Of course it doesn't, most of the people involved in the open source movement are not paying customers to either company. So why would MS and Novell try to make them happy.
You sound like a typical sales guy, not that that's bad. They are always focused on what they can sell this quarter, and not concerned about two years out. Novel is probably also listening to their sales guys. I find they under-estimate the power of the open-source community, and resent it for not paying any commissions. Most paying customers for Linux ask a real geek which distro to buy, and that generally means one of us open-source guys. I had a client company ask me just this question last week, and the decision I helped them make (RedHat - definately NOT Suse for EDA), will probably grow with that company for at least a decade. I figure over the long-run, Novell is out possibly a million bucks, just for pissing me off. And I'm just one geek. Yeah, they ought to care.
That worked really well with web browsers and Java (until a court stopped it). I think it would be real news if Microsoft or Oracle bought out RedHat and possibly Sun. That would dramatically shrink the world of open-source. However, I think we can live without Suse, even if it was a wonderful distro. It seems that the Zerg have infested it...
I agree... I'd sign up if I could legally play it on my Linux box. But heck, I have to break the law just to watch DVD's I paid for. Congress would have to pass a new law just to allow this service on Linux. I doubt this effort is going to break the cycle of stupidity.
Does anyone else find it interesting how slowly the slashdot crowd is responding to this topic? I figure it's one of three things, but I can't guess which:
- We're too tired of talking about this issue - We realize that we all agree it's evil, and that no one is listening to slashdot - We're somewhat afraid that this topic will actually be read carefully by the Justice Department
I tend to throw out Fedora because of their habbit of including unstable code, SUSE because of Microsoft, and RedHat because of the cost. Mandriva sounds good, but Ubuntu and Debian are where I usually land. You can't beat the 19,000 pre-compiled packages maintained in the distro! For a government, I'd want Ubuntu over Debian, since it has to be easy for morons to use:-)
I agree with your post... However, your sig, "The day Microsoft markets a product that doesn't suck will be the day they market a vacuum cleaner." I just bought an Xbox-360. It was harder to set up than it should be, and the packaging had way too much useless info on it. However, overall, I'd say it doesn't suck. It turns out that there are no open platforms of significance for gaming. So long as it's going to be dominated by big players pushing closed systems, I'd say backing Microsoft makes sense.
I think it's a bold experiment. What will poor children do when enabled with knowledge obtainable from the web? What happens when they have all the knowledge of the world at their fingertips? Will they continue to live as peasants? Will they rise up and build better lives for themselves? Will the realize that the rest of the world is horribly messed up for working so hard yet not obtaining the happiness they have?
Their EULA bans using VMWare to run Windows Vista Home Edition. Come on... this is clearly a bid to force us into the more expensive version, a way to ask for more money, and nothing else. They give away virtualization technology for free, but force you to fork over $400 to use it. By forcing everyone to pay for their OS, and giving away everything else, they force out potential innovators... this time targeting VMWare.
Just to clear this up a bit, there are now two common definitions for "Net nuetrality". The original definition, which has been enforced since the early days of the net is:
- Carriers will not discriminated against data based on who sends it.
This simply means that my bits have just as much right to reach your DSL customers as Microsoft's. Under this traditional definition, network traffic shaping is legal: you can discriminate against BitTorrent, gaming traffic, spam, video, etc. Traffic shaping is a critical component of running a network well.
The new definition is total BS created by the phone and cable companies. They've redefined our traditional term to mean:
- You wont be able to pay more for high-bandwidth connections, or less for low-bandwidth. All customers will pay exactly the same rate.
This stupid FUD is unfortunately working. By redefining our term, they have turned it into an evil thing, which no one wants. Who would vote in favor of making cheap low bandwidth connections illegal?
Upgrading Office isn't about getting new features. It's about being able to read the new.doc and.ppt files that you get from other companies in your e-mail. I use Open Office for this, thus breaking the endless cycle of unneeded upgrades. However, I have to deal with font-mismatches, and occasional glitches, like embedded Visual Basic macros that don't work. I haven't seen a really innovative feature in Word/Power Point/Excel in years. There was nothing wrong with Office 97.
Check out recent developments in Farnsworth rectors at the same site you posted. If true, we may be a lot closer to real fusion reactors than people think.
Expense, yes, but quality no. I'd love to have more Macs around if I could afford them. The ones I have just wont die, and I never tire of looking at them. Of course, I'm perfectly happy typing this response on my Dell Insprion 9300, running Ubuntu.
