And how exactly do templates do anything to solve the problem of making sure that your documents are internally consistent, and consistent with the behavior of the application?
Part of the problem is that if you are really good at tech writing, the allure of the secondary book market is too great.
I think most of the problem is that many Computer Science programs seem to de-emphasize the importance of being able to write & communicate effectively. I've seen many technically brilliant software engineers who can't write a coherent (and grammatically correct) sentence, much less 20,000 pages of documentation. More courses focused on simply reading & writing would be enormously helpful as a CS curriculum requirement.
Writing excellent software requires that you know the language you're writing in, and know how to apply that language to the problem you're trying to solve. Writing excellent documentation is the same - part training, part practice.
But we're only talking about 20,000 pages. And there are 800 people on the task.
Most of those 800 people are probably technical writers, and not the engineers who wrote the code initially.
20000 pages / 800 people = 25 pages per person. Doesn't sound like much, does it? Until you consider that...
Everything on 1 person's 25 pages must:
match up correctly with the other 19,975 pages the other 799 people are responsible for
match up correctly with the behavior of the actual software.
Anybody who would claim that this is not a significant amount of work, or that it should be "easy" because each person is only responsible for 25 pages is either completely unfamiliar with software development, or a fool who thinks that simply throwing more people at a large problem makes it trivial to accomplish.
The article was initially done by a consumer advocate. When the news station called Verizon & MATC, they were helpful. Whether or not they would have been as sympathetic and helpful to her as an individual (without the threat of bad press) is still an open question.
Your response is typical of the "you should have just figured it the fuck out yourself, you idiot," response that so many Linux advocates love to give. "If it's trivial for me to get these things working, it MUST be trivial for everybody else." There's this trait called empathy. If you want mainstream adoption, you might need to learn a little about it.
That's also when the comments - many of them angry, rude, and hateful - started pouring in.
Some Ubuntu users accused 27 News of "unscrupulous reporting," hitting a "new low for local news," and writing an "atrocious article."
Many Ubuntu users also wrote very personal attacks about the young lady who was having trouble using the operating system. They called her "lazy," "a dumb girl," and "not worthy of a college degree."
The young woman also contacted 27 News to report she's being harassed on her Facebook account by Ubuntu users.
Yeah. Way to go Linux community. Get yourselves a reputation in the media for hateful personal attacks and harrassment of people who don't abide by the FLOSS principles you revere so highly. Instead of using it as an opportunity to ask, "What could we do better?" the Ubuntu zealots circle the wagons and attack anybody who doesn't drink the kool aid. Great call. Be sure to let us all know how that works out for your dreams of widespread adoption.
Well, it does. Ubuntu has a very capable office suite and connects flawlessly to the internet. So there you go.
Then you [ the Linux community ] have done a piss-poor job of marketing your superior alternative and educating the schools who are mandating Microsoft Office and companies not supporting Linux with their installation / config cds. Blaming the individual user is ridiculous.
To clarify your electric car analogy, it would be like someone ordering a gas-powered car, receiving that electric car, and then being told by your local government, "Sorry, you can't drive THAT CAR on our roads, we only support gas-powered vehicles." If you RTFA, you'll see that the woman KEPT the Ubuntu laptop from Dell because she was told it would work for everything she needed. Then her school & her ISP told her she *needed* MSFT Office & a Windows install CD to get her networking functional. Oops. She tried to make the electric car work, and then was told she couldn't use it.
At what point do you stop blaming the user and start realizing that this is the single biggest problem the Linux community needs to overcome if it wants mainstream adoption for Linux? Attack the idiot centralized rules that equate "writing a document in an interchangeable format," with "needs MSFT Word." Demonstrate to that professor that there are "very capable" systems which "connect flawlessly." Get him to change his policy which, as currently worded, requires MSFT products - he's a person with significant influence over what computer systems his students will use. Get him on your side, and you'll have a lot more success than you will by calling the users idiots and retards for not disregarding the stated requirements of the course.
Yes, you're absolutely right. In fact, they could have just slapped an Apple logo on a completely functionless plastic mockup of an ipod, and sold hundreds of millions of them worldwide.
And that would work for the same reason that people would buy a BMW if it had square tires and was fueled by candy corn, of course! Or for the same reason that people would buy a Volvo if looking at the car the wrong way would cause it to crash and burst into flames!
Does Apple do a great job of marketing? Absolutely. Is the marketing overblown and hyperbolic? Often. Would they be so profitable if there wasn't some substance to back up that reputation? Not a chance.
On a related note, without the Apple iPod, how would you be able to feel smugly superior to the sheeple who don't have the refined taste and discernment that you obviously do?
You are not your consumer lifestyle. Identifying yourself as "anti-Apple" is just as fucking ridiculous as defining yourself as "pro-Apple". If the product doesn't do what you want, spend your money on one of the many alternatives that has the feature list you want, and get some perspective.
