But I'm talking about business reasons for business equipment, not some jumped-up little games console for some k1dd13 who's so k3wl because he can install Fedora.
One of the big "winners" for Linux in the enterprise is you're not forced to go to just one company for support. By refusing to ship anything other than binary drivers, hardware manufacturers are artificially putting this restriction back in place, where for many businesses the whole point of Open Source is to eliminate it.
If your l33t m3g4-c4rd 400GTi is only usable with binary drivers & the manufacturer stops shipping those, I don't care.
If the network card in my web servers which deals with thousands of $ business an hour, or the chipset in my customer's laptops is only usable with binary drivers and the manufacturer stops shipping/supporting them, I do care.
And for all I know they will stop shipping/supporting those drivers literally tomorrow.
I'll probably get modded to hell for this, but hey...
With Open Source drivers, if the hardware manufacturer stops supporting your hardware/OS & stops shipping drivers it doesn't matter. If the kernel radically changes and incorporates new features which you need, you don't have to wait for the hardware manufacturer to produce updated drivers.
Most of these are things which you don't need to worry about today, when you can just go to the website & download drivers. How about tomorrow?
Its been circumvented so many times, how can they hold a straight face while that file for legal action against 321studios?
Simple. The day they give up because the cat's out of the bag, they have to find an alternative business model. Most businesses don't like completely re-designing how they work.
Simple. The marketing goes out of its way to associate the ease of use/"look" with Microsoft's product. By copying it all you're doing is fostering confusion.
The "ease of use" argument is almost over with. Now we face the "ease of installing software/administering/configuring" argument. The point which needs to be driven home to the executives is that in real life, you try to minimise the software & administration on user's desktops (and you certainly stop them from doing any of that) purely because of the amount of work it generates. Therefore, who cares if it's a touch harder to set up? You only do it once! If your IT department can't handle reading a few instructions and trying a few things, reporting back if necessary and asking a given supplier, what exactly do they do for a living??
We did it years ago - on the desktop AND the server.
The trick with the desktop is that you lock it down as far as you can so that each user can do just what they need and no more (you should be doing this with Windows anyhow;). There's not many calls saying "How do I use X to do Y" because the user can't even see X in the first place.
This takes care of call cent(re|er) staff, and indeed almost anyone whose job involves little more than accessing a system through a terminal or web browser. It also makes the client much easier to handle because all you have is:
Base Linux Install
X Windows
Terminal Emulator
Mozilla
The complicated bit is anything which requires a fancy Windows program for which no replacement exists. Here you've two main options: rewrite it (either yourself or pay a 3rd party) or use Citrix.
The way you sell this, as has been discussed before, is in terms of cost-risk-benefit. In the above example, the biggest change is to the client PC, which probably doesn't do much business-critical stuff anyway and so you're rather less bothered than you might be at the server side.
This fascination with making KDE look as much like Windows as possible, including aping the colour scheme and button design right down to the nearest pixel, just to say "It looks like Windows so it must be as easy to use!" is, IMHO, a load of rubbish. 95% of Windows "ease of use" is marketing.
Unfortunately it's very good marketing, but that's not the point here...
In your article you make a number of interesting points, which I shall attempt to cover in order:
1. An open source product will eventually contain a maliciously inserted security breach.
On what grounds do you base this statement? How can you be certain that Microsoft haven't been paid by the CIA to place backdoors in Windows? Why, then, should any government which isn't in on such secrets trust Windows? How could a government be certain that it knew all such secrets?
2. The core project code could be compromised.
Quite true. However, there have been instances in the past where Microsoft's code has been compromised even when sitting on Microsoft's servers:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/14265.html
3. A distribution will be built with security holes for the express purpose of selling to governments.
How do you know this hasn't already happened with Windows? You speculate much, but back up little. What kind of advertising budget would such a hacker require for gaining government mindshare?
4. Insiders could "customise" a well-respected secure distribution.
They already can. It's called "leaving accounts on the system". Or "logic bombs". Or "misconfigured systems". This problem has existed for almost as long as computers have.
5. Finally, you speculate that nobody is "watching the watchers". What, however, you appear to have misunderstood is that the government organisation would have a full copy of the source code and could compile it themselves to confirm the resulting program is identical to the shipped version. They could then audit the source code - either in-house or pay an outside organisation.
It is quite correct to state that "you have to put your trust in someone - who should you trust?". Otherwise the country would have to be run on every level entirely by one person, who would be responsible for writing, implementing and enforcing law. I'm not from the US but I'm sure your President would get tired of writing out all those speeding tickets!
I would argue "you should trust someone who can prove they have nothing to hide".
Open Source has nothing to hide. Come into the light.
