In a move that some may have sensed was coming, Eric S. Raymond - one of the co-founders of the open-source movement - has joined the Freespire Leadership Board. Raymond believes desktop Linux is entering into a critical period, noting that historically, users have shifted operating systems during periods of fundamental changes in hardware platforms. He believes the PC vendors' embrace of 64-bit computing will provide desktop Linux a unique window of opportunity, which if missed, may not come along again for many years.
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Member since:2005-11-14
I don't think that name recognition is as useful outside of Slashdot as the board of Freespire might think.
Getting bonus points with the Slashdot crowd would be good for Linspire at this point, but ESR isn't gonna help there. Everyone has already realized that he has absolutely nothing to offer, and has stopped making sense a long time ago.
After his trolling on Fedora lists I'm glad he's found a different path. Linspire and him are a great match: they both don't understand what Free Software is about, and they will both not understand why systems like Fedora, SUSE, Ubuntu and Debian will always be more popular.
Member since:2005-10-12
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2006-04-21
Sorry, but I think at this point that whilst ESR of 1999, the Open Sources book, the How to Ask Questions FAQ and the Howto be a Hacker Howto might still have credibility among FOSS geeks, the ESR of 2006 lost all credibility among them long before it was officially announced that he was joining Freespire.
Member since:2006-01-01
Member since:2005-07-06
You know I can't figure that one out, either. Other than name recognition from his behavior during the dot bomb era, I fail to see what he has to offer.
I certainly can't figure it out. Since he confidently proclaimed KDE to be dead two or three years ago, and we all know he's right, maybe he'll be able to screw Freespire and Linspire up royally and get them to switch?
His Cathredal and Bazaar book made sense on its own terms, but it seems that ESR is having real, excruciating difficulty trying to think his way through ways in which desktop Linux can reach success. He has continually fumbled around for years about letting people develop proprietary drivers and software on Linux, for free no less (one of the reasons KDE was supposedly dead), for years without thinking of what the point of open source software would be, supporting the existing open source software we have and getting people to write open source drivers. Yes, it's possible to do the latter - it's just a question of demand. His message has become very confused amongst a lot of rhetoric.
The 64-bit thing, I just can't see the opportunity there. Apart from drivers, existing 32-bit software just works on a 64-bit architecture, and it's certainly not the shift that we had from 16 to 32-bit in the 90s. I just can't see where the window of opportunity is. It's not as if a Linux desktop system is going to be the only working 64-bit OS in existence.
Essentially, what's got to happen is that a desktop Linux system is going to have to tick all the boxes in terms of functionality, it's going to have to be given away free and someone is going to have to engineer a business model to allow them to do that. Nothing less will do.
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Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
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"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2006-01-01
You know I can't figure that one out, either. Other than name recognition from his behavior during the dot bomb era, I fail to see what he has to offer. I don't think that name recognition is as useful outside of Slashdot as the board of Freespire might think. It certainly isn't going to make any large OEM say, "Well now that they have Eric Raymond, I think we can do business with these guys."
The "co-founder" bit was pretty funny. Though compared to the usual deluded self-promotion of Eric Raymond by Eric Raymond I would say that it is pretty tame.