So I contend that this girl wouldn't do much better with a Windows box.
Actually, given that the Verizon DSL CD would have worked on a Windows system, and Microsoft Office would have worked just fine on a Windows system, I contend that she would have done a damn sight better with a Windows box - since both of her problems would not have happened with a Windows laptop.
In any case, this is not the mainstream user that desktop Linux is looking for right now.
Then I submit that "desktop Linux" is not looking for mainstream users. Full stop. And you know, that's fine - Linux can survive quite handily as a small segment of the desktop market & running servers. But if that is what the Linux community would prefer, drop the charade of wanting mainstream acceptance on the desktop. If you call your mainstream adopters retards for not being "smart enough" to use your system and eagerly accept every frustration, that's a recipe for failure.
At the end of the day, whatever good Ubuntu is, it will not be an exact copy of Windows. That is what many people like you is asking for and that is just not possible.
I am not asking for it to work like Windows. I'm saying that if you want acceptance on the desktop, that desktop needs to work for the things mainstream users want to do.
What you're implying is that everybody who uses Linux must also become a vocal advocate of software freedom and open standards and start fighting the good fight when they're told something requires Office or some other proprietary software. And most mainstream users - adaptable to change or not - simply don't value those concepts as much as a software engineer might. If you can't understand that, and you can't offer a compelling incentive (rather than frustration & more work) to switch, why would you ever expect people to do so?
Considering IQs of less than 70 are generally classified as "profound" to "borderline" deficiency (mental retardation), you might want to reconsider that range.
Many people - regardless of how high their IQs are - do not cream their jeans over the possibility of having Ubuntu installed on their computer. And as your post goes to show, at least some of the people who DO mess themselves over Linux... well, they're just not that bright, though they do manage an air of self-righteous superiority.
If you insist on lumping everybody who doesn't share your profound arousal over free software into the "mentally retarded" category, can you really make the claim that you want mainstream adoption with a straight face?
Public domain works are compatible with the GPL, and is therefore covered by my original statement of "GPL or some other compatible license."
My point was not to state a preference for a specific license; I was making the point that directing the money to research with the stipulation that any code created during the course of that funded research should be free & open would be preferable to simply hiring a bunch of developers and saying "go rewrite software that already exists."
Well said. And I'm not sure why they aren't simply directing additional grant & funding money to researchers at educational institutions. That model has worked pretty well, why not keep on doing it?
If a bunch of non-technical bureaucrats are going to start deciding what software should be written under the auspices of this program, I foresee $2Bn dollars going down the drain.
Are there REALLY not enough universities around the country that have Comp. Science departments with unfunded (but innovative, and probably viable) research projects? I keep seeing people say "But it's the stepping stone to new stuff." Great, then instead of paying a bunch of people to rewrite Samba and OpenOffice and put proprietary software companies out of business, fund real innovative research.
As a condition of research funding, require that any software written must be licensed under the GPL or some other compatible license, and made available to the public. Seems like a mission that's right up the alley of institutions of higher learning anyway.
Yes, because the first thing I do when I find a lost iPod somewhere is download all the shitty Ashlee Simpson & Beyonce songs on it to my own computer so that I can share them out over Limewire...
Possible? Sure. Likely? Not so much.
Here's a though: Nobody hates you enough to want to frame you for sharing music so you go to jail. If they hate you that much, they can do a lot worse things to you than that, so the RIAA is really the least of your problems.
Solenodons eat a wide variety of animals, like arthropods, worms and snails, as well as small reptiles; they may also feed on roots, fruits and foliage (however, a study found that solenodons refused all forms of vegetation).
It also probably attacks other animals savagely judging from the way a captive solenodon was reported to have attacked a young chicken and torn it to pieces with its strong claws, before eating it.
Doesn't sound like it discriminates *all* that much in terms of what it eats, from the studies they've done of it. So not that much of a significant step, really. The endangered status (again from the wikipedia article) is most likely due to small, infrequent litter sizes (2 litters of 1-3 offspring per year), and predation due to the introduction of cats, dogs, and the Small Asian Mongoose to Hispaniola.
As for software - iPhone is the best on the ease-of-use field but does not at all offer as much variety and flexibility as WinMo based phones.
This is the crucial point you're missing. Most of the hundreds of millions of phones sold every year are not being sold to people who get a hard-on when they read the hardware specs on their phone. "Oh my god, a microSD slot! I just came."
Like it or not, Apple's success with the iPhone is all about the software. It's easy to use, it performs well, and it does things natively that users want it to do, and has a good-sized application store to make it do even more. It is not the highest-powered hardware, certainly. It may not scratch the itch that geeks have to be as customizable and open and powerful as they like. But most of the population is not made up of geeks who think in these terms. As such, there will always be a significant market for easy-to-use, which you concede the iPhone offers.
