According to the Free Software Foundation, free software includes “the freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits… Access to the source code is a precondition for this.” While I agree that the principles of the FSF are noble, I also feel that there is an unspoken assumption – an assumption that pods of hobby developers across the world can coordinate on the same scale that directed companies with a budget can. Where free software has an important place in computing, so does closed-source commercial software.
Recently, Microsoft sent me an evaluation edition of their new Windows Server 2003. I had an NTFS partition on my computer with Windows XP installed, but it rarely saw any action. Knowing that I wouldn’t miss it, I blew it away and took a test drive of Windows Server 2003. That was about a month ago, and I’m using it now to write this.
Now, this is not a review of Windows Server 2003 or even an attempt to discuss it. However, installing and using has clarified some feelings, in my mind, about the success and shortcomings of open source software. As a grateful user of download editions of Linux, desktop environments like KDE and Gnome, and applications like gaim, OpenOffice.org, and Mozilla Firebird, I rely heavily upon free software for my day to day work. I use Apache http Server and script with PHP and write some Perl. I am no stranger to the quality of individual open source products, and I owe a debt of gratitude to developers around the world.
That said, booting up into Windows for the first time in a long time was surprisingly joyful. The graphics and feel of the system were tight and coordinated, the look and feel was sleek. Despite the fact that it’s supposed to be a server OS (which is a whole separate issue), it felt like a single, integrated system. Installing Office 2003 for the very first time was simple enough — as expected, clicking the setup.exe file installed the necessary components and I knew exactly where to find them, having installed a previous version before. Despite the fact that this was supposed to be a “trial run,” I had my server configured as a web server, a file server, a print server, and my primary desktop machine within an hour or so.
This is what got me thinking – “Choice is good.” Some debate the marketability of choice — it confuses new users, it makes learning much more complex, it makes each computer different enough so that you must, to some extent, relearn what you can and can’t do on each box. But one downfall of the amount choice is that it makes Linux, in this particular case, feel disjointed. Some programs feel meshed and others feel semi-developed. Some programs are themeable, while others maintain a single look. A public with extreme expectations refuses to accept distributions that strip out too much choice, and therefore, we end up with some sort of OS pudding, with each bite tasting just a little different than the rest. To top it off, when a commercial company, like Red Hat, takes a shot at solving this problem, the community backlash can best be described as merciless.
But that’s all candy. A system needn’t be visually consistent to be functional and enjoyable to use. But, in my opinion, it should at least be attractive. There’s debate as to whether or not what’s best wins — the case has been made a thousand times, “If quality were the sole determinant, Mac would win hands down.” But regardless of the level of importance of looks, I think we can all agree that quality is important. I’ve used many Linux distros, and I’ve consistently found that each handles the same tasks different ways, sometimes with mixed results. Browsing Windows domains, for example, is often unique to the distribution. Each distro has a recommended way to do so best – Xandros mount NFS and domain shares automatically, Red Hat recommends uses the Nautilus command smb://, and then there are dozens of after-market add-on applicatons. I’ve tried many of them with varying success, some are better then others, some are unstable on certain distributions, some are generally functional but not very pretty.
A question to pose, before we go any further, is “How important is look at feel?” I won’t get into preference details, but suffice it to say that I believe a machine should, these days, look and feel modern and sleek. Windows, since Windows 2000, accomplishes this, as does OS X. Linux distros have gotten closer with each successive release – Mandrake’s Galaxy, Red Hat’s Bluecurve, and SuSE’s new theme are all getting closer. But most distributions in general still feel like a collective work. This is where I believe, free software fails where commercial software succeeds.
With apologies to Richard Stallman, I must repeat – not all software is best free. New distributions like Xandros and LindowsOS are taking action not usually taken in the free software realm: employing graphical designers to make the system and logos cleaner, brushing up on points that are less important to the functionality of the system but important to the user actually using it. We, as techies, too often overestimate the priorities of the home user. We insist that security is an issue, when it’s usually not. Many people set their computer to log in automatically or use blank passwords. We believe speed is more important than eye candy, but the average user doesn’t always agree. Developers aren’t excited by the mundane, but these details must be painstakingly covered to ensure the system “feels” right. Many companies in the “Linux business” know this; they are doing their best to make Linux usable, and many of the best improvements, like XFM and Click-N-Run, are non-GPL programs! Let’s face it, if the source to these programs were publicly available, they’d be in many distributions within a few months.
When I move the mouse around in Linux – it feels a little like it plays catch up with me. When I click on objects, I feel like the system has to figure out what I meant to select. It’s a strange sensation that I have a very hard time putting into words. This as a likely limitation of Xfree86’s lack of the proper threading support. As a member of the IT community, I understand the complexity of this issue. As a user, I don’t care. A company like Apple or Microsoft has the resources to pay developers to work out whatever problems they decide need fixing. The open source community relies largely on developers working for free on what suits them in their free time. We can’t decide if we should be improving X, or ditching it in favor the replacements, most of which have been in development for years.
There are some applications out there that are part of what I consider a new generation of Linux apps that are top notch – K3B for cd burning, Ximian’s Evolution PIM, and the entire Mandrake Control Center, to name a few. While open source developers sometimes produce great products, with free software, developers can (and often do) skip over features that aren’t important to them personally. In fairness, that is not a bad thing – a developer should not be required to write something, for free, that they do not need. But an end user doesn’t want to use an application that doesn’t completely suit their needs. We’re still missing even passable counterparts for Photoshop, Access, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and Front Page. And there’s a good reason.
These products are impossibly large scale projects, but projects that a corporate interest would easily be able to accomplish, if it weren’t for a community so dead set in their intolerance of non-free software. Adobe, Macromedia, and other large software companies know the audience – they know Linux users don’t pay for software. We collectively sing the mantra of free software only, so we have to wait. We wait for someone somewhere to start a sourceforge project, recruit a team, decide on a programming language, and then begin to code. Then we wait for the forks – the guys who port a Qt app to GTK or create a Java version. We wait for it to mature. We report on our various successes. And then we download endless betas waiting for the 1.0 milestone. And when we implement it, there’s no support. At best, there’s a message board that helps you find out why you can’t compile the app or why the rpm doesn’t work on your distribution or how come the author’s didn’t include feature X.
