Not true at all. How many times do we hear "well why dont YOU code it then?" That is not accepting user feedback.
That was probably a bit of an extreme example but it is just not true to claim that open source accepts user feedback better than closed source software. User Acceptance Testing is a critical part of the commercial software development lifecycle, something that is sorely missing from open source development. This is a part of the SDLC that has resources allocated to it in commercial software, you say that in open source software it is done if the developer has nothing better to do. A preset budget v an afterthought, this is one instance where commercial software is better (yes I know I am generalising with 'commercial software' as there is much open source commercial software which also has rigorous UAT)
Each year they will announce that This is the Year of No More Spam on the Desktop (of course this never happens).
Or they will invent a brilliant new way to stop spam but as it requires the user to recompile all their OS and apps every 3 days it never gets used.
Or they just tell the end users "Why dont YOU code some anti-spam software?"
Or they produce an anti-spam system but the user must install 3 desktops and window managers, requires a 10,000 line config file that must be written by hand, comes with either missing or misleading documentation depending on the version you download and randomly purges any non-free software from the hard drive.
The usual response to anyone who wants anything included in a F/OSS project is "why dont you do it yourself? The developers do it to scratch their itch not yours"
The developers made a design decision for THEIR project. But oh no, thats no good because it's not what the F/OSS community wanted. Lets get this straight - its their project but they shouldnt use the language of their choice because others dont like it?
They're the developers, they decide what they do with it. Who are you to tell them what they should develop their own product in? So it doesnt conform to YOUR philosophy, so what? Sorry but this certainly smacks of zealotry. If you dont like it then fork it and create your own version of OOo.
How can you say Linus Torvalds is a genius though? The guy developed an operating system. He was not the first, he will not be the last. Were any of his developments major leaps forward in technology requiring a major insight nobody else had?
To be honest even RMS, love him or hate him, is closer to genius than Linux as he has shown a greater leap by pushing the concept of free software - a previously unheard of concept. This required thinking outside the norm.
Thanks for saying what likely 99% of us are thinking!!
I dont think even a/. Troll could come up with lines like that! About all that was missing from the interview was for him to start shouting that he is on teh sp0ke and telling us he got his inspiration from goatse.
The extreme majority of us dont know who he is
From the interview we were not given any particular reason to want to know who he is - "Satan likes to torture MC Pee Pants"? WTF? Was that seriously an actual line from a front page interview??
What? 2005 is not the year of Linux on the desktop?
Totally agree, after years of trying I finally got sick of having to frig around with all the/etc goodness and got myself a Mac. Never looked back. The problem with a lot of the zealots is that if you mention a problem the standard response is "well, why dont YOU fix it?" Just because something is free doesnt meant that it is faultless! Strangely enough most of the OS X converts I know are experienced sysadmins / developers with years of experience on *nix.
I take it you do not understand the meaning of the word 'growth'.
Let me explain in very simple terms
I make 500 sales in month 1 I make 1000 sales in month 2 This equals a 100% increase in sales
If in month 3 I then make 1056 sales, my growth in sales has decreased to 5.6%. Note this is NOT A DECLINE IN SALES - only in growth of sales. I have sold more in month 3 than I did in month 2.
OK, the comment was not FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) - it was just plain WRONG
Sales GROWTH has slowed to 5.6% - the sales did not decline at all, in fact sales increased by 5.6% for Windows / Office
How can the OSS community accuse MS of spreading FUD when the article was not only FUD but making a totally untrue statement - "In the face of a declining market for MS Windows" - a 5.6% increase is not a decline.
Im no MS fan but it really gets me when the/. crowd just pulls fanciful ideas out of the air and claim them to be facts to support their view of the world.
OK, Ill beat you all to it too - Im a M$ troll astroturfer on the M$ payroll, as is anyone who says anything positive about M$ even if true.
"My wife has me use my linux box to download pictures off her camera..."
See a problem here? Your wife has YOU download the pics off her camera. If Linux is so easy and intuitive, why does she not do it herself?
Oh, and working a camera with the Mac is a dream come true! 10 minutes to set up? Bah! Plugged in the camera (none of this loading drivers and setup nonsense) and everything JUST WORKED.
User friendliness and security can quite happily exist together - enter OS X. I have sat a number of people who have never touched OS X in front of my box and they have no troubles getting anything they need to done. When I got the PowerBook I just turned it on and started working - I had never touched OS X before - everything is just so easy to find and use.