99% of computer users in the world don't care whether they can use program X. They just care that they can use SOME program to do Y.
Actually, no. The vast majority of computer users that do not read/. on a regular basis equate "doing Y" with "program X." If you suddenly drop them in front of a completely unfamiliar interface and say, "But you can still do Y, you just have to adapt to a new interface & way of doing some/many/all things you used to do," you will meet with resistance, irritation, and frustration.
Reasonably sophisticated, computer-savvy users can adapt to new programs pretty quickly, and will even go out in search of a program that does things the way they want. The vast majority of users do not fall in this category. They have their status quo that they've learned to use, and they don't want it to change.
It's this fundamental misunderstanding of the willingness of an "average" computer user to change that fuels so much of Linux's struggle on the desktop.
Some people:
--get really good at coding
--get really good at math
--get really good at video games
--read large numbers of books
and finally some people watch a lot of television
The problem is, you're lumping all development into some generic activity called "coding." That ignores the simple fact that being an expert in C++ does not make you expert at UI design. Being an expert at UI design doesn't make you a SQL whiz. Being a SQL whiz does not make you an expert at designing flexible & scalable application systems with many moving parts.
See the pattern? To make any practically-useful system today, you MUST work with other people who are expert in areas you're very likely not an expert in. You can create the best data model in existence for your company's payroll system, but if you don't have a clear understanding of the business rules, a good architecture, and a solid UI (and I've seen very few people in software engineering who are experts at all of the pieces that go into creating a good piece of software), the resulting product will be an unusable piece of crap that doesn't meet requirements.
Stroustrop's point of the single genius programmer is valid. The model you describe supposes that a single person can possibly learn and be expert in all of the disparate knowledge areas that are required to make a working piece of software, and in any group, the people who are capable of that level of insight & knowledge will *always* be the statistical outliers. Instead of punishing the majority of people for not being born with genius-level intellect, teach them how to be good at their chosen area of expertise, and how to relate to the people they have to work with to get things done. You don't have to engage in XP or some other "pair programming" methodology to realize value from being able to communicate clearly and work with your architect, QA / Reliability engineers, your customers, your project manager, and other developers who are working on separate subsystems.
So what you're saying is that we should tolerate fuckwits like you who comment on stuff they know nothing about? I think not.
Apparently on Slashdot, it's regressed from not reading TFA to not even reading TF Comments you reply to now, huh? I didn't "comment on stuff," I asked a question about how the GPL would apply, and in fact stated that I wasn't conversant enough with the GPL to understand what it would require of Diebold.
But don't let the fact that I stated no opinion about the GPL stop you from your bout of indignant nerdrage. Just be careful, please, you wouldn't want to spew doritos and mountain dew all over your keyboard. As one of the 'leet slashdotters in the know about the GPL, I'm sure you also know what a bother it is to clean up the sticky messes you've created at the computer.
And as an unpaid contributor to Slashdot, you are more than welcome to pass on by my question without a second thought, and let some other person take a stab at it if they wish. Instead, you seem to have concluded that my question was some sort of a personal affront that you couldn't let go unanswered.
If you're inclined to pontificate about the terms of a "good" question, then I'll exercise my freedom to state the terms of what I consider an acceptable answer. Your condescension only serves to alienate people who might otherwise be interested in learning more about the GPL & its implications.
Well, now that I've been informed what constitutes a good question, I'll make sure that next time I have a question for my doctor, I read a relevant Anatomy & Physiology book first. And god forbid I ask any lawyer for advice without having first gotten a year or two of law school out of the way.
If you found my question to be lacking, you could have simply ignored the question and carried on with your business on Slashdot. However, by behaving as if the mere fact of a question about the application of the GPL is some sort of personal affront to you, what you've managed to do is make yourself look like a pedantic douchebag.
And then open source advocates will wonder why they have a problem getting the general public to understand what all the fuss is about... I wonder why.
Yeah, sorry. We've been discussing the GPL on Slashdot for a good decade now.
Understood. But to refine your example of a bible meeting further, I didn't ask "What is this GPL thing you're talking about?" I asked about how the "distribution" clause of the GPL would impact this particular scenario, because it isn't immediately obvious to me how it would work. Think of it more like going to the bible meeting and asking, "What's all this I hear about turning water into wine?"
It may be obvious and well-known information to people who are familiar with the bible, but to someone who has only passing knowledge of the bible, it's not a question that's so basic that the ramifications of the answer are immediately obvious.
That said, I do appreciate the information contained in your initial response. I understand the "RTFGPL, we've been talking about it for 10 years" frustration, just felt it was worth pointing out that my question was an honest attempt to increase my own understanding of how the GPL works in a practical situation such as this. I don't write code for a living, so software licensing is not a domain I'm familiar with.
