The driver criticism is legit (and will probably remain a problem for at least a year) but the installation comment puzzles me.
I thought Red Hat and Caldera were really easy to install nowadays. Is it really harder than Win98? Does anybody have some recent new-user stories that illustrate the problems?
I'm wondering if the perceived difficulty in installation is simply because most users have been through the Windows install more often and it's just more familiar.
We're not saying (at least most of us) that Windows is too fragmented. We're attacking Microsoft's arguement that Open Source leads to fragmentation by turning it back on them.
There are different Linux distributions, but they all work more or less the same way (once installed) and run the same software.
There are different flavours of Windows (Windows95/98, NT, CE, more coming...), but they may or may not run your "Windows" software and good luck trying to use your knowledge of WindowsCE to help you administer an NT box.
Yes, the fragmentation arguement is bogus. That's the point. As long as you have standards, fragmentation (aka. "competition" or "choice") is OK and can even be positive.
It's a little late to change the Open Source definition (unfortunately). If MS complies (as Apple and Troll Tech. did) even technically, they'll be able to use the trademark.
The reason for the letter is purely PR (which is OK, as far as I'm concerned). ESR is concerned that MS will release bits of Windows as Open Source and then gloat loudly that it didn't do anything for their consumers and therefore Open Source is a failure.
By making a statement like this at the outset, they're hoping to head MS off at the pass.
He probably gets paid a lot of money for saying pretty much nothing.
His contention that standards inevitably fall apart when money is involved doesn't make any sense. Unix split apart because of poor licensing before there was much money involved - it's been slowly coming back together BECAUSE there's now a lot of cash at stake. AT&T could have prevented the SysV/BSD split by 1/keeping the source totally closed through more restrictive licensing, 2/keeping the source totally open (ie. free). They did the worst possible thing by having licensing terms that encouraged a fork. Academics had enough access to the source to make significant modifications, but they couldn't merge their changes back to the original.
Are there other examples of standards splintering that I'm missing?
You want to replace all the GNU tools because you think RMS has too much of an ego? This is not just a waste of time but destructive.
One of the GOOD things about Linux is that, even though there are lots of distributions, there is a lot of commonality in the toolsets people use. If common utilities start behaving differently on different distributions then the FUD mongers will suddenly be right about splintering and infighting.
The copyright holder(s) may terminate your license to use this software in the event that you initiate a patent infringement suite against authors of any Open Source software.
I love Star Wars (and I will see it in it's first week), but it's formula. If I could only see one of "The Phantom Menace" or "The Red Violin" I'd see the latter.
The article makes it sound like they deliberately dropped the domains (supposedly to combat domain squatting). Is this legal?
There was an alternate DNS scheme happening some time ago. Does anybody have info on this? It occurs to me that any centralized naming system (no matter who runs it) is a potential weakness for a supposedly decentralized, indestructable network. It also occurs to me that Mozilla is in a position to force broad acceptance of an alternate DNS just by including support by default. Something to think about.
Ok, so how fast is this? Does the benchmark measure how long it takes to render a "typical" frame? If so, does that mean it would take (3 seconds/frame * 24 frames/second * 17 nodes) 1224 nodes to render a movie in real-time?
Something like that could make a really cool video game. Of course, in ten years your Playstation will be able to do it.
Lot's variations of Unix are good as long as they follow standards and the standards continue to evolve.
As near as I can see the current system words really well. Different vendors come up with new features. The good ones get copied and improved upon by the competition. Once something has been hashed out in the marketplace a little, it is standardized and everybody moves to comply.
The MS model is more like: 1/ marketing dude gets a bright idea, 2/ engineering does a half-baked implementation, 3/ the API is cast in stone and any mistakes in the design process are carried forward forever.
Wasn't MS one of the companies that wanted to crack down on domain squatting? Linus owns the Linux trademark, I'm sure he would have authorized somebody with money to litigate this.
Most big software vendors have already ported to Intel (with NT). They'll use the CPUID if it's there, but they can't afford to ignore popular platforms that don't have it.
The disturbing thing about Intel's CPUID is the way they expect it to be used. If Visa (for example) distributes electronic wallet software that requires the CPUID to function, and then makes it a requirement for all on-line Visa purchaces, what are you going to do? You can protest, but the clueless masses won't care. You'll either lose the ability to shop on-line or be forced to make your CPUID available.
It goes against the spirit of the GPL (and Linux). The module is, for all practical purposes, and enhancement to the Linux kernel. It's not a device driver or file system or other traditional "add-on". It should be free, but they found a loop-hole.
On the bright site, we know this kind of thing won't become common because their patches will never make it into the mainstream kernel. They'll have to keep producing patches against each new kernel version.
Even if you don't see need for LSB in order to run commercial software, I don't understand how anybody can argue against standards.
Standards are good for competition. The more things there are that are standard the easier it is for me to change distributions or work with people who use other distributions. There's less to learn, less to recompile, and less chance of frustration.