It’s important to note that the FSF also states “Free software does not mean non-commercial. A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important.” The problem is that some companies and their developers need to be compensated for their time in order to make the manufacturing their product worthwhile for them, and that often means withholding source code, restricting redistribution, and forbidding decompiling, which disqualifies the product as free software.
My intent here is not be presumptuous or didactic, but rather to suggest that we all revisit the notion of free software solving all problems. One of the problems we face is legitimitizing Linux. I believe that Linux’s eventual desktop success relies upon corporate and commercial interest. I dream of enterprise software makers catering to the Linux desktop and hardware manufacturers including Linux drivers on their companion CDs. Free software has its place, but not everything should be free. Sometimes, when developers have a quality product, they don’t want to give away their hard work for free. It’s not unreasonable to pay for goods and services, and I don’t believe that software should be an exception. If Linux users would concede that non-free software can fill in their swiss-cheese application market, perhaps the Linux software landscape wouldn’t be so hit-or-miss.
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Adam Scheinberg is a regular contributor to OSNews.com. He works as network administrator in Orlando, FL. He runs Linux and Windows at home.
Adam, many companies are successfully using dual-licensing approaches as they find the GPL and various commercial licenses serve two different market segments and two different sets of needs and concerns.
There are definitely times and places where you want code to be freely available. Think of a publically funded medical expert system, for instance. Free software is appropriate for those projects that have benefit to the community and need safety measures against commercial hijacking. Or all the tools you need to build and maintain such a system. It makes sense to have those tools available to the people who funded their creation so no community, society, or country is unable to access better medical care.
And there are times when a commercial license is appropriate. For instance, when selling product into corporations that need/want/expect a certain level of support from the vendor. MySQL for instance, is available in the corporate market via a commercial license.
The dual license provides both markets with what they need. The freely available open source provides trust to the market, something that we find missing for many commercial-only software products. Parts of many governments are switching to Linux not strictly due to cost, but because they can trust the code. This is why Microsoft hastily put together their governmental source viewing program to stem the tide of migration to Linux.
Also, your article is disingenuous when it comes to Linux:
1. Slow mouse tracking is very fixed in the latest development kernels and with the next stable release of Linux, this issue will no longer exist. The next kernel will also have ALSA, providing a stronger foundation for sound.
2. It is clear to most people that the quality of Windows 2003 is not comparable to that of Linux because the resources available. If the Linux community put in billions of dollars of funding into the next version of Linux and took four years, I’m sure it would be very good as well.
The concept of free software is not new. ‘Public domain’ software has existed for a long time. However, the FSF/GPL take on free software mandates that the software, including changes, be put back in the public domain. I think that’s fair and appropriate for many applications which benefit the public.
Commercial software has also been around a long time and it is not going away anytime soon. However, this software exists largely for applications which do not benefit the public at large and have no public accessibility requirements.
There is typically not a single software license that serves the needs of the commercial software developer and the public domain developer. I think in the coming few years, software multi-licensing will become more popular as it enables both public and commercial benefit.
It is clear to most people that the quality of Windows 2003 is not comparable to that of Linux because the resources available. If the Linux community put in billions of dollars of funding into the next version of Linux and took four years, I’m sure it would be very good as well.
That’s exactly my point. The resources AREN’T there, because too many Linux users refuse to pay for software. If users would pay for software, companies might be attracted more to the platform, and we’d end up with better software! I don’t see how that’s disingenuous.
I must say that this was one “free software” themed article that I actually enjoyed reading. Honest, down to earth and void of zealotry – Cheers!
Free software was never a matter a price.
The important distinction is not between free (as in zero price) and commercial software. It’s between free (as in freedom) and proprietary software.
Free (as in freedom) software deserves support, monetary and otherwise. Proprietary software does not.
You should pay for your free software. I do.
Not sure I agree with your take on this – as a software company whom is actually making a dual license structure work I see nothing in the article that suggests that this is not an appropriate path. Perhaps I should review it again but I think his read on this is pretty spot on in allot of ways. Note: I said, in allot of ways and not in every way – an important distinction as I don’t agree with every point/example in the article.
Perhaps an article should be written on all the possible definitions of free(as in free) as recognized by the FSF.
However, IMHO free(as in freedom) means you have the right to buy(as in spend money) or not to buy(as in not spend money) regardless of the assiociated License.
The GPL, which I’m assuming your referring to, is not about freedom at all. It’s about ensuring that you get something back for the work you’ve done.
First, commercial software gives immediate returns in the form of money. There is no choice in the matter (well, within the law I suppose).
GPL software on the other hand takes the following attitude. I don’t particularly care about money, but I care about code. If you make changes to my free code, I want them. An important point to make is that the owner here is not an individual, but a nonexistent entity. None the less, it is all about returns, not freedom.
If you really wanted to be a nice person, you would release code without expecting ANYTHING in return. This would be FREE software. I would have the freedome to do anything I want with it. The same cannot be said of GPL software.
That’s exactly my point. The resources AREN’T there, because too many Linux users refuse to pay for software. If users would pay for software, companies might be attracted more to the platform, and we’d end up with better software! I don’t see how that’s disingenuous.
You need to look at more than just “users pay for software = good software”.
1. You’ve made the assumption that every need can be best met by a commercial for-profit enterprise. This is not usually the case when it comes to software that is for the public benefit. There are many parallels in the real world as well. Many times public benefit companies cannot be private enterprises because the private enterprises tend to put their needs ahead of the public’s needs. Government regulation helps in these matters, but do you want every company that produces software for public benefit to be heavily regulated? That would certainly add overhead and cost, taking away from what benefits can be delivered.
2. Microsoft is funded by years of illegal monopoly money, so there is no comparing what Microsoft can do vs. what the Linux community can do. I will say it again, if you gave Linux billions of dollars in funding and four years (for just one major revision) of a zero market pressure environment, I’m sure you could turn out an amazing OS that would make Windows 2003 look shabby by comparison.
3. Just because something is commercial doesn’t mean it is going to be perfect. Take the example of QNX which is privately funded small company that makes a well-regarded OS product. You will find many versions of their OS had problems with the mouse pointer too. By the way, this was well before any cheap/free versions of their OS. There are many many examples of commercial products which are very poor quality.
4. When you examine Linux, you find many price points, from free all the way to enterprise server licenses that cost thousands of dollars. Many Linux users do pay for software. Even on the very low end, with the small but growing Walmart market that Lindows and Lycoris have created, there are more people everyday who are paying for Linux.
