Even reputable computer shops now insist that you show them your Windows license before they'll allow you to buy an OS-less computer.
Are you serious? I've been buying OS-less PCs for 15 years. The idea that an OS-less PC can't be bought is one of the biggest myths out there.
On another note, I'm pretty sure I know Steve Oulline. (How many can there be?) Nice guy, and certainly one to spend a lot of time to prove a point. My guess is that at his hourly rate, he took a loss getting his refund. Of course, he wasn't in it for the money.
Granted I used a technology example, but I still think the same principles apply for anyone in the knowledge business. Doctors, lawyers, educators, technicians and architects to name a few, all have to have to keep up with the latest in their respective fields.
White collar jobs can be thought of in terms of implementation or interpretation. Implementation details can be transferred overseas, but not the latest stuff. Interpretation (customer requirements, etc) are much more difficult to transfer. Combining the two makes an employee that much more valuable. Seems it's best to understand the collateral aspects of a job, not just the employers description. Otherwise you are just waiting for someone to tell you what to do. In this case, the employer can just tell someone overseas what to do.
In other words, it's a pretty good idea to be self-motivated in this country.
How many people reading this are using the same development technology they used:
5 years ago?
3 years ago?
1 year ago?
6 months ago?
If you are predominantly in the 6 month to 1 year category, and have been throughout your career, you are probably OK. 3-5 years? Might be a good idea to learn Hindi/Chinese/Russian.
Microsoft isn't the first technology company ordered to pay large sums after finding itself a class-action defendant. In 1999, Toshiba settled a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit that arose from claims that the company had sold notebooks with defective floppy drives. Immediately after the settlement, the same lawyers that pursued Toshiba sued Compaq Computer, Emachines, Hewlett-Packard, NEC and Packard Bell NEC.
Anyone notice a pattern here? Some time ago I received a notice in the mail informing me that I was entitled to $10-$20 dollar discount on a future monitor purchase. (Remember that lawsuit about display area?) In order to get the voucher, however, I had to fill out some paperwork which would have required that I spend more time than the voucher was worth. The notice also stated that the law firm received $5 million in fees. Pathetic. Wonder what the legal fees were for the law firm in this case. Bet they aren't taking vouchers.
If the next version of Linux offers something they want they can get it for the cost of the support techs installing it, no licenses required
Don't kid yourself. IBM doesn't do business like that. Sure would be interesting to see the support clauses of the contract. No doubt support has to be supplied by IBM, and any user changes immediately void the IBM service obligations. This one of the worst software deals in memory, and the fact that they 50% paid more for OSS makes it obvious it was a political decision. OSS has amazingly become a bogeyman in matters of free trade (at least in this context), something I never would have expected. In the long run, I don't think this is good for OSS by any means.
Maybe, but it's a different ballgame with people who have fiduciary responsibility. If a public company agreed to buy an IBM/Linux solution 50% above the cost of the M$ solution, they would probably be cast out at the next shareholder meeting, and may be subject to various conflict of interest investigations as well.
I am stunned that Munich paid 50% more for a Linux solution, and I doubt the TCO argument works given the huge up-front hit. This had to be a political decision more than anything else.
A few more of these and M$ will be able to go the WTO, which will really turn into a fascinating IP/trade/technology dispute. It's also conceivable that Red Hat and M$ could be allied in such a case, as it appears Red Hat wasn't considered, probably for domestic (German) political reasons. Imagine a ruling in which tariffs are applied to SuSE and Mandrake (foreign distro) but not Red Hat. One can imagine any number of countries deciding to encourage the creation of "national distros" in a thinly disguised protectionist move, while including the good stuff from other countries for free. Sure could turn into a big mess.
Now it appears to have graduated to competing on value
Wait a sec, they spent $12M more and this is competing on value?!? Remember that the $12M is spent today. It can't be used to pay down bond debt or other municipal expenditures. Perhaps it can be justified by reduced costs in the out years, but I have a hard time believing that they could not have negotiated this with M$ as well. Face it, they spent 50% more today to go with OSS instead of M$. If I were a taxpayer in Munich, I would not be very happy with this. I seriously doubt the decision was made on TCO. It looks a lot more like industrial policy to me, since the distro used is SuSE. No wonder Germany's economy is so dismal.
