>Here's the big issue with so-called free software: you still need to hire someone to install, configure and maintain the software. That type of maintenence ain't cheap, to say the least, especially for large organizations.
Large and medium organizations have always had to do all of these things with proprietary software and still do. But how much of a headache do you have maintaining it once you have it set up? What kind of uptime are you getting? What needs to be done to maintain security? How expensive are ongoing support contracts? What about support for your older hardware? That is where the real cost comes in for businesses. It's complex. Taking all that into account, Linux (even if you pay US$200.00+ for it), looks pretty good.
Or until damaged users force the issue by publicizing the problem and trying to take defensive measures. This activity is vorciferously discouraged by MS. Remember "we wish they would just keep their mouths shut", IIRC. This was referring to windows users posting security problems on the web in an attempt to find some work-around or reverse-engineer a 3rd party fix. Arrgghh!
And this has ever happened when? On the other hand, if MS wants to dedicate an entire team to finding bugs in Linux, that's cool. More eyes are always welcome. If they are going to do that though, they really should follow accepted proceedures and use a more recent distribution.
This comes on the heels of the TCO study, which didn't come off as very credible. Even the windows-only guys I talked to thought that was TCO study was pretty laughable. This analysis sounds like a similar waste of time. Maybe, they should get out of the study business, get out of the analysis business, and focus on fixing their code.
You beat me to it. Yes, it's bad enough people walk around with cell phones not paying attention to where they are going. Gripe. Gripe. I predict that 90% of the time Future-Dude walking around with the nano-contacts will be watching the football game and paying no attention to cars, trucks, manholes, etc.
>I don't understand this reply. What are you trying to say? Please clarify.
Clarifying: I understand AD's point of concern that he thinks that some people will take this article seriously and will vote accordingly. I, myself, contend that almost no-one will take this article seriously and vote accordingly. But I ended my post (and this is the subtle bit) by partly conceeding to AD and allowing that I may have been overestimating the political sophistication of some of my fellow americans. Now, after explaining it again, I'm just bummed out. It's all your fault, AC!
I read an article a few elections back detailing what the candidates ate for breakfast. The article was written by an organization that wanted to promote americans having a good breakfast. The candidates went along with it because any free publicity is better than nothing.
So, here is my big insight: (Drumroll please.) The article was really about the software and the candidates names are just a gimick to wrap the article around. (My, I'm ornery today.)
O.K., somebody has to say it. I read the article (gasp) and I don't think it is seriously about me or any other reader deciding who to vote for. It's just interesting (to me anyway) to see which organizations are running what software out in the real world. "Presidential Candidates" is a small (or not so small) economic segment in itself which is highly visible and not overly tech-focused (as compared to other industries). So it is interesting to see what they are running. Sigh.
Please Slashdot, you are overdoing the pranks today. First "Google Considers...", now this. You gave this prank away with the tearfully funny acronyms: MSH, MONAD. Not to mention the absurdity of the whole Microsoft-writes-a-CLI concept. I still have nightmares about DOS. Maybe I'll read the article when I finish laughing, or when I finish crying.
My humble prediction: The "ship only open source products" rule will get reversed as soon as there is a big money contract on the line. Sigh. I've been in this industry too long.
Thank you. Thank you. The recovery partition is high on my list of worst ideas ever. You can't do any real recovery with it. Who gets the blame for those, anyway? Microsoft or (the former) Compaq?
As I see it, "as in beer" and "as in money" are the same thing. After all, money can be exchanged for beer, so "as in beer, but not as in money" doesn't make sense to me.
The two types of "free" are generally refered to as 1) free as in beer (gratis - free of charge, freebie) and 2) free as in speech (libre - liberty, freedom). As far as software goes, free-as-in-beer refers to the purchase price and free-as-in-speech refers to what you can (legally) do with it after you own it - for example, read its source, copy it, change it, give it away, sell it, and so on.
You (and a few others) seem to be laboring under the assumption that Netscape (the ISP) will necessarily be packaged with Netscape (the browser). Think about it. AOL comes with IE. Why should AOL-lite come with anything else. "Smaller download" could just refer to a smaller amount of AOL specific client bloat.
This is a mess. I use and like Netscape 7.1. In fact, I recommended it to someone I know just yesterday. Now I'm going to have to download Mozilla, just to avoid confusion when I talk about my browser.
Remember the old movies where in the second to last scene the hero and the villian are fighting to the death. Then the villian falls on his own knife or maybe falls off a cliff. The villian is defeated and the hero hasn't had to do anything nasty.
In my opinion, this is the ideal public image in this situation. That is, protect your interests, but take the high road. Readme.sco does exactly that. I hope it gets wide publicity.
The last scene is where the hero kisses the girl. I'm not sure where that fits in.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
>Here's the big issue with so-called free software: you still need to hire someone to install, configure and maintain the software. That type of maintenence ain't cheap, to say the least, especially for large organizations.
Large and medium organizations have always had to do all of these things with proprietary software and still do. But how much of a headache do you have maintaining it once you have it set up? What kind of uptime are you getting? What needs to be done to maintain security? How expensive are ongoing support contracts? What about support for your older hardware? That is where the real cost comes in for businesses. It's complex. Taking all that into account, Linux (even if you pay US$200.00+ for it), looks pretty good.