5. Many people cannot afford a privately-produced OS. Sure many individuals who don’t have the discretionary money to pay for a privately produced OS do not pay for their Linux OS. But many of these people come from much poorer countries than the US and Europe. In Indonesia, desktop Windows costs more than the average person makes in a YEAR. It is unreasonable to think this person is going to buy any Microsoft OS. So this person either pirates Windows or copies Linux from someone.
You yourself are a Windows user and a Linux user. I presume you are paying for your Windows software. Do you refuse to pay for your Linux software? Are you completely unwilling to pay for any Linux software? If you were running a commercial enterprise and needed the benefits and support of Red Hat Enterprise Server, would you refuse to pay for it?
When we look at what is happening today, we find two things.
First, more and more people are paying for open source / free software, one way or another. We see great success in dual licensing, showing that those who are deriving commercial benefit from free/open-source software are willing to pay for it.
Second, we find that many commercial products are low quality. Private enterprise does not result in quality. Good software development results in quality and Linux is very good quality. Linux delivers far more quality per dollar invested than any Microsoft OS.
While I agree that the principals of the FSF are noble,
Cool. I think Richard and company are pretty noble folks as well. Besides that, their principles are noble too!
Andrew B. wrote:
However, IMHO free(as in freedom) means you have the right to buy(as in spend money) or not to buy(as in not spend money) regardless of the assiociated License.
Then I don’t think that’s in-line with the FSF’s meaning of the word. You’re thinking of “gratis”.
Free (as in freedom) in the FSF sense means that the *software* is free. Regardless of whether or not you pay for it, the source will be freely available if anyone distributes the software.
Not necesserilly in price, but the user should still have freedom to modify the product for his or her needs. just like if I buy a couch or whatever, i can do absolutely wahtever I want to it/with it, same should go for software.
I think the guy has a pretty good point. He didn’t say that all software has to be commercial, just that sometimes there are benefits to the commercial approach. I don’t think anyone except perhaps Stallman himself can claim otherwise.
It is hard to claim that Free Software does not produce good software. It is, however, equally hard to claim that Free Software produces software that meshes well. The division between KDE/Qt and GNOME/GTK is a perfect example. They both write good software. They do, however, demonstrate the man’s point that Free Software doesn’t coordinate well with itself.
Sure, the latest windows may feel good to you, but you have to ask yourself: how long did it take Microsoft to get to that point? MS has been around for more than 20 years, and windows has been under development for almost that long, but until very recently, and their resources notwithstanding, windows sucked big time. It took a lot of effort, mistakes, trials, retrials, before microsoft finally started getting it right. So I don’t think it is fair to explain whatever advantages windows has by refering to the fact that it is a commercial and proprietary system. The fact is: windows is maturing with time, and so is linux. In fact, I personally think linux is maturing at a much faster pace than windows.
And if you look at webservers, well, IIS has yet to catch up to its opensource counterpart. And things like postfix and bind and way ahead of their closed source versions. Sure, there’s a niche for both closed and open source software, but putting a priori limitations on the possibilities of open source for purely ideological reasons is premature.
> how long did it take Microsoft to get to that point?
10 years. All software gets better after ~10 years according to Joel On Software.
> MS has been around for more than 20 years, and windows has been under development for almost that long, but until very recently, and their resources notwithstanding, windows sucked big time.
You have misconceptions here regarding the development of the Windows NT-branch which only started in 1991. And in 1999 they already had a great product out, Windows 2000. The desktop version of it, XP, came 2 years later out. Win2k3 Server is even better.
You can bitch at Win9x and Win3.x if you want, but don’t put all Windows in the same bag just because they share the same name. They are using different code and architectures.
Adam,
You should get your facts right. Just because one gets the operating system for free (which is becoming more and more a commodity nowadays IMHO) doesn’t mean that he/she won’t pay for good quality software. There are other major problems concerning this, like the QT licensing, for instance. QT is as powerful and mature as any toolkit available at Windows, but people refuse to pay Trolltech what is due to develop comercial software which I find a little odd, since you can’t get MFC at Visual C for free in Windows neither. But I never hear people complaining about Visual Studio.NET licensing or something like that.
Unfortunately, GTK still is not mature as QT but is getting in there fast. The others toolkits are fighting their place at the sun, like wxWindows and FLTK. And the Xlib, which seems to be the Unix standard, is too hard to develop anything on it and is starting to show it age.
Well, The Kompany has been developing comercial software for KDE using QT for a long time now and I’m sure they are pleased with the multi-platform nature of it. They provide a Windows version of most of their software and in some cases, if you buy the version for Windows, you also get the Linux version and vice-versa. Even Adobe itself has turned a licensee of QT to develop Adobe Photoshop Album and they loved it.
See? There is space to comercial software here…
Personally, I don’t know anybody that says “Screw Adobe and their Photoshop stuff. We don’t need them. We’ve already got GIMP and GIMP rulez. Everybody knows that!!!” (Please note that I do love GIMP! :-)).
Some people might point that the opensource nature of Linux tends to lead into several versions of slightly incompatible versions of it, what might scare away comercial developers and therefore the Catedral-style should be widely adopted to make things more feasible for those companies. Well, I don’t see them porting their apps to FreeBSD neither, which do provides that kind of environment.
My point is… Adobe, Macromedia, Discreet and all the others can port their software for opensource OSes if they want to. Piracy isn’t even a good argument since people already get pirated copies of their software in Windows or Mac OS X anyway. Nobody really cares if closed source is what it takes to they do that (only a small minority of zealots would argue against something like that). It’s up to them to see if such move fits their needs market-wise.
But to say that it’s Linux/BSD users fault’s that those companies don’t support those systems as they deserve is really naive, to say the least.
DeadFish Man
> It’s not unreasonable to pay for goods and services, and I don’t believe that software should be an exception >
I fully agree!!
The cost for an OS or S/W Applications are irrelevant in the corporate world. They use it to improve their business and to stay competitive. In other words they are investment goods, as robots and other machines are in the car machine manufacturing industry.
Take AutoCad as an example. It costs mega bucks, but there is hardly any machine manufacturer who doesn’t use it. The same goes for any other specialiced ( and i include OFFICE as well) Application.
