"Hardware manufacturers will develop drivers for whatever system(s) provide them with the largest potential market."
I don't think so. They'll go for whatever brings them more revenue. Which can, or cannot, mean supporting the largest potential market.
Just an of course totally impossible scenario it happened to come to my mind: So you want the "Some Redmond's OS that happens to cope some 90% of the market certified" sticker? OK: I'll only need two conditions to be met: 1) that you stop supporting my old system on new offerings and 2) That you will only develop drivers for my system. Oh! and I'll give you 2 dollars per system sold on license rebates. It's not as I'm forcing you; you can offer support for that communist thingie from that crazy Finish but then forget about my sticker, my two dollars by machine and priority access to API documents, beta releases and source code screening.
Well, you know, it is not as if something like this could happen or had happen in the past...
"If I'm willing to continue paying for XP I can't really see why Microsoft should have a problem with it."
Because the more Microsoft stands still, the more easier a target it becomes. Microsoft lives out of licenses and it's on a dominant position. It's *required* for them to move on just to stay the same.
I.E.: The longer the current AD model, the better Samba will mimmick it; the longer Exchange stays the same, the easier for their competitors to bit its tail.
The question is: you know Microsoft is forced to go that way because its bussiness methods and position; you know that will cost you dare money just to sustain Microsoft's profit, but still you (for a big number of "you") are "willing to pay for" its tread mill. Luckily more and more people is becoming aware of Microsoft's (forced even to itself) practices.
"If they did have such qualms it didn't prevent them from making dozens upon dozens of such films."
They did such dozens upon dozens of films *because* such ethical qualms. So you know why bombs explode so far away from the camera point of view and why soldiers die with so little mud, so little suffering and so little blood? Do you know why on such films Germans are so bad guys beyond retaliation and US gals so heroic beyond sanctity? Do you know what "war effort" means?
"The purpose of this (and other) video games is to desensitize people to violence and make them believe war is necessary and ok. Why do you think mainstream media loves to report on violence and other more trivial things,"
Because it sells?
" rather than keeping us up to date on what the Congress and/or Senate has been doing"
Because it sells less?
Seriously: do you really think there's some kind of conspiration so mainstream media publish blood and misery in order to desensitize population while convinced they could get more revenue telling what Congress/Senate is doing in all their glory details?
"Hint: Anti-war, liberal/Democrat, pro-jihadi, United Nations, and war-protest websites and sources with obvious anti-West, anti-US, anti-Bush, and anti-war agendas don't count as citation."
On that days, even CNN made clear rebels in Fallujah were mostly (if not all) Iraquis themselves. I still remember US army telling they were going to go into by such and such date so everybody that didn't want to be killed should flee away.
I am not going to go into the ethics or if the US army was right or not in this particular case. But then think a bit about it as objectively as you can: an occupation army goes to your neighborhood and tells you that because some compatriots are considered rebels they are going to wreak havoc on the whole lot and that if you don't want to be slained you better go off your home, all while in the middle of a desert so you know that just by stablishing a control net fifteen miles around the town an occupying army would block all danger from the possible rebels without murders or destruction. Please pay attention: a foreign army, a compatriot and your home.
Going to foreign land to offer someone freedom by bombing him is a harsh proposition no matter how well intentioned your are.
"Is your point that a host that's connected via T-1 that's a mile away is faster than a host that's connected on an OC-3 3,000 miles away?"
No. My point is that whitin this context when someone says "closer" he's indeed saying "faster". I know that's untrue, but it's not me the one using closer for faster and this whole thread was about "non power users" so while not correct it's close enough (at least for those not nitpickers).
"Yes. Yes it is. If such a list can be generated, then why not just generate it in normal operation"
If choosing "nearest" mirror is so complex for a "non power user" then the default (which is choosing the mirror from your own country) is good enough (choosing the fastest mirror *now* is not without its own concerns). Non power users can stand losing some kbits on the odd update from time to time at the expense of having "good enough" on the majority of cases (you are using "stable", don't you? you are a non power user, remember?).
"Obviously bandwidth and availability varies on a day by day basis. So taking a snapshot at one point in time seems like it will get stale."
Obviously. Then why go with hassle *for non-power users* of such a tool and the compromises it takes when there's already a good enough working solution for vast majority of users whitout the needed knowledge?
"It's a legitimate end-user concern."
It is not the concern the one I told to be "-nonsense" but the reasoning and arguments supporting it.
