Come on, people, I don't think that the community was *that* upset. I don't think the community is upset at all.
Of course, that is an issue for those who rely on ReiserFS, and that really was a bad news for them, but for the rest...
FLOSS community is full of very different people, some of them - by the rule of big numbers - must be atypical, some of them even criminal or murderous. There surely is a large number of homosexuals, quite a number of people who never had a chance to mate, some even aren't going to get any... not to mention a wide area of different religious views or daily habits. Like avoiding bathing.
The community is so huge that there should be some people who get killed, some people who kill other people, some will or are dying of cancer or any other horrible disease... the fact that one of those people is well known is just a matter of statistics.
This thing is very tragic for family Reiser, it does have some impact on ReiserFS users, but for the rest of the world, this is just another sad story, but not an emotional hit.
If you were talking about Linus Torvalds or RMS or maybe just a few very influental individuals, we could say that the whole community did feel "emotional hit", but Hans Reiser is not *that* important, IMHO.
For all those.\ users who say "ActiveX good riddance" - yes, EXCEPT that QuickTime, Flash, and all the other IE plugins are guess way - ActiveX plugins.
OMG! I have ActiveX-enabled Konqueror!!!
Oh, those are IE plugins.. sheesh... you almost got me.
Now, how hard would it be to make these IE plugins - plugins?;-)
Or... maybe.. just maybe... Microsoft could pay Eolas for the license?
I mean, MSIE is free as in beer - therefore it doesn't have a value, so the value must
be MS customers. The logical step for Microsoft would be to pay Eolas to keep valuable customers happy, isn't it?
I beg to differ - average wages here are about 500$/month. MS Office 2003 OEM (small business edition) is 355$, Office Basic Edition (word, excel and outlook) is 270$.
Office Pro (most pirated version) OEM is 401$ (boxed: >500$).
Now, I do understand that you're living in a nice developed country, and you can give away 20% of your monthly paycheck for original software. This is the way it should be.
So you tell me that our product sucks, and we blame others for our failure. Well, maybe you haven't tried running FLOSS company yourself? Pirating software hurts us just as it hurts Microsoft, I can tell you that. For one simple reason: if you can get a pirated copy of whatever and still get away with it, you'll do it. (not you, of course; I'm talkinig about Joe Average here). We do not sell much of OpenOffice.org education CD-s not because they suck (they do not, we have very positive responses from our customers), but because nobody is going to bother with some open source software if they can get MS Office for cheap (or free).
Not everyone is living in a rich country, you know.
Yet, why they don't buy more into that FLOSS stuff? Well, because it is all too easy to pirate stuff. And get away with it. Therefore, Joe Average doesn't care. He's just fine with his pirated Windows, pirated Office, pirated Photoshop, pirated Maya, pirated this and pirated that.
That, belive it or not, hurts not just commercial software, but FLOSS as well.
Our parners and us have developed such a thing - an education CD named "Tuxedooo". You can see for yourself here: http://www.infoweekend.com/t2.html
It is a complete education suite, with examples and everything, tailored to fit non-technical user. Very simple and straightforward. It covers basics of Linux, OpenOffice.org applications, and even deals with migrating from MS Office to OpenOffice. But we didn't sell many of those.
Why? It turned out, our clients are much more interested in having MS Office education, and those who use OOo do like that CD, but the number of people that switched to OOo is just too small to be profitable here.
That goes against the notion that you need to have good books about something if you want people to switch. It is rather that people first get some software, try it, realize that they need a book, and just then they go out and buy the book.
Just because we have that CD on the market doesn't mean people will stampede into switching office suites. It does help, for sure, but it is just not the main factor. And frankly, 80% of people use it as a replacement for typewriter, a function that is easy to master in a few days without a book.
I'd rather say that pirated copies of MS Office are the main showstopper for wide adoption of OOo.
It's about inherent egoism of human race. First we were thinking that gods created universe just to make home for us, then we were sure the Earth is flat and everything revolves around Earth (read: us), then we thought we're just so perfectly evolved that evolution is obsolete and we can handle ourselves just as good as the nature does.
