The grandparent post's complaint is not that "the beta has bugs". It's practically inevitable that there will be some bugs in an OS, even in the release version.
The grandparent is complaining because to fix this particular bug the reviewer needed to tweak a config file. That certainly requires a higher level of knowledge than generally required during normal operation in Ubuntu, and makes it more difficult to use.
Whether Ubuntu is more difficult to use than versions of Windows or other OSes is something that needs more data to debate fairly. Leaving that question aside, the grandparent makes an important point: when measuring ease of use, you shouldn't use a bug-free system where everything works as expected as your only benchmark. If there are going to be bugs to some extent, you should also look at ways the user fixes or works around them, with the aim of creating a robust user experience, so that the bugs that do exist are more tolerable to users.
Friendly user forums are a good start, but I hope Ubuntu developers will also think carefully about other ways to make it easier for users to diagnose and fix minor problems.
From the GPL version 2: "The source code for a work means the preferred version for modifying it." If you obfuscate, it's no longer in the preferred form, so it doesn't meet the GPL's requirements.
Obfuscating as you suggest would destroy the meaning of opening up the source code, so no-one writing an open source license would want to allow it. If any licenses do allow it, it must be by accident.
But it didn't get pulled just because there were 80 complaints. Because there were complaints, it was investigated by the Advertising Standards Board, who ruled that it broke existing rules by showing illegal driving activity. Since it was found to break the rules, it was banned. (This is all from the article.)
Now, you can say the rules are stupid for banning ads like this, or that the 80 people were stupid for complaining, but I don't see how you can argue with a system which only punishes ads if
(a) they break rules that were in place anyway, and (b) only if someone complains about them.
This probably wouldn't work. As soon as MS revealed an alleged patent violation, the related code would be yanked out of the code tree and not put back in unless the allegation proved false.
The line from the Linux side would probably be "we didn't know; we're sorry; we've taken action; we're open to discussion; please tell us about any other patent violations you've found." I believe this is called "acting in good faith", something which courts and the general public both tend to look well on.
Not only would this show the Linux developers managing the code to be organised and responsible (in contrast to the "bunch of hippies" image some people seem to have of them) but it would show up the fact that Microsoft has no legitimate reason for not revealing any other patent problems it knows about. Trade secrets? Patents are already public knowledge. Legal strategy? Saying that would just make it look like Microsoft is playing the same poker game as SCO.
These patent allegations are only effective as FUD as long as the (alleged) patent problems appear to be impossible to fix, making companies using Linux inherently vulnerable to lawsuits. If even one problem actually got fixed, they'd be toothless.
It differs because no-one can reply to point out its mistakes, or mod it into the ground, however wrong it is. And because people are more likely to believe that it is The Truth.
Funny, to me your post feels less like criticism of Slashdot and more like criticism of the BBC. The BBC is a respected name, and employs professional journalists. If that counts for anything, they ought to be more than a match for the best posts on Slashdot rather than just level with the average ones.
Are they? I think I'll learn more from Slashdot, for all its faults. And I don't expect this vox pop to tell me anything I didn't know about different OSes. If anything, it may be more interesting for revealing how TV news presents the topic - what they focus on, if they make any mistakes, how much detail they think the public can take - than for the actual subject matter.
Maria Montessori's children's houses took in children from a range of ages, sometimes kindergarten age, and the things they taught included basic reading and writing and even how to tie shoelaces; not that different from what you'd find in a non-Montessori kindergarten.
Japanese education isn't necessarily a paragon of excellence, either. The system of English language teaching has hardly changed in 50 years, and despite its relative wealth, Japan is near the bottom of the league tables for English ability in Asia.
But there are other benefits to Microsoft besides unintentional bias.
Just having enough influential bloggers get used to using Vista and writing about it may well help to increase its popularity by word of mouth (assuming it's not actually dramatically worse than XP). This is the "first hit is free" or "cinema preview" effect.
Letting bloggers who are likely to try Vista use a super-fast PC to give them the best possible user experience is also likely to cut down on negative comments.
At this stage, when Vista adoption rates are not yet decided, Microsoft would be happy to give away Vista machines or even pay people to take them. But that looks too much like bribery, which is bad PR, and it looks like they backtracked because they realised that.
In retrospect, they probably should have only sent out review copies and asked for them to be sent back, to get the positive effects of publicity without the accusations that they were trying to buy good reviews.
The pragmatic side is not alienating people, and keeping Linux popular by not placing restrictions on its use, only on how you can copy it. That boils down to giving users as much freedom as possible, which is the same basic principle espoused by RMS.
