> but most people learn to deal with this ambiguity
My native language is not English, it's Dutch. I'm sure I didn't misunderstand you though. You (singular) dragged MS into this discussion without reason. Calling me names and throwing around insults about it doesn't make you (singular) look any better.
>...representing less than one thousandth of one percent of the open source community and thus meaning roughly JACK SHIT.
Actually, as you should have noticed, I was not comparing just to FOSS projects, I was comparing to closed source software as well. In the ETL space that we're competing in it's fair to say that all 4 of the top players have less than 5000 paying customers each. (makes sense, the software costs >US$100.000 a piece) Well, that's about the amount of downloads Kettle had... last month. So we must be doing something right.
Again, the same goes for Apache, JBoss and many *many* other interesting and very successful FOSS projects.
It's also interesting to note that Kettle could not have been written if it hadn't been for other open source projects on top of which it builds. I'm sure you would consider many of those projects "failures", but I found them extremely useful nevertheless.
> Not one single name has been called there, and no FUD is involved. These are simply the facts.
Mmmm, I distinctly remember you calling my community a bunch of monkeys. Now where is that post... Oh there it is. Portraying FOSS projects like that is dishonest to say the least and an insult to many people and organizations. FUD indeed. Sure there are failed attempts at software writing in FOSS, but like another poster said below, things are learned and you move along. And it's not like all close source software is that great either. I clearly remember the "good old" days of shareware and I *know* that 99% of that stuff was not worth the disk-space it occupied.
You as a consumer have the choice to use FOSS or not. Well, at least thanks to FOSS now you have that choice. So why not help out these "failed" projects with your obviously valuable feedback, instead of spending all your time complaining about it on Slashdot? The people in the Kettle community I value the most are the ones that write bug reports and give feedback, whether it is negative or not.
You must be confused or something. I never said anything negative about Microsoft, and I usually don't say anything negative about any other software. I'm just pointing out the differences.
You are sadly mistaken though. In the specific case of Kettle ETL I know that it is better than 90% of the commercial ETL tools out there, including tools from Oracle, feature wise AND quality wise. And not only is it better, but it is also Free. And because of that it has a bright future and will continue to improve. I can think of plenty of projects where this is the case, ranging from Apache to JBoss, Java and plenty of other success stories.
All thanks to the open nature of the software and community feedback.
Resorting to name-calling and spreading FUD is not winning you any points here. Neither is the whining.
> a totally different ecosystem > Because I use them on the same servers in the same data centers for the same purposes.
Yes, that's just about all that they have in common. So yes, really! And you are right, it's not only about the price.
Disclaimer: As the lead developer of an open source tool called Kettle (http://kettle.pentaho.org) I am a bit biased. Kettle was open-sourced a year ago next week. What we saw in the beginning was that mostly small companies/individuals were using the tool. That is because closed source tools like Kettle are *very* expensive in closed source software (CSS). So you see, price/cost is an issue in certain cases.
There is a drawback to using open source software is that it places a lot more responsibility on the shoulders of the "consumer" of that software. It's the "consumer" that has to decide whether or not a certain piece of software is fit to solve a particular problem. And, you often don't have a sales representative to help you with that. (Some people might argue that this is NOT a drawback:-)) It's also true that FOSS often doesn't follow strict project plans and goals and is much more than open-source developed based on community input. As such, a consumer is expected to participate in the community as least a tiny bit to understand what's going down in new versions. The consumer is expected to file bug reports, provide feedback, etc. In the example of the Kettle project, I get bug fixes, new features sent to me on almost a daily bases. As such Kettle "grows" based on community input not based on anything else, and certainly not a corporate plan or marketing strategy. That's not a bad thing either, believe me.
All these things are vastly different from CSS software.
> Does the project do what it set out to do? Yes or no. Very simple.
If it's yes, you would consider the project succesful. Fine. If it's no, in the FOSS world you have a choice. You can either ignore the project or participate by file feature requests, improvements to the code or even new code. For all practical purposes you don't have that choice in the CSS.
