“The Open Source community’s answer is to ignore Microsoft’s incredible technological lead – because it is proprietary and not a standard – and instead focusses on their own cool thing and self-gratifying cool features, because they think they can do better (which is where the ignorance combined with ego comes in).” Join the discussion at Advogato.
The Consequences of Open Source Arrogance
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
does he really say nothing concrete in a very inflamitory manor?
Arrogance and outdated are certainly the main characteristic of open-source. And arrogance is a very consensual term for what is in fact a bad blend of ignorance and integrism.
What is pointed out this article is the importance of standard, which have never needed to be, or not to be, open-source. The W3C attitude about paying for standard publication is very significative on this point.
Anyway open-source have a strong advantage, they are, currently…, free as beer. And if your don’t need state of the art, Linux is perfectly suited. Just run Celestia, after installing it (only a problem under Linux of course), on Linux and W2K to understand the diffrence between state of art, W2K, and outdated, Linux…
One more time, when you pay 0$, you get the amount of quality your money have purchased.
To finish, thank you Eugenia for posting something from Advogato. Which is a very good site, except maybe from the Linux trolls ;-)))
One more time, when you pay 0$, you get the amount of quality your money have purchased.
Wow. You’re a professionnal troller, aren’t you ?
It’s lack of organization/agreement between developers what
avoids linux from being way more popular. It’s not really lack of software itself.
and just why is it impossible for someone to do something BETTER than microsoft?
I don’t understand where the concept of Microsoft = “the best ever and ever will be” came from. I have certainly tried better things than windows and office.
Wow. You’re a professionnal troller, aren’t you ?
With that sort of quality? Nah, it’s an amateur.
I daresay Xavier is one of those weak minded souls who equates the Linux and X combination with Dos and Win3.1
That’s said, my dear Nico, of course i’m a professionnal troll. How did you guess it ?
Because i miss the magic sentence : Linux ? It’s rock !
How marvelous is so a simple world…
Just be carefull, somebody may think that such simplicity is only reserved to simple-minded ;-)))
I don’t think, Aesiamun, that exaggerating is necessary.
In fact better is very hard to define, for IT, it’s some combinaison of price/performance/feature/ease of use.
Microsoft, as other company of yesterday and tomorrow, may be very good in some departement. But i repeat myself, for 0$, Linux is very well suited for simple usage, and time to time, less simple.
He doesnt state anything other than the obvious in this “article”
I read it this morning and my first thought after reading it was , why?
simple, lets negate anything remotely joyfull.
well well…
is where I found my conclusion that they think Microsoft is impossible to pass in terms of quality:
“and instead focusses on their own cool thing and self-gratifying cool features, because they think they can do better (which is where the ignorance combined with ego comes in).”
and not everything is in response to your trolls
[i]That’s said, my dear Nico, of course i’m a professionnal troll. How did you guess it ?
Because i miss the magic sentence : Linux ? It’s rock ! [i]
Mon cher Xavier,
I didn’t even mention linux. But what you wrote is clearly stupid. Some free softwares with 0$ cost are crap, as many of commercial softwares. But there ARE also many free softwares of great quality, which beats commercial software hands down (for example, JBoss, Apache). Cost of software isn’t a good measure of software quality…
And as said earlier, with such a crap statement, you are in fact far from beeing a “professionnal” troller. Too lame. A good troller would be far more subtile.
“… and instead focusses on their own cool thing and self-gratifying cool features, because they think they can do better (which is where the ignorance combined with ego comes in).”
This sounds odd. For the last 12 months, everybody has been speaking about how Open Source is making whatever it can to _copy_ Microsoft and its products and accusing it of forgetting its own initial drive for new things.
And now this: “ignorance”, “focus on own cool things” and “self-gratification”. Sounds to me somebody isn’t too much up to date. Oh well.
Microsoft is associated with quality because that is the first company most people hear of when they purchase their first computer.
There is this fiction that if they aren’t “running Microsoft software”, they’re some how behind the “8th ball”. It is all about marketing, without marketing, Microsoft would never had grown to the size it is today.
As for “OpenSource Arrogance”. First of all:
1) The OpenSource community is a large and diverse community of people, ranging from the extreme “everything should be GPL and proprietary” to the pragmatic that accepts there can be peaceful co-existance between the two developer ideals. How dare some one, such as the half-wit from Advogato come up with pre-emptive conclusions based on nothing but cheap rhetoric and arrogance.
2) The OpenSource community either follows a standard that has been developed by a coalition of companies or developes one themselves, such as OGG Vorbis. Microsoft has a fixation that if it is developed by others, then obviously, it is inferior. The same complex behind Windows NT. Forget the fact that there are openstandards like the UNIX specifications and POSIX, why not just go ahead and re-invent the wheel to satisfy some zealot hatred of other companies.
3) Most OpenSource people aren’t as extreme has RMS. If RMS wants to toot his horn, then so be it. He has the right of freedom of speech, which he exercises. People who think that he some how “represents the OSS movement” should truely get their brains examined. It would be like saying that every Microsoft employee agree’s with the ideas of management.
Matthew Gardiner :
“Microsoft is associated with quality”
Where have you find this ? Microsoft is associated with a numerous thing BUT the quality…
They speak themselve of trying to improve this departement.
The only piece of software who reveals a little quality in Microsoft software is Linux. Precisely because Linux is a pure zero quality software, except the price. That’s all ;-)))
>>1) The OpenSource community is a large and diverse community of people, ranging from the extreme “everything should be GPL and proprietary” to the pragmatic that accepts there can be peaceful co-existance between the two developer ideals.<<
Unfortunatly if you frequent Slashdot, ZDNet, Yahoo, and even OSNews you mainly see the “extreme” people you talk about. Mostly it’s the Linux crowd. I’ve seen many stories where Microsoft isn’t even mentioned and the very first message on the board is by some Linux troll badmouthing M$ and preaching Open Source and Linux. If these posts are your only exposure to the OSS crowd, you will think of them as arrogant and childish.
.combined with ill eagle payper liesense hostage ransom scams, thrown together with billyuns of J.’s hardearned dollars “disappearing”, in the associated stock markup larceny.
now that’s genuine unabashed Godless arrogance.
mod me DOWN eug., IT’s all gooed fromnowon.
One more time, the quality of Apache is to be free, free as beer. Apache cruelly lacks any threading capabilities, just because it is another “Linux minded” software, and Linux have very poor threading feature. But “hacker” promised that in the 2.6 or later kernel, this 20 years old feature of other system will be really implemented in Linux. That’s apart, Linux ? It’s rock ! The only system warping you in the past, and for 0$. I think we need to create another category of system. Operating system is not rich enough to describe Linux, NS for Nostalgia System will be perfect ;-)))
But please, Jboss is not free, you have to pay ( little dollars ) for the documentation. Anyway Jboss can’t be compared with Apache, just because Apache is running…
I don’t see why people in the open source community care at all about Microsoft. First off, they don’t have to. Microsoft is a business and as such must turn a profit. It competes for those profits against other companies such as Netscape. Because of that, Microsoft needs to be concerned about whether or not their products are competitive with OSS. The day Microsoft fails to turn a profit is the day it dies. The day the FSF fails to turn a profit would be just like any other day. Thus, open source/free software will be around long after MS. The community should realize this and focus on what it does best: provide a valuable, stable, and reliable code base that all users can access and use for their computing. Let the corporations try to compete and turn profits. Whenever one of them gets killed in their game of monopoly, there is always the potential for their code to be donated to the OSS community. That could very well be the fate of Windows also. As technologies and markets change, we will see the long term advantages of the open source model more clearly.
Well, Linux certainly is backwards, but Microsoft also doesn’t exactly have a point with an OS which still uses garbled three-letter extensions to determine the content of a file, and volume letters to access drives. Not to mention the root-by-default policy. Face it, MS is neither innovative nor is their OS in any way modern. Oh, and proper multithreading was introduced into mainstream Windows in 1995, that’s been seven years ago (not twenty).
Eugenia,
Only weeks after you announce you’re leaving the editorial board of osnews and now you submitting this crap?
“Linux cost nothing, therefore has no value” Hmm….how much is air again??