To borrow the music analogy Linus uses in the post: thousands of Slashdot posts have said "DRM music is evil and hurts the consumer." and also "Putting DRM on music hurts its popularity because people won't accept the restrictions." Given that stance, a company which seeks to become successful by selling non-DRM music would be both pragmatic and non-evil. Linus is trying to do the same thing.
(I couldn't get the page from the link above. This link works for me.)
Of course they're missing out on making tons of money.
Are they really? I think they realise that charging for more types of ads, or some other money-making tactic, makes their service less attractive, and makes it that much easier for someone else to come from nowhere and overtake them.
It's not too obvious what they'd do, either - perhaps their own Google-style "sponsored" ads (maybe letting you pay to get your ad show more prominently). But that might well annoy their customers more than Google's discreet ads do.
Maybe they're just biding their time because they don't know what to do next. But in any event, if they have enough business sense to become the most popular site in their market, I don't think they're acting entirely out of altruism.
The potshot that "the government of the United States chooses to ignore" is completely justified.
Firstly, there are other ways to intervene than with air raids and tanks. If the US government took a more active role in assisting negotiations and dealing with the root causes of the conflict, who could complain? The fact that they went into Iraq instead merely shows that they had the resources to help but chose to spend it on ousting Saddam.
Secondly, saying that other countries are guilty of the same thing doesn't put the US in the right.
To get back firmly on topic, maybe video can make a difference. Remember the fuss al-Jazeera stirred up? If a few shocking images make it onto YouTube and word of mouth spreads, politicians might have to start taking notice.
Perfectly consistent. What if your job requires you to use VBA, even though you think it's broken and lets in trojans? So you do what you have to, complaining through your teeth. At least you can work with it on a Mac if you want.
Now if there's no support for VBA on Mac Office, does that mean you won't have to use VBA any more? No, it means you still have to, but you also have to switch to Windows as well.
Research isn't necessarily groundbreaking or original, and it doesn't even necessarily succeed in producing anything at all. (Also, I'm sure MIT is grateful for the donations, but if those MIT researchers innovate, you can't call that innovation by Microsoft.)
Maybe Microsoft Research is doing great things, but your comment would be a lot more persuasive if you gave examples of innovative research Microsoft has carried out.
The grandparent post is about nuclear weapons, so why are the examples in this post things like "homemade gin"?
If we're talking about drugs, I agree with you that turning people into criminals is not the solution. And heavy surveillance of bank account transactions are more worrying than the problem they're supposed to be solving. Also, let's not argue (for the moment) about polonium, and if you want to keep a rifle under your bed for when They come for you. (You could accuse me of going off topic by saying it, but I think I'm still addressing the wider issue raised by the article.)
But nuclear weapons? Are you really suggesting that private citizens should be allowed to make nuclear weapons if they want? I've read that building a simple nuclear bomb doesn't take that much in-depth knowledge or technical refinement. Say that I and my small team of fellow researchers want to build a uranium or plutonium bomb. We've done all our homework, and of course the whole project is just a leisure pursuit, like building model railways - we'd never dream of hurting anyone. You're seriously OK with letting me do it?
Normally I'd assume that you didn't really mean that, but your post said "prohibition of any kindnever works", explicitly ruling out any exceptions to your statements with the parts in boldor italics, so I have to take your word for it.
I agree with almost everything you said, including the part about the phrase Trusted Computing. I was just stating a personal preference. Certainly the FSF using the term Treacherous Computing makes the argument easier to understand.
However, I disagree with one thing. If I were Linus, I'd prefer that Tivo use Linux for their system, even with non-Free hardware, as long as they released any changes they made. Of course, the choice belongs to the author of the code, and different people will have different opinions.
True, of course consumers won't automatically choose free software products over everything else. If Tivo had to trade away freedom to get its movie deal, perhaps a free software alternative is unrealistic.
But in that case, what can anyone do? The new GPL would only stop Tivo using GPL software, so they'd have to move to other software, say proprietary or BSD-licensed software - not a major problem for them. Is that a win?
To take another example, what if most of the personal computers in the world - as many as run Windows now - became locked-down computers only able to run signed code, in the name of Trusted Computing? I can only hope that developers would be inconvenienced enough to demand an alternative, and I can't see how stopping GPL software running on those computers would really help.
Perhaps in a way region encoding is only a small victory - consumers were given a free choice, the difference was easy to understand, and there are still many single-region players. However, I still feel that it is significant because it shows that giving consumers problems with DRM-like initiatives creates demand for hardware unencumbered by those problems.
That's obviously a problem, but I didn't mean to say that market pressure is the answer to everything, only that it's potentially more useful than the pressure exerted by campaigning.