Re:I love these case studies...
on
SCOoby Snacks
·
· Score: 1
Which means that all of these case studies are actualy referring to a totally different company.
Y'know, that country invented by Pratchett (can't remember the book) where everything said *had* to legally be true on pain of death would be a nice place to be right now. We could invite SCO there to explain their legal claims.
Right. That would be why us Brits abolished the death penalty in 1965.
One of the last men we hanged, James Hanratty, was proved innocent in 1996. While this doesn't sound particularly important politically, as it was so much later, it re-ignited the death penalty debate in this country a fair bit.
Death penalty wins again. If you kill 'em all - innocent or guilty - you'll likely end up paying less restitution for wrongful convictions than if you let 'em live.
AIUI what you're saying is society is better off with the death penalty not for any moral reasons but because it's cheaper?
I, at least, am totally opposed to the death penalty. Not because the crooks don't deserve it - most of 'em do. But because it's administered by a government, with at least the usual levels of incompetence, corruption, and misuse for oppression of any government project.
This is why I was commenting with tongue firmly in cheek. I agree with you for pretty much the same reasons.
Every time science comes up with a new form of evidence (or even a new way of analysing old techniques), someone gets convicted because of a persuasive argument which blinds the jury with science.
It's happened with DNA, fingerprints, computer cracking.... Hopefully the technology is eventually ironed out such that this stops happening.
Meantime, this is cold comfort to victims of such miscarriages of justice, or their families. At least if you have the death penalty the vctim of the miscarriage of justice (eventually) isn't in too much of a position to care.
(That last comment was slightly tongue in cheek, karma be damned!)
Erm... at my g/f's summer ball at uni there was a professional photographer there doing printouts on the spot.
His printer? One medium-range Epson photo inkjet which you could buy for a under UK150-200.
Today, you can buy fade resistant inks for such printers.
Today, such printers are able to provide true photo quality which is literally indistinguishable from the real thing to all but the most trained eyes, and even then they'd need a microscope.
Today, professional photographers are finding that such printers are able to supply all the quality they will ever be asked to provide.
It is dangerous (and sometimes downright wrong) to assume that professionals don't use anything which the consumer arena has ever heard of.
It is a much easier operating system to learn, for sure. I can't imagine middle schoolers using linux.... faaar too stupid.
This is something I have been saying for ages yet nobody seems to listen. So I'll say it again. MOST ORGANISATIONS SHOULD/DO NOT ALLOW THEIR USERS TO PLAY WITH THE OPERATING SYSTEM.
Essentially, for most users, all the OS needs to provide is a pretty blue background and a few icons to click on. Everything else after that is so much window dressing - the user shouldn't be setting up printers/sharing resources over the network/figuring out how to play whatever file type. The system should be locked down such that the user can't do this in the first place. Because that way madness lies.
I have yet to see a corporate, school or college Windows box which wasn't in some way restricted, frequently to the point that the all-singing PC almost becomes a half-a-dozen task "kiosk". In which case Linux is not only ready, it's been ready for years.
Yes, it requires a total change of direction from a systems admin perspective. But the user? Feh.
Very true. The point I was making (not sure if it was clear enough) is under the BSD license, Microsoft could take all of IBM's carefully written code, incorporate it into NT version (whatever) and not give a single thing back. Not so with the GPL.
The GPL is a great playing field leveller in that respect - OK, you have to give your code (and therefore some control over your IP) away but you also guarantee that no one will, having taken the code, improve/"extend" it and use their improved version to put you out of business.
Of course, with (the old) SCO, they sold the code to companies who were prepared to actually put some effort into it. SCO, however, simply couldn't keep up - hence why the new SCO has no chance of making money out of selling Unix based on the code they've inherited. Looked at in that light, you understand why the fascination for suing everyone - it's about the only remaining chance SCO have of ever making any money.
Not necessarily. There's no incentive for IBM, Intel et al to support BSD with open code because the BSD license allows anyone to take their code, benefit from it and NOT release any changes back. Essentially, IBM, Intel et al would very possibly be writing code on Microsoft's behalf with no payment in either cash or further improved code.
This may not count for much in the enthusiast market but in enterprise, support from the big guys is a big plus.
The article encapsulates many of the major issues affecting free software today. Best of all, it's written in a reasonably sensible, intelligent fashion (rather than "these copyleft commies are going to take over the world!" which SCO would like us to believe).
Hopefully this indicates that the media is starting to understand that there can be another way. Free software and truly open standards will never become widely adopted while the mainstream view is "how can anything with little or no copyright restrictions be any good?"
There is enough functionality in OO.o to provide a database frontend - you simply use something like MySQL to handle the backend.