How true... we're all benefiting from Sun's work. I especially love OpenOffice, as it allows me to single-boot instead of dual-boot with Windows. With all their software open-source, and with their hardware falling way behind cheap PCs, how will Sun stay alive? I'm rooting for them...
It's great to have this in the GPL domain, but it's just gotta PO all those open-source developers who have built a GPL version of the same system. Why the heck didn't Sun do this 10 years ago? It would have save the world a LOT of grief.
You're probably right about the EULA. One less thing to worry about. However, the GPL does not indemnify users from being sued by Microsoft (nor SCO). Novell is free to license patents from Microsoft, SCO, or whoever in order to protect their users, but if I were Novell, I'd make sure that protection didn't apply to anyone who redistributes my distro. Software patents pose a real danger to Linux. Did you hear that Microsoft has been funding SCO to pursue the lawsuits? It remains to be seen what Microsoft will do once SCO goes down in flames. Without Bill Gates at the helm providing some level of insight, they just might come out strong with their lawyers. After all, it's not statistically likely for a complex project like a Linux distro to be completely clean against such a massive software patent portfolio as Microsoft's, no matter how hard we try.
Er... so neither the 2 GIG recommended for Vista, nor that EULA still has you concerned?
Does anybody else miss Bill Gates? When he ran the company, they were far more insightful in their business practices. My favorite example is allowing some level of piracy, since some piracy can help you grow. Now that he's given over control to the typical less-insightful corporate types, we're seeing this kind of nonsense. The same thing seemed to happen to HP and Sony when their founders finally retired.
Microsoft never agreed to the GPL. They can say to Novell, "For you're license fee of $1, your direct users will have the right to download your Linux distro, so long as they do NOT redistribute it or modify it. If they do, we'll sue them. Also, we'll need your users to agree to this EULA..." Software patents are just bad. I've got several, and I'm not happy about it.
Microsoft agreeing not to go after SuSE means they cannot go after the code full stop.
Sorry, but that's simply not true. They can secretly license their patents to Novel for $1, making it perfectly legal for them to sue the heck out of every other Linux distro in US courts. This kind of thing is done all the time. Patent portfolio companies often offer to license their technology for free or cheap to the top one or two players in a field, and then make their money suing everyone else. For example, these pricks pretty much gave away their patent license to Intel, and are now suing the heck out of everybody.
Microsoft is just propping up the #2 threat to damage the #1 threat. Microsoft is doing this to hurt RedHat, who scares them more. Offering not to sue Novell??? Guess that means they're gearing up to take down RedHat, and they need a Linux distros on their side, preferably one that hates RedHt, one they can buy cheap.
This is just the sleazy way of doing exactly what Oracle is trying to do: drop RedHat down a notch or two so they can be taken out (through buyout or bankruptcy)
Looks like Linux has finally arrived on the radar.
As you know, Linux is growing in leaps and bounds. The rate of improvement in both Fedora and Ubuntu (the only two I follow closely) is amazing. The rate of improvement is way beyond anything Microsoft has done in years... But you're still right about Windows dominating, and users forking over the $$ to help them.
There are basically three kinds of users: business users, professional home users, and gamers. The other sub-categories, like us hackers, are tiny in comparison.
Business users use Windows for Microsoft Office, which is the standard. Business users WANT to pay $$ for their OS... they don't trust what's free. The #1 Linux distro for them (by installed base) is RedHat Enterprise... total crap compared to the free distros. The best Linux distro for desktop use in business IMO is Ubuntu, but try selling something that means "Being human to eachother" at the office. Fedora for business use is actively discouraged by RedHat. It's lose-lose-lose in the business front for Linux.
Industry professionals usually buy the same OS at home that they use in the office. It let's them do work at home, something we Americans do a lot, for some reason. Again NOT Linux.
IMO, gamers are the most powerful force here. They are the true power users. Business users could get buy with a Win98 machine forever. Gamers are the ones pushing the real need for big iron. The Linux base is too small to market games to, and unless that changes, it wont change!
I love Linux, and I've got no Microsoft EULA here... Guess I gotta get use to being a minority.