For bad legislation, the best thing we have is - democratic pressure?
The section in Ciarán O'Riordan's speech called "Could we use market pressure instead?"
This looks to be a summary of the argument put forward by Linus Torvalds for why you don't need to change the GPL to exclude things like tivolisation or Trusted(*) Computing. Except O'Riordan doesn't get it. "Market pressure" does not mean Free Software advocates ganging up together and deciding not to buy things on principle. It means consumers - all consumers - making choices based purely on self-interest.
For example, multi-region DVD players. If the content makers had their way, multi-region players wouldn't exist. They do exist because consumers realise that multi-region is better than single-region, creating a demand. That in turn produced an incentive for manufacturers to make them.
Tivo could work out the same way. Imagine if the FSF somehow stopped Tivo using Linux like they do now. Tivo would probably respond by dropping Linux and licensing Windows, or some other proprietary system. On the other hand, if tivolisation is really such a bad thing for consumers, eventually someone would bring out an FSF-friendly Tivo clone without the tivolisation problems, and everyone will buy that instead.
I think it's a telling mistake that the FSF people see "pressure" only in terms of an ideological struggle between factions, and don't notice that there's a natural pressure from market forces.
A lot of what RMS says is right, and he may win some people over by making speeches, but in the end, the best way to gain allies is via Linus-style pragmatism - by giving people a selfish motive to do what you want them to.
(*) I prefer the term "Trusted Computing". The Microsoft doublespeak sounds far more sinister than any nasty name the FSF can think up.
One problem is that market analysts don't understand the "Bazaar-style" development model FOSS uses. Unlike software developed in a single company, with FOSS there is no boss telling developers what to do next. That means market analysts can't see the direction in which development is headed. Market analysts are important because top management types in companies listen to them.
Another problem is that FOSS projects can lack direction and vision, leading to a lack of progress. Linux is a good project because Linus controls it by choosing which patches to add. However, projects sometimes suffer from bad leadership, which stops progress (like XFree86), or unclear leadership, which leads to feature creep and no real advances (like GNOME in the past).
The solution to this problem is to have a leader controlling development, to make developers achieve definite goals within a specific time frame. In other words, FOSS projects should move closer to the "Cathedral" style of development.
In one sentence: to be successful, projects need to be managed and coordinated well. Not a very surprising conclusion.
Slashdot Mirror
The grandparent post's complaint is not that "the beta has bugs". It's practically inevitable that there will be some bugs in an OS, even in the release version.
The grandparent is complaining because to fix this particular bug the reviewer needed to tweak a config file. That certainly requires a higher level of knowledge than generally required during normal operation in Ubuntu, and makes it more difficult to use.
Whether Ubuntu is more difficult to use than versions of Windows or other OSes is something that needs more data to debate fairly. Leaving that question aside, the grandparent makes an important point: when measuring ease of use, you shouldn't use a bug-free system where everything works as expected as your only benchmark. If there are going to be bugs to some extent, you should also look at ways the user fixes or works around them, with the aim of creating a robust user experience, so that the bugs that do exist are more tolerable to users.
Friendly user forums are a good start, but I hope Ubuntu developers will also think carefully about other ways to make it easier for users to diagnose and fix minor problems.
I seem to remember there was one part in the book with this graph of the normal distribution.
"Oh no, the dinosaurs must be breeding, because their population graph is a normal distribution curve!"
Maybe some expert biologist can explain that one? It doesn't make any sense to me...
From the GPL version 2: "The source code for a work means the preferred version for modifying it." If you obfuscate, it's no longer in the preferred form, so it doesn't meet the GPL's requirements.
Obfuscating as you suggest would destroy the meaning of opening up the source code, so no-one writing an open source license would want to allow it. If any licenses do allow it, it must be by accident.
But it didn't get pulled just because there were 80 complaints. Because there were complaints, it was investigated by the Advertising Standards Board, who ruled that it broke existing rules by showing illegal driving activity. Since it was found to break the rules, it was banned. (This is all from the article.)
Now, you can say the rules are stupid for banning ads like this, or that the 80 people were stupid for complaining, but I don't see how you can argue with a system which only punishes ads if
(a) they break rules that were in place anyway, and
(b) only if someone complains about them.
This probably wouldn't work. As soon as MS revealed an alleged patent violation, the related code would be yanked out of the code tree and not put back in unless the allegation proved false.
The line from the Linux side would probably be "we didn't know; we're sorry; we've taken action; we're open to discussion; please tell us about any other patent violations you've found." I believe this is called "acting in good faith", something which courts and the general public both tend to look well on.