""Which mirror should I select" should not be a user problem."
That's why when installing at default priority level the system won't ask you to select a mirror but will offer you one out of you country's selection which, on average, will be good enough.
"The user wants his bits as soon as possible"
The non-savvy user want a lot of things, sometimes contradictory (it's just logical: he is non-savvy) so usually the best approach is not offering him the choice but a good enough compromise -which, by the way, it's current behaviour. The savvy user will know his way out the problem and the system will assist him if possible (in this case through apt-spy).
"If that's the case, we should probably integrate that with the mirror selection process"
Then you are free to propose it *on the proper forum* or even offer your patch. Maybe then you'd realize what the technical problems of the approach are and properly evaluate if the alledged benefit from current situation is worth *your* effort.
"The point I was sneaking up on is that because of the way the open source arena has evolved, it has a distinct disadvantage in terms of support."
It's only that's bullshit. It won't be neither "open source" nor "Linux" the one that will offer you corporate support. It will be Red Hat, HP, Canonical, IBM, etc. so you question shouldn't be "So, can linux compete from a support standpoint?" but "So, can [IBM|Red Hat|Canonical...] compete from a support standpoint with Microsoft?". Quite a different question with, maybe, quite a different answer.
"So looking at this from the point of view of open source adopters, they are going to have support costs which aren't anywhere near trivial [...] As much as I'd like to move the company for which I manage IT into open source products, the support costs would be staggering."
Not to say that wouldn't be the case for you, but it is still an unsubstantiated claim (I know in my company relative support costs for the Microsoft platform are higher than Linux'. See? I can produce anecdotae too). By the way, nobody is claiming that support costs are trivial but how well will stand up different alternatives.
"MS learned a long time ago that supporting a mass of the largely computer illiterate in the use of an OS is a huge resource sink, and they've done everything they could to move away from it."
So, your "will X be able to compete against Microsoft on corporate-grade support" becomes "since Microsoft doesn't give support to the computer illiterate mass at all"? By the way, that wasn't your previous claim. You based your previous claim on an example about Microsoft being able to offer corporate-grade support to a corporation (supposedly) at corporate rates (it might be the case "corporate rates" where off the equation since you was talking about a beta, but so that would be the case with other vendors too). Surprise! IBM or Red Hat are absolutly able to do the same for their supported Linux offers. And they do it.
"This is reflected in the way they've pushed oem licensing, with the responsibility for support pushed to the system builder, which really is as it should be."
Yeah, sure. On one hand this kind of "mixed responsibilites" does work on Linux-world. Red Hat on Dell, for instance, is kind of "join venture support" between Red Hat and Dell, as you say, as it should be. On the other hand, your previous post is an example or exactly the opposite behaviour. As you stated your problem with a Toshiba laptop ended with your machine being sent *to Microsoft* for a patch *from Microsoft* to be created *on Redmond* by *Microsoft engineers", so to what extent did the OEM builder (Toshiba, in this case) got involved except as a man-in-the-middle at best? And if Toshiba just acted as a man-in-the-middle, well, I think I can get better support if those middlemen just disappear, thanks.
"Is it just me or is the fun game of "pick your closest mirror" not very fun at all? Just download the damn thing at best possible speed. I don't care where you get it from. "
You are aware that "closest" in this context means "faster", aren't you?
"As if I'm in a position to pick the best site where to download something from. Give me a break. Apologies to the power users who can lick their Ethernet cable and tell which site will have the best download performance and availability."
Probably is too much a power user the one able to install the package "apt-spy" which will build a sources.list for you based on bandwith probes, isn't it?
Oh, and please, don't let parent post at +Insigthful when it's plain -Nonsense.
"My son must turn in his reports in ms word format. That is what they use at their elementary school."
Is he using Microsoft Word 2.0? For, you know, chances are that by the time your son is stablished on the job market current Word version will resemble today's much like Word 2.0 resembles to current.
I never understood the (circular) argument. Companies choose Microsoft because that what was thought to our children ten years ago; and we must teach Microsoft to our children because that's what will use in ten years. Not specially when closed software earns their money by selling licenses so they are going to change their products even if only for the sake of it in order to sell new licenses. They may have a point if they used something like Emacs which not depending on selling licenses you can expect core functionallity to stay the same but, closed software?
"So, can linux compete from a support standpoint?"