Puhlease! Have you suddenly turned you back on the whole “no badmouthing other OS’s” — or have you finally realized that OS discussion should be all about the zealotry?
At least be a little more subtle about the types of articles you submit…..
“Microsoft has a fixation that if it is developed by others, then obviously, it is inferior. The same complex behind Windows NT.”
Rather ironic on two counts, at least as I (possibly mis-) understand what you’re saying:
1. NT was jointly developed by MS and IBM, marketed by MS as NT/W2K/XP, and by IBM as OS/2 and OS/2 Warp.
2. I’ve had two crashes in 2 1/2 years running W2K. That’s a very refreshing change from Win98, which is probably responsible for more Linux downloads and sales than anything the Free Software Foundation has done. (Not at all intended as any slight to the worthiness of the FSF’s efforts.)
BTW, I’ve got Win2K, Win98 and FreeBSD on my machine, have run QNX, and intend to install Gentoo Linux within a week or two. Each of these OSs, except Win98, is useful to me for accomplishing certain tasks.
Open source and closed source are both capable of building the better mousetrap. When you don’t allow others to see your mousetrap until they buy it, and then refuse them to show it to others, you squelch the concept of innovation.
You may have the better mousetrap, but I may have the better cheese. If we can’t share ideas openly, we’ll never be able to make the BEST moustrap.
The conflict between open standards and business is that business wants to make money off of the product, open standards wants to make the product available to all for free.
are Microsoft’s hallmarks. Those are two leads that the Open Source community would be hard pressed to equal.
I’m astonished as to why this got posted on OS News. That whole thread is a waste of electrons. Eugenia, I’ve always thought of you as being quite picky in both your postings and reviews. So I don’t get why you paid any notice to a pointless discussion.
What evidence was made to support the “incredible” technological advantage of M$. The funny thing is that for years I’d been reading that the commercial Unices had capabilities that could be found nowhere else and that M$ couldn’t match them.
Lately, the common wisdom is that Linux will supplant the selfsame commercial Unices and not severely impact M$ installed base.
Here is the scenario: the “advanced” Unices are going to stand idly by while the “incredibly advanced” M$ will take over the planet and the “arrogant” OpenSourcers will do nothing?
What bullshit. I come to OS News to find quality posting. I can find crap on my own.
“The Open Source community’s answer is to ignore Microsoft’s incredible technological lead”.
Maybe not for servers (well, NTFS has had stable journaling and meta-data for a long time), but for mulitmedia (my own concern), noone in the OSS world has come with something close to DirectShow. And even though it’s not perfect it allows some things that would be hard to do otherwise.
Why is there an open SSL library and no open codec library ?! (with an interface usable on every OS). If you look at mplayer, gstreamer and other players, you’ll see that they all want to make their own thing with them own API, and “ignoring the Microsoft lead” is exactly what they all do…
Dear Lord this was a sorry article. It would have made more sense in say 95-98ish years, but certainly not now. Linux has made enormous gains in ease of use and functionality in the last 2 years unequaled in this industry. Not mention its the fastest growning OS in the server space. Add the MONO project to that and we have a VERY real threat to M$.
What I get tired of hearing is the M$ trolls that havent even used Linux recently or long enough to learn it, sit and bash linux. What a joke! In contrast, most of the linux crowd is very proficiant in windows. I run Linux, windows and Netware at home and work. I recently decided that, for gaming purposes, I was going to switch back to XP from SuSE 8.1. Well, after one day I was ready to flush XP down the toilet. I was right back into linux post haste. Other than some, not all DX gaming, I have yet to find anything windows can do as good or better than linux. All it needs now is more enterprise level application support on the desktop side of things. MONO will make this an easy reality. Crossover from Codeweavers already gives you support for M$ office, lotus notes, quickbooks, several others and soon Adobe photoshop in linux.
One other rant….wtf is up with M$ prices. For love of all that is holy! I buy and pay for my linux distributions. SuSE 7.3 pro cost me 79.99 full, then came 8.0 and 8.1 at $49.99 upgrade prices. The Pro bundle comes with single click install of just about every worthy linux app in existance (2500+ on 7cds) so I really dont have to worry about downloads etc or buying more software. Once installed I am in 100% control of my machine to do with it or set it up as I please. I recently tried to buy a legit copy of XP pro for my wifes machine (cause Home edition is a pile of crap) and M$ wants $300. $149 if youre upgrading from an older version. Then you get the added bonus of WPA and are forced to live with everything the way M$ thinks you should have it. Ok…so now that youve just spent $300 and signed your computer away to M$ what have you got? Jack S–T Now all you have is a computer with OS installed. Whats that…want to write a document or a spreadsheet….not a problem, for a mere $600 more you can get officeXP pro. M$ is one of the richest companies on earth and they still insist on raping us and continue to raise prices. Then there is graphics software, photo software, antivirus, cd burning software, etc etc. So when all is said and done, if you do it legitimately, youre looking at about $1500 to $2000 in software just to get you started. Lets not forget that next year you will get to spend at least 50% of that price all over again for upgrades to the latest versions of said software.
The author states his motivation a few posts down: the Apache-team won’t accept his Samba-code. Therefore they are arrogant and stuck-up.
The author looks more like a typical sore loser, reverting to name-calling.
Microsoft’s “superior technology” turns out to be the same technology that the author has imitated and reproduced. So in the end, he tries to claim that his own work is superior to that of the Open Source community.
Maybe it is good work. But if it is, he could always fork off Apache to form Inca (native Americans in samba-producing areas), and let users (and Microsoft lawyers) decide if he’s right.
I think the author is dead wrong where he claims Microsoft’s “incredible” technical lead.
I believe Microsoft and Open Source are definitely in the same ballpark.
It is always important to watch out for turning arrogant, and therefore introverted. But I don’t believe that is a dominant open source characteristic; and if the .Net supporters win over the “embrace-extend-extinguish” supporters within Microsoft, it isn’t too dominant there either.
I guess we should all sit back in gratitude and admiration waiting for Microsoft to come up with great new technology for the rest of us. Maybe I’ll buy a copy of “The Road Ahead” to see what they’ve been up to these past few years.
it’s a little thing called FUNDING which most open sourced projects have NONE of… stupid.
-j
“What I get tired of hearing is the M$ trolls that havent even used Linux recently or long enough to learn it, sit and bash linux.”
What I am tired of is linux people making up excuses for their OS’s limitations and bashing everyone else.
Yes. Linux is not the perfect free OS that Linux people would have you believe. It’s cool and all, but a lot of people will not use it for different reasons. Tell that yo a linux person and you are branded a stupid, mind numb person who gave your soul to MS.
all oses have their problems.
Yea MS sucks in many ways
Yea Linux sucks in many ways
Yea OSX sucks in many ways
Yea BeOS sucks in many ways
Yet I find the linux/MS people to have the biggest mouths and the first to slam everyone else for using another OS.
MS people say Linux people are to cheap, Linux people say everyone is stupid. OSX people defend themselves from both. BeOS people… Well I don’t see to much from them lately
Anyway, There is alot of BS from MS/Linux people, but MS people have one a few things going for them.
#1) MS has a lot of $$$ and uses it
#2) There are a lot more MS people
“Apache cruelly lacks any threading capabilities, just because it is another “Linux minded” software, and Linux have very poor threading feature.”
Well, it should be “Unix minded”.
Anyway, even if you might not want to use a threaded implementation on Linux, you could use it on other platforms.
That’s what Apache httpd’s MPS are for.
Cheers,
Kevin
Was Burger King or Wendy’s arrogant to think they could compete with McDonald’s? Instead of recognizing that McDonald’s had superior marketing and fatshare, they sought to reinvent the wheel, er burger.
Obviously with the success of McDonalds, it must be high quality given the overwhelming number of stores and burgers sold. (Billions and Billions served!)
These people must be crazy to create a burger and let people decide that they want it their way. They’ll loose market share because their sauce code is too open, too.
Why do people think the Microsoft way is the only way? Unix people are used to many solutions of varied benefits and drawbacks.
The whole thread is just silly.
1) Opensource has not ignored MS. Sometimes they try to accomodate like with Samba. Sometimes they follow like with Mono. Sometimes they immitate like gnumeric, Evolution or OpenOffice. However, most developers deep into the opensource arena never ignore MS. So when you provide a free alternative based on MS products how are you being Arrogant?