In fact, there's evidence that humans still evolve - at least, we're getting taller each generation.;-)
We have achieved great advances in science, but still we're thinking everything revolves around us, and we're sooo perfect indeed. Evolution - shcmolution, who needs you these days? We have medicine, we have genetics, we don't need you, just go away, we're taking over the world, drill this and bulldoze that, and we're going to make it a hell of a place!:-)
Is that the man who said that any technology advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic? They didn't belive him about the sattelites, ya' know...
But, hey... Unix already uses magic for some tasks. So it is just an evolutive step forward, and umm.. logical one? Magical one?:-)
Just two remarks:
1. viruses use RNA chunks, not DNA
2. viruses aren't that old, there's common misconception that they must be soo old since they're so simple life forms (IF they are life forms), but the fact is that virus must evolve *after* it's host, for it can't propagate without using cell hardware of infected host. So, first you get a host, then you get a virus. They are evolving so rapidly, there's little chance to date them using methods for cell-based organisms.
At the moment you acquire one, it will be in the quantum uncertainity state of infecting all your files, but you won't be sure until you run quantum antivirus to pin it down to a certain state of infecting just one file.
I don't see much improvement in end-user experience...
We have a different set of results here. In Croatia, bigger companies use FLOSS more than small companies. Big companies have people who know how to save money, small companies just buy a DVD with everything from a local pirate. Our customers are mostly medium size (for Croatia it's like from 20 to 200 employees) companies. Most small companies actually never buy licences, so they just don't care about FLOSS.;-)
The hard fact is that you have to really study, study, study - to get your degree. You have to be skilled at maths and science, and you have to have some engineering rigor. Being an engineer is about a passion more than about making money.
On the other side of the table is a marketing guy. Often clueless, but well dressed, good loking fella that sells stuff to other clueless people, and get a huge bonuses. It is this guy who really drives development of your company product, not you the engineer. And he's got all the parties because it goes with that job position. He's got no passion about science or quality, he's got passion to his bonuses. And chicks love him, too - he is good loking, suit wearing "director of subdepartmental proposition to VIP customers."
Now, let's pretend you're a teenager with not so much passion about anything but binge drinking... now, look above. What position's got more sound?;-)
Come on, retaliating on someone's religion will NOT stop them (in fact, it will make them stronger) and neither will it bring any justice over what happened.
And branding the whole religion because of acts of few radicals (that most of the time use religion as a cover up for their own selfish motives) is just plainly wrong. And, just in case you don't know that, true Islam is strongly against terrorist attacks and killing innocent people. Read Kur'an before you judge the book.
Dvorak strategy: make one bold prediction that no one thought of being possible. You'll miss often, but rare cases that prove you were right where no one deemed it's possible - will give you more good PR than all the misses. Net result is positive gain.
You're doing it the wrong way. Here, it is Windows machine that is loaded up to the point services eat each other for resources. Linux boxes do just one or few specific tasks. So it is quite the opposite.
Some people told me that they do it that way because there's not much they can run on Linux (Exchange, anyone?), so it is used mostly as gateway/firewall/proxy/database, and since they paid a pretty penny for Windows boxes, they don't want them to sit idle.
Last year I've witnessed real problem with X-ray technology on Zagreb airport. It is the human factor, of course. X-rays are there for my safety, and frankly, I don't care if someone can see my underwear as long as they don't broadcast their colour.
As I was standing in line at zagreb airport that day, to x-ray my luggage and pass the checkpoint, there was one lady in the other line, who's got her luggage going trough x-ray machine at the moment. The policeman at the machine called his coleague to check something on the screen. He called him out loud so all of us could hear it clearly.
I'll tell you what he said in Croatian, I'm sure you'll be able to understand it regardless your language:
People might be afraid of not having MSIE on their system, you know...:)
Do you remember the time Bill Gates told us that this emerging Internet is not a real advantage, in fact people might be afraid of using it because this is some strange new technology, luckily there is Microsoft with their plan to build Microsoft Network in orbit, so everyone is going to be connected to Microsoft Network, and this strange technology that is already obsolete would remain confined to academic organizations?