IANAL, but I have done business with a lot of them. I have also been a participant in legal proceedings, and have seen judges make some mind-boggling decisions.
The GPL does not recursively modify existing licenses unless the author of a program allows it
This is the kind of thing that makes lawyers freak and consequently bill you for more time.
I am becoming more concerned about the GPL. If I want to build the next killer app, I am first inclined to think "Open Source!" But then I have to think about the business model, and that means I better have a Very Good Lawyer look at the implications of the GPL. I can confidently inform you that the VGL's time will cost FAR more than any proprietary OS license.
You might say that I, the developer, am paying more for legal expenses, but the customers on their open source platforms will have paid much less, so there will be a total cost savings. The problem is that to get the Next Big Idea of the ground, I have to control my costs, and lawyers are expensive.
I'm not saying that I would never think of creating something based on the GPL, but I do think it prudent to recognize that it is not a inexpensive as some might think.
This is the quandary presented by OSS right now. The cost of XP Home and Office, amortized over a few years of use, is pretty inexpensive. Reloading a machine with Linux, just because it is "free" (which it isn't, it will take time, and take more time the first time I try to use it with unsupported hardware) isn't worth it. On the other hand, by providing replication of Office functionality, maybe enough people out there will start using Linux such that a young Bricklin will create something really new and interesting. Something like TiVo, Which is the only new and compelling Linux app I can think of today. But, if the new app is open sourced, will it be compelling enough for someone to invest dollars in improving it?
Seems to me that the big OSS economic opportunity lies with creating a product that utilizes OSS, but does not require distribution of the source. This defines what innovations we will ulimtately see, I think.
And yet again, I get to ask one of my favorite questions: "What is Sun's business model?"
They gave us JAVA and made Linux viable
Not sure about the last part, at least I sincerely doubt it was Sun's intention to make Linux viable. One thing for certain, though, if I were a Sun shareholder I would not be very happy with management strategy so far.
Fair enough, I appreciate your point. However, look at the accompanying posts and you can see what is happening. The SCO fiasco may just be the tip of the iceberg. No wonder Tux is a penguin!
"I'm giving it all she's got Jim, but I don't know if the engines can take this much longer! It keeps pulling us in!"
Linux (OK, GNU/Linux) has been ready for the desktop for a long time. The question, though, is which distro? Which window manager? When running a business, this stuff matters far more than license fees, within reasonable limits. When you think about how technically inferior Windows 3.1 was compared to OS/2 and the Mac, let alone the *nix's back then, it would seem to be a wonder that it got anywhere at all. But, considering how cheap it was and the fact that it did its basic job well enough on a huge permutation of PC hardware, its success becomes easier to understand.
Technical superiority has never been the primary determinant of market success, at least in the commercial world.
Now we have you and others comparing Mandrake to RH and <name favorite disto> already, and I sense the same pattern of the OS battles in the early 90s. Sooner or later,/. will become a spectacular arena in which to watch the distro battle/FUD flingfest. How this will resolve itself, I have no idea. But it sure will be interesting to see which Linux distro prevails, and to what extent.
You are probably right - 500 CDs is probably too small of a job, so the company came up with some lame reasons not to do it.
What's more interesting to me, though, is the lack of comment regarding Oracle's hostile takeover attempt of Peoplesoft, which prompted Peoplesoft to file suit. Note that the US DoJ and a couple of state AGs have become more interested in Oracle's tactics as well, and not a mention on/. Some article about 500 CDs gets mentioned and not Oracle? If you are not familiar with the situation, Ellison told the marketplace that after they do the takeover, Peoplesoft will be shut down. He has backpedaled since then.
Someday M$ will announce the KitchenPC blender. It will network to your fridge so that you will know when you can make a smoothie. The instant it is announced, a collection of OSS coders will begin porting Linux to it. Six months later, M$ will drop the blender effort, but will have spent its real effort on something useful to someone (ok, another service pack!)