I don't think that's the point. Not at least from Microsoft's point of view. Microsoft's point of view is "I'm top of the hill" so in any change to the 'statu quo' I'm facing ending worse than now, since there's no high up I can go. That's why Microsoft fights nail and theeth to open source: for them it can only mean a change for the worse.
On the other hand, if this means Microsoft comes to compete on equal foot, quality and service-wise, with alternatives, instead of FUDing and using unethical and sometimes illegal practices, I for one would welcome our new microsoftian opensource-aware fair playing overlords.
"With the world economic situation putting strains on government money [...] substantial savings can be had by going the OSS route."
What does this exactly mean? If some choice is really cheaper (like not cheaper in front costs but more expensive in the long run) do we allow government to overexpend if it happens to be a buoyant economy situation? If it's cheaper, it's cheaper, economic situation has nothing to do.
"Especially for smaller companies, this pans out mostly okay. For larger companies, Linux may make sense as the cost of in-house development and Microsoft licensing may start to get on even footing."
But if the "larger company" happens to do things the way it is supposed to be (that is, allowing redistribution of their not strategical in-house development) which is quite expectable from a government organization, then you can have these customizations on smaller companies too, which then start to get on even footing regarding open source too.
Instead of money going to some big pockets for doing nothing, it will go to local companies for doing things, and at a lower overall cost. A win-win proposition in my book.
"In other words, their expenditures for proprietary software must equal to $0.00?"
I know you are trying to be fun here but then, you know not all operations allow for the commutative operation.
They said "open source procurement funding match expenditures for proprietary software" not "propietary software procurement funding match expenditures for open source". So no: it doesn't mean expenditures for propietary software must equal to $0.00".
In the other hand, it says "expenditures" not "expenditures from licensing". If you think installing 1000 copies of whatever doesn't involve expenditures you are not only not funny (no: your previous message, while attempting to it was not funny) but stupid too.
"True, but so far, I haven't yet seen a network card which didn't work out of the box in Vista (including wireless...)."
True (well, at least I gonna admit it; certainly I didn't use Vista extensively). But looking at the trend on XP to Vista un maintenance of third party drivers and the fact that more and more network and wifi cards rely on firmware to be included, it wouldn't be much of a surprise if this became more common on the future.
"Also true, but the likelihood is much higher. With Linux, you have many entirely separate repositories for every distro, so even if you make a driver, if you want it to be distributed in that fashion, you have to maintain it in all of them. Or you have to submit it to the kernel tree (and then you do not really control its development anymore)."
I never went on the relative quantity (it would be stupid on my side), but about the quality. In this regards, I insist, Windows and Linux are quite the same. Regarding redistribution issues, it's true that average Linux user (or, at least, as long as I myself can be considered "average Linux user") people want all software (including firmware/drivers) to be tightly coupled to the package management of their distribution of choice. Note that this is because how vastly superior, we that use Linux on a day to day basis, feel the distribution-based method to the vendor based proper of the Windows realm. This, of course, doesn't limit the ability from third parties to distribute on their own basis (you see companies like Intel or NVidia go this route providing generic scripts that will install their stuff the same no matter the distribution).
On the "submit to the kernel tree" is quite untrue that means "loosing development control"; quite on the contrary it insures smooth integration and distribution-free troubles (since distributions will take the burden on themselves). The only and real point no to integrate drivers on main kernel line is regarding distribution licenses, and you know what? more power for me. If they don't want/can't distribute on an open way, others do and will be those others the ones that will see my wallet.
"On the other hand, if you make a driver for Vista, there's only one "distro" as far as you're concerned."
While this is true, it's more about perception than reality: distributing to any single OS limits your integration efforts to this single OS, be it Windows Vista, Debian GNU/Linux, Red Hat Linux or whatever. This of course, doesn't mean I am not aware of the penetration impact of any single of those OSs (if you are going to make the effort for just one OS it makes sense going with the one with widest implantation) but this doesn't make it less real: if you go with any single OS, say Debian GNU/Linux, there will just one "distro" as far as you're concerned exactly as if you just go with Windows Vista. And being Debian, Red Hat, SUSE, etc. so much alike among them than Windows with anything else, by just committing a bit yourself (like making what's needed for your drivers to be on Linux kernel's main line) you will be able to offer your support to a wide number of OSs almost for free.