The only minor problem is that there is, to my knowledge, no easy way to convert an existing Access database. And if your company is happy with Office '97 and sufficiently licensed, there's little incentive to do so.
A lot of businesses are still using Office '97. Upgrades are expensive, not just in terms of licensing but also staff time to install across a number of PCs, retraining costs etc.
This file format will only become widespread (and hence a threat to open software adoption) if Office 2003 adoption becomes widespread - which I don't see happening right now.
Companies and individuals are starting to take free software seriously. It doesn't have to be Linux - why not give someone a Windows PC (no licensing apart from what it sold with) and OO.o? If OO.o can gain serious market share before Office 2003 does, the whole thing becomes a non-issue.
This is probably only the second company (after IBM) to actually turn around and say "OK. Prove it or go away".
High time too. I reckon a few more companies ought to do this - it would force SCO to actually start talking a little sense rather than just spouting FUD.
Slashdot Mirror
BUT you must buy a license from us or risk being sued!!!
Clearly, you are a troll.
But I'm talking about business reasons for business equipment, not some jumped-up little games console for some k1dd13 who's so k3wl because he can install Fedora.
One of the big "winners" for Linux in the enterprise is you're not forced to go to just one company for support. By refusing to ship anything other than binary drivers, hardware manufacturers are artificially putting this restriction back in place, where for many businesses the whole point of Open Source is to eliminate it.
If your l33t m3g4-c4rd 400GTi is only usable with binary drivers & the manufacturer stops shipping those, I don't care.
If the network card in my web servers which deals with thousands of $ business an hour, or the chipset in my customer's laptops is only usable with binary drivers and the manufacturer stops shipping/supporting them, I do care.
And for all I know they will stop shipping/supporting those drivers literally tomorrow.
With Open Source drivers, if the hardware manufacturer stops supporting your hardware/OS & stops shipping drivers it doesn't matter. If the kernel radically changes and incorporates new features which you need, you don't have to wait for the hardware manufacturer to produce updated drivers.
Most of these are things which you don't need to worry about today, when you can just go to the website & download drivers. How about tomorrow?
Mirror here
Simple. The day they give up because the cat's out of the bag, they have to find an alternative business model. Most businesses don't like completely re-designing how they work.
The "ease of use" argument is almost over with. Now we face the "ease of installing software/administering/configuring" argument. The point which needs to be driven home to the executives is that in real life, you try to minimise the software & administration on user's desktops (and you certainly stop them from doing any of that) purely because of the amount of work it generates. Therefore, who cares if it's a touch harder to set up? You only do it once! If your IT department can't handle reading a few instructions and trying a few things, reporting back if necessary and asking a given supplier, what exactly do they do for a living??
The trick with the desktop is that you lock it down as far as you can so that each user can do just what they need and no more (you should be doing this with Windows anyhow ;). There's not many calls saying "How do I use X to do Y" because the user can't even see X in the first place.
This takes care of call cent(re|er) staff, and indeed almost anyone whose job involves little more than accessing a system through a terminal or web browser. It also makes the client much easier to handle because all you have is:
- Base Linux Install
- X Windows
- Terminal Emulator
- Mozilla
The complicated bit is anything which requires a fancy Windows program for which no replacement exists. Here you've two main options: rewrite it (either yourself or pay a 3rd party) or use Citrix.The way you sell this, as has been discussed before, is in terms of cost-risk-benefit. In the above example, the biggest change is to the client PC, which probably doesn't do much business-critical stuff anyway and so you're rather less bothered than you might be at the server side.
This fascination with making KDE look as much like Windows as possible, including aping the colour scheme and button design right down to the nearest pixel, just to say "It looks like Windows so it must be as easy to use!" is, IMHO, a load of rubbish. 95% of Windows "ease of use" is marketing.
Unfortunately it's very good marketing, but that's not the point here...
Dear Mr. Russell Jones,
In your article you make a number of interesting points, which I shall attempt to cover in order:
1. An open source product will eventually contain a maliciously inserted security breach.
On what grounds do you base this statement? How can you be certain that Microsoft haven't been paid by the CIA to place backdoors in Windows? Why, then, should any government which isn't in on such secrets trust Windows? How could a government be certain that it knew all such secrets?
2. The core project code could be compromised.
Quite true. However, there have been instances in the past where Microsoft's code has been compromised even when sitting on Microsoft's servers:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/14265.html
3. A distribution will be built with security holes for the express purpose of selling to governments.
How do you know this hasn't already happened with Windows? You speculate much, but back up little. What kind of advertising budget would such a hacker require for gaining government mindshare?
4. Insiders could "customise" a well-respected secure distribution.
They already can. It's called "leaving accounts on the system". Or "logic bombs". Or "misconfigured systems". This problem has existed for almost as long as computers have.