I am not meaning to turn this into another Apple rant, what Im getting at is that security and user friendliness are not mutually exclusive. Windows users can use other OS'es as long as the layout makes sense.
Lazy developers realised long ago that include() takes far less thinking for tasks such as this than copy / paste or 10 SQL queries:)
Re:Trollo-meter: off. the. charts.
on
Why I Love The GPL
·
· Score: 0, Troll
All IBM proves is that IBM wanted to become a service provider as opposed to a software vendor in the small to medium server space. They did not embrace Linux because IBM loves teh GPL!!1! If IBM embrace teh GPL and teh free software as teh way of the future!!11!! (death to commercial software lolroromgomglol) then why isnt Websphere, DB2 or AIX GPL'ed? At least Sun is trying to GPL Solaris.
There is a capitalist business case for being a service / solutions provider and not having to code your own OS but where is the tons of GPL'ed software that IBM created in-house just to release under the GPL?
This comes down to whether they were on contract to do just that job or whether they were full time employees. Before you say "sure sure, thats just being pedantic" hear me out
If they were contracted to do just that job, then they would have expected to be paid for a short term job ie. a higher pay than a permanent employee. If they were a full time employee, then part of the bargain of the employee accepting lower pay than the contractor is the implication made by the company that by accepting the lower pay there is greater job security.
I guess what Im getting at is that if a company does not want employees on for long periods, then it should not offer permanency to staff. If it does offer permanency with the knowledge that it plans to downsize the employee in the forseeable future then it is being dishonest as it is promising permanency only with the view to reduce how much it has to pay.
Dont want permanent employees - only hire contractors. That way both sides know what to expect from the arrangement.
"Now, we can all reasonably conclude that this is stupid; if I buy a car and design a new fin for it, then sell the fin design to others, the car companies don't claim the fin design is their property. However, when we purchase a car we don't sign a "derivative works" contract with the car dealer or manufacturer. "
Slightly OT but..
This is the main point of many who prefer the BSD licenses over the GPL. The GPL is just as bad - if you design the fin for the car, as the car is GPL'ed the fin must be GPL'ed also, as it attaches to the car.
"News flash: Major corporations exist for the sole purpose of making money, not to be a charity. If it is in IBM's shareholders best interest to open source something, you can bet they will. If not, they won't... no matter how much the armchair CEOs of the world may piss and moan."
Yes, exactly. They did not do this because they are some champion of free software. My point was exactly what you said - they did this out of concern for their bottom line, not because they are 'teh r0x0r enlightened company who has seen that open source is the way of teh future' as the vast majority of above posts would have us believe. Great business plan - open source things that don't make you money, get others to do the work for you, then profit from their work. Good for their bottom line. Let's not try to make out that it is some sort of act of charity for the goodness of mankind.
"Stop living in your parent's basement and get a real job."
Generally said by students to try to sound as if they know what they are talking about - your point was well made until this last remark.
Fact remains, even though the likes of you want to cover it up and pretend that IBM are some champion of goodness and believe everything should be opened, that IBM do not open source anything that makes them money.
If I kill somebody (to remove arguments such as self-defence etc lets say in cold blood to steal money only for personal profit) why is it wrong? Chemically, biologically and physically they have changed state, but where does 'bad' fit into this? In real terms I have only killed a number of cells that happen to form a human. Define good and bad only through scientific means - is it quantifiable? At this point we sit back and decide whether we only believe in the physical universe - in which case it is very difficult if not impossible to prove that killing somebody is bad and should not be done, or we can believe in more than the physical universe, in which case good and bad take on real meaning.
I am very curious how one can PROVE that it is in fact 'bad' to kill somebody in cold blood. If we accept that it is in fact a bad thing to do, then we are using no more proof than what a religious person would use to believe in the existence of God.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true at all. How many times do we hear "well why dont YOU code it then?" That is not accepting user feedback.
That was probably a bit of an extreme example but it is just not true to claim that open source accepts user feedback better than closed source software. User Acceptance Testing is a critical part of the commercial software development lifecycle, something that is sorely missing from open source development. This is a part of the SDLC that has resources allocated to it in commercial software, you say that in open source software it is done if the developer has nothing better to do. A preset budget v an afterthought, this is one instance where commercial software is better (yes I know I am generalising with 'commercial software' as there is much open source commercial software which also has rigorous UAT)
Each year they will announce that This is the Year of No More Spam on the Desktop (of course this never happens).