2) MS is not always in the technological lead as other readers point out but they are very keen on identifying features users want and implementing them.
This leads to a misconception of arrogance on the opensource folks. Why? Corporations like Redhat, IBM, ximian and other contribute to projects but they do not run them. The people that run them are usually folks who code this for one reason. They like it. They had an idea of how to do something and they actually — gasp! — did something about it. When people scream that their code or idea should be implemented the maintainers actually think of the good of the project and the code first.
The sad part is that this thread once again is going into the M$ sux versus the linux zealots crowd and that is sad.
MS has its uses. It makes a good exchange server, and the secreataries and gamers and business people need systems like MS. File servers are probably best kept on NT with Active Directory and all that even when samba starts supporting that Active this and that stuff.
I like linux for DNS servers. I got two P200 boxes that just chug with DNS and admin from webmin. Any noob administrator can deal with it. I like linux for my web servers. IIS does not cut it and even with Apache 2.0/NT2000 I have had less issues with the linux boxes. I like linux for backup servers because you don’t have to dedicate Sun hardware to backup duties. I like Solaris+Oracle for database boxes.
People will probably will have different preferences and choices based on their situation but the difference is being experienced enough to realize that other people have different situations. People have different preferences and it does mean that they are M$ trolls or linux zealots.
Being a developer on both Windows and *NIX, I can see the advantages of both platforms. More often than not, I am going to use Windows for my front end and *NIX as my backend. Simply because that is where their strengths are.
I don’t agree with the a lot of what MS does and find some satisfaction when open source wins out when a company or goverments switches to it. It will eventually cause MS to change their thinking somewhat and get in line with open standards. On the other hand *NIX zealots need to learn Windows users will be put off by “MS is the devil don’t use it”. The majority of end users are not developers and just want to surf the web, send e-mail and pictures of Johnny to their loved ones. I realize they can do that on *NIX but most users don’t want to have to ./configure … make install… now how do I run it?
I’ll put my flame retardent gear on now. I’m off to catch Web Head — Green One
Can you explain something?
Corporations like Redhat, IBM, ximian and other contribute to projects but they do not run them..
Does this mean they don’t run them, like “I don’t run windows, I run linux”, or “I don’t run windows, Bill Gates does”?
Maybe I’m confused
Anyway I agree with your point, except for NT being the best choice for file serving. I can’t use NT server shares with Active Directory because I’m on linux. I can use any share that a linux box puts out though…same with other Unices. Windows can use samba shares…I think a Unix would be a better choice.
Like MS runs the project that creates Windows.
Redhat and SuSE etc..etc.. do NOT run the projects that are needed to create a Linux system.
If all the linux companies went out of business tommorrow then linux development would slow to a crawl. However, linux itself would remain intact.
Redhat is a distribution of the linux OS.
Linux is made up of all these programs, services and packages. Redhat owns and runs almost none of them.
The projects, and programs are developed by people.
Some of the people are employees of Redhat, Ximian, IBM and others.
However, the maintainers of the projects do not answer to any of those companies.
Most of the people started the projects in their spare time and do NOT get paid to do them. They code these projects because they want to. Because they think it is fun. Those maintainers run the projects. They make decisions based on what they think the project and code needs.
Not Redhat, or SuSE or Ximian needs.
Samba will support Active directories soon. This will help you. If you are going to put out a file server that will be used by Windows desktops and for the project you need Active directories then Windows is your best choice right now.
“Samba will support Active directories soon. This will help you. If you are going to put out a file server that will be used by Windows desktops and for the project you need Active directories then Windows is your best choice right now.”
I dunno. I use Mac OS X in a Windows network with no problems.
My environment is very unix focued with most development being linux or Solaris based.
I use samba on linux and Solaris for a file server and the Windows clients have no problem seeing it.
Samba does not handle Active Directories right now.
My linux client can get to all the network shares at work. Why? None of them are Active Directory based. No, I do not go all command-line either. I use LinNeighborhood.
I have no idea if Macs support Active Directories on either the client or server side.
> 1. NT was jointly developed by MS and IBM, marketed by
> MS as NT/W2K/XP, and by IBM as OS/2 and OS/2 Warp.
Actually, the products that were sold as “OS/2” bear very little resemblence to those sold as “Windows NT” and its subsequent flavors.
The two share some history and some minor bits of code, but the two diverged *significantly* well before the first IBM release of OS/2 (v2.0) in 1992…
I’m inclined to think this was posted maliciously… I usually enjoy reading OSNews but was there any point at all to referencing this article?
This was trollish/flamebait pure and simple … if you want to post articles bashing Linux or Open Source or even Windows, go ahead let’s just see that they have some meat to them.
when open source guys were arguing which OS is best,
M$ was already doing Desktop domination with Office, etc
when open source guys are arguing if StarOffice is
better than M$ office, mozilla is better than IE,
M$ is in the direction of network domination.
Just consider this: On a 28.8 kps dialup connection
can you run the latest KDE or Gnorme desktop remotely ?
I think it is not possble (your milage may vary), but
it is possible to do a win2k/xp style RDP session.
the reason is that for the most part, open source
gui/desktop are tied to the decade old X, so no matter
how good is your compression tricks, how clever the
LBX proxy, the stupid X still need to shuffle an array
of fonts back and forth several rounds between the
server (like XFree86) and the client (like netscape)
before a working window could be shown.
So apart from a few exceptions (like xterm which use
only one fixed font), X is useless even on a home
grade DSL (capped by the 128k uplink bottle neck).
yeah, more people are turning to linux/open source
for solutions, but is that because open source is
better or is that because people simply want
something for nothing ?????
if M$ shit and open source shit are priced at equal level,
people’s choice will be obvious – go to any
P2P network and do a search – WinXP vs linux distro
OfficeXP vs StarOffice.
other interesting points:
1 install apps by using only the mouse
2 make a device driver without recompile the kernel
3 run an OS without the need to use a C compiler
My personal preferance is for:
Netware on file/print. Yes, they still win all the awards and still do it best in this category. NSS 3.0 filesystem in Netware 6.x has full support for NCP, CIFS, NFS, AFP name spaces so anything can talk to em.
Linux for web, dns, dhcp, firewall, IDS, and most other mission critical network services.
Windows for application serving. Like it or not, M$ owns this territory right now.
Email can be handled by ANY platform really. Due to security and up time issues I prefer to host email on Netware or Linux. Although Netware is much better in terms of security, Linux has all the great and free security/ antispam tools.
In my server spaces here and at home the Netware and Linux boxes are really so solid and boring that they dont even need monitors on em. While the Windows boxes do their job well, I spend a great deal of time dealing with memory leaks, security patches, and Virus updates. I think 2kserver could have been so much better if they made it a real server OS (lean and mean and secure) and not 2kpro with some server bolt ons.
As far as M$ trolls vs. Linux Zealots…..yes they are a pain. In my opinion both are a detrement to their respective platforms. I think the Linux ppl (Im one of them) are frustrated by the fact that most M$ only ppl are closed minded, proprietary, and backed by a monster company that holds a monster monopoly. In my experience, most of the ones that bash linux have no business judging anything but M$ products in the first place. Regardless, the attitude of the Linux Zealots to refuse to accept Windows as having a place is not going to help the effort. Especially when Linux cant host much applications. Most of which are win32. As far as M$ being the devil…Im not going to argue there though. They are a convicted monopolist that doesnt compete in this industry…they destroy. The fact that the Linux movement is enormous and world wide doesnt give M$ a target to paint. Which in my mind, all opinions aside, is great for the market and competition…..and generally fun to watch.
Another poorly done troll!
You can write drivers without a kernel recompile…it’s called a module.
Also, you don’t need gcc to run the OS.
With redhat and mandrake, debian and many others you can install software with the mouse, no need for keyboard commands.
Where are your complaints?
If operating systems were characters from seinfeld, i think linux would have to be george because linux zealots seem to be as frustrated as him.
MacOS X would of course be kramer as it is a weird operating system.
Newman would be beos and that leaves seinfeld or elaine for windows xp.