"And you don't have to hand over your driver's source code, or the rights to it"
That's again about perception. As long as both the vendor and the consumer's perception goes like this, good ride to the vendor. I myself vote with my wallet and while they don't hand over their source code to me I won't hand over my money to them. The more users behave like me the better for me and the rest of the users. But, hey, this is free market!
" If the app you want, or the version of the app you want isn't in the repository, it's a *LOT* harder than in Windows to get that app working on your system."
It really deppends. If the app is already packaged for your distribution, it's a breeze. If it is not, it's difficult but achiveable. On the other hand, in windowsworld, if the app comes not with a Windows installer, you are almost absolutly lost.
"If you've ever tried to upgrade your RHEL kernel to a newer kernel than currently supported, you have to deal with getting those drivers into the kernel.. i know, i've had to do it."
Try to update a Windows kernel. I must admit I haven't done. Do you know why? It's not only difficult, it is impossible.
The point is that Linux gives you freedom. In your case, you choose to mix apples to oranges (trying to do unsupported things on Linux and complaining it is more difficult than doing supported things on Windows. Try to compare supported things on Linux to supported things on Windows or unsupported things on Linux to unsupported things on Windows for a change). It's your choice, but please don't come here trying to pass it as an apples-to-apples comparation.
"To be honest, I haven't played with it [postgres] enough to tell you"
So, in the end, you haven't played with Postgres and tried blender "for about 30 seconds before giving up" but still you feel entitled to give them harsh and hard reports. You are part of the problem.
"Debian takes years, literally years, between updates."
Yes. Debian Etch: 2007; Debian Lenny: 2009
But how about its competitors? Red Hat 4: 2005; Red Hat 5: 2007 SUSE 9: 2003; SUSE 10: 2005; no news about corporate supported SUSE 11 (only OpenSUSE, but I admit I can be misinformed about this). Windows XP: 2001; Windows Vista: 2006
"If you're interested in an apt-based distro, consider Ubuntu. It has corporate support"
So you think corporate supported Ubuntus take much less, uh? Ubuntu 6.06 LTS: 2006; Ubuntu 8.04 LTS: 2008. Surprise! Quite the same than Debian.
"CentOS is obviously the gold standard."
Of course yes... it is Red Hat rebranded as you probably know, so you can see how it goes a bit above: two years from its last release; two years average between versions. Quite near to Debian's mark.
"Its community is broken [...] If you advise your employer to use Debian, you're giving them bad advice. An oddball distro with almost no market share or community support, with very little in the way of contractor support."
So, up to now, all you have is an irrelevant fact (since all other "competitors" take as much if not more between revisions) some unsupported affirmations and a proveable wrong fact (if you call IBM, HP and a host of minor partners like my employer "minor support" you sir, are utterly wrong).
"It's 2009, you can't just keep using what you started with, you have to stay current."
What do you think the 70+ Debian servers under my belt are exactly so uncurrent and compared to what, may I ask?
"If you're not willing to do that, get out of the way."
If all you can do is rude unstated and wrong assertions, you will find yourself out of the way wondering what happened... but of course I know that won't stop you, Mr. A. Coward.
No matter how advanced a civilization is, their space fighter's engines won't make noise in vacuum nor will move like an atmospheric plane.
On the other hand, it *can't* be sci-fi. All we know sci-fi is about the future, while Star Wars is about a long time ago, in a far far distant galaxy (grin).
" By that reasoning, fantasy could happen as well, assuming that we find some source of power that would grant people abilities indistinguishable from magic."
Which, by the way, is the exact Clarke's definition for some advanced enough civilization's science: "magic".
"In a world with no copyright, you may be able to copy the binary around at will but would no longer have guaranteed access to the source code in the first place, one of the key principles of free software."
Laws (and contracts) are not Justice, but a means to down Justice into Real World. As such, without the laws and the mentality of copy rights, while not guaranteed to gain access to source code, your chances of not having it would be more or less the same than being suffocated by all your oxigen going out of your lungs at the same time by brownian motion.
Slashdot Mirror
"Hardware manufacturers will develop drivers for whatever system(s) provide them with the largest potential market."
I don't think so. They'll go for whatever brings them more revenue. Which can, or cannot, mean supporting the largest potential market.