Or they will invent a brilliant new way to stop spam but as it requires the user to recompile all their OS and apps every 3 days it never gets used.
Or they just tell the end users "Why dont YOU code some anti-spam software?"
Or they produce an anti-spam system but the user must install 3 desktops and window managers, requires a 10,000 line config file that must be written by hand, comes with either missing or misleading documentation depending on the version you download and randomly purges any non-free software from the hard drive.
The usual response to anyone who wants anything included in a F/OSS project is "why dont you do it yourself? The developers do it to scratch their itch not yours"
The developers made a design decision for THEIR project. But oh no, thats no good because it's not what the F/OSS community wanted. Lets get this straight - its their project but they shouldnt use the language of their choice because others dont like it?
They're the developers, they decide what they do with it. Who are you to tell them what they should develop their own product in? So it doesnt conform to YOUR philosophy, so what? Sorry but this certainly smacks of zealotry. If you dont like it then fork it and create your own version of OOo.
Depends on what you take
Einstein == Genius
How can you say Linus Torvalds is a genius though? The guy developed an operating system. He was not the first, he will not be the last. Were any of his developments major leaps forward in technology requiring a major insight nobody else had?
To be honest even RMS, love him or hate him, is closer to genius than Linux as he has shown a greater leap by pushing the concept of free software - a previously unheard of concept. This required thinking outside the norm.
Thanks for saying what likely 99% of us are thinking!!
/. Troll could come up with lines like that! About all that was missing from the interview was for him to start shouting that he is on teh sp0ke and telling us he got his inspiration from goatse.
I dont think even a
The extreme majority of us dont know who he is
From the interview we were not given any particular reason to want to know who he is - "Satan likes to torture MC Pee Pants"? WTF? Was that seriously an actual line from a front page interview??
An oxymoron
Boiler Room had nothing to do with bookies - a boiler room is a dodgy stockbroking firm that tries to push dodgy stocks onto unsuspecting people.
What? 2005 is not the year of Linux on the desktop?
/etc goodness and got myself a Mac. Never looked back. The problem with a lot of the zealots is that if you mention a problem the standard response is "well, why dont YOU fix it?" Just because something is free doesnt meant that it is faultless! Strangely enough most of the OS X converts I know are experienced sysadmins / developers with years of experience on *nix.
Totally agree, after years of trying I finally got sick of having to frig around with all the
Ummm...no
"Ask and ye shall receive! I'm an 18-28 female in Canberra. Tomorrow I'm going to a maths lecture..."
:)
:S
*drool*
"...just metres from where the Linux conf will be"
Now only if you had said Apple Store! Oh well, I guess the search continues
"Hmm... guess that and washing my hair will keep me busy for the next 10 years.... sorry Bob.
"
OK, Im a bit slow - that went WAY over my head
Hmm...that laugh...I recognise it from the CLUG mailing list :)
Are you an 18 - 28 yo female? If so, then tomorrow if you have nothing better to do? If not, umm....Ill get back to you....sometime....maybe :)
"Firstly, I live in Canberra"
:(
And here I thought I was the only one on here!
I dont feel special any more
I take it you do not understand the meaning of the word 'growth'.
Let me explain in very simple terms
I make 500 sales in month 1
I make 1000 sales in month 2
This equals a 100% increase in sales
If in month 3 I then make 1056 sales, my growth in sales has decreased to 5.6%. Note this is NOT A DECLINE IN SALES - only in growth of sales. I have sold more in month 3 than I did in month 2.
OK, the comment was not FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) - it was just plain WRONG
Sales GROWTH has slowed to 5.6% - the sales did not decline at all, in fact sales increased by 5.6% for Windows / Office
/. crowd just pulls fanciful ideas out of the air and claim them to be facts to support their view of the world.
How can the OSS community accuse MS of spreading FUD when the article was not only FUD but making a totally untrue statement - "In the face of a declining market for MS Windows" - a 5.6% increase is not a decline.
Im no MS fan but it really gets me when the
OK, Ill beat you all to it too - Im a M$ troll astroturfer on the M$ payroll, as is anyone who says anything positive about M$ even if true.
"My wife has me use my linux box to download pictures off her camera..."
See a problem here? Your wife has YOU download the pics off her camera. If Linux is so easy and intuitive, why does she not do it herself?