<quote>I agree with everything you say up to the Application serving part.</quote>
It all depends on the application you are serving. Some are best served by Solaris or AIX or Linux or NT. It all depends heavily on the application.
</quote>Email can be handled by ANY platform really. Due to security and up time issues I prefer to host email on Netware or Linux. Although Netware is much better in terms of security, Linux has all the great and free security/ antispam tools. </quote>
Once again, it all depends so heavily on what you need. I have seen Notes servers running on linux, Solaris, NT2000 and AIX. For Exchange there is NT2000. Groupwise the great ignored option of course I say stick with Novell complete solution. As you were saying it all depends so much on what you need and what you got and your circumstances.
There’s nothing more repulsive than an ass-kisser licking his lips to the thought of expanding into rimjobs.
Not only is this guy obviously lying out his ass but the lies are so huge (as hitler theorized) that he believes no one will challenge them.
Mickeysoft has no innovation (they just steal from others), has no technology lead (clustering, scalability, uptime) except in blue screens.
Microsoft is shit, and if another viable vendor came along in the x86 arena (apple maybe) people would leave the windoze platform in droves. People I interact with everyday, from secretaries to ceo’s, all detest windoze. It’s easy to see why since sitting down at a windoze desktop is a supremely frustrating experience. Those cartoons of the guy flipping off his computer and the computer returning the salute are born of the windoze experience. It’s not the computer he’s angry at, it’s windoze.
And now linux distros, like xandros, are actually equal to winxp, and will be better, far better, a year from now. It’s mickeysoft that will be playing catchup.
> Another poorly done troll!
hehe, hard to find a linux board without trolls
all over it 8-))))
>You can write drivers without a kernel recompile…it’s >called a module.
I used to make a living in writing this “module”s, so..
My point is that without the whole kernel src
and using only kernel headers, it is hard to
do a driver.
> Also, you don’t need gcc to run the OS.
What about package with only src code ?
> With redhat and mandrake, debian and many others you can > install software with the mouse, no need for keyboard commands.
What if I choose mwm as my window manager ?
do I get icons/shortcuts with only mouse clicks ?
> Where are your complaints?
why do you think I have complaints ?
I enjoy linux, as much as I enjoy windows,
I simply pick the better part of both worlds.
flogger :
“Microsoft is shit(…) the guy flipping off his computer and the computer returning the salute are born of the windoze experience”
Well, why not ? This is an opinion.
“(…) And now linux distros, like xandros, are actually equal to winxp”
But here, this is becoming very strange. Do you really want to mean that Linux try to equal shit ?
For sure, this is not a great idea ;-)))
I know this is basically a troll, but I would love to hear Jeremy Allisons (co-lead developer with Andrew Tridgell on Samba)tales on this
Perhaps the most arrongant group is Free Software developers, not open source developers as a whole. Take BSD developers for example, while they have some snobbish controversial ones, they are all more pragmatic in comparison to GNU developers. Far less snobbish. Far less arrogant.
Don’t pin all open source developers as arrogant, because a minority aren’t. The majority is just influenced by a highly successful Marxist philosophy.
Xavier, in my times of using Linux, I find it in one way or another have better quality than Windows. If you just install Mandrake or Red Hat, you would think it is a piece of junk. The reason? They use bleeding egde software that isn’t tried and true, together with other bleeding edge software. Thus creating a less quality feel. But some distributions, specifically Lycoris and Xandros, keep up a very high standard of quality that might one day surpass Microsoft. My hacked-up Mandrake 9.0 box with almost everything custom behaves better than Windows XP. However, Mdk 9.0 out of the box is full of problems.
The arrogance and fragmentation of the community is why Linux doesn’t have much of the desktop market. Why do we need KDE and GNOME. Why not just focus on one and make it work. People often argue that “choice” is important but what good is it when you have to choose between a bunch of half broken things.
If people want OSS to be taken seriously they need to drop all the arrogance and start building solutions that address market need. Apache is an excellent example of this kind of thinking it is a fantastic piece of software. But what I want to know is why is it that there are about 40 different OSS POP3 mail servers out there, each with their own little nuisances and minor feature differences, but not one good solid OSS groupware package which will compete feature for feature with something like Exchange or Lotus Notes.
Doubt I’ll add anything to this discussion but the comments have brought up an interesting point. I believe the one way for the open source ideology to succeed is for the developers and community in general to try to teach others and help others contribute more than they do now. We should go out of our way and be creative to try to make learning on Linux and playing with Linux fun. If you can make developement fun for the community you’ll get more developers and better software. I bet the average teenager geek can code circles around the average sys admin. So keep it simple and make it fun and we have a chance, no matter how the community acts or how much the software costs.
<quote>I used to make a living in writing this “module”s, so..
My point is that without the whole kernel src
and using only kernel headers, it is hard to
do a driver.</quote>
However, most major drivers including all the ones available from vendors come in rpm format so you don’t have to have a C compiler or the frickin’ source. Pre-compiled kernel mods that install into your /lib/modules and even update your modules.conf for goodness sake.
<quote>What about package with only src code ?</quote>
Like what? I use apt for rpm to get most everything I need in straight up rpm format. Smack that together with synaptic I end not having to compile and at the same time having a gui interface to software installation. The only limitation is the bandwidth and yes it takes a while to download lots of stuff.
Honestly, if it is only available in source code then it seriously beta anyway. Like I have said before, I wish developers would not make their source code available on a website but only by request or some hidden ftp site. Why?
So, trolls would have no source code available to complain about not being able to compile. If the program is in usable shape it is available in rpm format somewhere.
If you want to complain about format and stuff complain that it takes a system with apt on it to negotiate in any way the maze of dependencies. That arguement at least has teeth because the big boys like Redhat do not include the apt solution with the distro.
<quote>What if I choose mwm as my window manager ?
do I get icons/shortcuts with only mouse clicks ?</quote>
It all depends on whether or not the distro maker supports mwm. If I use Litestep on Windows some of the themes do not generate menus without manual intervention since I am in essence not using the Start menu hierachy. If you don’t use the windows desktop it is not like you can expect MS to support your dippy *Step theme. Why should Redhat or Mandrake support mwm? If the distro comes with mwm then it should support the behavior, yes. Otherwise, your complaint does not apply.
This is why I like the fact that by default Redhat 8 comes with one gui-desktop installed and that is Gnome. You have to go out and conciously choose to install KDE or anything else. If you expect RH to support blackbox or something else forget it and that is good.
It is the classic two-face arguement. Half the people complain there are no standards and the distros ought to pick a desktop or interface and stick with it.
The other half of the trolls scream and holler that there is no clean support across every single possible dipstick tiny window manager known to man and there should be better inter-operability.
> The arrogance and fragmentation of the community is why
> Linux doesn’t have much of the desktop market.
One man’s “arrogance” is another man’s pragmatism.
Keep in mind that much open-source software is designed and written to address a personal need, not a desire to win a more generalized market share.
> Why do we need KDE and GNOME. Why not just focus on one
> and make it work.
Which one? Who makes the choice? And who enforces that choice once it is made?
Red Hat is moving towards a unified desktop presentation, and look at the flak they’ve gotten. It might be a good move or not (hard to say), but such decisions have to be made within the confines of the Linux community — they cannot be dictated.
> People often argue that “choice” is important but what
> good is it when you have to choose between a bunch of
> half broken things.
Not much different from the Microsoft world in that regard, is it? 🙂
“One more time, when you pay 0$, you get the amount of quality your money have purchased.
Wow. You’re a professionnal troller, aren’t you ?”
I love how open source zealots would rather just accuse people of trolling instead of address the alegations made. But I guess I should expect that from a lot of the open source community by now.
Bottom line is the article is largely correct. Open source has not produced anything innovative. All it has done is clone existing software and ideas.
And in many cases, yes OSS is way behind closed source software in the technology department. For example, the Linux kernel is light years behind the Solaris kernel. Example. KOffice is light years behind MS Office. (And don’t tell me OpenOffice. The only reason it is as good as it is is because it was a gift from SUN that was already well developed commercial software.) GIMP, although useful, is light years behind PhotoShop.
I mean really… Outside of a few common applications like mail software and web servers, is there any open souce software that is anything more than a poorly done and semi-functional clone of a commercial product? Not really.