Or SAP. It costs hundred thousands of $. Compared to those figures Xp cost you peanuts. (It comes pre-installed anyway).
May I be wrong but, as far as I know, many developers that use to work in FS projects are employees of big companies like IBM, Oracle, SGI, HP, Red Hat, Suse and so on. And many of them are researchers that work in universities over all world.
Of course, that are hobbyists (and many are professionals) working too, but they are a plus (and sometimes, a BIG plus). And, if you believe in statistics, and know how to interpret them, you can believe that more people looking the code can help fix it.
Also, I like to think that programming is one area of science where the theoretical background can be compensated by creativity, what is a lot harder in others areas. Again, with statistics, there is a good chance of a good idea come to light from this crowd and, if something is wrong, be fixed.
One thing that many people overlook, is that even though programmers at Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and in others companies can’t cut and paste FS code on theirs projects, they are free to see it, learn and apply it whether they learned something or not.
Anyway, isn’t because exist some big company behind one project that it’s going to be a success, the history give many cases that proof it.
I believe this article was writting with a certain amount of naivete. I don’t mean to say that Adam Sheinberg isn’t knowledgable about linux, but simply that I don’t think he is plugged into the way that most users think about free software. He seems of the opinion that free software users insist all of their software should be free. This is further supported by his reply to an above comment: …because too many Linux users refuse to pay for software..
This assumption is ridiculous. Many linux users I know keep a windows partition for games (which they pay for). I believe transgaming does fine with winex (which people pay for). Crossover Office is constantly being improved and sells plenty of copies despite the fact that it costs money. Linux users don’t insist on having all free software. It is just that there aren’t many companies making their software available to purchase on linux. Look at Adobe. How long could it possibly take to get a working port of Photoshop or Illustrator on Linux? They have a version for OSX so I am sure it wouldn’t require an incredible amount of resources. However, they don’t even take the time to try and get wine compatibility. How about Macromedia? There is still no linux shockwave plug-in or dreamweaver.
The reason you see so many open source alternatives in the linux world isn’t because of any great refusal to pay for software (although there are those who would like to see a free version of everything). It is because companies refuse to make the investment. Personally, I wouldn’t mine seeing every company who doesn’t have linux versions of their major software by 2005 go out of business. If that were to kill Adobe or Macromedia, then so be it. They have great products, but they refuse to support a community that has been clamoring for these programs for awhile.
Ask any linux user, chances are they will tell you that commercial software being ported to linux is a good thing.
I just read DeadFishMan’s comment after posting that last one and he said pretty much the same thing as I said (even calling Adam naive). Sorry for the reduncancy, but it is good to see that others agree with me.
I agree with your point, but you make a few errors:
>they don’t even take the time to try and get wine compatibility
Do you realize what a support nightmare it would be? Codeweavers works with it. Regular Wine, however, is (no offense to the developers)a hack designed for users. It is not reliable. It’s as silly as saying Nintendo should have designed its games with ROM emulator compatibility in mind.
>There is still no linux shockwave plug-in
There has been one (a proprietary one, not the GPL one) for Linux and Moz/NS compatible browsers since forever. Works fine for me.
>If that were to kill Adobe or Macromedia, then so be it. They have great products, but they refuse to support a community that has been clamoring for these programs for awhile.
Just because someone is clamoring for products does not mean that the company can fiscally and otherwise justify porting something. I’m sure the BeOS community would just looove a Photoshop port, but there are too few of them (us?). Linux is still not on a significant amount of desktops. It’s a vicious circle–no famous proprietary apps–>no popularity–>no famous proprietary apps. Linux does need a killer app, one that not only performs better (I could say so for much of my Linux software) but has PR appeal. Something of the GIMP’s scale but not a replacement for a proprietary product.
There is a very important point that must be made. Linux has delivered far more quality to the market per software development dollar than any Windows OS.
The fact that so many companies are adopting and using Linux is due to the fact that Linux is a high-quality OS.
Look at the recent big machine benchmarks. There are machines near the top of the list that run Linux. These are machines that are run mission-critical software and you find many of them are running Linux.
A critical factor in the delivery of quality in open source / free software development is that money can be directly targeted on improvements. If my company needs fixes in the USB driver, I can hire someone and have them fix it. There is no such thing available in the commercial software / closed source market. If I need new functionality, I can spend the money and get it built. Again, commercial software / closed source cannot deliver.
The point here is that open source / free software delivers quality software at a much lower cost than commercial software. It also enables the specific evolution of that software in a way that fits the agile enterprises of today.
Microsoft cannot deliver similar benefits to the market. When you go down the Microsoft OS road, you are beholden to Microsoft for all your bug fixes, patches, and improvements. You had better hope they care enough about the welfare of your company. And I hope you are not a competitive ISV as Microsoft is notorious for not fixing the bugs that are preventing their competition from using Windows effectively.
Great, your Windows 2003 setup is working, you like the look and feel, but really, it’s not like I care. You just can’t customize everything. And why you installed Office on a server?
The thing that I hate the most about Windows and Microsoft products in general is not that is crashes, or the software sucks, etc. but it’s the unability to really customize how you want it. That’s the beauty of free software.
Of course, newbies doesn’t care, but I don’t care about them either.
> The GPL, which I’m assuming your referring to, is not
> about freedom at all. It’s about ensuring that you get
> something back for the work you’ve done.
You’re wrong. The GPL is about ensuring users’ freedoms. It does not require that you publish modifications. It does not ensure that you get something back for the work you’ve done.
> GPL software on the other hand takes the following
> attitude. I don’t particularly care about money, but I
> care about code.
Again, you’re wrong. As a free software developer, I care about the freedoms of the users of my software.
> If you make changes to my free code, I
> want them. An important point to make is that the owner
> here is not an individual, but a nonexistent entity. None
> the less, it is all about returns, not freedom.
It’s all about the users’ freedoms.
> If you really wanted to be a nice person, you would
> release code without expecting ANYTHING in return. This
> would be FREE software.
Then I am a nice person. Thanks. 🙂 Also, the GPL is a FREE software license.
> I would have the freedome to do anything I want with it.
You should not have the freedom to restrict the freedoms of others.
> The same cannot be said of GPL software.
The GPL protects the freedoms of ALL users.