Whatever the case, that's for the consumer to decide and is as such very subjective and far from simple. However, by looking at the popularity at least we can see that more and more people and organisations use FOSS and as such have made the decision that a particular project was useful/succesful for a particular purpose.
> More people using open source does not mean open source is getting better.
Indeed, just "Using" FOSS doesn't make open source any better, participation in the communities is required before that happens. However, a certain percentage of the people usually does. (folks that, unlike you, grasp the concept of FOSS) As such, it would be a safe bet to say that FOSS software improves over time.
However, the decision of whether or not it is fit for a certain purpose will always remain on your shoulder, not on anyone else.
In that case, your definition of failure for FOSS projects is indeed flawed. FOSS projects operate in a totally different ecosystem from commercial closed source software. The success of closed source / commercial software could simply be measured by the amount of money it makes for the creator. FOSS success is less trivial to measure. In FOSS software projects it can happen that for years someone (or a small group of people) works on a software project and then releases it with a big bang. Does that mean that by definition the project was 'a failure' during those years? I don't think so.
The way I see it, all FOSS software competes with each other and the best/most popular/best supported options remain. The rest is indeed abandoned.
You might as well say that the success of FOSS itself could be measured by the number of abandoned projects / period of time. The more projects get abandoned the more succesful FOSS is. Because these projects needed to get started in the first place and because of the open nature of the software, good ideas can be inherited rapidly by other projects. It's like a giant software breeding system.
Let's take for example a hypothetical radically new Linux distribution that is sooo much better than anything else. It perhaps causes a couple of smaller distributions that weren't any good anyway to fail. Does that mean that thos FOSS projects where a failure? Obviously not, they perhaps were a stepping stone for the new Linux distribution, a new starting point.
In any case, I don't need any "Homer Simpson" statistics to know that open source is getting more popular in almost all the domains that it is present in at the moment. It certainly is in the Business Intelligence arena where I'm operating in.
Well I don't know... There have been times when I have found myself completely out of control, violently smashing chairs and punching people after seeing David "The Hoff" Hasselhoff on television. I even had a fit watching William Shatner "act" in an old episode of Columbo.
I strongly believe (pun intended) that the randomness is vital to the development and existance of life. Imagine if everything would be strictly ordered, what a boring place would the universe be. Even in society, I think that diversity is good. Different opinions make us stronger, not weaker.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong : if you think you found something, you didn't look hard enough.
Last time I wrote on Slashdot that Mandriva was installing fine but refused to even run on my laptop I got modded into oblivion.
So it's with great joy I have to say that I've been working with SuSE 10.1RC3 for a couple of weeks now and it really IS very nice. I have a brand new laptop: Acer 5612, Dual Core, NVidia 3D card, etc. In hours I got everything working, *including* Xgl which is nice.
Special thanks to the MPlayer guys who installed the video codecs on it at Linuxtag in Wiesbaden.
Hey, I'm even starting to like Gnome. Who would have though it possible on SuSE?;-)
I don't know, in my line of work (Data Warehousing) where I need to move around large amounts of data, no amount of tuning beats a large amount of spindles. In that regard, I find the new advances that MySQL is making on table partitioning (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/partitioni ng.html ) in their 5.1 beta VERY interesting.
[warning: shameless plug ahead!] If you combine this with my own Free/free open source ETL tool Kettle (http://www.kettle.be/ ) you can build your data warehouse just as fast or faster than most commercial ETL tools.
The deal then becomes very simple: spend the money you save on licensing on hardware! You'll be amazed at the results... Oh, and try the Pentaho (http://www.pentaho.org/ ) open source BI solution while you're at it...
Most people don't care about an old alpha workstation, they care about the discount computer they bought or the latest laptop. In my opionion, the study seems to be fair. Once linux supports a piece of hardware, it does so very well for the most part. However, for the newer laptops and computers, things do not look so good.