While I appreciate the information you provided & thank you for it, please bear in mind that not all of us have read the GPL from start to finish, or have a copy on hand to cut and paste from. The condescension is not strictly necessary.
I asked that question seriously, because I don't understand the legal nuances of the GPL and hoped someone could answer the question - I've received several informative answers, yours included. When you answer questions in this fashion, you only serve to alienate people who are just looking for information or clarification.
Where's the freaking reasonable middle when you need it? Sheesh!
Locked out of the process from the start by the shrillness of the political primaries, that's where. It's been drowned out by the inability of anybody to have a nuanced policy debate without resorting to name calling. It's been suffocated by the demand for sound bites & bumper-sticker slogans. It's been allowed to die a slow death because it's easier to just believe what someone tells you rather than do some research and find out of they're selling you a pile of horseshit.
Don't agree with the neo-conservative and/or envagelical republican base? Fuck you, you're a terrorist sympathizing, flip-flopping, unpatriotic, socialist, communist, marxist, god-hating, panty-waisted son of a bitch who doesn't have the balls to kick a little ass and wear a flag pin.
Don't agree with the socialist and/or progressive democrats? Fuck you, you're a corrupt warmonger who doesn't understand how easily we could attain utopia if we just raise taxes and create new entitlements for special interest groups. The world hates you, wring your hands and self-flagellate for being an American. Oh, and you're probably just a rich white man who wants to keep minorities & poor people down.
American "democracy" has turned into a shouting contest where the sedate voice of moderation is drowned out by the shrillness of the debate between the two most extreme elements of the major parties warring over power. Funny thing is, they wind up looking like two sides of the same coin - doctrinaire, dogmatic true believers who are hoping to use the government to ram their ideals down the throats of their fellow citizens. George Washington warned us about it in 1796 in his Farewell Address (emphasis mine):
[ . . . ]
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
[ . . . ]
That second bold part is exactly why McCain is being implored to "SAVE US", and why there are people making straight-faced irony-not-intended references to Obama as a Messianic figure.
There's no room for polite & reasonable debate anymore. The political process has turned into poisonous mudslinging punctuated by occasional robotic regurgitation of vetted, scrubbed, test-grouped, marketing-driven talking points. And what we ought to do is show our dissatisfaction with the whole rotten lot of fools by refusing to elect a republican or a democrat. But we will, overwhelmingly, re-elect the incumbents who led us down the road to ruin, D
Real question here - I am not a lawyer, so I'm curious. Say for the purpose of argument, the Diebold machine runs Win2k, and happens to have a stock, unmodified copy of Ghostscript which it uses on that system for creating and printing a "receipt" of some sort.
Given that scenario, under the GPL, is Diebold still required to make a copy of the ghostscript code available, if they've made no modifications to it? Or could they simply put on their web site, "Diebold uses the open-source tool Ghostscript, v8.2.1, which can be downloaded from "?
It doesn't make sense that running the ghostscript app on their system would force them to provide "all the source code for their entire system," and it also doesn't make sense that if they're using the app unmodified, they should have to provide for some sort of hosting mechanism when there's already a definitive hosting platform for it and they're "just using" the app as distributed by that company.
$25 Billion is peanuts compared to the size of Microsoft.
And you're the only one who's brought up Microsoft in any of this. Unless you're an astroturfing shill for Microsoft, why do you insist on bringing them into this at all? I repeat - you are the only person who has brought them up. Linux Foundation sure didn't.
The ecosystem of Microsoft is in the trillions.
Citation please?
This number would work against Linux that way.
If the only basis for comparison was some arbitrary cheerleading by an advocacy organization about the "value of the ecosystems", then yes, that number would work against Linux in a head-to-head comparison with Microsoft. Of course, that neglects the fact that there are other, far more useful bases for comparison, and that not every comparison where Linux is involved pits them against Microsoft. I've seen many comparisons between Linux and Solaris, or AIX, or HP-UX floating around my workplace, where Microsoft wasn't even a shadow of an afterthought.
The only way you could sell it is by looking at the rates of expansion and trying to compare them.
No, there's many other ways to sell Linux as a competitor to Microsoft or any other platform. Its price, its functionality, its security record, its Unix & POSIX underpinnings, its record of stability, its remarkable degree of choice & freedom. Any of those are perfectly valid reasons to ALSO choose to use Linux.
What a "ecosystem is worth 25Bn dollars" statement does is it serves notice to companies that the Linux *ecosystem* is a place where there is a significant amount of money to be made in building your own services and applications. But you insist on bringing it back to Microsoft as if they're the only player that really matters in any discussion of platforms.
I extrapolated that as the only feasible cause for their concern.
Extrapolated? I think you mean "I engaged in wild-eyed speculation that that would be the only thing they could care about, and slapped some fancy latin on it to shore up an otherwise inadequate argument."
There is no other viable reason, and you have not presented one yet.