Actually, you’re not entirely right either. The GPL is about protecting the code. The entire GNU philosophy is that code itself should be free. Thus to protect its freedom, the GPL places certain restrictions on its used in non-Free products.
If it was about the rights of the users of the code, it would be more like the BSD license: give credit, and do what you please with it.
It’s all subtle differences, but they’re still there.
> They are using different code and architectures.
I thought that too until I stumble with a “Incorrect DOS function” ~1.5 years ago when I was copying contents from a CD.
Maybe it has a different architecture, but it has a lot of legacy code too.
I think of Win3.x (and bellow) as a different of Win9x/ME series in terms of archtecture. Win3.x –> Win9x/ME -> WinNT/2K/2K3 are, for many reasons, steps in the Windows foundation.
Win3.x was just a shell over DOS (16bits) . Win9x /ME were mixed 16/32bits. Windows NT/2K/2K3 are indeed 32 (64 for Win2K3 64) bits architecture.
If you ask me I tell you that Windows has 20 years.
But then you could argue that Linux has 30+ years on it’s foundations…
As for “Is Free Software Always a Good Thing?”.
No, of course not. Both commercial and free (as in beer, as in chocolate, whatever) are needed.
There are truly amazing software/tecnologies in both sides of the fence.
For example, IMHO:
FS Commercial
Apache
Mozilla
Eclipse,NetBeans Websphere Studio
PostScript PDF
OpenGL and derivatives (this fits both)
Photoshop
Rational Rose
BSD, Linux Solaris, OS X
yacc (bison), lex (flex)
LaTeX
MySQL,PosgreSQL Oracle DB*,DB2
Java (J2SE, J2EE, J2ME)
Quake, Unreal
X11
and much other that I can’t remember now.
* Don’t ask me about their other products…
Dual license ONLY works if you wrote every single line of the source code. If you start your project from other people’s GPL source code, then you CAN’T dual license.
>>>There are definitely times and places where you want code to be freely available. Think of a publically funded medical expert system, for instance. Free software is appropriate for those projects that have benefit to the community and need safety measures against commercial hijacking. Or all the tools you need to build and maintain such a system. It makes sense to have those tools available to the people who funded their creation so no community, society, or country is unable to access better medical care.
It’s YOUR tax dollar. Would you be willing to fund a public program that other countries can steal for free —- and because of that —- people in other countries (where no public funds were spent) paid lower taxes than you.
Safety has nothing to do with open/close source code. Both are just as buggy (Microsoft ISN’T the whole close source industry). It’s actually much costlier if you have to certify both your x-ray machine software application and also the open source OS. It already takes years to get safety certifications when QNX/VxWorks/Lynx certified their OS so you only have to certify your app.
>>>>Microsoft is funded by years of illegal monopoly money, so there is no comparing what Microsoft can do vs. what the Linux community can do. I will say it again, if you gave Linux billions of dollars in funding and four years (for just one major revision) of a zero market pressure environment, I’m sure you could turn out an amazing OS that would make Windows 2003 look shabby by comparison.
Linux is funded by IBM (who had a anti-trust consent decree with the US government). Just because Microsoft is the only one convicted — doesn’t mean that everybody else (who cuts a deal with the government and avoided a conviction) are less guilty.
>>>Take the example of QNX which is privately funded small company that makes a well-regarded OS product. You will find many versions of their OS had problems with the mouse pointer too. By the way, this was well before any cheap/free versions of their OS. There are many many examples of commercial products which are very poor quality.
That’s a bad example. For one, many QNX systems doesn’t even have a desktop. Secondly, you don’t change mouses or video cards once you deploy a qnx-based nuclear power station. This has NOTHING to do with quality, it has EVERYTHING to do with QNX customers (your average nuclear power station owner) not willing to pay extra money for a better mouse driver.
I think the original poster has something of a point. Microsoft has a huge head start in this arena. WinNT was started in October 1996, and coding didn’t really get under way until well into 1997. So NT has a six year head start. KDE has hundreds of developers. Microsoft has thousands. The KDE architecture had to be designed from scratch, while the Win32 API was an evolution of the pre-existing Win16 API. In that time, the KDE folks have been able to come up with a product that, on a technological level, is competitive with NT, and even has an edge in many cases. That is an incredible achievement, and speaks volumes about the development model. The KDE folks have at least two years until Longhorn comes out. To put that into perspective, that is how long it took them to do a rewrite for the 1.0 -> 2.0 transition. Who wants to be they can clean up any usability issues in that time frame?
PS> I think the KDE development model in particular has a few important advantages: first, architectural issues are handled by a core few people, not really random developers. Just take a look at the API. It’s very clean and integrated, hardly what you’d expect from an anarchic development model. Second, it has a much stronger community than closed source development. Just take a look at KDE programs in general. The strong community encourages developers to do everything “the KDE way.” As a result, the level of integration between KDE applications far exceeds that in any other desktop. I don’t know if this strength will hold as the KDE developer community gets larger, but it’s a nice change from the MS world, where even Office and Internet Explorer use different toolkits.
“It is just that there aren’t many companies making their software available to purchase on linux.”
-MS holds over 90% of the market, Linux just about 1%. It’s just not worthwhile for most companies to invest into the Linux market.
Unless Linux doesn’t gain more market shares it won’t change; unfortunatly.
It’s about freedom and protecting code.
It’s about freedom since you give the same rights over the code to your customers/end users.
It’s about protecting your code since it won’t allow anyone to “steal it” (read claiming that is it exclusively his/hers own).
It’s about cooperation since if someone finds another use for your code (s)he has the moral and legal duty to make the changes availlable to you.
It’s, definitely, NOT about making money with your code.
>> You can bitch at Win9x and Win3.x if you want,
Actually, I wansn’t bitching at all, just pointing out even Microsoft needed time to roll out a good product.
>> but don’t put all Windows in the same bag just because >> >> they share the same name. They are using different code and architectures.
Everybody knows that, Eugenia, thank you very much. So what are you saying anyway? That ms developed the other windows from 1982 to Windows Me -18 years – and still didn’t make a good product out of it? What does that tell you?
You know what though? No matter how much you spin it, the NT line is still, in a very important sense, a continuation of MS’s windows efforts. They leveraged their past windows efforts, and experience, and EVEN code, to build the NT line. So stop pretending like the NT line was a micracle coming completely out of the blue.