Slashdot Mirror
You sound like a typical sales guy, not that that's bad. They are always focused on what they can sell this quarter, and not concerned about two years out. Novel is probably also listening to their sales guys. I find they under-estimate the power of the open-source community, and resent it for not paying any commissions. Most paying customers for Linux ask a real geek which distro to buy, and that generally means one of us open-source guys. I had a client company ask me just this question last week, and the decision I helped them make (RedHat - definately NOT Suse for EDA), will probably grow with that company for at least a decade. I figure over the long-run, Novell is out possibly a million bucks, just for pissing me off. And I'm just one geek. Yeah, they ought to care.
That worked really well with web browsers and Java (until a court stopped it). I think it would be real news if Microsoft or Oracle bought out RedHat and possibly Sun. That would dramatically shrink the world of open-source. However, I think we can live without Suse, even if it was a wonderful distro. It seems that the Zerg have infested it...
I agree... I'd sign up if I could legally play it on my Linux box. But heck, I have to break the law just to watch DVD's I paid for. Congress would have to pass a new law just to allow this service on Linux. I doubt this effort is going to break the cycle of stupidity.
Does anyone else find it interesting how slowly the slashdot crowd is responding to this topic? I figure it's one of three things, but I can't guess which:
- We're too tired of talking about this issue
- We realize that we all agree it's evil, and that no one is listening to slashdot
- We're somewhat afraid that this topic will actually be read carefully by the Justice Department
I tend to throw out Fedora because of their habbit of including unstable code, SUSE because of Microsoft, and RedHat because of the cost. Mandriva sounds good, but Ubuntu and Debian are where I usually land. You can't beat the 19,000 pre-compiled packages maintained in the distro! For a government, I'd want Ubuntu over Debian, since it has to be easy for morons to use :-)
Agreed. I thought only the US allowed software patents. What other countries, besides South Korea and the US do this?
I agree with your post... However, your sig, "The day Microsoft markets a product that doesn't suck will be the day they market a vacuum cleaner." I just bought an Xbox-360. It was harder to set up than it should be, and the packaging had way too much useless info on it. However, overall, I'd say it doesn't suck. It turns out that there are no open platforms of significance for gaming. So long as it's going to be dominated by big players pushing closed systems, I'd say backing Microsoft makes sense.
Heck, I think the phishers belong in jail, and the spammers need stern enough punishment to make them stop. If M$ can help out, more power to them.
I think it's a bold experiment. What will poor children do when enabled with knowledge obtainable from the web? What happens when they have all the knowledge of the world at their fingertips? Will they continue to live as peasants? Will they rise up and build better lives for themselves? Will the realize that the rest of the world is horribly messed up for working so hard yet not obtaining the happiness they have?
Their EULA bans using VMWare to run Windows Vista Home Edition. Come on... this is clearly a bid to force us into the more expensive version, a way to ask for more money, and nothing else. They give away virtualization technology for free, but force you to fork over $400 to use it. By forcing everyone to pay for their OS, and giving away everything else, they force out potential innovators... this time targeting VMWare.
Just to clear this up a bit, there are now two common definitions for "Net nuetrality". The original definition, which has been enforced since the early days of the net is:
- Carriers will not discriminated against data based on who sends it.
This simply means that my bits have just as much right to reach your DSL customers as Microsoft's. Under this traditional definition, network traffic shaping is legal: you can discriminate against BitTorrent, gaming traffic, spam, video, etc. Traffic shaping is a critical component of running a network well.
The new definition is total BS created by the phone and cable companies. They've redefined our traditional term to mean:
- You wont be able to pay more for high-bandwidth connections, or less for low-bandwidth. All customers will pay exactly the same rate.
This stupid FUD is unfortunately working. By redefining our term, they have turned it into an evil thing, which no one wants. Who would vote in favor of making cheap low bandwidth connections illegal?
Upgrading Office isn't about getting new features. It's about being able to read the new .doc and .ppt files that you get from other companies in your e-mail. I use Open Office for this, thus breaking the endless cycle of unneeded upgrades. However, I have to deal with font-mismatches, and occasional glitches, like embedded Visual Basic macros that don't work. I haven't seen a really innovative feature in Word/Power Point/Excel in years. There was nothing wrong with Office 97.
Check out recent developments in Farnsworth rectors at the same site you posted. If true, we may be a lot closer to real fusion reactors than people think.
Expense, yes, but quality no. I'd love to have more Macs around if I could afford them. The ones I have just wont die, and I never tire of looking at them. Of course, I'm perfectly happy typing this response on my Dell Insprion 9300, running Ubuntu.