I have presented several possible benefits they could realize from publicizing this information, none of which have anything to do with Microsoft. Since we're both engaging in speculation as to the motives of the Linux Foundation, I'll reiterate my own wild-ass guesses for you. The Linux Foundation, as an advocacy group, is interested in publicizing the fact that the ecosystem of Linux & linux-based products & services is a substantial portion of the computing market where quite a bit of money can be made. This encourages companies to write new / port existing applications to Linux, encourages IT people to consider learning more about Linux, and in general makes the case for Linux stronger since it's not a case of a senior sysadmin pitching Linux to his managers and justifying it with, "Well me and 5 of my best friends use it at home, and it's the best." Claiming that the Linux ecosystem's value is "small compared to Microsoft" as a way of dismissing the valuation of Linux makes no sense: Apple has made a killing in the last decade by servicing a small but highly profitable segment of the computing market, why wouldn't Linux-oriented companies & support organizations be able to repeat that same sort of success?
You're missing the simple fact that it's not a zero-sum game, and Microsoft, while large is not "the rest of the market except Linux." It's likely that Linux is stealing some market share from Microsoft, as well as some market share from IBM, HP, Sun, and probably other Unix vendors, as well as growing into some new markets where there really wasn't any competition from any of those players
Slashdot Mirror
And how exactly do templates do anything to solve the problem of making sure that your documents are internally consistent, and consistent with the behavior of the application?
I think most of the problem is that many Computer Science programs seem to de-emphasize the importance of being able to write & communicate effectively. I've seen many technically brilliant software engineers who can't write a coherent (and grammatically correct) sentence, much less 20,000 pages of documentation. More courses focused on simply reading & writing would be enormously helpful as a CS curriculum requirement.
Writing excellent software requires that you know the language you're writing in, and know how to apply that language to the problem you're trying to solve. Writing excellent documentation is the same - part training, part practice.
And in specific, GP is also correct.
Anybody who would claim that this is not a significant amount of work, or that it should be "easy" because each person is only responsible for 25 pages is either completely unfamiliar with software development, or a fool who thinks that simply throwing more people at a large problem makes it trivial to accomplish.
And, from the fucking followup article:
Yeah. Way to go Linux community. Get yourselves a reputation in the media for hateful personal attacks and harrassment of people who don't abide by the FLOSS principles you revere so highly. Instead of using it as an opportunity to ask, "What could we do better?" the Ubuntu zealots circle the wagons and attack anybody who doesn't drink the kool aid. Great call. Be sure to let us all know how that works out for your dreams of widespread adoption.
Then you [ the Linux community ] have done a piss-poor job of marketing your superior alternative and educating the schools who are mandating Microsoft Office and companies not supporting Linux with their installation / config cds. Blaming the individual user is ridiculous.
To clarify your electric car analogy, it would be like someone ordering a gas-powered car, receiving that electric car, and then being told by your local government, "Sorry, you can't drive THAT CAR on our roads, we only support gas-powered vehicles." If you RTFA, you'll see that the woman KEPT the Ubuntu laptop from Dell because she was told it would work for everything she needed. Then her school & her ISP told her she *needed* MSFT Office & a Windows install CD to get her networking functional. Oops. She tried to make the electric car work, and then was told she couldn't use it.
At what point do you stop blaming the user and start realizing that this is the single biggest problem the Linux community needs to overcome if it wants mainstream adoption for Linux? Attack the idiot centralized rules that equate "writing a document in an interchangeable format," with "needs MSFT Word." Demonstrate to that professor that there are "very capable" systems which "connect flawlessly." Get him to change his policy which, as currently worded, requires MSFT products - he's a person with significant influence over what computer systems his students will use. Get him on your side, and you'll have a lot more success than you will by calling the users idiots and retards for not disregarding the stated requirements of the course.
Yes, you're absolutely right. In fact, they could have just slapped an Apple logo on a completely functionless plastic mockup of an ipod, and sold hundreds of millions of them worldwide.
And that would work for the same reason that people would buy a BMW if it had square tires and was fueled by candy corn, of course! Or for the same reason that people would buy a Volvo if looking at the car the wrong way would cause it to crash and burst into flames!
Does Apple do a great job of marketing? Absolutely.
Is the marketing overblown and hyperbolic? Often.
Would they be so profitable if there wasn't some substance to back up that reputation? Not a chance.
On a related note, without the Apple iPod, how would you be able to feel smugly superior to the sheeple who don't have the refined taste and discernment that you obviously do?
You are not your consumer lifestyle. Identifying yourself as "anti-Apple" is just as fucking ridiculous as defining yourself as "pro-Apple". If the product doesn't do what you want, spend your money on one of the many alternatives that has the feature list you want, and get some perspective.
If you really think the vast majority of people care about SDHC expandibility or an FM tuner in a music player, you're deluding yourself.