If Microsoft says people are afraid of tabs, then people are afraid of tabs. If Apple says mouse doesn't need more than one button, then the mouse doesn't need to have two, nor three, nor any other number of buttons. One shall be the number of buttons, and number of buttons will be one.
That leaves out us, bunch of freakin' anarchists who use FLOSS software. Indeed we are lost lambs! My mouse has one wheel and four buttons. My browser can spawn as much tabs as I want. My KDE can have more than one desktop at the same time. I can have variety of Linux distros. My God, indeed I am lost! There's no salvation for me, for I do not fear such freedom of choice!:))
IBM is already using OOo for their (proprietary) solutions. It seems that OOo will spread by proxy, companies around the world will embrace (and extend, huh IBM?) OOo and thus slowly change the dominant office format towards OpenOffice?
This is geek part of Bill Gates speaking out. He might be filthy rich and stuff, he can give away money for poor children (as he does), you can praise him or throw stones on him, but don't you try to take his techno-leadership away!:)
They could move to Croatia. You might have people here working for you for more than six months without actually paying them sallaries. We're used to it, and since local companies can do that, there's no reason foreign company can't do the same...
Now, that beats the crap out of India! In Croatia, you get people work for free!:)
As soon as companies realize this, we're going to be the biggest outsource county in the world! Maybe then EU will accept us...;>
Oh, that doesn't mean new OSS developers. Most of that staff would probably be coin-operated salespeople or typewriter managers. Just as in any other big company, they have huge middleware layer between developers and upper management, and they will probably cut most from that layer.
Of course, we can expect to see some developers walking out of the building, but don't think they're all OSS fans. Most of them might just turn to Microsoft-based companies and continue developing software there. It is where they can get money for food and shelter. They might just not care about what platform they're developing on, as long as they get paid for it.;)
I presume that, if we want to get specimens back to Earth, we would have to protect them from Space, meaning having a shelter designed for retrieval - a shelter that can keep living things alive.;)
So far, we just think that meteorites from Mars might brought us some fossils, not living bacteria. On the other hand, it is known fact that some earth-borne bacteria did survive extreme conditions on space vessels they "infected" prior to launch.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, that is an issue for those who rely on ReiserFS, and that really was a bad news for them, but for the rest...
FLOSS community is full of very different people, some of them - by the rule of big numbers - must be atypical, some of them even criminal or murderous. There surely is a large number of homosexuals, quite a number of people who never had a chance to mate, some even aren't going to get any... not to mention a wide area of different religious views or daily habits. Like avoiding bathing.
The community is so huge that there should be some people who get killed, some people who kill other people, some will or are dying of cancer or any other horrible disease... the fact that one of those people is well known is just a matter of statistics.
This thing is very tragic for family Reiser, it does have some impact on ReiserFS users, but for the rest of the world, this is just another sad story, but not an emotional hit.
If you were talking about Linus Torvalds or RMS or maybe just a few very influental individuals, we could say that the whole community did feel "emotional hit", but Hans Reiser is not *that* important, IMHO.
OMG! I have ActiveX-enabled Konqueror!!!
;-)
Oh, those are IE plugins.. sheesh... you almost got me.
Now, how hard would it be to make these IE plugins - plugins?
Or... maybe.. just maybe... Microsoft could pay Eolas for the license? I mean, MSIE is free as in beer - therefore it doesn't have a value, so the value must be MS customers. The logical step for Microsoft would be to pay Eolas to keep valuable customers happy, isn't it?
Developers, developers, developers, developers. Mushroom, mushroom! It's Nibbles!
Office Pro (most pirated version) OEM is 401$ (boxed: >500$).
Now, I do understand that you're living in a nice developed country, and you can give away 20% of your monthly paycheck for original software. This is the way it should be.