In fact I'm typing this message on a Acer TravelMate 8100 laptop, bought about a year ago. Despite trying several different distribution Linux does NOT run on it in a orderly fashion. (SuSE 10, 10.1a, Mandrake last 2 versions, Fedora Core 3, 4 and a couple I forgot) There's always something that doesn't work: top 1 problem when asking around is most of the time X Windows, followed closely by wireless LAN, power management a sound cards.
When I think about this, it's been like this with the last 4 laptops I had. If I would install linux on the first laptop I had, it would probably run perfectly. But then again, I wouldn't want to do any serious work on that old piece of junk, would I?
These question then come to mind: - How many people will install Linux if they already have Windows XP on their new machine? - Of the few that *do* try linux on their bright and shiny new machine, how many will fail because of the new hardware and leave disapointed.
Just a couple of thought, this message will probably be moderated troll, but the fact remains that a LOT of the newest hardware is out of reach for Linux users like myself.
OK, so you forgot to tell the JVM how much memory it could use on the machine... Should I start to cry now? It's still so much better then having the JVM kill the whole machine because someone forgot to let objects get out of scope. Look at it this way: at least your machine was still running fine. Suppose you only had the 1G to spare and it went to 1.5Gb: your application wouldn't be running anymore either. Do you know what trashing is? It's not very nice!
-1 for the script kiddy languages as far as I'm concerned: bad behaving processes should go way, not hang around.
Slashdot Mirror
> but most people learn to deal with this ambiguity
My native language is not English, it's Dutch. I'm sure I didn't misunderstand you though. You (singular) dragged MS into this discussion without reason. Calling me names and throwing around insults about it doesn't make you (singular) look any better.
>
Actually, as you should have noticed, I was not comparing just to FOSS projects, I was comparing to closed source software as well.
In the ETL space that we're competing in it's fair to say that all 4 of the top players have less than 5000 paying customers each. (makes sense, the software costs >US$100.000 a piece)
Well, that's about the amount of downloads Kettle had... last month. So we must be doing something right.
Again, the same goes for Apache, JBoss and many *many* other interesting and very successful FOSS projects.
It's also interesting to note that Kettle could not have been written if it hadn't been for other open source projects on top of which it builds.
I'm sure you would consider many of those projects "failures", but I found them extremely useful nevertheless.
> Not one single name has been called there, and no FUD is involved. These are simply the facts.
Mmmm, I distinctly remember you calling my community a bunch of monkeys. Now where is that post... Oh there it is.
Portraying FOSS projects like that is dishonest to say the least and an insult to many people and organizations. FUD indeed.
Sure there are failed attempts at software writing in FOSS, but like another poster said below, things are learned and you move along. And it's not like all close source software is that great either. I clearly remember the "good old" days of shareware and I *know* that 99% of that stuff was not worth the disk-space it occupied.
You as a consumer have the choice to use FOSS or not. Well, at least thanks to FOSS now you have that choice.
So why not help out these "failed" projects with your obviously valuable feedback, instead of spending all your time complaining about it on Slashdot? The people in the Kettle community I value the most are the ones that write bug reports and give feedback, whether it is negative or not.
Peace,
Matt
You must be confused or something. I never said anything negative about Microsoft, and I usually don't say anything negative about any other software. I'm just pointing out the differences.
You are sadly mistaken though. In the specific case of Kettle ETL I know that it is better than 90% of the commercial ETL tools out there, including tools from Oracle, feature wise AND quality wise. And not only is it better, but it is also Free. And because of that it has a bright future and will continue to improve. I can think of plenty of projects where this is the case, ranging from Apache to JBoss, Java and plenty of other success stories.
All thanks to the open nature of the software and community feedback.
Resorting to name-calling and spreading FUD is not winning you any points here. Neither is the whining.
> twinkie attached to standard electrical plug atop standard notebook paper
Just when I thought I saw it all, something like this comes along.
Making science popular to younsters is fine and all, but come on!
This is getting silly, I have to protest!
...reading a post like that on Slashot: priceless!
Thanks.
I couldn't possibly agree more.