Not only would this show the Linux developers managing the code to be organised and responsible (in contrast to the "bunch of hippies" image some people seem to have of them) but it would show up the fact that Microsoft has no legitimate reason for not revealing any other patent problems it knows about. Trade secrets? Patents are already public knowledge. Legal strategy? Saying that would just make it look like Microsoft is playing the same poker game as SCO.
These patent allegations are only effective as FUD as long as the (alleged) patent problems appear to be impossible to fix, making companies using Linux inherently vulnerable to lawsuits. If even one problem actually got fixed, they'd be toothless.
It differs because no-one can reply to point out its mistakes, or mod it into the ground, however wrong it is. And because people are more likely to believe that it is The Truth.
Funny, to me your post feels less like criticism of Slashdot and more like criticism of the BBC. The BBC is a respected name, and employs professional journalists. If that counts for anything, they ought to be more than a match for the best posts on Slashdot rather than just level with the average ones.
Are they? I think I'll learn more from Slashdot, for all its faults. And I don't expect this vox pop to tell me anything I didn't know about different OSes. If anything, it may be more interesting for revealing how TV news presents the topic - what they focus on, if they make any mistakes, how much detail they think the public can take - than for the actual subject matter.
You misunderstand what the grandparent means by "pyrrhic victory".
The victory is Vista being killed by mistrust of DRM.
The loss is allowing DRM to become widespead enough for that to happen.
Maria Montessori's children's houses took in children from a range of ages, sometimes kindergarten age, and the things they taught included basic reading and writing and even how to tie shoelaces; not that different from what you'd find in a non-Montessori kindergarten.
Japanese education isn't necessarily a paragon of excellence, either. The system of English language teaching has hardly changed in 50 years, and despite its relative wealth, Japan is near the bottom of the league tables for English ability in Asia.
But there are other benefits to Microsoft besides unintentional bias.
Just having enough influential bloggers get used to using Vista and writing about it may well help to increase its popularity by word of mouth (assuming it's not actually dramatically worse than XP). This is the "first hit is free" or "cinema preview" effect.
Letting bloggers who are likely to try Vista use a super-fast PC to give them the best possible user experience is also likely to cut down on negative comments.
At this stage, when Vista adoption rates are not yet decided, Microsoft would be happy to give away Vista machines or even pay people to take them. But that looks too much like bribery, which is bad PR, and it looks like they backtracked because they realised that.
In retrospect, they probably should have only sent out review copies and asked for them to be sent back, to get the positive effects of publicity without the accusations that they were trying to buy good reviews.
Linus's position is both moral and pragmatic.
The pragmatic side is not alienating people, and keeping Linux popular by not placing restrictions on its use, only on how you can copy it. That boils down to giving users as much freedom as possible, which is the same basic principle espoused by RMS.
To borrow the music analogy Linus uses in the post: thousands of Slashdot posts have said "DRM music is evil and hurts the consumer." and also "Putting DRM on music hurts its popularity because people won't accept the restrictions." Given that stance, a company which seeks to become successful by selling non-DRM music would be both pragmatic and non-evil. Linus is trying to do the same thing.
Aren't all links in Slashdot posts marked nofollow, meaning they have zero effect on PageRank?
Are they really? I think they realise that charging for more types of ads, or some other money-making tactic, makes their service less attractive, and makes it that much easier for someone else to come from nowhere and overtake them.
It's not too obvious what they'd do, either - perhaps their own Google-style "sponsored" ads (maybe letting you pay to get your ad show more prominently). But that might well annoy their customers more than Google's discreet ads do.
Maybe they're just biding their time because they don't know what to do next. But in any event, if they have enough business sense to become the most popular site in their market, I don't think they're acting entirely out of altruism.
The potshot that "the government of the United States chooses to ignore" is completely justified.
Firstly, there are other ways to intervene than with air raids and tanks. If the US government took a more active role in assisting negotiations and dealing with the root causes of the conflict, who could complain? The fact that they went into Iraq instead merely shows that they had the resources to help but chose to spend it on ousting Saddam.
Secondly, saying that other countries are guilty of the same thing doesn't put the US in the right.
To get back firmly on topic, maybe video can make a difference. Remember the fuss al-Jazeera stirred up? If a few shocking images make it onto YouTube and word of mouth spreads, politicians might have to start taking notice.
Perfectly consistent. What if your job requires you to use VBA, even though you think it's broken and lets in trojans? So you do what you have to, complaining through your teeth. At least you can work with it on a Mac if you want.
Now if there's no support for VBA on Mac Office, does that mean you won't have to use VBA any more? No, it means you still have to, but you also have to switch to Windows as well.
sarcasm
Research isn't necessarily groundbreaking or original, and it doesn't even necessarily succeed in producing anything at all. (Also, I'm sure MIT is grateful for the donations, but if those MIT researchers innovate, you can't call that innovation by Microsoft.)