Just an of course totally impossible scenario it happened to come to my mind: So you want the "Some Redmond's OS that happens to cope some 90% of the market certified" sticker? OK: I'll only need two conditions to be met: 1) that you stop supporting my old system on new offerings and 2) That you will only develop drivers for my system. Oh! and I'll give you 2 dollars per system sold on license rebates. It's not as I'm forcing you; you can offer support for that communist thingie from that crazy Finish but then forget about my sticker, my two dollars by machine and priority access to API documents, beta releases and source code screening.
Well, you know, it is not as if something like this could happen or had happen in the past...
"Software doesn't spontaneously develop vulnerabilities [...] there's only newly discovered vulnerabilities."
The practical difference being?
Welcome, Captain Obvious!
"If I'm willing to continue paying for XP I can't really see why Microsoft should have a problem with it."
Because the more Microsoft stands still, the more easier a target it becomes. Microsoft lives out of licenses and it's on a dominant position. It's *required* for them to move on just to stay the same.
I.E.: The longer the current AD model, the better Samba will mimmick it; the longer Exchange stays the same, the easier for their competitors to bit its tail.
The question is: you know Microsoft is forced to go that way because its bussiness methods and position; you know that will cost you dare money just to sustain Microsoft's profit, but still you (for a big number of "you") are "willing to pay for" its tread mill. Luckily more and more people is becoming aware of Microsoft's (forced even to itself) practices.
"If they did have such qualms it didn't prevent them from making dozens upon dozens of such films."
They did such dozens upon dozens of films *because* such ethical qualms. So you know why bombs explode so far away from the camera point of view and why soldiers die with so little mud, so little suffering and so little blood? Do you know why on such films Germans are so bad guys beyond retaliation and US gals so heroic beyond sanctity? Do you know what "war effort" means?
"The purpose of this (and other) video games is to desensitize people to violence and make them believe war is necessary and ok. Why do you think mainstream media loves to report on violence and other more trivial things,"
Because it sells?
" rather than keeping us up to date on what the Congress and/or Senate has been doing"
Because it sells less?
Seriously: do you really think there's some kind of conspiration so mainstream media publish blood and misery in order to desensitize population while convinced they could get more revenue telling what Congress/Senate is doing in all their glory details?
"Hint: Anti-war, liberal/Democrat, pro-jihadi, United Nations, and war-protest websites and sources with obvious anti-West, anti-US, anti-Bush, and anti-war agendas don't count as citation."
On that days, even CNN made clear rebels in Fallujah were mostly (if not all) Iraquis themselves. I still remember US army telling they were going to go into by such and such date so everybody that didn't want to be killed should flee away.
I am not going to go into the ethics or if the US army was right or not in this particular case. But then think a bit about it as objectively as you can: an occupation army goes to your neighborhood and tells you that because some compatriots are considered rebels they are going to wreak havoc on the whole lot and that if you don't want to be slained you better go off your home, all while in the middle of a desert so you know that just by stablishing a control net fifteen miles around the town an occupying army would block all danger from the possible rebels without murders or destruction. Please pay attention: a foreign army, a compatriot and your home.
Going to foreign land to offer someone freedom by bombing him is a harsh proposition no matter how well intentioned your are.
"Is your point that a host that's connected via T-1 that's a mile away is faster than a host that's connected on an OC-3 3,000 miles away?"
No. My point is that whitin this context when someone says "closer" he's indeed saying "faster". I know that's untrue, but it's not me the one using closer for faster and this whole thread was about "non power users" so while not correct it's close enough (at least for those not nitpickers).
"Yes. Yes it is. If such a list can be generated, then why not just generate it in normal operation"
If choosing "nearest" mirror is so complex for a "non power user" then the default (which is choosing the mirror from your own country) is good enough (choosing the fastest mirror *now* is not without its own concerns). Non power users can stand losing some kbits on the odd update from time to time at the expense of having "good enough" on the majority of cases (you are using "stable", don't you? you are a non power user, remember?).
"Obviously bandwidth and availability varies on a day by day basis. So taking a snapshot at one point in time seems like it will get stale."
Obviously. Then why go with hassle *for non-power users* of such a tool and the compromises it takes when there's already a good enough working solution for vast majority of users whitout the needed knowledge?
"It's a legitimate end-user concern."
It is not the concern the one I told to be "-nonsense" but the reasoning and arguments supporting it.
""Which mirror should I select" should not be a user problem."
That's why when installing at default priority level the system won't ask you to select a mirror but will offer you one out of you country's selection which, on average, will be good enough.