Why is the OSS community so obsessed with re-inventing the wheel? (Or Unix for that matter...) Lets see another desktop model, for example, instead of Yet Another Windows Clone...
A good question, or several, actually. The problem with OpenSource, from a business point of view, is that it is almost impossible to make a big bet with it and gain from the insight that inspired the bet in the first place. Jobs and Wozniak bet on a friendly looking computer and a whimsical company image. Once established, no one could catch up to it for a long time. Gates bet on stripping out the windowing functions of OS/2, leaving the superiority of OS/2 behind in favor of lower cost. Similar big bets were made by Dell, Ellison and others. Now imagine an environment were their ideas were instantly distributed to everyone else, especially before they were completely evolved. I bet none of them would have market gained traction.
As I have mentioned in other posts, there only three promising Linux markets: high end, which Red Hat will likely win, ultra low end, where Lindows is well positioned, and embedded (TiVo). Successful technology strategies have few peers...
There are a lot of great things about OSS, but nationalism sure isn't one of them.
Munich signed SuSE, a Germany company. It only makes sense
But what if Red Hat offers a better product? Imagine a nation's politicians decide to use OSS to close their markets or even their societies. A commercial vendor cannot afford to alienate customers everywhere, but a government sure can. What is going to happen? Will someone sue Kim Jong Il over his regime's violation of the GPL?
On a lighter note, think multi-guage railways, NTSC/PAL Corba, left/right-hand drive, etc. Sure, there are standards bodies and other organizations that should ensure all systems play together - But - I will believe it when I see it. How do we know that all of the "programmers-down-the-street" tweaking here, tweaking there, aren't going to make a huge Tower of Babel?
I'll spell out my theory/bias: OSS applied to the "Global Enterprise" is a huge compatibilty disaster waiting to happen. Embedded OSS seems to be the safe business bet as I see it, because it ties functionality to a responsible vendor while innovative ideas are only limited by imagination of the OSS community.
My view has been that the best Linux app out there is TiVo, and it represents a good model for use of Linux in consumer electronics - as an embedded OS. Lindows is interesting because that is essentially what it is, a preloaded OS on inexpensive hardware, designed to allow someone to browse, email, and do some basic backoffice work. Lindows should really work with a hardware vendor to package all in a little box, not much bigger than a drive, to make a turnkey product.
Russ Mitchell is right about the effort wasted recreating the desktop. GNU/Linux community seems to be obsessed with the XP desktop. Why bother with a lookalike? To save $50? OK, throw in Office and make it $300. If I'm a professional, $300 is still cheap when I know all of my other software will work with the machine. If all I want to do is browse, email and print a few letters or whatever, Lindows is fine.
That's why I believe there will be two winners in the Linux world - Lindows or some Lindows like company (CE device), and Red Hat (enterprise). Once again thinking of TiVo, it has a customized interface (not looking for XP here!) suited for its task and does what I expect. In the enterprise arena, big corporations will likely go with Red Hat which seems to have the momentum now. All the other distros will become hobby horses.
Isn't the fact that MS is willing to support windows one of it's selling points?
Depends on who you talk to. For the typical user, probably not. The practical effect of its ubiquity, though, is that there is probably someone around you can ask, or a book ("Dummies", etc) to look at.
Does it really matter?....why should they be pissed off if someone tells them to call Microsoft...
I don't know if you have ever worked in an office environment, but let me tell you, it matters a lot. Imagine a co-worker is trying to figure out how to open a window (a real one!) and is puzzled by the locking mechanism. Someone comes along who knows everything there is to know about the windows in the building, but the one the co-worker is looking at is not one he would have used. The co-worker asks for assistance, but he says "Call facilities, that's what they are for." I guarantee that the co-worker will swear to never recommend whatever the preferred brand of the expert is, because they will associate it with his attitude. Believe me, attitude matters more than technology. That's why *nix lost the desktop in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Guess you never ran Black Ice Defender firewall software. Sad to say, you are right. The Gibson conjecture is becoming more accurate every day.
Even reputable computer shops now insist that you show them your Windows license before they'll allow you to buy an OS-less computer.