Oh, and working a camera with the Mac is a dream come true! 10 minutes to set up? Bah! Plugged in the camera (none of this loading drivers and setup nonsense) and everything JUST WORKED.
User friendliness and security can quite happily exist together - enter OS X. I have sat a number of people who have never touched OS X in front of my box and they have no troubles getting anything they need to done. When I got the PowerBook I just turned it on and started working - I had never touched OS X before - everything is just so easy to find and use.
I am not meaning to turn this into another Apple rant, what Im getting at is that security and user friendliness are not mutually exclusive. Windows users can use other OS'es as long as the layout makes sense.
Lazy developers realised long ago that include() takes far less thinking for tasks such as this than copy / paste or 10 SQL queries :)
All IBM proves is that IBM wanted to become a service provider as opposed to a software vendor in the small to medium server space. They did not embrace Linux because IBM loves teh GPL!!1! If IBM embrace teh GPL and teh free software as teh way of the future!!11!! (death to commercial software lolroromgomglol) then why isnt Websphere, DB2 or AIX GPL'ed? At least Sun is trying to GPL Solaris.
There is a capitalist business case for being a service / solutions provider and not having to code your own OS but where is the tons of GPL'ed software that IBM created in-house just to release under the GPL?
"And they were compensated for it."
This comes down to whether they were on contract to do just that job or whether they were full time employees. Before you say "sure sure, thats just being pedantic" hear me out
If they were contracted to do just that job, then they would have expected to be paid for a short term job ie. a higher pay than a permanent employee. If they were a full time employee, then part of the bargain of the employee accepting lower pay than the contractor is the implication made by the company that by accepting the lower pay there is greater job security.
I guess what Im getting at is that if a company does not want employees on for long periods, then it should not offer permanency to staff. If it does offer permanency with the knowledge that it plans to downsize the employee in the forseeable future then it is being dishonest as it is promising permanency only with the view to reduce how much it has to pay.
Dont want permanent employees - only hire contractors. That way both sides know what to expect from the arrangement.
"Now, we can all reasonably conclude that this is stupid; if I buy a car and design a new fin for it, then sell the fin design to others, the car companies don't claim the fin design is their property. However, when we purchase a car we don't sign a "derivative works" contract with the car dealer or manufacturer. "
Slightly OT but..
This is the main point of many who prefer the BSD licenses over the GPL. The GPL is just as bad - if you design the fin for the car, as the car is GPL'ed the fin must be GPL'ed also, as it attaches to the car.
"News flash: Major corporations exist for the sole purpose of making money, not to be a charity. If it is in IBM's shareholders best interest to open source something, you can bet they will. If not, they won't... no matter how much the armchair CEOs of the world may piss and moan."
Yes, exactly. They did not do this because they are some champion of free software. My point was exactly what you said - they did this out of concern for their bottom line, not because they are 'teh r0x0r enlightened company who has seen that open source is the way of teh future' as the vast majority of above posts would have us believe. Great business plan - open source things that don't make you money, get others to do the work for you, then profit from their work. Good for their bottom line. Let's not try to make out that it is some sort of act of charity for the goodness of mankind.
"Stop living in your parent's basement and get a real job."
Generally said by students to try to sound as if they know what they are talking about - your point was well made until this last remark.
Fact remains, even though the likes of you want to cover it up and pretend that IBM are some champion of goodness and believe everything should be opened, that IBM do not open source anything that makes them money.
Oh great! I cant wait to get hold of the source code to DB2 and Websphere!
They are open sourcing them arent they? After all, they are the champions of open source software are they not?
I will take a slightly different approach to this
If I kill somebody (to remove arguments such as self-defence etc lets say in cold blood to steal money only for personal profit) why is it wrong? Chemically, biologically and physically they have changed state, but where does 'bad' fit into this? In real terms I have only killed a number of cells that happen to form a human. Define good and bad only through scientific means - is it quantifiable? At this point we sit back and decide whether we only believe in the physical universe - in which case it is very difficult if not impossible to prove that killing somebody is bad and should not be done, or we can believe in more than the physical universe, in which case good and bad take on real meaning.
I am very curious how one can PROVE that it is in fact 'bad' to kill somebody in cold blood. If we accept that it is in fact a bad thing to do, then we are using no more proof than what a religious person would use to believe in the existence of God.