"The user wants his bits as soon as possible"
The non-savvy user want a lot of things, sometimes contradictory (it's just logical: he is non-savvy) so usually the best approach is not offering him the choice but a good enough compromise -which, by the way, it's current behaviour. The savvy user will know his way out the problem and the system will assist him if possible (in this case through apt-spy).
"If that's the case, we should probably integrate that with the mirror selection process"
Then you are free to propose it *on the proper forum* or even offer your patch. Maybe then you'd realize what the technical problems of the approach are and properly evaluate if the alledged benefit from current situation is worth *your* effort.
"The point I was sneaking up on is that because of the way the open source arena has evolved, it has a distinct disadvantage in terms of support."
It's only that's bullshit. It won't be neither "open source" nor "Linux" the one that will offer you corporate support. It will be Red Hat, HP, Canonical, IBM, etc. so you question shouldn't be "So, can linux compete from a support standpoint?" but "So, can [IBM|Red Hat|Canonical...] compete from a support standpoint with Microsoft?". Quite a different question with, maybe, quite a different answer.
"So looking at this from the point of view of open source adopters, they are going to have support costs which aren't anywhere near trivial [...] As much as I'd like to move the company for which I manage IT into open source products, the support costs would be staggering."
Not to say that wouldn't be the case for you, but it is still an unsubstantiated claim (I know in my company relative support costs for the Microsoft platform are higher than Linux'. See? I can produce anecdotae too). By the way, nobody is claiming that support costs are trivial but how well will stand up different alternatives.
"MS learned a long time ago that supporting a mass of the largely computer illiterate in the use of an OS is a huge resource sink, and they've done everything they could to move away from it."
So, your "will X be able to compete against Microsoft on corporate-grade support" becomes "since Microsoft doesn't give support to the computer illiterate mass at all"? By the way, that wasn't your previous claim. You based your previous claim on an example about Microsoft being able to offer corporate-grade support to a corporation (supposedly) at corporate rates (it might be the case "corporate rates" where off the equation since you was talking about a beta, but so that would be the case with other vendors too). Surprise! IBM or Red Hat are absolutly able to do the same for their supported Linux offers. And they do it.
"This is reflected in the way they've pushed oem licensing, with the responsibility for support pushed to the system builder, which really is as it should be."
Yeah, sure. On one hand this kind of "mixed responsibilites" does work on Linux-world. Red Hat on Dell, for instance, is kind of "join venture support" between Red Hat and Dell, as you say, as it should be. On the other hand, your previous post is an example or exactly the opposite behaviour. As you stated your problem with a Toshiba laptop ended with your machine being sent *to Microsoft* for a patch *from Microsoft* to be created *on Redmond* by *Microsoft engineers", so to what extent did the OEM builder (Toshiba, in this case) got involved except as a man-in-the-middle at best? And if Toshiba just acted as a man-in-the-middle, well, I think I can get better support if those middlemen just disappear, thanks.
"Is it just me or is the fun game of "pick your closest mirror" not very fun at all? Just download the damn thing at best possible speed. I don't care where you get it from. "
You are aware that "closest" in this context means "faster", aren't you?
"As if I'm in a position to pick the best site where to download something from. Give me a break. Apologies to the power users who can lick their Ethernet cable and tell which site will have the best download performance and availability."
Probably is too much a power user the one able to install the package "apt-spy" which will build a sources.list for you based on bandwith probes, isn't it?
Oh, and please, don't let parent post at +Insigthful when it's plain -Nonsense.
Please undo moderation to parent post. Signed packages anyone?
"My son must turn in his reports in ms word format. That is what they use at their elementary school."
Is he using Microsoft Word 2.0? For, you know, chances are that by the time your son is stablished on the job market current Word version will resemble today's much like Word 2.0 resembles to current.
I never understood the (circular) argument. Companies choose Microsoft because that what was thought to our children ten years ago; and we must teach Microsoft to our children because that's what will use in ten years. Not specially when closed software earns their money by selling licenses so they are going to change their products even if only for the sake of it in order to sell new licenses. They may have a point if they used something like Emacs which not depending on selling licenses you can expect core functionallity to stay the same but, closed software?
"So, can linux compete from a support standpoint?"
I don't think that's the point. Not at least from Microsoft's point of view. Microsoft's point of view is "I'm top of the hill" so in any change to the 'statu quo' I'm facing ending worse than now, since there's no high up I can go. That's why Microsoft fights nail and theeth to open source: for them it can only mean a change for the worse.