For example, every distribution has a way to stop and start daemons. Since the feature is standard there should be a standard way of accessing it. If you can't agree on init.d setup, then agree on a standard interface that each distro will implement in it's own way (ie. a set of/usr/sbin scripts that call the native commands).
Now I can go to any machine running Linux and be confident that, even though I've never seen the distro, I can perform basic administration. Also, if Slackware comes up with some awsome whiz-bang feature that I must have, I can switch to it and be instantly productive.
When are clean room procedures required? I know it's needed for reverse engineering, but I don't know exactly why. Presumably to ensure there is no copyright violation?
Linus (along with thousands of OS design students who are now working in industry) saw the source to Minix and that wasn't deemed a problem. People from Digital's VMS group ended up working on NT. Clearly seeing the source for one OS doesn't prevent somebody from ever working on another.
I don't see anything that amounts to death threats, but there should be some way to fight this on privacy grounds.
Tons of public information that used to be logistically difficult to get in one place can now be assembled easily. Privacy laws need to be overhauled to deal with this.
Nice look... GNOME take note
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· Score: 1
I was looking at the screen shot of Gnome under WindowMaker. I can't quite figure out why the WindowMaker look is so much nicer. I guess that's why I'm a programmer and not an artist.
The GNOME folks should borrow some of the WindowMaker Widgets. Or maybe the WindowMaker folks could spruce up GTK and use its widgets.
I've worked for a few companies that use expensive Unix hardware (AIX, Sun) just to run database clients. This is dumb and I wouldn't do it if it was my money. The hardware is just too expensive.
Pointy haired people are clueing into the fact that you don't need MASSIVELY powerful workstations for this stuff and are buying Intel boxes. NT is by far the dominent operating system on Intel (Win98 doesn't count).
The good news is that 1/ Linux is getting support from the database vendors that these shops use, 2/ Linux is more stable and cheaper, 3/ Sun/HP/IBM aren't stupid and will fight back as well.
So I'm not worried about the long term trend. Finding Unix work won't be a problem for the forseeable future.
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My first compiler was Borland Pascal 3.0 and I've liked their tools ever since.
Of course I haven't done much Windows development in the last few years. This might actually get me to buy their stuff again!
The driver criticism is legit (and will probably remain a problem for at least a year) but the installation comment puzzles me.
I thought Red Hat and Caldera were really easy to install nowadays. Is it really harder than Win98? Does anybody have some recent new-user stories that illustrate the problems?
I'm wondering if the perceived difficulty in installation is simply because most users have been through the Windows install more often and it's just more familiar.
Thanks for all that typing, it's a cool article. But coudn't this get Rob into serious trouble? You know, copyrighted material and all.
We're not saying (at least most of us) that Windows is too fragmented. We're attacking Microsoft's arguement that Open Source leads to fragmentation by turning it back on them.
There are different Linux distributions, but they all work more or less the same way (once installed) and run the same software.
There are different flavours of Windows (Windows95/98, NT, CE, more coming...), but they may or may not run your "Windows" software and good luck trying to use your knowledge of WindowsCE to help you administer an NT box.
Yes, the fragmentation arguement is bogus. That's the point. As long as you have standards, fragmentation (aka. "competition" or "choice") is OK and can even be positive.
It's a little late to change the Open Source definition (unfortunately). If MS complies (as Apple and Troll Tech. did) even technically, they'll be able to use the trademark.
The reason for the letter is purely PR (which is OK, as far as I'm concerned). ESR is concerned that MS will release bits of Windows as Open Source and then gloat loudly that it didn't do anything for their consumers and therefore Open Source is a failure.
By making a statement like this at the outset, they're hoping to head MS off at the pass.
They're redoing (almost?) everything from scratch. They stuff that's there is excellent, but it'll be a while yet before it's all there.
He probably gets paid a lot of money for saying pretty much nothing.
His contention that standards inevitably fall apart when money is involved doesn't make any sense. Unix split apart because of poor licensing before there was much money involved - it's been slowly coming back together BECAUSE there's now a lot of cash at stake. AT&T could have prevented the SysV/BSD split by 1/keeping the source totally closed through more restrictive licensing, 2/keeping the source totally open (ie. free). They did the worst possible thing by having licensing terms that encouraged a fork. Academics had enough access to the source to make significant modifications, but they couldn't merge their changes back to the original.
Are there other examples of standards splintering that I'm missing?
You want to replace all the GNU tools because you think RMS has too much of an ego? This is not just a waste of time but destructive.
One of the GOOD things about Linux is that, even though there are lots of distributions, there is a lot of commonality in the toolsets people use. If common utilities start behaving differently on different distributions then the FUD mongers will suddenly be right about splintering and infighting.
Grow up.
The copyright holder(s) may terminate your license to use this software in the event that you initiate a patent infringement suite against authors of any Open Source software.
If it can run Corel Draw reasonably well I'll reformat my Windows box tonight!
Any word on performance? How does this thing actually work (does it interpret the machine code or execute it somehow)?
