I should clarify this...I think it was a good business move for Sun to buy Cobalt. What they have done with the product line since acquiring it indicates they don't want it to thrive...maybe even perceive it as a threat to their "core" business. That's where I think they stepped on their cranks.
Open Source today depends on big companies to basically make charitable contributions.
It wasn't always that way, and the degree of open source's dependency on corporate sponsorship is debatable. I'm not going to deny it exists or speculate on whether or not this is a Good Thing, but if it didn't there would still be open source development: remember the cash the government spent on BSD via DARPA and the NSA pumped into SE Linux and the continuing support from universities and academia to open source. Not to mention the thousands of developers who devote their spare time and personal resources.
What corporate sponsorship there is exists because the sponsors have something tangible to gain, not just goodwill. IBM saw the writing on the wall for proprietary UNIX and embraced Linux to poise itself for the future and strike back at HP, DEC, Microsoft, and Sun. Over the weekend news broke that Apple was going to be buying some new chips from IBM for future computers, but the article also said that IBM was considering running Linux on them as well:
Now, that right there shows that IBM is looking after their own bottom line with the 970 chip in more ways than being a vendor to Apple, and dollars to donuts Red Hat has the specs on it and is likely gearing up to port future versions of its Linux distro so they'll run not only on x86 gear, but IBM 970 boxen and Apple Macs as well.
I think Sun's embrace on StarOffice was McNealy's ego wanting to undermine MS-Office, which he was willing to spend some cash to do. Profiting from it was a secondary consideration at best. So now it's mostly morphed into an open source project that is finally getting enough quality under its belt to be a serious Office competitor.
The reason I used Sun as an example has nothing to do with its StarOffice foray....I was referring to the rock and a hard place it finds itself in with Linux/BSD competing against Solaris and Intel/AMD competing against Sparc64. Sun saw the threat and lost sales that Cobalt represented, which was why they bought them up at a fat price and have neglected the product line. Not a good move if you ask me....Linux ain't going away, and nothing is preventing someone else from entering the free OS server appliance industry with newwer and better stuff.
All the penny-pinching and cost controls in corporate America these days are the kind of environmnet Open Source thrives in.
Free and low-cost alternatives to Win32/Office like Red Hat's imroving desktop and OpenOffice.org are being looked at seriously now.
Linux may have gotten alot of hype and speculative investment in the 90's, but the current economy is where its price/performance potential becomes evident.
Not only is Ballmer scared, but Sun announced 4,400 layoffs today. The demand for commodity operating systems is kicking them in the pants, and their quality, but proprietary hardware seems less of a bargain as commodity hardware improves in price/performance.
FWIW, open source is sending some proprietary UNIX employees to the unemployment lines already. Next, it's Redmond's turn as the desktop improves.
I think its great that Wired runs a lot of mac articles, but in the past issues you would think that Macs have a 50% marketshare or something. IMHO, they give way too much press to any mac users who do something "unusual. "
It just validates that Mac users are like any other privileged special interest group whose influence is way out of proportion to its actual numbers.
Steve: What do you say to spending just a little over 50 million dollars to derail Linux development on its tracks?
Somebody mod the parent to this up!
This is reason enough for Linux and other OSS projects to be wary of wedding themselves to proprietary software whose licensing can change on a whim. Of course, such an event would hamper kernel development, for a time anyhow, but it would also light a fire under developers' arses to improve CVS (or write a new OSS product) out of necessity, after which I imagine we'd hear "never again!" shouted from open source rooftops.
This kinda reminds me of when de Raadt removed IPFilter from OpenBSD's ports tree over restrictive licensing and the OpenBSD crew took it upon themselves to develop pf from the ground up.
Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today?
on
FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
·
· Score: 2
OS X being available as an alternative on x86 would surely put a monkey wrench in the DRM conspiracy, and would give Apple more mindshare. Just what they need to drive more developer interest.
If it were popular, they might have more clout with Intel and AMD to thwart DRM.
He's neoconservative Israel-firster whose real name is Michael Weiner, which explains a great deal.
Anyone who thinks most "right-wing" talk radio is "alternative" is seriously deluded. It's all party-line for the neocons. About the only show I'll listen to on my AM dial is Jeff Rense...what few other shows are worthwhile are scattered among shortwave and Internet streaming audio.
I'm a paleo-libertarian, yet I still enjoy listening to Pacifica now and then...how's that for diversity?
I would reccommend either the cable channel BBC America or the world service streamed across the net. The WS in particular is very cool. As a last resort get a short wave radio.
The BBS dropped shortwave service to North America and the Pacific in 2001, but I do agree their Internet streaming is worthwhile.
Ever since about the time of the OJ trial (maybe before), American television news has degenerated into tabloid trash. All along it's been a slick propaganda tool for the establishment....to wit: newspapers, not television, did the roll-up-your-sleeves investigative reporting on the Watergate scandal.
Thank goodness for Internet streaming audio and online journalism.
OPN has always been a very locked-down, authoritative (read: non-free) network. It will continue to be such, as long as the "maintainer" of the network refuses to delegate control of it. I've suggested this to him personally over 2 years ago, to which he scoffed. Fine, micromanage it into the ground.
In this respect, OPN/Freenode sounds alot like "Free" [sic] Republic . . . . that is to say, lavish use of the personal possessive prounoun. Hi, RimJob!
Most of them have, except irc.freshmeat.net is on OFTC, where #freshmeat is
all the other irc.xxx.xxx domains in OSDN seem to be on SlashNET now (Slashdot, linux.com, K5, Sourceforge)
You'd think that the official #debian channel would move to OFTC, since it's a member project of Software in the Public Interest and a sister project to Debian.
If RIAA wins this suit, it could set a nasty precedent for someone to sue Havenco's backbone providers because of content some corp or govt deems objectionable.