Are you serious? I've been buying OS-less PCs for 15 years. The idea that an OS-less PC can't be bought is one of the biggest myths out there.
On another note, I'm pretty sure I know Steve Oulline. (How many can there be?) Nice guy, and certainly one to spend a lot of time to prove a point. My guess is that at his hourly rate, he took a loss getting his refund. Of course, he wasn't in it for the money.
OK, I'll admit it - I just like the sound effects.
Guess this site will be getting a few more entries.
Granted I used a technology example, but I still think the same principles apply for anyone in the knowledge business. Doctors, lawyers, educators, technicians and architects to name a few, all have to have to keep up with the latest in their respective fields.
White collar jobs can be thought of in terms of implementation or interpretation. Implementation details can be transferred overseas, but not the latest stuff. Interpretation (customer requirements, etc) are much more difficult to transfer. Combining the two makes an employee that much more valuable. Seems it's best to understand the collateral aspects of a job, not just the employers description. Otherwise you are just waiting for someone to tell you what to do. In this case, the employer can just tell someone overseas what to do.
In other words, it's a pretty good idea to be self-motivated in this country.
How many people reading this are using the same development technology they used:
If you are predominantly in the 6 month to 1 year category, and have been throughout your career, you are probably OK. 3-5 years? Might be a good idea to learn Hindi/Chinese/Russian.
From the article:
Microsoft isn't the first technology company ordered to pay large sums after finding itself a class-action defendant. In 1999, Toshiba settled a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit that arose from claims that the company had sold notebooks with defective floppy drives. Immediately after the settlement, the same lawyers that pursued Toshiba sued Compaq Computer, Emachines, Hewlett-Packard, NEC and Packard Bell NEC.
Anyone notice a pattern here? Some time ago I received a notice in the mail informing me that I was entitled to $10-$20 dollar discount on a future monitor purchase. (Remember that lawsuit about display area?) In order to get the voucher, however, I had to fill out some paperwork which would have required that I spend more time than the voucher was worth. The notice also stated that the law firm received $5 million in fees. Pathetic. Wonder what the legal fees were for the law firm in this case. Bet they aren't taking vouchers.
Also, the IBM/SuSE bid came in at $150M...
You be the judge: Troll or Funny?
If the next version of Linux offers something they want they can get it for the cost of the support techs installing it, no licenses required
Don't kid yourself. IBM doesn't do business like that. Sure would be interesting to see the support clauses of the contract. No doubt support has to be supplied by IBM, and any user changes immediately void the IBM service obligations. This one of the worst software deals in memory, and the fact that they 50% paid more for OSS makes it obvious it was a political decision. OSS has amazingly become a bogeyman in matters of free trade (at least in this context), something I never would have expected. In the long run, I don't think this is good for OSS by any means.
Maybe, but it's a different ballgame with people who have fiduciary responsibility. If a public company agreed to buy an IBM/Linux solution 50% above the cost of the M$ solution, they would probably be cast out at the next shareholder meeting, and may be subject to various conflict of interest investigations as well.
I am stunned that Munich paid 50% more for a Linux solution, and I doubt the TCO argument works given the huge up-front hit. This had to be a political decision more than anything else.
A few more of these and M$ will be able to go the WTO, which will really turn into a fascinating IP/trade/technology dispute. It's also conceivable that Red Hat and M$ could be allied in such a case, as it appears Red Hat wasn't considered, probably for domestic (German) political reasons. Imagine a ruling in which tariffs are applied to SuSE and Mandrake (foreign distro) but not Red Hat. One can imagine any number of countries deciding to encourage the creation of "national distros" in a thinly disguised protectionist move, while including the good stuff from other countries for free. Sure could turn into a big mess.
Wait a sec, they spent $12M more and this is competing on value?!? Remember that the $12M is spent today. It can't be used to pay down bond debt or other municipal expenditures. Perhaps it can be justified by reduced costs in the out years, but I have a hard time believing that they could not have negotiated this with M$ as well. Face it, they spent 50% more today to go with OSS instead of M$. If I were a taxpayer in Munich, I would not be very happy with this. I seriously doubt the decision was made on TCO. It looks a lot more like industrial policy to me, since the distro used is SuSE. No wonder Germany's economy is so dismal.