Or until damaged users force the issue by publicizing the problem and trying to take defensive measures. This activity is vorciferously discouraged by MS. Remember "we wish they would just keep their mouths shut", IIRC. This was referring to windows users posting security problems on the web in an attempt to find some work-around or reverse-engineer a 3rd party fix. Arrgghh!
And this has ever happened when? On the other hand, if MS wants to dedicate an entire team to finding bugs in Linux, that's cool. More eyes are always welcome. If they are going to do that though, they really should follow accepted proceedures and use a more recent distribution.
This comes on the heels of the TCO study, which didn't come off as very credible. Even the windows-only guys I talked to thought that was TCO study was pretty laughable. This analysis sounds like a similar waste of time. Maybe, they should get out of the study business, get out of the analysis business, and focus on fixing their code.
You beat me to it. Yes, it's bad enough people walk around with cell phones not paying attention to where they are going. Gripe. Gripe. I predict that 90% of the time Future-Dude walking around with the nano-contacts will be watching the football game and paying no attention to cars, trucks, manholes, etc.
Yes, but he won Florida, damnit! Oh, wait...
Replying to AC:
>I don't understand this reply. What are you trying to say? Please clarify.
Clarifying: I understand AD's point of concern that he thinks that some people will take this article seriously and will vote accordingly. I, myself, contend that almost no-one will take this article seriously and vote accordingly. But I ended my post (and this is the subtle bit) by partly conceeding to AD and allowing that I may have been overestimating the political sophistication of some of my fellow americans. Now, after explaining it again, I'm just bummed out. It's all your fault, AC!
Yes, but I was giveing the "some people" as in "some people do take this seriously" more credit than that. What was I thinking?
I read an article a few elections back detailing what the candidates ate for breakfast. The article was written by an organization that wanted to promote americans having a good breakfast. The candidates went along with it because any free publicity is better than nothing.
So, here is my big insight: (Drumroll please.) The article was really about the software and the candidates names are just a gimick to wrap the article around. (My, I'm ornery today.)
O.K., somebody has to say it. I read the article (gasp) and I don't think it is seriously about me or any other reader deciding who to vote for. It's just interesting (to me anyway) to see which organizations are running what software out in the real world. "Presidential Candidates" is a small (or not so small) economic segment in itself which is highly visible and not overly tech-focused (as compared to other industries). So it is interesting to see what they are running. Sigh.
Except it would be $1.00 in the toy section of the dollar store and all the kids would buy it. Ugh, kids ears are dirty enough as it is.
Please Slashdot, you are overdoing the pranks today. First "Google Considers ...", now this. You gave this prank away with the tearfully funny acronyms: MSH, MONAD. Not to mention the absurdity of the whole Microsoft-writes-a-CLI concept. I still have nightmares about DOS. Maybe I'll read the article when I finish laughing, or when I finish crying.
>Remember the fiasco surrounding Hotmail's move from BSD (I think) to Windows?
Hmm, how did that go anyway? Did they ever finish that?
My humble prediction: The "ship only open source products" rule will get reversed as soon as there is a big money contract on the line. Sigh. I've been in this industry too long.
Thank you. Thank you. The recovery partition is high on my list of worst ideas ever. You can't do any real recovery with it. Who gets the blame for those, anyway? Microsoft or (the former) Compaq?
Ah well. Tried to fix another person's typo and I did one myself. I meant:
>Which makes me wonder why ESS picked this
Eric S. Raymond is ESR
>Which makes me wonder why ESS picked this ESR, Eric S. Raymond
>not as in "beer" but as in "money"
As I see it, "as in beer" and "as in money" are the same thing. After all, money can be exchanged for beer, so "as in beer, but not as in money" doesn't make sense to me.
The two types of "free" are generally refered to as 1) free as in beer (gratis - free of charge, freebie) and 2) free as in speech (libre - liberty, freedom). As far as software goes, free-as-in-beer refers to the purchase price and free-as-in-speech refers to what you can (legally) do with it after you own it - for example, read its source, copy it, change it, give it away, sell it, and so on.
You (and a few others) seem to be laboring under the assumption that Netscape (the ISP) will necessarily be packaged with Netscape (the browser). Think about it. AOL comes with IE. Why should AOL-lite come with anything else. "Smaller download" could just refer to a smaller amount of AOL specific client bloat.
This is a mess. I use and like Netscape 7.1. In fact, I recommended it to someone I know just yesterday. Now I'm going to have to download Mozilla, just to avoid confusion when I talk about my browser.
One of my former co-workers used to use Prodigy. He doesn't admit it now. I think his memory has been wiped.
Netscape 7.1 has popup blocking. Works fine.
Problem #3: Air pollution.
From the article: The amount of short interest in the stock rose more than tenfold between May and July, according to Bloomberg data.
It seems that Slashdotters aren't the only ones who've been shorting SCO.
Remember the old movies where in the second to last scene the hero and the villian are fighting to the death. Then the villian falls on his own knife or maybe falls off a cliff. The villian is defeated and the hero hasn't had to do anything nasty.
;-)
In my opinion, this is the ideal public image in this situation. That is, protect your interests, but take the high road. Readme.sco does exactly that. I hope it gets wide publicity.
The last scene is where the hero kisses the girl. I'm not sure where that fits in.
"Conspiracy" makes Linux sound cool. How about ConspiracyLinux for the home market - or AlienAbductionLinux?
Yes I am an adult, by the way. In my office, the SCO nonsense did not in any way deter us from purchasing a new Linux Server.