And btw, as far as servers go, Win2k was still NOT an exceptional product. It was only good to the extent that it was more stable than previous ms products – in order words, it was good by ms standards. As long as I am not compelled to run sql server or iis, I would, if I was making a technical decision, still choose BSD or linux over win2k.
Good article, Adam.
Lee Nooks.
Why people were/are angry at Redhat is because they changed a lot more than the theme and a few defaults.
check out more here: http://mosfet.org/noredhat.html (Yes, he missed a lot of hamrful changes to KDE, but is hould give you an overview.)
Also, i do agree that OSS neds to become more interoperable and integrated, it just needs more coordanation and team work for a common cause like taking more than 1% of the desktop markey and increasing the server market even more. Instead of havinga billion tiny applications that are intended to do the same thing but have a few differences, jsut make only 2-3 reallly gooooood ones. Competition is good, but waht drives the market the most at improvement is 2-3 companies making the same product, when it gets toof ragmented everything starts going downhill and it becomes a ngihtmare for th user too. (UNIX)
I think when Stallman stated that the freedom to choose any license was not the sort of freedom he advocated was when he lost the last of his cred for me. The simple fact is that the marketplace has been around since the first humans began trading in earnest, and, with good regulation, it works. Don’t underestimate the willingness of people to pay money for something that will be valuable to them. Hence people pay for QT licenses etc.. I agree that in many cases software costs were way out of reality, but we are seeing the software market become saner and stabler and the hype die down now.
I love free software, in the license sense, and I think it has already achieved it’s goal. There is no stopping the momentum it has already built. To rail against the freedom of individuals or companies in this day, when there are in fact often open source alternatives to most proprietary solutions, to choose any license is silly and wrong.
There is a even a growing symbiotic relationship between commercial companies and open source projects these days.
The bottom line is that not every itch that businesses and consumers desire is going to met by an itch that developers want to scratch. At the same time, the open source development model can’t be expected to be expected to fulfill every niche in the market. In other words, giving away your source, in an already small market for some software might be akin to giving away the whole market.
I think open source can be very good at providing a computing infrastructure(ie an os, database, networking technogies, etc) but often stops short of giving a polished “simplified” package to the user.
It is a shame that more closed source consumer software companies(ie. Intuit, Macromedia, Adobe, etc.) have not commited to devloping software on linux.
>check out more here: http://mosfet.org/noredhat.html
Oh, please. “Harmful” to KDE. Right…
I have KDE on my RH 9 and it works perfectly and QT apps compile perfectly too. I have absolutely no problems with KDE under RH, and I don’t believe all this propaganda against RH Mosfet and his friends are brewing.
Ian Pulsford wrote:
I think when Stallman stated that the freedom to choose any license was not the sort of freedom he advocated was when he lost the last of his cred for me.
Do you have a reference for that quote? Doesn’t sound like the typical razor sharp writing/speaking about free software I’ve heard from him. Besides, I’ll bet he doesn’t support the freedom to rob banks either.
For those who haven’t read the GPL,
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
There’s more about what “free software” means
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
as well as a great faq
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
and lots of other good reading.
Of course, when you’re done, don’t forget to take the quiz:
http://www.gnu.org/cgi-bin/license-quiz.cgi
🙂
Not necesserilly in price, but the user should still have freedom to modify the product for his or her needs.
Why? If I spend 6 months working on a program (that included nobody else’s licensed code) and decide to release it under whatever license I see fit, you as an end user don’t have the freedom to do shit with my code unless I say you do.
just like if I buy a couch or whatever, i can do absolutely wahtever I want to it/with it, same should go for software.
Of course, software is not the same thing as a physical object such as a couch, which many people will attest to when they want to justify piracy. Just look at it this way – if you could make 1,000 copies of that couch in about a half a minute and then give those copies to all of your friends, do you think it would be legal to do so? Just because it can be done with software doesn’t mean that it should be done with software. (And not saying it shouldn’t either, but that’s not for the end user to decide.)
If someone wants to write an app and hand it out for free along with the source code, that’s fine if they choose to do so – a lot of great programs fall under this category. But what these ‘free software or death’ people need to do is to stop expecting something for free that they did not have a hand in creating. If a piece of software has a license that’s too restrictive for your needs, don’t use/buy it. Either build it yourself or use something else. And if there’s nothing else, well …. that’s just too damn bad, isn’t it? If you’re not willing to do the work involved in building what you want on your own, then why do you expect somebody else who wishes to keep their code under wraps to just hand you the source code and have at it?
Flaws.
“Linux users don’t pay for software.”
Because right now they’re more sophisticated. Unsophisticated users need to buy software — users that right now use Windows. If they used Linux, they’d be buying software because they can’t build it. They’d even have more money for it.
“community backlash can best be described as merciless.”
Don’t customers ever backlash? Don’t employees ever fight management? Isn’t Redhat dependent on that very community to make its business model feasible — low startup costs because they don’t employ most of their developers? Who is doing whom a favor here?
The thesis — free software doesn’t pay salaries.
Absent proprietary software, wouldn’t customers still pay money for programmers to fulfill their needs? Adam Scheinberg is assuming many things about a completely different software universe that has never yet existed. The financial rules won’t be the same, and he needs to think about them.
>>The thesis — free software doesn’t pay salaries.<<
The opposite assumption is — free software save salaries.
Thus, the new thesis — non free software waste salaries.
>>If you really wanted to be a nice person, you would release code without expecting ANYTHING in return. This would be FREE software. I would have the freedome to do anything I want with it.<<
OK, now this is what I can do with your code: Make it locked and propietary and charge you for that. Now I make you a slave to make it better. Do you realize that you are a nice slave by now?
I just wanted to get this said once and for all … comparing Microsoft to Linux in order to compare the quality or usefullness of open source vs. commercial products is not the best and most direct comparison you can make.
The more direct comparisons to be made would either be between Unix and Linux, because they attempt to support the same theory (alhtough linux was originally meant to be a personal desktop OS, and no other unix was – so just like all analogies or comparisons it breaks down at some level).
Another valid comparison would be between Linux and BeOS, because both we’re created at aproximately the same time, and both we’re meant to be new personal OSes.