IANAL, but I have done business with a lot of them. I have also been a participant in legal proceedings, and have seen judges make some mind-boggling decisions.
The GPL does not recursively modify existing licenses unless the author of a program allows it
This is the kind of thing that makes lawyers freak and consequently bill you for more time.
I am becoming more concerned about the GPL. If I want to build the next killer app, I am first inclined to think "Open Source!" But then I have to think about the business model, and that means I better have a Very Good Lawyer look at the implications of the GPL. I can confidently inform you that the VGL's time will cost FAR more than any proprietary OS license.
You might say that I, the developer, am paying more for legal expenses, but the customers on their open source platforms will have paid much less, so there will be a total cost savings. The problem is that to get the Next Big Idea of the ground, I have to control my costs, and lawyers are expensive.
I'm not saying that I would never think of creating something based on the GPL, but I do think it prudent to recognize that it is not a inexpensive as some might think.
This is the quandary presented by OSS right now. The cost of XP Home and Office, amortized over a few years of use, is pretty inexpensive. Reloading a machine with Linux, just because it is "free" (which it isn't, it will take time, and take more time the first time I try to use it with unsupported hardware) isn't worth it. On the other hand, by providing replication of Office functionality, maybe enough people out there will start using Linux such that a young Bricklin will create something really new and interesting. Something like TiVo, Which is the only new and compelling Linux app I can think of today. But, if the new app is open sourced, will it be compelling enough for someone to invest dollars in improving it?
Seems to me that the big OSS economic opportunity lies with creating a product that utilizes OSS, but does not require distribution of the source. This defines what innovations we will ulimtately see, I think.
And yet again, I get to ask one of my favorite questions: "What is Sun's business model?"
They gave us JAVA and made Linux viable
Not sure about the last part, at least I sincerely doubt it was Sun's intention to make Linux viable. One thing for certain, though, if I were a Sun shareholder I would not be very happy with management strategy so far.
Fair enough, I appreciate your point. However, look at the accompanying posts and you can see what is happening. The SCO fiasco may just be the tip of the iceberg. No wonder Tux is a penguin!
"I'm giving it all she's got Jim, but I don't know if the engines can take this much longer! It keeps pulling us in!"
Linux (OK, GNU/Linux) has been ready for the desktop for a long time. The question, though, is which distro? Which window manager? When running a business, this stuff matters far more than license fees, within reasonable limits. When you think about how technically inferior Windows 3.1 was compared to OS/2 and the Mac, let alone the *nix's back then, it would seem to be a wonder that it got anywhere at all. But, considering how cheap it was and the fact that it did its basic job well enough on a huge permutation of PC hardware, its success becomes easier to understand.
Technical superiority has never been the primary determinant of market success, at least in the commercial world.
Now we have you and others comparing Mandrake to RH and <name favorite disto> already, and I sense the same pattern of the OS battles in the early 90s. Sooner or later, /. will become a spectacular arena in which to watch the distro battle/FUD flingfest. How this will resolve itself, I have no idea. But it sure will be interesting to see which Linux distro prevails, and to what extent.
You are probably right - 500 CDs is probably too small of a job, so the company came up with some lame reasons not to do it.
What's more interesting to me, though, is the lack of comment regarding Oracle's hostile takeover attempt of Peoplesoft, which prompted Peoplesoft to file suit. Note that the US DoJ and a couple of state AGs have become more interested in Oracle's tactics as well, and not a mention on /. Some article about 500 CDs gets mentioned and not Oracle? If you are not familiar with the situation, Ellison told the marketplace that after they do the takeover, Peoplesoft will be shut down. He has backpedaled since then.
Such is the tech business.
Someday M$ will announce the KitchenPC blender. It will network to your fridge so that you will know when you can make a smoothie. The instant it is announced, a collection of OSS coders will begin porting Linux to it. Six months later, M$ will drop the blender effort, but will have spent its real effort on something useful to someone (ok, another service pack!)
Why is the OSS community so obsessed with re-inventing the wheel? (Or Unix for that matter...) Lets see another desktop model, for example, instead of Yet Another Windows Clone...