> a totally different ecosystem
:-))
> Because I use them on the same servers in the same data centers for the same purposes.
Yes, that's just about all that they have in common. So yes, really!
And you are right, it's not only about the price.
Disclaimer: As the lead developer of an open source tool called Kettle (http://kettle.pentaho.org) I am a bit biased.
Kettle was open-sourced a year ago next week. What we saw in the beginning was that mostly small companies/individuals were using the tool. That is because closed source tools like Kettle are *very* expensive in closed source software (CSS). So you see, price/cost is an issue in certain cases.
There is a drawback to using open source software is that it places a lot more responsibility on the shoulders of the "consumer" of that software. It's the "consumer" that has to decide whether or not a certain piece of software is fit to solve a particular problem. And, you often don't have a sales representative to help you with that. (Some people might argue that this is NOT a drawback
It's also true that FOSS often doesn't follow strict project plans and goals and is much more than open-source developed based on community input. As such, a consumer is expected to participate in the community as least a tiny bit to understand what's going down in new versions. The consumer is expected to file bug reports, provide feedback, etc.
In the example of the Kettle project, I get bug fixes, new features sent to me on almost a daily bases. As such Kettle "grows" based on community input not based on anything else, and certainly not a corporate plan or marketing strategy. That's not a bad thing either, believe me.
All these things are vastly different from CSS software.
> Does the project do what it set out to do? Yes or no. Very simple.
If it's yes, you would consider the project succesful. Fine.
If it's no, in the FOSS world you have a choice. You can either ignore the project or participate by file feature requests, improvements to the code or even new code. For all practical purposes you don't have that choice in the CSS.
Whatever the case, that's for the consumer to decide and is as such very subjective and far from simple.
However, by looking at the popularity at least we can see that more and more people and organisations use FOSS and as such have made the decision that a particular project was useful/succesful for a particular purpose.
> More people using open source does not mean open source is getting better.
Indeed, just "Using" FOSS doesn't make open source any better, participation in the communities is required before that happens. However, a certain percentage of the people usually does. (folks that, unlike you, grasp the concept of FOSS) As such, it would be a safe bet to say that FOSS software improves over time.
However, the decision of whether or not it is fit for a certain purpose will always remain on your shoulder, not on anyone else.
'nough said.
Matt
In that case, your definition of failure for FOSS projects is indeed flawed.
FOSS projects operate in a totally different ecosystem from commercial closed source software.
The success of closed source / commercial software could simply be measured by the amount of money it makes for the creator. FOSS success is less trivial to measure. In FOSS software projects it can happen that for years someone (or a small group of people) works on a software project and then releases it with a big bang. Does that mean that by definition the project was 'a failure' during those years? I don't think so.
The way I see it, all FOSS software competes with each other and the best/most popular/best supported options remain. The rest is indeed abandoned.
You might as well say that the success of FOSS itself could be measured by the number of abandoned projects / period of time. The more projects get abandoned the more succesful FOSS is. Because these projects needed to get started in the first place and because of the open nature of the software, good ideas can be inherited rapidly by other projects. It's like a giant software breeding system.
Let's take for example a hypothetical radically new Linux distribution that is sooo much better than anything else. It perhaps causes a couple of smaller distributions that weren't any good anyway to fail. Does that mean that thos FOSS projects where a failure? Obviously not, they perhaps were a stepping stone for the new Linux distribution, a new starting point.
In any case, I don't need any "Homer Simpson" statistics to know that open source is getting more popular in almost all the domains that it is present in at the moment. It certainly is in the Business Intelligence arena where I'm operating in.
Matt
Yes, don't you just love it!
There is already a shortage of capable ICT personel in Europe.
Oh wait...
Well I don't know...
There have been times when I have found myself completely out of control, violently smashing chairs and punching people after seeing David "The Hoff" Hasselhoff on television.
I even had a fit watching William Shatner "act" in an old episode of Columbo.
So there you go.
ROTFL. Man that was funny!
Sure, but in the rare case you need it, we could agree to press shift for 5 seconds to lock it.