Who cares about who is arrogant, or bad or good. The issue is not this namecalling and ethical crap
Bottom line, standards are important in computing: APIs, file formats, communication protocols. The MS business plan was, is, continues to be – we own the frickin’ standard. Buy our stuff or don’t have a personal computer that works with anything. That is good for MS shareholders. MS is just doing exactly what any business would do in their shoes.
Of course having a standard – even a one company one – is tremendously valuable and MS gets credit for having done this in the early days of the PC. Lots of companies made money and saved money because of what MS did.
But the problem is there is a better, long-term solution to “One Company to Rule Them All.” It’s called open standards, standards controlled by technical bodies, standards controlled by anyone and anything other than ONE FRICKEN COMPANY. So that multiple products and platforms – even proprietary ones like OS X and Windows — can function together and communicate. Unix and its various flavors and the Internet and OSS are the model for this – nobody owns it.
MS is like the Aunt that comes and stays with the family while Mom and Dad are sick or something and then she won’t go home. She makes the mistake of thinking her good deeds entitle her to free rent forever.
> Open source has not produced anything innovative. All it
> has done is clone existing software and ideas.
How many commercial single-floppy firewall products can you name?
One could argue that the DEVELOPMENT PROCESS that some open source software uses is innovative — read the paper _The Cathedral and the Bazaar_ for more information.
> I mean really… Outside of a few common applications
> like mail software and web servers, is there any open
> souce software that is anything more than a poorly done
> and semi-functional clone of a commercial product?
Mozilla? VNC? Samba? EMACS? Perl?
How about FreeBSD?
“The ‘this’ is also ‘that’. The ‘that’ is also ‘this’ … That the ‘that’ and the ‘this’ cease to be opposites is the very essence of Tao. Only this essence, an axis as it where, is the centre fo the circle responding to the endless changes.”
Bind, Samba, CUPS, OpenSSH (far surpasses it’s commercial cousin), PHP, Python, Eclipse…
And many more.
Yes, it does seem that MS copied the GUI, VMS (or whatever DEC thing they ripped off for NT), etc., etc. FIRST. Wow, that’s really great, they copied before OSS copied. That’s a real “technological” achievement.
One of the funniest things about OSS to me is precisely this. MS’s whole modus operandi (taken from the old IBM playbook) is offer something very standard, not leading edge, and win in the market on things other than “being better.” They have NEVER been “better.” It was always “good enough,” (just barely), and then win based on other things like marketing, predatory pricing, etc.
Along comes Linux and OSS and at least initially the goal is not to make something better, just something as good and free. Just like MS, copy and good enough – except free and not controlled by one company.
“I mean really… Outside of a few common applications like mail software and web servers, is there any open souce software that is anything more than a poorly done and semi-functional clone of a commercial product? Not really.”
Well, which no opensource desktop system has a network- and protocol transparent IO architecture like KIO?
Cheers,
Kevin
….all of you who are joining into this argument, are really just being used by Eugenia to ‘get back’ at the owners of this site, IMHO.
So, please feel free to continue the flames, but understand at least that you are pawns in someone elses game. She set you up and is laughing at what she’s created now.
Would any of you, in your right mind think that this article was actually submitted because she honestly thought it would be worth discussing?????
“Mozilla?”
Sorry. It’s nothing more than a gift from Netscape. Not innovative.
Samba?
A clone of many commercial products that existed for years before SAMBA was even concieved. SAMBA hardly introduced file and print sharing between Windows and UNIX.
EMACS?
And bloated editor that includes everything except the kitchen sink? What’s so great about that?
Perl?
So what? It’s a scripting language (and some would say not a very good once since it encourages lousy programming). Nothing new here.
OpenSSH
Still a clone. nothing invovative here.
PHP
A clone of ASP based on the C language. Nothing innovative about embedded scripting languages.
Do you see the point? There is nothing inovative about any of these. They are copies of already existing ideas.
That they are all free…gifts to use and change to make better…
What has your beloved MS every given you besides bluescreens?
Microsoft is based on other people’s software…
DOS? purchased from someone else
Windows? MacOS
Excel? Lotus123
Besides the fact that they aren’t original…they cost more than they are worth.
I just wanted to reiterate what others have already said. The Mono project completely demolishes that totally biased and hopelessly naive argument.
http://www.go-mono.com/index.html
I switched to Linux from Windows about a year ago for three reasons; first, I’m a student interested in software development. That’s synonimous with being poor and in need of decent tools. Linux is great as a developer’s platform, whereas Windows can’t shed its candy coating, which makes it harder to learn about computers. Second, there’s much more flexible liscencing with Linux stuff.And finally, most important of all, I don’t believe anyone for a single second who says Linux today is better than Windows. That’s just wrong. But at its rate of development compared to MS’s, I think it’s safe to assume it’ll be the best in the biz within a couple of years, and I’m trying to get a head start so that when Linux / OSS / free software becomes more powerful, I can be comfortable using it right off the bat. I’m working on inferior software with the understanding that it’s a good sized investment. If ya don’t think OSS is gonna pass MS within a few years, compare IE with Mozilla!
I’ve seen an awful lot of posts complaining about a lack of innovation in OpenSource software, and an engineer am confused.
Innovation is a funny thing, it means very different things to different people.
for me, all I want from an OS is:
Games/Applications that do not crash or cause memory leaks. I want drivers to be available for my hardware, the day that I buy them and I want them to work. I don’t want to key in anything other than my user name and password on installing my OS. I love the ability to add/remove/modify software, especially the OS. I want the ability to add/remove/modify EVERYTHING–I’m an engineer and as such, my arrogance tells me that I can always make something better than a large corporation looking to cut costs (though obviously not cheaper, in terms of time & money.)
Innovation, bah. To me Win95 B/C were innovations when compared to Win95A, because 90% of my driver problems were fixed. Win95B/C IS A COPY OF THE MAC OS–that makes it NOT INNOVATIVE in terms of “the future of computing.” whatever the hell moving target that is. Win 2k, & Win Me were 2 steps backwards (for me) because they broke compatibility with some software & hardware. If they released some support, even slow but working emulation support for these games (especially the 5star games,) I would still be using 2k.
in the past month I’ve installed Gentoo, Red Hat, Mandrake, Attempted BeOS (hardware incompatibilites prevented it form working,) Windows XP, Windows 2k. I’m new to linux, but have used PCs since DOS 5 (DOSSHELL.) Recently I stopped by a Macintosh store to look at their high end dual 1.25GHZ machines w/ OS X.
Please note that I have never read a windows manual. I hate manuals.
1) Of these, OS X looked the nice and was easiest to use (though the fact that EVERY SINGLE THING YOU DO MUST BE DONE EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WINDOWS makes things a little difficult to learn [like playing baseball with a lefty glove.])
2) XP/2K were easiest to install (though I can’t get it to work on an i440BX system with a P3 Tualatin CPU.) They are both fairly easy to use (except for networking–for some reason windows likes to reset certain configurations over and over.) Also, I am an adult and feel that I know what’s best for me. I don’t like that fact that I can’t choose ANYTHING other than removing support for handicapped keyboards. They also run modern Direct X games at full speed. (A big plus.)
3) Gentoo was a bit of a pain to install (at 2 hours a day [i’m very busy,] I’m on my 5th day & haven’t been able to install it yet (though I’m on the last step, setting up (/boot HDA1 etc.) on a celeron 333MHz i810E board with a 40Gig drive & 288MB RAM. Compiling took like a day, and just updating apps took like 6 hours (the merge thing.) Bootstrap.sh took a long time too. I know it’s a slow system but seriously, this OS would GREATLY benefit from an installation script or something similar. Being completely new to linux, I was able to figure out basic command line comands. If I didn’t print out the x86 installation guide off their website, I would have NO WAY to install Gentoo. I’ll find out how it works in about another day when I have more time.
4) I used Mandrake 9.0 for about 2 weeks using Ice, KDE & Gnome. I really liked ALL 3, though I liked ICE the most. I have & had no idea how to install software on this OS. I download LGeneral, figured out how to unTar it. Then what? I tried looking around, no luck. The software Mandrake comes with is nice though! The OS ran VERY SMOOTH. Operations that would take some time to do were done in the background, not hogging up all my resources (it truly felt like multi-tasking wasn’t just a marketing term anymore as in windows.) I was VERY impressed with it–though I didn’t get to fully use it because I really need a tutorial for installing software & CVS.