On the other hand, if this means Microsoft comes to compete on equal foot, quality and service-wise, with alternatives, instead of FUDing and using unethical and sometimes illegal practices, I for one would welcome our new microsoftian opensource-aware fair playing overlords.
"With the world economic situation putting strains on government money [...] substantial savings can be had by going the OSS route."
What does this exactly mean? If some choice is really cheaper (like not cheaper in front costs but more expensive in the long run) do we allow government to overexpend if it happens to be a buoyant economy situation? If it's cheaper, it's cheaper, economic situation has nothing to do.
"Especially for smaller companies, this pans out mostly okay. For larger companies, Linux may make sense as the cost of in-house development and Microsoft licensing may start to get on even footing."
But if the "larger company" happens to do things the way it is supposed to be (that is, allowing redistribution of their not strategical in-house development) which is quite expectable from a government organization, then you can have these customizations on smaller companies too, which then start to get on even footing regarding open source too.
Instead of money going to some big pockets for doing nothing, it will go to local companies for doing things, and at a lower overall cost. A win-win proposition in my book.
"In other words, their expenditures for proprietary software must equal to $0.00?"
I know you are trying to be fun here but then, you know not all operations allow for the commutative operation.
They said "open source procurement funding match expenditures for proprietary software" not "propietary software procurement funding match expenditures for open source". So no: it doesn't mean expenditures for propietary software must equal to $0.00".
In the other hand, it says "expenditures" not "expenditures from licensing". If you think installing 1000 copies of whatever doesn't involve expenditures you are not only not funny (no: your previous message, while attempting to it was not funny) but stupid too.
"True, but so far, I haven't yet seen a network card which didn't work out of the box in Vista (including wireless...)."
True (well, at least I gonna admit it; certainly I didn't use Vista extensively). But looking at the trend on XP to Vista un maintenance of third party drivers and the fact that more and more network and wifi cards rely on firmware to be included, it wouldn't be much of a surprise if this became more common on the future.
"Also true, but the likelihood is much higher. With Linux, you have many entirely separate repositories for every distro, so even if you make a driver, if you want it to be distributed in that fashion, you have to maintain it in all of them. Or you have to submit it to the kernel tree (and then you do not really control its development anymore)."
I never went on the relative quantity (it would be stupid on my side), but about the quality. In this regards, I insist, Windows and Linux are quite the same. Regarding redistribution issues, it's true that average Linux user (or, at least, as long as I myself can be considered "average Linux user") people want all software (including firmware/drivers) to be tightly coupled to the package management of their distribution of choice. Note that this is because how vastly superior, we that use Linux on a day to day basis, feel the distribution-based method to the vendor based proper of the Windows realm. This, of course, doesn't limit the ability from third parties to distribute on their own basis (you see companies like Intel or NVidia go this route providing generic scripts that will install their stuff the same no matter the distribution).
On the "submit to the kernel tree" is quite untrue that means "loosing development control"; quite on the contrary it insures smooth integration and distribution-free troubles (since distributions will take the burden on themselves). The only and real point no to integrate drivers on main kernel line is regarding distribution licenses, and you know what? more power for me. If they don't want/can't distribute on an open way, others do and will be those others the ones that will see my wallet.
"On the other hand, if you make a driver for Vista, there's only one "distro" as far as you're concerned."
While this is true, it's more about perception than reality: distributing to any single OS limits your integration efforts to this single OS, be it Windows Vista, Debian GNU/Linux, Red Hat Linux or whatever. This of course, doesn't mean I am not aware of the penetration impact of any single of those OSs (if you are going to make the effort for just one OS it makes sense going with the one with widest implantation) but this doesn't make it less real: if you go with any single OS, say Debian GNU/Linux, there will just one "distro" as far as you're concerned exactly as if you just go with Windows Vista. And being Debian, Red Hat, SUSE, etc. so much alike among them than Windows with anything else, by just committing a bit yourself (like making what's needed for your drivers to be on Linux kernel's main line) you will be able to offer your support to a wide number of OSs almost for free.
"And you don't have to hand over your driver's source code, or the rights to it"
That's again about perception. As long as both the vendor and the consumer's perception goes like this, good ride to the vendor. I myself vote with my wallet and while they don't hand over their source code to me I won't hand over my money to them. The more users behave like me the better for me and the rest of the users. But, hey, this is free market!