Don’t get me wrong, there are dozens of usefull connections and comparisons to make, between all manner of licenses, development models, OSes, langauges, etc … and definately the Windows vs. Linux issue has a place … but it is constantly talked about primarily for one reason only – popularity. Windows is the most used and popular OS, and Microsoft the largest company. Linux is the most used and popular open source operating system, and Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman are the most recognized personalities (and I find people who connect them too much even more clueless than people who can only compare linux to windows).
I frequently find myself perplexed by the Linux community. I love the software and I enjoy using the alternative environment for it’s benefits and my genuine interest in the technology. However, I never have been able to fully understand the zealous of “open-source.” As a college student preparing for a career in programming, I do not see GPL as anything close to a viable career choice. I like free software, and I like community-driven free software, however, I think they are and will remain hobbies. I enjoy programming, that’s why I want it as a CAREER not a hobby. About the only useful benefit of opensource over freeware closed-source to me personally is the compiling optimizations of Gentoo
Didn’t they debunk the whole “Free software isn’t free!” meme? Are free countries less free when they outlaw murder?
Do we need these wordgames to keep us from important things?
Yes, I’ve read most of Stallman’s rhetoric.
Here’s what I was referring to:
‘However, one so-called freedom that we do not advocate is the “freedom to choose any license you want for software you write”. We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom.’
from: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.html
There has been one (a proprietary one, not the GPL one) for Linux and Moz/NS compatible browsers since forever. Works fine for me.
I am afraid you are thinking of Flash. Shockwave is as of yet unsupported. Believe me, I wish it were, my little bro loves the Nick Jr. website but can’t use it on my computer due to most of the games being shockwave as opposed to flash.
Do you realize what a support nightmare it would be? Codeweavers works with it. Regular Wine, however, is (no offense to the developers)a hack designed for users.
I am not saying it should be officially supported. But they could throw the wine guys a bone with some hints to making it work and a little effort. Also Codeweavers is based on wine with some proprietary stuff thrown in. It isn’t that much of a stretch that certain things that work in codeweavers could be made to work on wine if some companies who owned the ip would give a hand.
The opposite assumption is — free software save salaries.
Thus, the new thesis — non free software waste salaries.
How do you figure this?
Let’s say I want to write a program that would be the Mac software equivalent to Wine – to be able to run OSX apps under Linux and/or Windows without the need for OSX itself, and have it as close to 100% compatibability as possible. (I’m not sure if anyone would really want to do that, but just go along with it for the sake of discussion …)
Now, I don’t really care about money and would love to make this free software, but I have a problem … this is not the kind of project you can sit down and write in your spare time and expect to be done in less than 10 years .. especially if you have a wife and kids
The most you can hope for is that you would release some code and maybe enough developers would jump on board to help so that you would be done in the next millenium. But considering how long it has taken Wine to get this far, I don’t really think I want to go that route.
So, at the very least, I need to do this full time, and probably have a lot of other paid developers helping me, and create a small company. However, to be able to do this, I need money. So I go out and find a couple of investors and hire the developers that I need. Two years later, the project is done (v1.0) and ready for release. Now, I can release this program under the GPL and let the community make bug fixes and/or upgrades for me and be able to do with it what they wish (free software), but I’ve got a problem … in developing this software, I’ve got a lot of debts to pay off. So, how the hell am I supposed to do that by releasing/selling the software under a license that allows people to do whatever they want with the code and give it away for free? And moreover, why do you think that end users should have the right to do this after my company has spent so much time and money developing this thing? Now, I am probably missing something, but I don’t see how the hell this is supposed to work when people need/want to make money?
..so I have less to bitch about
Interesting article, and it brings up some good points — but it also gets a few wrong.
1) We’re still missing even passable counterparts for Photoshop
Wrong! GIMP. It is most definitely more than “passable”, by anyone’s definition. (Whether it’s as good or better than Photoshop is another matter entirely)
2) Linux users don’t pay for software.
Other postings have refuted this point well enough. I’d be interested in seeing supporting documentation for this statement, btw.
3) And when we implement it, there’s no support.
Um… have you ever called MS tech support? Q.E.D.
MS holds over 90% of the market, Linux just about 1%. It’s just not worthwhile for most companies to invest into the Linux market.
You ignore many important facts in this comment.
1) Porting from OSX to linux is generally considered a non-ordeal. I don’t know how true this is, but I’ll have to go by what people say.
2) Porting between linux and all traditional unices is also simple as long as traditional api calls are used.
3) Linux is an emerging market. There is a saying in the world of business: “The bigger the risk, the bigger the payoff.” Linux may be a big risk (I don’t believe it is, I think it is an obvious winner), but even if it is a big risk it has a chance of a big payoff. I think it is a small risk with a big payoff. The only reason the risk is considered big is because most people don’t see how obvious it’s success is.
Q.E.D.? Jeez, GoodGrief, could you get any more arrogant?
The GIMP is wonderful. But a Photoshop counterpart it ain’t. Ask a real graphic designer, they’ll tell you. People who say the GIMP is a professional design tool are generally the ones who only use it to convert those pesky png files into the “more manageable” .bmp format.
As for the paying for software thing – public companies exist to make their stockholders happy and make money. If they thought they could sell, say, Photoshop or AfterEffects or Flash on Linux, they’d do it. They obviously don’t.
3) And when we implement it, there’s no support.
Um… have you ever called MS tech support?
Yes, have you? They’re not God, but they stand by their product and they’ve sent people out to help us firefight real problems. Anyway, Microsoft isn’t the only company that markets their support. Ever called Novell for support? That’s worth every penny.
Support, too often, for better or worse, is about blame. Microsoft is willing to stand by their products, even when the shit hits the fan. Open source developers, for better or for worse, usually disclaim themselves from any responsibility in the README file.
Don’t cast me as anti-open source, just don’t try to sell me with weak, baseless (and incredibly pompous) arguments.
“Porting from OSX to linux is generally considered a non-ordeal… Porting between linux and all traditional unices
is also simple as long as traditional api calls are used.”
> I can’t judge nor argue it.
“Linux is an emerging market. There is a saying in the world of business: “The bigger the risk, the bigger the payoff.” Linux may be a big risk (I don’t believe it is, I think it is an obvious winner), but even if it is a big risk it has a chance of a big payoff. I think it is a small risk with a big payoff. The only reason the risk is considered big is because most people don’t see how obvious it’s success is.”
> Let’s hope that this is enough of an incentive for developers to invest in Linux. But at the Moment most companies are reluctant to do so.