Slashdot Mirror
sheesh the *BSD trolls are trolling to non-BSD threads now
20GB, XP Home
867MHz Crusoe(TM) TM5800 processor with LongRun(TM)
Power Management
10.6" wide-format SXGA TFT
256MB memory
20GB hard drive
DVD/CD-RW Combo drive
External USB 3.5" floppy drive
Built-in multinational 56K4 V.90 modem
Built-in 10/100 Ethernet
Quickpoint pointing device with scroll button
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home
Model P2110, FPCM20091
$1,499
I should clarify this...I think it was a good business move for Sun to buy Cobalt. What they have done with the product line since acquiring it indicates they don't want it to thrive...maybe even perceive it as a threat to their "core" business. That's where I think they stepped on their cranks.
It wasn't always that way, and the degree of open source's dependency on corporate sponsorship is debatable. I'm not going to deny it exists or speculate on whether or not this is a Good Thing, but if it didn't there would still be open source development: remember the cash the government spent on BSD via DARPA and the NSA pumped into SE Linux and the continuing support from universities and academia to open source. Not to mention the thousands of developers who devote their spare time and personal resources.
What corporate sponsorship there is exists because the sponsors have something tangible to gain, not just goodwill. IBM saw the writing on the wall for proprietary UNIX and embraced Linux to poise itself for the future and strike back at HP, DEC, Microsoft, and Sun. Over the weekend news broke that Apple was going to be buying some new chips from IBM for future computers, but the article also said that IBM was considering running Linux on them as well:
Big Blue is being equally cautious about revealing its own 970 system plans, but analysts say the chip could provide the basis for an IBM Linux system.
Now, that right there shows that IBM is looking after their own bottom line with the 970 chip in more ways than being a vendor to Apple, and dollars to donuts Red Hat has the specs on it and is likely gearing up to port future versions of its Linux distro so they'll run not only on x86 gear, but IBM 970 boxen and Apple Macs as well.
I think Sun's embrace on StarOffice was McNealy's ego wanting to undermine MS-Office, which he was willing to spend some cash to do. Profiting from it was a secondary consideration at best. So now it's mostly morphed into an open source project that is finally getting enough quality under its belt to be a serious Office competitor.
The reason I used Sun as an example has nothing to do with its StarOffice foray....I was referring to the rock and a hard place it finds itself in with Linux/BSD competing against Solaris and Intel/AMD competing against Sparc64. Sun saw the threat and lost sales that Cobalt represented, which was why they bought them up at a fat price and have neglected the product line. Not a good move if you ask me....Linux ain't going away, and nothing is preventing someone else from entering the free OS server appliance industry with newwer and better stuff.
Free and low-cost alternatives to Win32/Office like Red Hat's imroving desktop and OpenOffice.org are being looked at seriously now.
Linux may have gotten alot of hype and speculative investment in the 90's, but the current economy is where its price/performance potential becomes evident.
Not only is Ballmer scared, but Sun announced 4,400 layoffs today. The demand for commodity operating systems is kicking them in the pants, and their quality, but proprietary hardware seems less of a bargain as commodity hardware improves in price/performance.
FWIW, open source is sending some proprietary UNIX employees to the unemployment lines already. Next, it's Redmond's turn as the desktop improves.
It just validates that Mac users are like any other privileged special interest group whose influence is way out of proportion to its actual numbers.
Somebody mod the parent to this up!
This is reason enough for Linux and other OSS projects to be wary of wedding themselves to proprietary software whose licensing can change on a whim. Of course, such an event would hamper kernel development, for a time anyhow, but it would also light a fire under developers' arses to improve CVS (or write a new OSS product) out of necessity, after which I imagine we'd hear "never again!" shouted from open source rooftops.
This kinda reminds me of when de Raadt removed IPFilter from OpenBSD's ports tree over restrictive licensing and the OpenBSD crew took it upon themselves to develop pf from the ground up.
http://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/
didn't they used to publish "Compute!" as well?
OS X being available as an alternative on x86 would surely put a monkey wrench in the DRM conspiracy, and would give Apple more mindshare. Just what they need to drive more developer interest. If it were popular, they might have more clout with Intel and AMD to thwart DRM.
He's neoconservative Israel-firster whose real name is Michael Weiner, which explains a great deal.
Anyone who thinks most "right-wing" talk radio is "alternative" is seriously deluded. It's all party-line for the neocons. About the only show I'll listen to on my AM dial is Jeff Rense...what few other shows are worthwhile are scattered among shortwave and Internet streaming audio.
I'm a paleo-libertarian, yet I still enjoy listening to Pacifica now and then...how's that for diversity?
The BBS dropped shortwave service to North America and the Pacific in 2001, but I do agree their Internet streaming is worthwhile.
Ever since about the time of the OJ trial (maybe before), American television news has degenerated into tabloid trash. All along it's been a slick propaganda tool for the establishment....to wit: newspapers, not television, did the roll-up-your-sleeves investigative reporting on the Watergate scandal.
Thank goodness for Internet streaming audio and online journalism.
LOL
In this respect, OPN/Freenode sounds alot like "Free" [sic] Republic . . . . that is to say, lavish use of the personal possessive prounoun. Hi, RimJob!
Most of them have, except irc.freshmeat.net is on OFTC, where #freshmeat is all the other irc.xxx.xxx domains in OSDN seem to be on SlashNET now (Slashdot, linux.com, K5, Sourceforge)
You'd think that the official #debian channel would move to OFTC, since it's a member project of Software in the Public Interest and a sister project to Debian.
....you know the rest
If RIAA wins this suit, it could set a nasty precedent for someone to sue Havenco's backbone providers because of content some corp or govt deems objectionable.
it's spelled E-U-L-O-G-Y, dumbass