Linux, the free operating system, has gone from an intriguing experiment to a mainstream technology in corporate data centers, helped by the backing of major technology companies like IBM, Intel, and HP, which sponsored industry consortiums to promote its adoption. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, with the system's penguin symbol, will assist the Linux Foundation. Those same companies have decided that the time has come to consolidate their collaborative support into a new group, the Linux Foundation, which is being announced today. And the mission of the new organization is help Linux, the leading example of the open-source model of software development, to compete more effectively against Microsoft, the world's largest software company.
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Member since:2006-04-21
Member since:2005-11-11
Member since:2005-07-06
Not really. A standardized platform is a standardized implementation. Windows or OS X are standardized platforms, for example. An open standard is a standard interface, presumably supported by a number of different implementations.
That said, at some point you do have to standardize the platform. If you encode everything that an application might depend on into a standardized interface, you just end up with a big, ugly, complex standard. In practice, there is a de-facto standardization of implementations. While X11 is an open standard, basically every major desktop distribution uses X.org's implementation. Anybody could come along and implement GTK+'s API, but in practice everyone uses GTK+. Sitting down and saying "you shall use X.org, GTK+, Cairo, blah, and you should put them in these locations" doesn't really reduce the flexibility of distributions in any practical way. Who really cares what the GTK+ shared library is called, after all?
Of course, there is no way to enforce standardization between distributions. What might be a more doable approach, and one that would be almost as useful for developers, would be to synchronize the schedules of the major APIs. You should be able to point to a "Linux Platform 1.x, which is guaranteed to have GTK+ 2.8+, Cairo 1.2+, etc". Even if the package formats and library configurations aren't standardized, having a stable target for all your major APIs would be tremendously useful.
Member since:2005-07-24
"The ruthless Darwinian world of Open Source means that only the best survives. Go to sourceforge and see the thousands of stagnant projects that have been sidestepped or forked.
I wouldn't be suprised if the Linux kernel goes the same way as Hurd in a few years and it would be no tragedy if something better replaced it.
I have recently entered the post-Linux world of FREEBSD without any real dramas after 2 years full time on Linux. Prior to that I was an XP, 2K, Win 98, 0S7.1 - OS8.6, DOS, Commodore 64 and PDP11 user."
I think you're right about the Darwinian enviornment, and it would certainly be interesting to see Linux replaced by something better.
(as opposed to Linux BECOMING something better?)
But FreeBSD? Not that it's not a great OS in its own right, but what has it got that promises to send it beyond Linux?
"The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Member since:
2007-01-13
We need to emphasise the use of open standards rather than standardising platforms.
Thousands of different models of cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses from numerous manufacturers coexist on our roads. That is because transport is an 'open standard' with well defined protocols.
However many people think that we should all drive identical white Honda Civics because it would be simpler for mechanics and motor repairers to stock parts and repair them.
The ruthless Darwinian world of Open Source means that only the best survives. Go to sourceforge and see the thousands of stagnant projects that have been sidestepped or forked.
I wouldn't be suprised if the Linux kernel goes the same way as Hurd in a few years and it would be no tragedy if something better replaced it.
I have recently entered the post-Linux world of FREEBSD without any real dramas after 2 years full time on Linux. Prior to that I was an XP, 2K, Win 98, 0S7.1 - OS8.6, DOS, Commodore 64 and PDP11 user.
The world constantly changes and we need to change with it.
Edited 2007-01-22 13:46