5. Finally, you speculate that nobody is "watching the watchers". What, however, you appear to have misunderstood is that the government organisation would have a full copy of the source code and could compile it themselves to confirm the resulting program is identical to the shipped version. They could then audit the source code - either in-house or pay an outside organisation.
It is quite correct to state that "you have to put your trust in someone - who should you trust?". Otherwise the country would have to be run on every level entirely by one person, who would be responsible for writing, implementing and enforcing law. I'm not from the US but I'm sure your President would get tired of writing out all those speeding tickets!
I would argue "you should trust someone who can prove they have nothing to hide".
Open Source has nothing to hide. Come into the light.
Y'know, that country invented by Pratchett (can't remember the book) where everything said *had* to legally be true on pain of death would be a nice place to be right now. We could invite SCO there to explain their legal claims.
One of the last men we hanged, James Hanratty, was proved innocent in 1996. While this doesn't sound particularly important politically, as it was so much later, it re-ignited the death penalty debate in this country a fair bit.
See also here.
AIUI what you're saying is society is better off with the death penalty not for any moral reasons but because it's cheaper?
This is why I was commenting with tongue firmly in cheek. I agree with you for pretty much the same reasons.
It's happened with DNA, fingerprints, computer cracking.... Hopefully the technology is eventually ironed out such that this stops happening.
Meantime, this is cold comfort to victims of such miscarriages of justice, or their families. At least if you have the death penalty the vctim of the miscarriage of justice (eventually) isn't in too much of a position to care.
(That last comment was slightly tongue in cheek, karma be damned!)
1. Make snide comment about SCO's latest ploy. 2. ??? 3. KARMA!!!
His printer? One medium-range Epson photo inkjet which you could buy for a under UK150-200.
Today, you can buy fade resistant inks for such printers.
Today, such printers are able to provide true photo quality which is literally indistinguishable from the real thing to all but the most trained eyes, and even then they'd need a microscope.
Today, professional photographers are finding that such printers are able to supply all the quality they will ever be asked to provide.
It is dangerous (and sometimes downright wrong) to assume that professionals don't use anything which the consumer arena has ever heard of.
This is something I have been saying for ages yet nobody seems to listen. So I'll say it again. MOST ORGANISATIONS SHOULD/DO NOT ALLOW THEIR USERS TO PLAY WITH THE OPERATING SYSTEM.
Essentially, for most users, all the OS needs to provide is a pretty blue background and a few icons to click on. Everything else after that is so much window dressing - the user shouldn't be setting up printers/sharing resources over the network/figuring out how to play whatever file type. The system should be locked down such that the user can't do this in the first place. Because that way madness lies.
I have yet to see a corporate, school or college Windows box which wasn't in some way restricted, frequently to the point that the all-singing PC almost becomes a half-a-dozen task "kiosk". In which case Linux is not only ready, it's been ready for years.
Yes, it requires a total change of direction from a systems admin perspective. But the user? Feh.
And on that positive note, bye bye karma...
Anyone whose computer is infected with this worm is violating our IP! You must pay $699 for a license!
The GPL is a great playing field leveller in that respect - OK, you have to give your code (and therefore some control over your IP) away but you also guarantee that no one will, having taken the code, improve/"extend" it and use their improved version to put you out of business.
Of course, with (the old) SCO, they sold the code to companies who were prepared to actually put some effort into it. SCO, however, simply couldn't keep up - hence why the new SCO has no chance of making money out of selling Unix based on the code they've inherited. Looked at in that light, you understand why the fascination for suing everyone - it's about the only remaining chance SCO have of ever making any money.
This may not count for much in the enthusiast market but in enterprise, support from the big guys is a big plus.
Hopefully this indicates that the media is starting to understand that there can be another way. Free software and truly open standards will never become widely adopted while the mainstream view is "how can anything with little or no copyright restrictions be any good?"
There is enough functionality in OO.o to provide a database frontend - you simply use something like MySQL to handle the backend.
The only minor problem is that there is, to my knowledge, no easy way to convert an existing Access database. And if your company is happy with Office '97 and sufficiently licensed, there's little incentive to do so.
This file format will only become widespread (and hence a threat to open software adoption) if Office 2003 adoption becomes widespread - which I don't see happening right now.
Companies and individuals are starting to take free software seriously. It doesn't have to be Linux - why not give someone a Windows PC (no licensing apart from what it sold with) and OO.o? If OO.o can gain serious market share before Office 2003 does, the whole thing becomes a non-issue.
High time too. I reckon a few more companies ought to do this - it would force SCO to actually start talking a little sense rather than just spouting FUD.
Not when the "high powered workstation" has a fairly run of the mill IDE disk fitted.