How true... we're all benefiting from Sun's work. I especially love OpenOffice, as it allows me to single-boot instead of dual-boot with Windows. With all their software open-source, and with their hardware falling way behind cheap PCs, how will Sun stay alive? I'm rooting for them...
It's great to have this in the GPL domain, but it's just gotta PO all those open-source developers who have built a GPL version of the same system. Why the heck didn't Sun do this 10 years ago? It would have save the world a LOT of grief.
That's a damned good clause! I'll have to go back and read it, again.
You're probably right about the EULA. One less thing to worry about. However, the GPL does not indemnify users from being sued by Microsoft (nor SCO). Novell is free to license patents from Microsoft, SCO, or whoever in order to protect their users, but if I were Novell, I'd make sure that protection didn't apply to anyone who redistributes my distro. Software patents pose a real danger to Linux. Did you hear that Microsoft has been funding SCO to pursue the lawsuits? It remains to be seen what Microsoft will do once SCO goes down in flames. Without Bill Gates at the helm providing some level of insight, they just might come out strong with their lawyers. After all, it's not statistically likely for a complex project like a Linux distro to be completely clean against such a massive software patent portfolio as Microsoft's, no matter how hard we try.
Er... so neither the 2 GIG recommended for Vista, nor that EULA still has you concerned?
Does anybody else miss Bill Gates? When he ran the company, they were far more insightful in their business practices. My favorite example is allowing some level of piracy, since some piracy can help you grow. Now that he's given over control to the typical less-insightful corporate types, we're seeing this kind of nonsense. The same thing seemed to happen to HP and Sony when their founders finally retired.
Microsoft never agreed to the GPL. They can say to Novell, "For you're license fee of $1, your direct users will have the right to download your Linux distro, so long as they do NOT redistribute it or modify it. If they do, we'll sue them. Also, we'll need your users to agree to this EULA..." Software patents are just bad. I've got several, and I'm not happy about it.
Sorry, but that's simply not true. They can secretly license their patents to Novel for $1, making it perfectly legal for them to sue the heck out of every other Linux distro in US courts. This kind of thing is done all the time. Patent portfolio companies often offer to license their technology for free or cheap to the top one or two players in a field, and then make their money suing everyone else. For example, these pricks pretty much gave away their patent license to Intel, and are now suing the heck out of everybody.
It's a trap!!!
Microsoft is just propping up the #2 threat to damage the #1 threat. Microsoft is doing this to hurt RedHat, who scares them more. Offering not to sue Novell??? Guess that means they're gearing up to take down RedHat, and they need a Linux distros on their side, preferably one that hates RedHt, one they can buy cheap.
This is just the sleazy way of doing exactly what Oracle is trying to do: drop RedHat down a notch or two so they can be taken out (through buyout or bankruptcy)
Looks like Linux has finally arrived on the radar.
Sometimes it's easy to predict the future...
As you know, Linux is growing in leaps and bounds. The rate of improvement in both Fedora and Ubuntu (the only two I follow closely) is amazing. The rate of improvement is way beyond anything Microsoft has done in years... But you're still right about Windows dominating, and users forking over the $$ to help them.
There are basically three kinds of users: business users, professional home users, and gamers. The other sub-categories, like us hackers, are tiny in comparison.
Business users use Windows for Microsoft Office, which is the standard. Business users WANT to pay $$ for their OS... they don't trust what's free. The #1 Linux distro for them (by installed base) is RedHat Enterprise... total crap compared to the free distros. The best Linux distro for desktop use in business IMO is Ubuntu, but try selling something that means "Being human to eachother" at the office. Fedora for business use is actively discouraged by RedHat. It's lose-lose-lose in the business front for Linux.
Industry professionals usually buy the same OS at home that they use in the office. It let's them do work at home, something we Americans do a lot, for some reason. Again NOT Linux.
IMO, gamers are the most powerful force here. They are the true power users. Business users could get buy with a Win98 machine forever. Gamers are the ones pushing the real need for big iron. The Linux base is too small to market games to, and unless that changes, it wont change!
I love Linux, and I've got no Microsoft EULA here... Guess I gotta get use to being a minority.
I stand corrected. Thank goodness, since I love attributing that quote to him....
That is my absolute favorite quote that Franklin never said. OTOH, my sig is his :-)