5) I’m very interested in APT GET & Gentoo’s portage system, sounds pretty good, hopefully I’ll figure out without too much trouble.
6) BeOS Max edition froze in booting from the CD, so I wasn’t able to install it (i even tried safe mode, but the mouse pointer would appear, then the system would reboot.) There needs to be some work on supporting older hardware.
7) The main reason I am even looking at Linux is that I REALLY DON’T LIKE DUAL BOOTING. I think it’s stupid and unnecessary. Breaking support for older software really annoys me. Breaking support for older hardware annoys me more. I look forward to using Wine/Winex or Bochs to run my old favorite games. My only alternative is Windows Me. Me boots nice n quick, but has WAAAAAAAY too many memory leaks & quirks (like not being able to make a DOS boot disk.)
My whole point to this is: What may not be innovative for you is certainly innovative for me. You want an innovative experience, then buy a Touch screen monitor, or use the mouse that you “think” to make it move. I like better mousetraps, especially the kind that don’t snap on you when you’re installing them. I like the kind that do what their supposed to do, always.
what about directx? and please don’t tell me hardware accelerated xfree is better.
But certainly not where you wait for it : software. Just raise your head to the command line, and read the first characters : http… pure open-source but far for gpl, as are tcp-ip or ethernet.
The article from Advogato is right, open-source SOFTWARE developpers are mainly arrogant, and always outdated.
Open-source, one more time far from gpl, is strong in two domains :
1/ where then is no money
2/ where there is too much money to be bearable by one company
Basically the 2/ is very often standard specification, thank you Vinton Cerf 😉
The 1/ is “pre-software” idea, getting out from university research, object computing, IA and so on ( Rank Xerox lab for the GUI, Bells lab for Unix ). As soon as a market exists for an idea, open-source software become instantly outdated compared with the commercial one.
That said, the general idea behind GNU stays very interesting, because it succeed in transforming IT on a common resource, as are “natural” language, English or Chinese for sample. Not a bad result, and really usefull 😉
Neither side is really innovating at this point.
What the hell is MS doing that Sun or someone else before them were not already doing?
Not a lot.
Some of the greatest innovations of opensource are getting long in the tooth and some already have alternatives.
BIND
INN
APACHE — if there was no decent web server available at a decent price then their would be no WWW.
FTP
TCP/IP stack.
linux kernel — it ain’t unix so don’t even bothering the unix-clone crap. No decent kernel to run GNU utilities on before this.
The key is that the opensource folks are still playing catch up considering the fact that the OS itself is a lot younger than the Windows project. Free software and ideas made the Internet age. Free utilities run on every commercial Unix server I know of because it is the first thing most sysadmins do is grab their favorite gnu utilities. Apache runs the web.
The key is seeing the next vista.
I don’t see much innovation coming from the monopoly. It never does. Monopolies do not innovate. R&D at Apple is down. I do not see it there. Perhaps when the OSS people get over the idea that they necessarily have to keep playing catch up, they will understand that the only thing to do next is to innovate. The way that Deniss Ritchie, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy did before them.
lol I’m not sure what is on that site exactly, but I’m at school at the moment, and when attempting to view the article I’m getting:
http://www.advogato.org
“HTTP Error
Status: 403 Forbidden
Description: Organizational policies prohibit access to this page.”
This is not true at all. Microsoft came out with C# and some people though there was a lot of good things about it. Thats why they created Mono the open source implementation of it. The thing that people dont notice is this. Both Microsoft and open source software have been taking things from each other from the beginning. Look at the network utilities that newer versions of windows is starting to offer. Microsoft sees how handy they are to unix administrators and decide to rip them off freebsd and put them into their own os for their admins. So it has and always will go both ways. Also Microsoft probably will come out with an implementation of something first, this is because geeks dont release something thats very buggy, marketing on the other hand does.
That’s synonimous with being poor and in need of decent tools. Linux is great as a developer’s platform, whereas Windows can’t shed its candy coating, which makes it harder to learn about computers.
Borland offers free command line tools for windows. If you want to learn about computers download a C64 emulator and learn some 8-bit assembly.
As far as I can tell, the author just threw out a lot of flamebait and told the readers to have at it. There wasn’t a single bit of news in the article, just some inflammatory opinions. It doesn’t belong on OSNews.
Okay, I admit that is also just an opinion 😉
Very true!
MS took the network utilities and pretty much TCP/IP stack from BSD/Unix (Bill Joy’s code).
Still, Miguel takes the Mono idea, Gnumeric is based on Excel, OpenOffice is a clone of MSOffice etc..etc..Evolution is clone of Outlook.
Apple stole so many of the GUI ideas from Palo Alto labs.
It is all bullshit. Anytime, someone innovates in the most minor of matters someone will be right there to copy it, reverse engineer it, and put it out on a different OS.
Richard Steiner says:
“The two [OS/2 and NT] share some history and some minor bits of code, but the two diverged *significantly* well before the first IBM release of OS/2 (v2.0) in 1992…”
Their development has certainly diverged in many respects, but they share, for example, a filesystem (called “NTFS” for New Technology File System by MS and “HPFS” for High Performance File System by IBM).
I’ll leave it to you whether you consider a common filesystem to be a “minor bit of code.”
Jud
“what about directx? and please don’t tell me hardware accelerated xfree is better.”
xfree isnt a game platform…but SDL is. SDL, while still in its infancy, has already totally proved it can compete with DirectX. Unreal Tournament2003 is a great example. Give it time to grow and itll be as good as directX easily.
Everyone needs to stop and realize just how much OSS has advanced in the last 2 years. Its advancing WAY faster than M$ or any other type of software is. OSS is already closing in on, meeting, or even beating Windows2000 and WindowsXP in terms of technical capability,functionality and ease of installation and use. The next version of windows (Longhorn) isnt slated until 2005 and, if history means anything here, it will probably slide even further. At the current rate OSS is advancing, by that time it will be wiping the floor with M$. Project MONO will be rocking and, with it, porting M$ applications to Linux will be a breeze as well as linux app development in general. Its funny, but M$ highly touted .NET (paving the way for MONO) will probably be the biggest boon to OSS and Linux to date.
Regardless of what happens though, we all need to keep open minds and use the tools best suited for the job…..and freedom and choice are good things.
“MS took the network utilities and pretty much TCP/IP stack from BSD/Unix (Bill Joy’s code).”
So true, and furthermore, MSFT’s hefty Services for Unix/Interix add-on product is based 80-90% on straight BSD code. How about that?
“Lunix? It’s crock!”
I thought MS bought their tcp/ip stack from trumpet software i think
Along with talking right things about Linux and Microsoft, you are doing same as many Windows users: you know Linux and don’t know/want to know other OS’es.
(Free/Net/Open)BSD are. FreeBSD is very powerful server and (yes, you can believe me or not) _desktop_ OS, strict and reasonable designed. I know that in reply to my message some trolls will start trolling: a) “BSD is dying”; b) BSD is for servers. Neither is correct. Just go to http://ftp.freebsd.org, get an iso image, burn it onto CD, read The Handbook and install and use FreeBSD as either server or desktop.
—
Guy, who run FreeBSD on both servers and desktop machines.
Everything you listed except Apache was developed under academic research, which I tend to seperate from OSS as we are now talking about it. And even Apache is questionable since it is heavily based on NCSA HTTPd, which was developed under academic research.
But all that aside, Apache isn’t even that great of a Web server. It’s main redeeming quaility is that it doesn’t cost anything. But performance wise, it isn’t all that great compared to say, Zeus or something.
“linux kernel — it ain’t unix so don’t even bothering the unix-clone crap. No decent kernel to run GNU utilities on before this.”
Oh come on. Don’t try to tell me it isn’t a UNIX clone. It obviously is. The only reason “it ain’t unix” is because they would get sued if they called it that.
And what of the GNU utilities? They are just clones of UNIX utilities. There’s nothing special about them.
“I know that in reply to my message some trolls will start trolling: a) “BSD is dying”; b) BSD is for servers. Neither is correct.”