" If the app you want, or the version of the app you want isn't in the repository, it's a *LOT* harder than in Windows to get that app working on your system."
It really deppends. If the app is already packaged for your distribution, it's a breeze. If it is not, it's difficult but achiveable. On the other hand, in windowsworld, if the app comes not with a Windows installer, you are almost absolutly lost.
"If you've ever tried to upgrade your RHEL kernel to a newer kernel than currently supported, you have to deal with getting those drivers into the kernel.. i know, i've had to do it."
Try to update a Windows kernel. I must admit I haven't done. Do you know why? It's not only difficult, it is impossible.
The point is that Linux gives you freedom. In your case, you choose to mix apples to oranges (trying to do unsupported things on Linux and complaining it is more difficult than doing supported things on Windows. Try to compare supported things on Linux to supported things on Windows or unsupported things on Linux to unsupported things on Windows for a change). It's your choice, but please don't come here trying to pass it as an apples-to-apples comparation.
"For home users, Vista/Win7 will happily automatically download drivers for all hardware it can't recognize out of the box via Windows Update."
Unless, of course, one of those drivers is for the network card. Unless, of course, the driver is not on Microsoft's own databases.
On the other hand, that's exactly how all major Linux distributions had work for at least a decade.
"To be honest, I haven't played with it [postgres] enough to tell you"
So, in the end, you haven't played with Postgres and tried blender "for about 30 seconds before giving up" but still you feel entitled to give them harsh and hard reports. You are part of the problem.
"Debian takes years, literally years, between updates."
Yes. Debian Etch: 2007; Debian Lenny: 2009
But how about its competitors?
Red Hat 4: 2005; Red Hat 5: 2007
SUSE 9: 2003; SUSE 10: 2005; no news about corporate supported SUSE 11 (only OpenSUSE, but I admit I can be misinformed about this).
Windows XP: 2001; Windows Vista: 2006
"If you're interested in an apt-based distro, consider Ubuntu. It has corporate support"
So you think corporate supported Ubuntus take much less, uh?
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS: 2006; Ubuntu 8.04 LTS: 2008. Surprise! Quite the same than Debian.
"CentOS is obviously the gold standard."
Of course yes... it is Red Hat rebranded as you probably know, so you can see how it goes a bit above: two years from its last release; two years average between versions. Quite near to Debian's mark.
"Its community is broken [...] If you advise your employer to use Debian, you're giving them bad advice. An oddball distro with almost no market share or community support, with very little in the way of contractor support."
So, up to now, all you have is an irrelevant fact (since all other "competitors" take as much if not more between revisions) some unsupported affirmations and a proveable wrong fact (if you call IBM, HP and a host of minor partners like my employer "minor support" you sir, are utterly wrong).
"It's 2009, you can't just keep using what you started with, you have to stay current."
What do you think the 70+ Debian servers under my belt are exactly so uncurrent and compared to what, may I ask?
"If you're not willing to do that, get out of the way."
If all you can do is rude unstated and wrong assertions, you will find yourself out of the way wondering what happened... but of course I know that won't stop you, Mr. A. Coward.
"The most interesting comparison, of course, would be how it compares to hiring J. Random Linux Hacker to work on $OLD_DISTRO."
What's exactly the interesting part? It's economics 101: Microsoft has a monopoly on supporting Windows. All we know what a monopoly does with prices.
"Why not?"
No matter how advanced a civilization is, their space fighter's engines won't make noise in vacuum nor will move like an atmospheric plane.
On the other hand, it *can't* be sci-fi. All we know sci-fi is about the future, while Star Wars is about a long time ago, in a far far distant galaxy (grin).
" By that reasoning, fantasy could happen as well, assuming that we find some source of power that would grant people abilities indistinguishable from magic."
Which, by the way, is the exact Clarke's definition for some advanced enough civilization's science: "magic".
"Science Fiction is just a subset of Fantasy.
Is it?"
Let's rewrite it: science fiction is just a subset of fiction.
"In a world with no copyright, you may be able to copy the binary around at will but would no longer have guaranteed access to the source code in the first place, one of the key principles of free software."
Laws (and contracts) are not Justice, but a means to down Justice into Real World. As such, without the laws and the mentality of copy rights, while not guaranteed to gain access to source code, your chances of not having it would be more or less the same than being suffocated by all your oxigen going out of your lungs at the same time by brownian motion.