Maybe Microsoft Research is doing great things, but your comment would be a lot more persuasive if you gave examples of innovative research Microsoft has carried out.
In Soviet Russia, fire warms itself using YOU!
The grandparent post is about nuclear weapons, so why are the examples in this post things like "homemade gin"?
If we're talking about drugs, I agree with you that turning people into criminals is not the solution. And heavy surveillance of bank account transactions are more worrying than the problem they're supposed to be solving. Also, let's not argue (for the moment) about polonium, and if you want to keep a rifle under your bed for when They come for you. (You could accuse me of going off topic by saying it, but I think I'm still addressing the wider issue raised by the article.)
But nuclear weapons? Are you really suggesting that private citizens should be allowed to make nuclear weapons if they want? I've read that building a simple nuclear bomb doesn't take that much in-depth knowledge or technical refinement. Say that I and my small team of fellow researchers want to build a uranium or plutonium bomb. We've done all our homework, and of course the whole project is just a leisure pursuit, like building model railways - we'd never dream of hurting anyone. You're seriously OK with letting me do it?
Normally I'd assume that you didn't really mean that, but your post said "prohibition of any kind never works", explicitly ruling out any exceptions to your statements with the parts in bold or italics, so I have to take your word for it.
I agree with almost everything you said, including the part about the phrase Trusted Computing. I was just stating a personal preference. Certainly the FSF using the term Treacherous Computing makes the argument easier to understand.
However, I disagree with one thing. If I were Linus, I'd prefer that Tivo use Linux for their system, even with non-Free hardware, as long as they released any changes they made. Of course, the choice belongs to the author of the code, and different people will have different opinions.
True, of course consumers won't automatically choose free software products over everything else. If Tivo had to trade away freedom to get its movie deal, perhaps a free software alternative is unrealistic.
But in that case, what can anyone do? The new GPL would only stop Tivo using GPL software, so they'd have to move to other software, say proprietary or BSD-licensed software - not a major problem for them. Is that a win?
To take another example, what if most of the personal computers in the world - as many as run Windows now - became locked-down computers only able to run signed code, in the name of Trusted Computing? I can only hope that developers would be inconvenienced enough to demand an alternative, and I can't see how stopping GPL software running on those computers would really help.
Perhaps in a way region encoding is only a small victory - consumers were given a free choice, the difference was easy to understand, and there are still many single-region players. However, I still feel that it is significant because it shows that giving consumers problems with DRM-like initiatives creates demand for hardware unencumbered by those problems.
Oh, I didn't know they were illegal in the US.
That's obviously a problem, but I didn't mean to say that market pressure is the answer to everything, only that it's potentially more useful than the pressure exerted by campaigning.
For bad legislation, the best thing we have is - democratic pressure?
The section in Ciarán O'Riordan's speech called "Could we use market pressure instead?"
This looks to be a summary of the argument put forward by Linus Torvalds for why you don't need to change the GPL to exclude things like tivolisation or Trusted(*) Computing. Except O'Riordan doesn't get it. "Market pressure" does not mean Free Software advocates ganging up together and deciding not to buy things on principle. It means consumers - all consumers - making choices based purely on self-interest.
For example, multi-region DVD players. If the content makers had their way, multi-region players wouldn't exist. They do exist because consumers realise that multi-region is better than single-region, creating a demand. That in turn produced an incentive for manufacturers to make them.
Tivo could work out the same way. Imagine if the FSF somehow stopped Tivo using Linux like they do now. Tivo would probably respond by dropping Linux and licensing Windows, or some other proprietary system. On the other hand, if tivolisation is really such a bad thing for consumers, eventually someone would bring out an FSF-friendly Tivo clone without the tivolisation problems, and everyone will buy that instead.
I think it's a telling mistake that the FSF people see "pressure" only in terms of an ideological struggle between factions, and don't notice that there's a natural pressure from market forces.
A lot of what RMS says is right, and he may win some people over by making speeches, but in the end, the best way to gain allies is via Linus-style pragmatism - by giving people a selfish motive to do what you want them to.
(*) I prefer the term "Trusted Computing". The Microsoft doublespeak sounds far more sinister than any nasty name the FSF can think up.
In one sentence: to be successful, projects need to be managed and coordinated well. Not a very surprising conclusion.
Oops, I'm wrong about the 'wi' part. But there is a 'wei' sound.
You're thinking of Japanese. Chinese has different 'l' and 'r' sounds, and a 'wi' sound too.