So you tell me that our product sucks, and we blame others for our failure. Well, maybe you haven't tried running FLOSS company yourself? Pirating software hurts us just as it hurts Microsoft, I can tell you that. For one simple reason: if you can get a pirated copy of whatever and still get away with it, you'll do it. (not you, of course; I'm talkinig about Joe Average here). We do not sell much of OpenOffice.org education CD-s not because they suck (they do not, we have very positive responses from our customers), but because nobody is going to bother with some open source software if they can get MS Office for cheap (or free).
Not everyone is living in a rich country, you know.
Yet, why they don't buy more into that FLOSS stuff? Well, because it is all too easy to pirate stuff. And get away with it. Therefore, Joe Average doesn't care. He's just fine with his pirated Windows, pirated Office, pirated Photoshop, pirated Maya, pirated this and pirated that.
That, belive it or not, hurts not just commercial software, but FLOSS as well.
Our parners and us have developed such a thing - an education CD named "Tuxedooo". You can see for yourself here: http://www.infoweekend.com/t2.html It is a complete education suite, with examples and everything, tailored to fit non-technical user. Very simple and straightforward. It covers basics of Linux, OpenOffice.org applications, and even deals with migrating from MS Office to OpenOffice. But we didn't sell many of those. Why? It turned out, our clients are much more interested in having MS Office education, and those who use OOo do like that CD, but the number of people that switched to OOo is just too small to be profitable here. That goes against the notion that you need to have good books about something if you want people to switch. It is rather that people first get some software, try it, realize that they need a book, and just then they go out and buy the book. Just because we have that CD on the market doesn't mean people will stampede into switching office suites. It does help, for sure, but it is just not the main factor. And frankly, 80% of people use it as a replacement for typewriter, a function that is easy to master in a few days without a book. I'd rather say that pirated copies of MS Office are the main showstopper for wide adoption of OOo.
It's about inherent egoism of human race. First we were thinking that gods created universe just to make home for us, then we were sure the Earth is flat and everything revolves around Earth (read: us), then we thought we're just so perfectly evolved that evolution is obsolete and we can handle ourselves just as good as the nature does. In fact, there's evidence that humans still evolve - at least, we're getting taller each generation. ;-)
We have achieved great advances in science, but still we're thinking everything revolves around us, and we're sooo perfect indeed. Evolution - shcmolution, who needs you these days? We have medicine, we have genetics, we don't need you, just go away, we're taking over the world, drill this and bulldoze that, and we're going to make it a hell of a place! :-)
Is that the man who said that any technology advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic? They didn't belive him about the sattelites, ya' know... But, hey... Unix already uses magic for some tasks. So it is just an evolutive step forward, and umm.. logical one? Magical one? :-)
Just two remarks: 1. viruses use RNA chunks, not DNA 2. viruses aren't that old, there's common misconception that they must be soo old since they're so simple life forms (IF they are life forms), but the fact is that virus must evolve *after* it's host, for it can't propagate without using cell hardware of infected host. So, first you get a host, then you get a virus. They are evolving so rapidly, there's little chance to date them using methods for cell-based organisms.
At the moment you acquire one, it will be in the quantum uncertainity state of infecting all your files, but you won't be sure until you run quantum antivirus to pin it down to a certain state of infecting just one file. I don't see much improvement in end-user experience...
We have a different set of results here. In Croatia, bigger companies use FLOSS more than small companies. Big companies have people who know how to save money, small companies just buy a DVD with everything from a local pirate. Our customers are mostly medium size (for Croatia it's like from 20 to 200 employees) companies. Most small companies actually never buy licences, so they just don't care about FLOSS. ;-)
The hard fact is that you have to really study, study, study - to get your degree. You have to be skilled at maths and science, and you have to have some engineering rigor. Being an engineer is about a passion more than about making money. On the other side of the table is a marketing guy. Often clueless, but well dressed, good loking fella that sells stuff to other clueless people, and get a huge bonuses. It is this guy who really drives development of your company product, not you the engineer. And he's got all the parties because it goes with that job position. He's got no passion about science or quality, he's got passion to his bonuses. And chicks love him, too - he is good loking, suit wearing "director of subdepartmental proposition to VIP customers." Now, let's pretend you're a teenager with not so much passion about anything but binge drinking... now, look above. What position's got more sound? ;-)
It is not the fuel, but green cookies that scare me...