Actually, given that the Verizon DSL CD would have worked on a Windows system, and Microsoft Office would have worked just fine on a Windows system, I contend that she would have done a damn sight better with a Windows box - since both of her problems would not have happened with a Windows laptop.
Then I submit that "desktop Linux" is not looking for mainstream users. Full stop. And you know, that's fine - Linux can survive quite handily as a small segment of the desktop market & running servers. But if that is what the Linux community would prefer, drop the charade of wanting mainstream acceptance on the desktop. If you call your mainstream adopters retards for not being "smart enough" to use your system and eagerly accept every frustration, that's a recipe for failure.
I am not asking for it to work like Windows. I'm saying that if you want acceptance on the desktop, that desktop needs to work for the things mainstream users want to do.
What you're implying is that everybody who uses Linux must also become a vocal advocate of software freedom and open standards and start fighting the good fight when they're told something requires Office or some other proprietary software. And most mainstream users - adaptable to change or not - simply don't value those concepts as much as a software engineer might. If you can't understand that, and you can't offer a compelling incentive (rather than frustration & more work) to switch, why would you ever expect people to do so?
Dear smug asshole,
Considering IQs of less than 70 are generally classified as "profound" to "borderline" deficiency (mental retardation), you might want to reconsider that range.
Many people - regardless of how high their IQs are - do not cream their jeans over the possibility of having Ubuntu installed on their computer. And as your post goes to show, at least some of the people who DO mess themselves over Linux... well, they're just not that bright, though they do manage an air of self-righteous superiority.
If you insist on lumping everybody who doesn't share your profound arousal over free software into the "mentally retarded" category, can you really make the claim that you want mainstream adoption with a straight face?
Thanks for your consideration.
Public domain works are compatible with the GPL, and is therefore covered by my original statement of "GPL or some other compatible license."
My point was not to state a preference for a specific license; I was making the point that directing the money to research with the stipulation that any code created during the course of that funded research should be free & open would be preferable to simply hiring a bunch of developers and saying "go rewrite software that already exists."
Well said. And I'm not sure why they aren't simply directing additional grant & funding money to researchers at educational institutions. That model has worked pretty well, why not keep on doing it?
If a bunch of non-technical bureaucrats are going to start deciding what software should be written under the auspices of this program, I foresee $2Bn dollars going down the drain.
Are there REALLY not enough universities around the country that have Comp. Science departments with unfunded (but innovative, and probably viable) research projects? I keep seeing people say "But it's the stepping stone to new stuff." Great, then instead of paying a bunch of people to rewrite Samba and OpenOffice and put proprietary software companies out of business, fund real innovative research.
As a condition of research funding, require that any software written must be licensed under the GPL or some other compatible license, and made available to the public. Seems like a mission that's right up the alley of institutions of higher learning anyway.
Yes, because the first thing I do when I find a lost iPod somewhere is download all the shitty Ashlee Simpson & Beyonce songs on it to my own computer so that I can share them out over Limewire...
Possible? Sure. Likely? Not so much.
Here's a though: Nobody hates you enough to want to frame you for sharing music so you go to jail. If they hate you that much, they can do a lot worse things to you than that, so the RIAA is really the least of your problems.
Doesn't sound like it discriminates *all* that much in terms of what it eats, from the studies they've done of it. So not that much of a significant step, really. The endangered status (again from the wikipedia article) is most likely due to small, infrequent litter sizes (2 litters of 1-3 offspring per year), and predation due to the introduction of cats, dogs, and the Small Asian Mongoose to Hispaniola.
This is the crucial point you're missing. Most of the hundreds of millions of phones sold every year are not being sold to people who get a hard-on when they read the hardware specs on their phone. "Oh my god, a microSD slot! I just came."
Like it or not, Apple's success with the iPhone is all about the software. It's easy to use, it performs well, and it does things natively that users want it to do, and has a good-sized application store to make it do even more. It is not the highest-powered hardware, certainly. It may not scratch the itch that geeks have to be as customizable and open and powerful as they like. But most of the population is not made up of geeks who think in these terms. As such, there will always be a significant market for easy-to-use, which you concede the iPhone offers.
Math correction... 1cm = 10mm
Original dimensions: 200mm x 100mm x 15mm = 300,000 cubic mm
less 2mm in each dimension: 198mm x 98mm x 13mm = 252,252 cubic mm = 47,748 mm^3 lost, a loss of ~16%.
Still considerable, but not 40%.
Actually, no. The vast majority of computer users that do not read /. on a regular basis equate "doing Y" with "program X." If you suddenly drop them in front of a completely unfamiliar interface and say, "But you can still do Y, you just have to adapt to a new interface & way of doing some/many/all things you used to do," you will meet with resistance, irritation, and frustration.
Reasonably sophisticated, computer-savvy users can adapt to new programs pretty quickly, and will even go out in search of a program that does things the way they want. The vast majority of users do not fall in this category. They have their status quo that they've learned to use, and they don't want it to change.