No, that is not correct. But what IS correct is that all the BSD innovation occured when BSD was still a research project at UCB. So even this isn’t a very good example of OSS innovation.
i agree with this man. you open source people pat yourselfs on the back for figureing something out that microsoft took 5 minutes to do in 1996, stop your whiny little bitching and get to work if you are at all serious about this.
This was an extraordinarily poorly written and poorly thought out little blog entry. Why bother posting it to osnews.
I love how open source zealots would rather just accuse people of trolling instead of address the alegations made. But I guess I should expect that from a lot of the open source community by now.
So what, pray tell, about anything that Xavier ever posts about Linux is not a troll? It is very difficult to discuss something intelligently with somebody who a) has a large chip on their shoulder, and b) is highly irrational and incorrect?
Bottom line is the article is largely correct. Open source has not produced anything innovative. All it has done is clone existing software and ideas.
Unlike Microsoft who is always innovating. Let’s see:
Word Clone of WordPerfect
Excel Clone of Lotus
Access Clone of Paradox
Windows Clone of MacOS
XBox Clone of every other game console every conceived
SQLServer Clone of many other relational databases
ActiveDirectory Poor clone of NDS
C# Clone of C/C++ and Java
WindowsXP Clone of the Teletubbies
Need I go on? Since every product produced by every company nowdays is a clone of something, can we please get off this stupid “Microsoft is innovative and OSS isn’t innovative so it’s bad” drivel?
I mean really… Outside of a few common applications like mail software and web servers, is there any open souce software that is anything more than a poorly done and semi-functional clone of a commercial product? Not really.
Perl, Python, Ruby, CDParanoia, Zope, JBoss, many of the games, KDE, fetchmail, procmail, Bogofilter, Cinelerra, Mozilla, etc, etc, etc.
I don’t mean to pick on your posts, but this is a continuation of the last one.
“Mozilla?”
Sorry. It’s nothing more than a gift from Netscape. Not innovative.
Have you actually used the version of Netscape that was given to the Mozilla team and then used the current version of Mozilla? I would say quite a bit of innovation has occured.
Samba?
A clone of many commercial products that existed for years before SAMBA was even concieved. SAMBA hardly introduced file and print sharing between Windows and UNIX.
See my comment on cloned software in my last post. All software is cloned nowdays; even Microsoft’s. It doesn’t have any bearing on the discussion so please get over it. It is a non-issue.
EMACS?
And bloated editor that includes everything except the kitchen sink? What’s so great about that?
I think EMACS sucks and I never use it, however, considering the bloated mess that is VisualStudio, which even includes a kitchen sink, I don’t think bloat can be considered as a disqualifying factor.
Perl?
So what? It’s a scripting language (and some would say not a very good once since it encourages lousy programming). Nothing new here.
Actually, there is quite a bit that is new and is not found in the Microsoft world (except for in ports of Perl). Perl is superior to any technology that Microsoft has produced at parsing and working with strings. Also, Perl doesn’t encourage bad programming, but encourages people to use it by being flexible. If you’re a C programmer you can code perl C-Style. If you prefer a different language, perl can acommodate you as well.
OpenSSH
Still a clone. nothing invovative here.
You must hate Windows and other Microsoft products, which are all clones.
PHP
A clone of ASP based on the C language. Nothing innovative about embedded scripting languages.
So, ASP is a clone as well.
Do you see the point? There is nothing inovative about any of these. They are copies of already existing ideas.
Funny, it is exactly the same with all Microsoft products as well. So I plead again, can we please get off of this “clone” focus and discuss something that is relevant?
Windows is for the mass of humanity who wants to use a computer. They want to install programs using an auto-run CD. They want to install printers and scanners, + digital camera’s with the double-click of a mouse button. They want to surf the internet and download music, burn CD’s, and play POOL on Yahoo without having to install a plug-in for their web browser in order to do it. Why is Mozilla so great if it won’t play pool on Yahoo? Why is Linux capable of being as easy to use as Windows, yet it is so fragmented by hundreds of distributions that they all compete with themselves instead of the real competition? Microsoft will always be the greatest OS ever. Simply by the fact that 90% of the worlds computers run Windows. The only thing keeping Linux from challenging MS is the ARROGANCE of the various linux distributers. United we stand? Not Mandrake, Suse, UL, Deb, Redhat,Lycoris, Elx, Peanut, Libranet,Icepack, Lindows or any other.Together they would be overwhelming, apart, they are insignificant. The more Linux distro’s there are, the more Microsoft gloats.
No need to shout.
Windows is for the mass of humanity who wants to use a computer. They want to install programs using an auto-run CD. They want to install printers and scanners, + digital camera’s with the double-click of a mouse button. They want to surf the internet and download music, burn CD’s…
So it’s for the average?
Although you can do all that stuff under Linux, if Windows is what you want then use it. I don’t recall anyone saying you can’t.
However, since you brought it up. Linux users want to have stability and control over their system. They want to automatically grab email off their ISPs server and sort it into folders after passing it through spam filters. They want to run their own web and mail servers. They want to have a solid development platform. Or in a nutshell, they want to do more with their computers and have more control over them.
As I’ve said before, I use Windows and Linux. I don’t understand the self limiting mentality of looking at multiple products and becoming all religous over one and becoming an overzealous evangelist against the others.
…and play POOL on Yahoo without having to install a plug-in for their web browser in order to do it.
You have to download Flash and Shockwave in Windows and IE the same as you do in any other OS that supports them if that’s what you’re referring to.
Why is Mozilla so great if it won’t play pool on Yahoo?
Either it can, or the pool site uses very poor HTML or a proprietary IE plugin. I would tell you, but I’m not willing to sign up for one of their accounts.
Why is Linux capable of being as easy to use as Windows, yet it is so fragmented by hundreds of distributions that they all compete with themselves instead of the real competition?
For exactly the same reasons Microsoft is going to fragment WindowsXP. By offering customers a customized version of an OS, one that suits their needs, you make a better environment for your customers to work in, thus making them happier.
Microsoft will always be the greatest OS ever.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha…that was good. I wasn’t aware it had achieved a measure of greatness yet let alone greatest status.
Simply by the fact that 90% of the worlds computers run Windows.
So, by that logic, are people in the U.S. who speak fluent English greater than those that don’t since more than 90% of the U.S. speaks English? I think not.
The only thing keeping Linux from challenging MS is the ARROGANCE of the various linux distributers.
No it isn’t. The only thing keeping Linux from challenging MS is end users, just as they were what kept OS/2 from challenging DOS and the Windows 3.1 shell. Most users have been conditioned to accept Microsoft unconditionally, and it will take a lot to change that.
United we stand? Not Mandrake, Suse, UL, Deb, Redhat,Lycoris, Elx, Peanut, Libranet,Icepack, Lindows or any other.
Actually, SuSE and UL are united since they are one in the same thing.
Together they would be overwhelming
No they wouldn’t for the user reason listed above.
apart, they are insignificant.
To you perhaps.
The more Linux distro’s there are, the more Microsoft gloats.
Having worked there before, I can say with confidence that MS isn’t gloating.
Try checking out openmosix.sourceforge.net sometime.
OpenMosix is really cool, as is Moshe Bar. However, this will not convince the Linux pundits because it isn’t related to playing games online, writing a Word document, downloading music, or brown tonguing Bill and Steve in some way.
I’m not saying that anti-Linux Windows users are dumb in any way, I’m just saying the level they operate their computer at is different than the level a Linux user operates their computer at. It’s like trying to explain to a hamster how to drive a car. You can’t since you and the hamster are operating on completely different levels. The hamster will never understand.
Just so nobody takes offense, my comparison is regarding computer usage habits and not intelligence.
It is true iconoclast. I am tired of trying to say that all OSes have their places and no one is really innovating in either the private for profit or the OSS sectors. Hopefully the R&D labs funded by the private sector or the university labs will crank some big new changes out soon.
I am tired of trying to answer the trolls in a reasonable manner.
OSS, Mac and Windows folks have not made any huge innovations in years. That is half the damn problem with the software industry. There is the big monopoly and then there is everyone else that spends all their damn time worrying about the big monopoly.