You see, CAPS-LOCK __is__ really not needed.
I strongly believe (pun intended) that the randomness is vital to the development and existance of life.
Imagine if everything would be strictly ordered, what a boring place would the universe be.
Even in society, I think that diversity is good. Different opinions make us stronger, not weaker.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong : if you think you found something, you didn't look hard enough.
Matt
42 right?
Yeah right! Even more resources spent: money and time setting it up.
Last time I wrote on Slashdot that Mandriva was installing fine but refused to even run on my laptop I got modded into oblivion.
;-)
So it's with great joy I have to say that I've been working with SuSE 10.1RC3 for a couple of weeks now and it really IS very nice. I have a brand new laptop: Acer 5612, Dual Core, NVidia 3D card, etc.
In hours I got everything working, *including* Xgl which is nice.
Special thanks to the MPlayer guys who installed the video codecs on it at Linuxtag in Wiesbaden.
Hey, I'm even starting to like Gnome. Who would have though it possible on SuSE?
Cheers,
Matt
it's best to avoid consuming the PGG on planets without proper revalidation facilities!
Like the conversation between the hair-dryer and the vacuum-cleaner:
Haidryer : You suck!
Vacuum-cleaner: You blow!
I don't know, in my line of work (Data Warehousing) where I need to move around large amounts of data, no amount of tuning beats a large amount of spindles.i ng.html ) in their 5.1 beta VERY interesting.
In that regard, I find the new advances that MySQL is making on table partitioning (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/partition
[warning: shameless plug ahead!]
If you combine this with my own Free/free open source ETL tool Kettle (http://www.kettle.be/ ) you can build your data warehouse just as fast or faster than most commercial ETL tools.
The deal then becomes very simple: spend the money you save on licensing on hardware! You'll be amazed at the results...
Oh, and try the Pentaho (http://www.pentaho.org/ ) open source BI solution while you're at it...
Cheers,
Matt
>and trying to make sure that what every trader saw on the screen matched what every company in the world had on theirs
Keeping it honest is indeed very important!
Chris, smokers are addicts. There is no point in arguing with them.
They will come up with any argument to justify their habbit.
Where do these types of collisions normally take place?
Do these collisions occur in the same environment as in the LHC?
Thanks,
Matt
That's nothing
Most people don't care about an old alpha workstation, they care about the discount computer they bought or the latest laptop.
In my opionion, the study seems to be fair. Once linux supports a piece of hardware, it does so very well for the most part.
However, for the newer laptops and computers, things do not look so good.
In fact I'm typing this message on a Acer TravelMate 8100 laptop, bought about a year ago. Despite trying several different distribution Linux does NOT run on it in a orderly fashion. (SuSE 10, 10.1a, Mandrake last 2 versions, Fedora Core 3, 4 and a couple I forgot)
There's always something that doesn't work: top 1 problem when asking around is most of the time X Windows, followed closely by wireless LAN, power management a sound cards.
When I think about this, it's been like this with the last 4 laptops I had. If I would install linux on the first laptop I had, it would probably run perfectly. But then again, I wouldn't want to do any serious work on that old piece of junk, would I?
These question then come to mind:
- How many people will install Linux if they already have Windows XP on their new machine?
- Of the few that *do* try linux on their bright and shiny new machine, how many will fail because of the new hardware and leave disapointed.
Just a couple of thought, this message will probably be moderated troll, but the fact remains that a LOT of the newest hardware is out of reach for Linux users like myself.
Peace,
Matt
OK, so you forgot to tell the JVM how much memory it could use on the machine... Should I start to cry now?
It's still so much better then having the JVM kill the whole machine because someone forgot to let objects get out of scope.
Look at it this way: at least your machine was still running fine.
Suppose you only had the 1G to spare and it went to 1.5Gb: your application wouldn't be running anymore either. Do you know what trashing is? It's not very nice!
-1 for the script kiddy languages as far as I'm concerned: bad behaving processes should go way, not hang around.
Just my 2 cents,
Matt