It's this fundamental misunderstanding of the willingness of an "average" computer user to change that fuels so much of Linux's struggle on the desktop.
The problem is, you're lumping all development into some generic activity called "coding." That ignores the simple fact that being an expert in C++ does not make you expert at UI design. Being an expert at UI design doesn't make you a SQL whiz. Being a SQL whiz does not make you an expert at designing flexible & scalable application systems with many moving parts.
See the pattern? To make any practically-useful system today, you MUST work with other people who are expert in areas you're very likely not an expert in. You can create the best data model in existence for your company's payroll system, but if you don't have a clear understanding of the business rules, a good architecture, and a solid UI (and I've seen very few people in software engineering who are experts at all of the pieces that go into creating a good piece of software), the resulting product will be an unusable piece of crap that doesn't meet requirements.
Stroustrop's point of the single genius programmer is valid. The model you describe supposes that a single person can possibly learn and be expert in all of the disparate knowledge areas that are required to make a working piece of software, and in any group, the people who are capable of that level of insight & knowledge will *always* be the statistical outliers. Instead of punishing the majority of people for not being born with genius-level intellect, teach them how to be good at their chosen area of expertise, and how to relate to the people they have to work with to get things done. You don't have to engage in XP or some other "pair programming" methodology to realize value from being able to communicate clearly and work with your architect, QA / Reliability engineers, your customers, your project manager, and other developers who are working on separate subsystems.
Apparently on Slashdot, it's regressed from not reading TFA to not even reading TF Comments you reply to now, huh? I didn't "comment on stuff," I asked a question about how the GPL would apply, and in fact stated that I wasn't conversant enough with the GPL to understand what it would require of Diebold.
But don't let the fact that I stated no opinion about the GPL stop you from your bout of indignant nerdrage. Just be careful, please, you wouldn't want to spew doritos and mountain dew all over your keyboard. As one of the 'leet slashdotters in the know about the GPL, I'm sure you also know what a bother it is to clean up the sticky messes you've created at the computer.
Fuckwit.
And as an unpaid contributor to Slashdot, you are more than welcome to pass on by my question without a second thought, and let some other person take a stab at it if they wish. Instead, you seem to have concluded that my question was some sort of a personal affront that you couldn't let go unanswered.
If you're inclined to pontificate about the terms of a "good" question, then I'll exercise my freedom to state the terms of what I consider an acceptable answer. Your condescension only serves to alienate people who might otherwise be interested in learning more about the GPL & its implications.
Well, now that I've been informed what constitutes a good question, I'll make sure that next time I have a question for my doctor, I read a relevant Anatomy & Physiology book first. And god forbid I ask any lawyer for advice without having first gotten a year or two of law school out of the way.
If you found my question to be lacking, you could have simply ignored the question and carried on with your business on Slashdot. However, by behaving as if the mere fact of a question about the application of the GPL is some sort of personal affront to you, what you've managed to do is make yourself look like a pedantic douchebag.
And then open source advocates will wonder why they have a problem getting the general public to understand what all the fuss is about... I wonder why.
Understood. But to refine your example of a bible meeting further, I didn't ask "What is this GPL thing you're talking about?" I asked about how the "distribution" clause of the GPL would impact this particular scenario, because it isn't immediately obvious to me how it would work. Think of it more like going to the bible meeting and asking, "What's all this I hear about turning water into wine?"
It may be obvious and well-known information to people who are familiar with the bible, but to someone who has only passing knowledge of the bible, it's not a question that's so basic that the ramifications of the answer are immediately obvious.
That said, I do appreciate the information contained in your initial response. I understand the "RTFGPL, we've been talking about it for 10 years" frustration, just felt it was worth pointing out that my question was an honest attempt to increase my own understanding of how the GPL works in a practical situation such as this. I don't write code for a living, so software licensing is not a domain I'm familiar with.
While I appreciate the information you provided & thank you for it, please bear in mind that not all of us have read the GPL from start to finish, or have a copy on hand to cut and paste from. The condescension is not strictly necessary.
I asked that question seriously, because I don't understand the legal nuances of the GPL and hoped someone could answer the question - I've received several informative answers, yours included. When you answer questions in this fashion, you only serve to alienate people who are just looking for information or clarification.
Locked out of the process from the start by the shrillness of the political primaries, that's where. It's been drowned out by the inability of anybody to have a nuanced policy debate without resorting to name calling. It's been suffocated by the demand for sound bites & bumper-sticker slogans. It's been allowed to die a slow death because it's easier to just believe what someone tells you rather than do some research and find out of they're selling you a pile of horseshit.
Don't agree with the neo-conservative and/or envagelical republican base? Fuck you, you're a terrorist sympathizing, flip-flopping, unpatriotic, socialist, communist, marxist, god-hating, panty-waisted son of a bitch who doesn't have the balls to kick a little ass and wear a flag pin.