And branding the whole religion because of acts of few radicals (that most of the time use religion as a cover up for their own selfish motives) is just plainly wrong. And, just in case you don't know that, true Islam is strongly against terrorist attacks and killing innocent people.
Read Kur'an before you judge the book.
(btw, I'm Christian)
Dvorak strategy: make one bold prediction that no one thought of being possible. You'll miss often, but rare cases that prove you were right where no one deemed it's possible - will give you more good PR than all the misses. Net result is positive gain.
You're doing it the wrong way. Here, it is Windows machine that is loaded up to the point services eat each other for resources. Linux boxes do just one or few specific tasks. So it is quite the opposite.
Some people told me that they do it that way because there's not much they can run on Linux (Exchange, anyone?), so it is used mostly as gateway/firewall/proxy/database, and since they paid a pretty penny for Windows boxes, they don't want them to sit idle.
As I was standing in line at zagreb airport that day, to x-ray my luggage and pass the checkpoint, there was one lady in the other line, who's got her luggage going trough x-ray machine at the moment. The policeman at the machine called his coleague to check something on the screen. He called him out loud so all of us could hear it clearly.
I'll tell you what he said in Croatian, I'm sure you'll be able to understand it regardless your language:
"Dodji vidi, mali vibrator!"
Apple holds a patent to mouse wheel. And their mice still have just one button. Way to go, man! :)
Here's the link to picture showing Einstein at that time:p g
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/images/ae14.j
Oh, and I think today his job application would be rejected because he lack necessary skills...
People might be afraid of not having MSIE on their system, you know... :)
Do you remember the time Bill Gates told us that this emerging Internet is not a real advantage, in fact people might be afraid of using it because this is some strange new technology, luckily there is Microsoft with their plan to build Microsoft Network in orbit, so everyone is going to be connected to Microsoft Network, and this strange technology that is already obsolete would remain confined to academic organizations?
If Microsoft says people are afraid of tabs, then people are afraid of tabs. If Apple says mouse doesn't need more than one button, then the mouse doesn't need to have two, nor three, nor any other number of buttons. One shall be the number of buttons, and number of buttons will be one.
That leaves out us, bunch of freakin' anarchists who use FLOSS software. Indeed we are lost lambs! My mouse has one wheel and four buttons. My browser can spawn as much tabs as I want. My KDE can have more than one desktop at the same time. I can have variety of Linux distros. My God, indeed I am lost! There's no salvation for me, for I do not fear such freedom of choice! :))
You're damn right about that!
IBM is already using OOo for their (proprietary) solutions. It seems that OOo will spread by proxy, companies around the world will embrace (and extend, huh IBM?) OOo and thus slowly change the dominant office format towards OpenOffice?
This is geek part of Bill Gates speaking out. He might be filthy rich and stuff, he can give away money for poor children (as he does), you can praise him or throw stones on him, but don't you try to take his techno-leadership away! :)
They could move to Croatia. You might have people here working for you for more than six months without actually paying them sallaries. We're used to it, and since local companies can do that, there's no reason foreign company can't do the same... Now, that beats the crap out of India! In Croatia, you get people work for free! :)
As soon as companies realize this, we're going to be the biggest outsource county in the world! Maybe then EU will accept us... ;>
Oh, that doesn't mean new OSS developers. Most of that staff would probably be coin-operated salespeople or typewriter managers. Just as in any other big company, they have huge middleware layer between developers and upper management, and they will probably cut most from that layer. Of course, we can expect to see some developers walking out of the building, but don't think they're all OSS fans. Most of them might just turn to Microsoft-based companies and continue developing software there. It is where they can get money for food and shelter. They might just not care about what platform they're developing on, as long as they get paid for it. ;)
So far, we just think that meteorites from Mars might brought us some fossils, not living bacteria. On the other hand, it is known fact that some earth-borne bacteria did survive extreme conditions on space vessels they "infected" prior to launch.