A good question, or several, actually. The problem with OpenSource, from a business point of view, is that it is almost impossible to make a big bet with it and gain from the insight that inspired the bet in the first place. Jobs and Wozniak bet on a friendly looking computer and a whimsical company image. Once established, no one could catch up to it for a long time. Gates bet on stripping out the windowing functions of OS/2, leaving the superiority of OS/2 behind in favor of lower cost. Similar big bets were made by Dell, Ellison and others. Now imagine an environment were their ideas were instantly distributed to everyone else, especially before they were completely evolved. I bet none of them would have market gained traction.
As I have mentioned in other posts, there only three promising Linux markets: high end, which Red Hat will likely win, ultra low end, where Lindows is well positioned, and embedded (TiVo). Successful technology strategies have few peers...
Nationalism = Industrial Policy = Trouble
There are a lot of great things about OSS, but nationalism sure isn't one of them.
Munich signed SuSE, a Germany company. It only makes sense
But what if Red Hat offers a better product? Imagine a nation's politicians decide to use OSS to close their markets or even their societies. A commercial vendor cannot afford to alienate customers everywhere, but a government sure can. What is going to happen? Will someone sue Kim Jong Il over his regime's violation of the GPL?
On a lighter note, think multi-guage railways, NTSC/PAL Corba, left/right-hand drive, etc. Sure, there are standards bodies and other organizations that should ensure all systems play together - But - I will believe it when I see it. How do we know that all of the "programmers-down-the-street" tweaking here, tweaking there, aren't going to make a huge Tower of Babel?
I'll spell out my theory/bias: OSS applied to the "Global Enterprise" is a huge compatibilty disaster waiting to happen. Embedded OSS seems to be the safe business bet as I see it, because it ties functionality to a responsible vendor while innovative ideas are only limited by imagination of the OSS community.
Interesting point. I suspect a FUD fight in the making between SuSE and Red Hat. Place your bets now!
My view has been that the best Linux app out there is TiVo, and it represents a good model for use of Linux in consumer electronics - as an embedded OS. Lindows is interesting because that is essentially what it is, a preloaded OS on inexpensive hardware, designed to allow someone to browse, email, and do some basic backoffice work. Lindows should really work with a hardware vendor to package all in a little box, not much bigger than a drive, to make a turnkey product.
Russ Mitchell is right about the effort wasted recreating the desktop. GNU/Linux community seems to be obsessed with the XP desktop. Why bother with a lookalike? To save $50? OK, throw in Office and make it $300. If I'm a professional, $300 is still cheap when I know all of my other software will work with the machine. If all I want to do is browse, email and print a few letters or whatever, Lindows is fine.
That's why I believe there will be two winners in the Linux world - Lindows or some Lindows like company (CE device), and Red Hat (enterprise). Once again thinking of TiVo, it has a customized interface (not looking for XP here!) suited for its task and does what I expect. In the enterprise arena, big corporations will likely go with Red Hat which seems to have the momentum now. All the other distros will become hobby horses.
I'm not an advocate anymore, been there, done that
What were you advocating?
Yeesh! Well, you are "Malcontent." Now that I think about it, I used to call IT because of network problems. Novell network that is...
Isn't the fact that MS is willing to support windows one of it's selling points?
Depends on who you talk to. For the typical user, probably not. The practical effect of its ubiquity, though, is that there is probably someone around you can ask, or a book ("Dummies", etc) to look at.
Does it really matter? ....why should they be pissed off if someone tells them to call Microsoft...
I don't know if you have ever worked in an office environment, but let me tell you, it matters a lot. Imagine a co-worker is trying to figure out how to open a window (a real one!) and is puzzled by the locking mechanism. Someone comes along who knows everything there is to know about the windows in the building, but the one the co-worker is looking at is not one he would have used. The co-worker asks for assistance, but he says "Call facilities, that's what they are for." I guarantee that the co-worker will swear to never recommend whatever the preferred brand of the expert is, because they will associate it with his attitude. Believe me, attitude matters more than technology. That's why *nix lost the desktop in the first place.