I thought they were pulling out all the stops to get it out this fall. Does anybody have some more info on this?
I was about to say the same thing.
I love Star Wars (and I will see it in it's first week), but it's formula. If I could only see one of "The Phantom Menace" or "The Red Violin" I'd see the latter.
The article makes it sound like they deliberately dropped the domains (supposedly to combat domain squatting). Is this legal?
There was an alternate DNS scheme happening some time ago. Does anybody have info on this? It occurs to me that any centralized naming system (no matter who runs it) is a potential weakness for a supposedly decentralized, indestructable network. It also occurs to me that Mozilla is in a position to force broad acceptance of an alternate DNS just by including support by default. Something to think about.
Ok, so how fast is this? Does the benchmark measure how long it takes to render a "typical" frame? If so, does that mean it would take (3 seconds/frame * 24 frames/second * 17 nodes) 1224 nodes to render a movie in real-time?
Something like that could make a really cool video game. Of course, in ten years your Playstation will be able to do it.
Lot's variations of Unix are good as long as they follow standards and the standards continue to evolve.
As near as I can see the current system words really well. Different vendors come up with new features. The good ones get copied and improved upon by the competition. Once something has been hashed out in the marketplace a little, it is standardized and everybody moves to comply.
The MS model is more like: 1/ marketing dude gets a bright idea, 2/ engineering does a half-baked implementation, 3/ the API is cast in stone and any mistakes in the design process are carried forward forever.
Wasn't MS one of the companies that wanted to crack down on domain squatting? Linus owns the Linux trademark, I'm sure he would have authorized somebody with money to litigate this.
Most big software vendors have already ported to Intel (with NT). They'll use the CPUID if it's there, but they can't afford to ignore popular platforms that don't have it.
The disturbing thing about Intel's CPUID is the way they expect it to be used. If Visa (for example) distributes electronic wallet software that requires the CPUID to function, and then makes it a requirement for all on-line Visa purchaces, what are you going to do? You can protest, but the clueless masses won't care. You'll either lose the ability to shop on-line or be forced to make your CPUID available.
It goes against the spirit of the GPL (and Linux). The module is, for all practical purposes, and enhancement to the Linux kernel. It's not a device driver or file system or other traditional "add-on". It should be free, but they found a loop-hole.
On the bright site, we know this kind of thing won't become common because their patches will never make it into the mainstream kernel. They'll have to keep producing patches against each new kernel version.
Even if you don't see need for LSB in order to run commercial software, I don't understand how anybody can argue against standards.
Standards are good for competition. The more things there are that are standard the easier it is for me to change distributions or work with people who use other distributions. There's less to learn, less to recompile, and less chance of frustration.
For example, every distribution has a way to stop and start daemons. Since the feature is standard there should be a standard way of accessing it. If you can't agree on init.d setup, then agree on a standard interface that each distro will implement in it's own way (ie. a set of /usr/sbin scripts that call the native commands).
Now I can go to any machine running Linux and be confident that, even though I've never seen the distro, I can perform basic administration. Also, if Slackware comes up with some awsome whiz-bang feature that I must have, I can switch to it and be instantly productive.
They mention a new version of GNOME. Does anybody (perhaps the GNOME developers) know if 1.0 will be released on Wednesday?
When are clean room procedures required? I know it's needed for reverse engineering, but I don't know exactly why. Presumably to ensure there is no copyright violation?
Linus (along with thousands of OS design students who are now working in industry) saw the source to Minix and that wasn't deemed a problem. People from Digital's VMS group ended up working on NT. Clearly seeing the source for one OS doesn't prevent somebody from ever working on another.
If somebody packages one of these in a modem-sized box with some memory, ethernet, perrallel, and serial port, I'll buy a fiew.
The cost should be under $200 (the chip is less than $20) and they'd make great print servers and fax servers.
I don't see anything that amounts to death threats, but there should be some way to fight this on privacy grounds.
Tons of public information that used to be logistically difficult to get in one place can now be assembled easily. Privacy laws need to be overhauled to deal with this.
I was looking at the screen shot of Gnome under WindowMaker. I can't quite figure out why the WindowMaker look is so much nicer. I guess that's why I'm a programmer and not an artist.
The GNOME folks should borrow some of the WindowMaker Widgets. Or maybe the WindowMaker folks could spruce up GTK and use its widgets.
I've worked for a few companies that use expensive Unix hardware (AIX, Sun) just to run database clients. This is dumb and I wouldn't do it if it was my money. The hardware is just too expensive.
Pointy haired people are clueing into the fact that you don't need MASSIVELY powerful workstations for this stuff and are buying Intel boxes. NT is by far the dominent operating system on Intel (Win98 doesn't count).
The good news is that 1/ Linux is getting support from the database vendors that these shops use, 2/ Linux is more stable and cheaper, 3/ Sun/HP/IBM aren't stupid and will fight back as well.
So I'm not worried about the long term trend. Finding Unix work won't be a problem for the forseeable future.