Don't agree with the socialist and/or progressive democrats? Fuck you, you're a corrupt warmonger who doesn't understand how easily we could attain utopia if we just raise taxes and create new entitlements for special interest groups. The world hates you, wring your hands and self-flagellate for being an American. Oh, and you're probably just a rich white man who wants to keep minorities & poor people down.
American "democracy" has turned into a shouting contest where the sedate voice of moderation is drowned out by the shrillness of the debate between the two most extreme elements of the major parties warring over power. Funny thing is, they wind up looking like two sides of the same coin - doctrinaire, dogmatic true believers who are hoping to use the government to ram their ideals down the throats of their fellow citizens. George Washington warned us about it in 1796 in his Farewell Address (emphasis mine):
That second bold part is exactly why McCain is being implored to "SAVE US", and why there are people making straight-faced irony-not-intended references to Obama as a Messianic figure.
There's no room for polite & reasonable debate anymore. The political process has turned into poisonous mudslinging punctuated by occasional robotic regurgitation of vetted, scrubbed, test-grouped, marketing-driven talking points. And what we ought to do is show our dissatisfaction with the whole rotten lot of fools by refusing to elect a republican or a democrat. But we will, overwhelmingly, re-elect the incumbents who led us down the road to ruin, D
Real question here - I am not a lawyer, so I'm curious. Say for the purpose of argument, the Diebold machine runs Win2k, and happens to have a stock, unmodified copy of Ghostscript which it uses on that system for creating and printing a "receipt" of some sort.
Given that scenario, under the GPL, is Diebold still required to make a copy of the ghostscript code available, if they've made no modifications to it? Or could they simply put on their web site, "Diebold uses the open-source tool Ghostscript, v8.2.1, which can be downloaded from "?
It doesn't make sense that running the ghostscript app on their system would force them to provide "all the source code for their entire system," and it also doesn't make sense that if they're using the app unmodified, they should have to provide for some sort of hosting mechanism when there's already a definitive hosting platform for it and they're "just using" the app as distributed by that company.
So I'm curious - anybody have any insight?
And you're the only one who's brought up Microsoft in any of this. Unless you're an astroturfing shill for Microsoft, why do you insist on bringing them into this at all? I repeat - you are the only person who has brought them up. Linux Foundation sure didn't.
Citation please?
If the only basis for comparison was some arbitrary cheerleading by an advocacy organization about the "value of the ecosystems", then yes, that number would work against Linux in a head-to-head comparison with Microsoft. Of course, that neglects the fact that there are other, far more useful bases for comparison, and that not every comparison where Linux is involved pits them against Microsoft. I've seen many comparisons between Linux and Solaris, or AIX, or HP-UX floating around my workplace, where Microsoft wasn't even a shadow of an afterthought.
No, there's many other ways to sell Linux as a competitor to Microsoft or any other platform. Its price, its functionality, its security record, its Unix & POSIX underpinnings, its record of stability, its remarkable degree of choice & freedom. Any of those are perfectly valid reasons to ALSO choose to use Linux.
What a "ecosystem is worth 25Bn dollars" statement does is it serves notice to companies that the Linux *ecosystem* is a place where there is a significant amount of money to be made in building your own services and applications. But you insist on bringing it back to Microsoft as if they're the only player that really matters in any discussion of platforms.
Extrapolated? I think you mean "I engaged in wild-eyed speculation that that would be the only thing they could care about, and slapped some fancy latin on it to shore up an otherwise inadequate argument."
I have presented several possible benefits they could realize from publicizing this information, none of which have anything to do with Microsoft. Since we're both engaging in speculation as to the motives of the Linux Foundation, I'll reiterate my own wild-ass guesses for you. The Linux Foundation, as an advocacy group, is interested in publicizing the fact that the ecosystem of Linux & linux-based products & services is a substantial portion of the computing market where quite a bit of money can be made. This encourages companies to write new / port existing applications to Linux, encourages IT people to consider learning more about Linux, and in general makes the case for Linux stronger since it's not a case of a senior sysadmin pitching Linux to his managers and justifying it with, "Well me and 5 of my best friends use it at home, and it's the best." Claiming that the Linux ecosystem's value is "small compared to Microsoft" as a way of dismissing the valuation of Linux makes no sense: Apple has made a killing in the last decade by servicing a small but highly profitable segment of the computing market, why wouldn't Linux-oriented companies & support organizations be able to repeat that same sort of success?
You're missing the simple fact that it's not a zero-sum game, and Microsoft, while large is not "the rest of the market except Linux." It's likely that Linux is stealing some market share from Microsoft, as well as some market share from IBM, HP, Sun, and probably other Unix vendors, as well as growing into some new markets where there really wasn't any competition from any of those players