No instead the trolls focus on my comments on old innovations. fine. To hell with it.. I am going to bed.
The next time I get a web project up that allows searching on information about any server in our organization on multiple categories with a relational database backend and get all up and running in three days and no cost to my employer while still doing my other daily duties — I will think about how linux, apache, postgres and php all suck as technologies and how I should have done it with Windows solutions. You are right they are not unix people and they won’t understand. At least I understand they have a right to want to do things their way.
Why there are so many folks who turn every discussion into an OS pissing match is beyond me?
Bastardo: The arrogance and fragmentation of the community is why Linux doesn’t have much of the desktop market. Why do we need KDE and GNOME.
Without GNOME, KDE wouldn’t be GPL-compatible. Without GNOME, KDE wouldn’t have half as much features as they do now. Without GNOME, KDE 2 wouldn’t have been as ambious as it was. Merging the two is impossible. The different ways used by GNOME and KDE developers, the technical differences, the different visions and goals. I rather keep them separate but compatible.
Red Hat is moving towards a unified desktop presentation, and look at the flak they’ve gotten.
Most of the vocal critism came about the changes with kdelibs and Qt, not the look. The look coupled with a thinking that RH is making KDE look and feel like GNOME was the last draw. KDE was pretty much irrational, but then again, RH had never been especially nice to KDE either.
Simba: For example, the Linux kernel is light years behind the Solaris kernel.
I beg to differ. The only reason why Solaris is better is because of the maturity and the SMP code. Things that no longer be considered an advantage when the kernel gets NUMA and grows with age. But in many ways, especially the overall design, I think the Linux kernel is way better than the Solaris kernel.
Simba: Example. KOffice is light years behind MS Office.
It may be lightyears away in terms of features, but I think it is rather innovative. Look how fast it moves from one height to another with so little developers. Then look on how the applications actually integrate.
Besides, I would like to note, KOffice doesn’t specifically clone any product. In fact KWord is more influenced by FrameMaker than MS Word.
Richard Steiner: Mozilla? VNC? Samba? EMACS? Perl?
I would like to note most of the manpower behind Mozilla is Netscape employees, while Samba is a clone.
appleforever: Yes, it does seem that MS copied the GUI, VMS (or whatever DEC thing they ripped off for NT), etc
As for Microsoft copying the GUI, why oes every Machead brings this up. Every other desktop OS copied the GUI, except maybe Apple which gave Xerox stock options in exchange for the idea.
Plus, as for NT< while the whole world was either cloning DOS or UNIX, Microsoft decided to clone what would be best for them, VMS. They didn’t purposely clone VMS, their research team head once work at DEC.
appleforever: MS’s whole modus operandi (taken from the old IBM playbook) is offer something very standard, not leading edge, and win in the market on things other than “being better.”
And we all wonder why nobody could beat Microsoft so far. It is easy, not many understand it. Microsoft doesn’t just use something very standard. They only implement features when they know their customers wants them. They are smart, they don’t waste money on some cool-whiz idea and then nobody really uses it.
Simba: And bloated editor that includes everything except the kitchen sink? What’s so great about that?
If you can call this editor bloated, then you can call things like Office and Windows bloated. Because of the features. I only used EMACS for about a month, and using the features, it was hard to move to Kate (but I did anywa because of the integration with KDevelop).
Simba: Still a clone. nothing invovative here.
Actually, if you check it out, OpenSSH had already surpass its commercial cousin.
A clone of ASP based on the C language. Nothing innovative about embedded scripting languages.
I tried to learn PHP and ASP once, while PHP can accept ASP scripts, pure PHP is very different than ASP. Plus, PHP is around the same age as ASP, so I wouldn’t say PHP cloned ASP.
Hug0: what about directx? and please don’t tell me hardware accelerated xfree is better.
hardware accelerated xfree is a competiting product to GDI+ not DX. DX’s competitors are like SDL, OpenDX, OpenGL, etc. Besides, early versions of DirectX were a clone of IBM’s own product (i forgot the name)
I don’t see much innovation coming from the monopoly.
Neither would I if I didn’t use a magnifiying glass. Microsoft did this way before they even got a monopoly. They only do something innovative if they know there would be a positive market response. That’s why they leave it to their competitors to test the market.
dhuv: Microsoft sees how handy they are to unix administrators and decide to rip them off freebsd and put them into their own os for their admins.
Nope, they may have clone it from FreeBSD, but I doubt the code is taken from FreeBSD. Mainly because both OS is very different technically. (Besides, as far as I know, network administration in .NET Server and FreeBSD is very different).
Hug0: I thought MS bought their tcp/ip stack from trumpet software i think
I doubt it, Trumpet Software is in a very different market than Windows. Check this out: http://www.trumpet.com.au/products.html
Simba: But performance wise, it isn’t all that great compared to say, Zeus or something.
I have no saw one recent (meaning less than a year old) benchmark that says Apache is slower than Zeus.
Simba: But what IS correct is that all the BSD innovation occured when BSD was still a research project at UCB. So even this isn’t a very good example of OSS innovation.
At this point, I found out that you have a very warp idea of OSS. OSS was invented for research and development. Was used by things like BSD and Apache. You are confusing it with Fee Software. Very different. Free Software doesn’t care about research and development, but rather conquering the world with a communist philosophy.
Ironoclast: Word Clone of WordPerfect
Actually, Word was a clone of WordStar, that’s why WP and Word is so different then and now.
Ironoclast: Windows Clone of MacOS
Early versions of Windows (i.e. 1.0, maybe 2.0), yes. But later on, they were also highly influenced by other UIs, specifically from Amiga, OS/2 Presentation Manager, OS/2 Warp, etc. The reason people think Windows is a clone of Mac OS is that Apple sued Microsoft for using a copyrighted metaphor.
Ironoclast: XBox Clone of every other game console every conceived
Actually, I would say a clone of a PC, with a console feel.
Ironoclast: WindowsXP Clone of the Teletubbies
That one was funny 🙂
Ironoclast: Have you actually used the version of Netscape that was given to the Mozilla team and then used the current version of Mozilla? I would say quite a bit of innovation has occured.
Guess where most of the innovations come from? Netscape employees. Netscape’s distribution of Mozilla cannot just add in features like Mozilla. Remember, it is a commercial product.
Where truth is! There innovation is!
only harmful ppl lies or can’t says anything that helpful!
all by myself
This article is a complete 100% troll. I’ll save myself from both Windows and *nix users alike and not even bother feeding it, thus bringing the flames down upon me.
You only have to read the synopsis for crying out loud. “and instead focusses on their own cool thing and self-gratifying cool features, because they think they can do better (which is where the ignorance combined with ego comes in).” Shoot me now.
Could we have one microsoft thread without half the posters shortening Microsoft to M$? I think we can get the jist of your hatred of microsoft from the substance of your post, thank you very much.
I couldn’t agree more. I imagine they would have a heart attack if suddenly everyone started calling Open Source 0$. It’s childish, and its just something to hide behind with the actual arguments are quite limited (imho).
This is what I picture everytime I hear someone use M$:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-7-22&res=l
I stab at thee!
Pat
“Example. KOffice is light years behind MS Office.”
A few months ago I saw an article about the KOffice team, and it included a picture of _all_five_or_six_of_them_ sitting around a coffee table. Seriously, what these guys have done hacking in their spare time is astonishing. MS Office has been the effort of hundreds or maybe even thousands of programmers working for over fifteen years.
For anyone who compares MS Office with KOffice, remember that the difference in development effort spent is at least 1000 to one, and the difference in money invested in development is even more disproportional (divide by zero errors, anyone?) IMHO, both KOffice and its developers are great.
Actually, the main reason behind the reason why KOffice took so fast is that a lot of technology, like KParts, were already there. Plus the fact that they already have a clear picture of what they want KOffice to end out like. Not only that, because it is a closely knit team, unlike in Microsoft, a person may do more.
Personally, if I had the money, I would hire them all to work full-time.
I thought MS bought their tcp/ip stack from trumpet software i think
Well the BSD liscense allows people to incorporate code into a propriatary product. Possibly that’s what trumpet did and when MS bought them they didn’t realize what exactly they were getting. I could see them being somewhat bitter about this…