“Open source developers, for better or for worse, usually disclaim themselves from any responsibility in the README file.”
MSFT always disclaims itself from any responsibility in the EULA.
“Microsoft is willing to stand by their products, even when the shit hits the fan.”
Redhat employs Alan Cox so he can debug hard problems for their support clients.
“If they thought they could sell, say, Photoshop or AfterEffects or Flash on Linux, they’d do it.”
QNX is profitable. Does Adobe sell Photoshop for it? No. Now, if Windows and MacOS were gone, and the only serious desktop were Gnu/Linux, would Adobe sell Photoshop for it? Yes.
btw, the post you’re responding to said that Gimp is merely “passable.” In no way did he say it was a professional tool.
There are certain reasons why software companies need to make decent amounts of money, and why a GNU world is dangerous. For example, Microsoft keeps hardware manufacturers in check, which probably is a very good thing. And the Microsoft tax is very low.
However, I don’t think this article captures these points.
btw, the post you’re responding to said that Gimp is merely “passable.” In no way did he say it was a professional tool.
He said (indirectly) that Gimp was a passable alternative for Photoshop and since Photoshop is a professional tool, what does that lead you to conclude ?
>Porting from OSX to linux is generally considered a non-ordeal.
Only if you are talking about POSIX command line applications. If you are talking about GUI apps, it is almost impossible to port anything from OSX (just very dificult), as most apps are based on Carbon and Linux has nothing like it, while Cocoa is very poorly supported by Gnustep (plus most people don’t have gnustep on their linuxes, therefore devs don’t prefer it). And even for the first team, the command line apps, usually is the other way around: people are porting from linux and unix to OSX, not the other way around, in general.
>Porting from OSX to linux is generally considered a non-ordeal.
Eugenia, above claim was from dwilson. Anyway, thanks for your explanation. All I was saying is that S/W developers couldn’t justify the costs of porting win aps to linux because there is hardly any demand for it in the corporate world.
Well, Good Grief wrote:
It is most definitely more than “passable”, by anyone’s definition. (Whether it’s as good or better than Photoshop is another matter entirely)
While he wrote it’s more than passable (my errer, I’ve been up too long), it seems he’s casting doubt on it being up to Photoshop’s standards.
Anyway, it’s too late for me to care about trying to delve into the meaning of a someone’s post, and I’ll drop that point. I misread it too.
I only use Linux and have no interest at all using Microsoft products under any circumstances. This is something that will never change. I definately paid for my Redhat distribution and I would be willing to pay for other Linux services.
It’s important to me that the source code is publically available because that means that changes to the platform have to be responsible to the public. I also have control over my applications because the vendor research and development is not locked up, instead I can control the libraries because I have the freedom to migrate or implement new behavior. I think that over time, open source development will become more generic, and provide powerful reuse and popular simplification so that source code accessibility can be leveraged by all Linux users.
Information technology is so easy to abuse. It’s very easy for a vendor to slip handcuffs onto you without you realizing it until you are fully locked in. These issues require extensive background information, and they are not understood by the public. Information technology is a glutton for abuse, and open source is the way to educate the public and provide them with control, power, and best of all, freedom.
In the free software world, people don’t pay for software. People pay for service, people donate to their favorite projects. Its a revolution and most people are still under shock. But I can assure you in a few years, most non specialist software will be free (as in beer), but you’d be able to pay and get your money’s worth of good support for it. Also, custom software would become the order of the day, and that is what people would pay for — to get software customized for their needs.
The sad fact is that a group of 5 or 6 high school students who probably wear their grandmothers panties over their heads can go into their attics and write software that kicks ass on any Microsoft product. Doesn’t that tell you that Microsoft is just a little bit inefficient? I mean I wonder what really goes on there, probably a zoo of people pretending to be working hard.
It’s not just in open-source projects that you have to wade through endless beta releases before a decent release. The quality of programs like Windows and Photoshop has been gradually improved over decades. I doubt anyone would say that Win95 was a quality product.
At least with free software you don’t have to pay to get the beta releases.
Darius,
your posts about hypothetical projects, and problems of people modifying your code and such make me want to hug you. Good to know there are some logical and sane people out there.
soup,
“In the free software world, people don’t pay for software. People pay for service, people donate to their favorite projects. Its a revolution and most people are still under shock. But I can assure you in a few years, most non specialist software will be free (as in beer), but you’d be able to pay and get your money’s worth of good support for it. Also, custom software would become the order of the day, and that is what people would pay for — to get software customized for their needs.”
You completely don’t get it. Thats not the way things are going to go. Any business model like your will tank. Service as a addon to your revinue from sales is nice, but you can’t live off it. If your product is truely good, you will have no service business, since people arn’t needed to call tech support when something is good, or rather not nearly enough to make any money. Also, a few random people kicking 5-20 bucks to a company for writing something is not going to support them. Face it, what keaps software companies in business is selling software. When they give something out for free, they are doing it for a reason. Adobe gives away acrobat reader so they can sell people the software to make Pdf’s, otherwise PDF’s would have never taken off. You can think happy thoughts all you want about your world, but it isn’t going to happen. The world runs on money. Companies live on selling goods. Service businesses only work when the whole basis is service. But if a company has to create product, service will not cut it.
Also custom software is the main way of things. I belive it’s something like 90% or software written is custom apps for people, not off the shelf stuff. And you can be damn sure software that falls into this catagory is not free. Asking someone to write you and app and telling them you want it for free, but they can charge you whenever you have a question is going to get a door slammed in your face. If they did go for it you can pretty much garrentee one crappy confusing program.
Someone comes out with this unmitigated guff every month or so, and they’re always wrong.
First, separate the issues. The development model is entirely irrelevant. Open source doesn’t mean you have to *accept* patches or let anyone else play with your baby. A company can release its code as open source yet develop it exactly as they would a closed source product. Imagine if id software open sourced their engine as they wrote (they wouldn’t of course, but bear with me). How would that affect its development? Not at all. Someone might take the code and make a fork, but the id product would be the same at the end.
Second, the point is flawed. It’s not the open source model that makes desktop Linux a slightly less polished (although still immeasurably better – tried using a command prompt yet?) product than desktop Windows, it’s simple immaturity and comparative lack of resources. Try using GNOME apps (NOT GTK) and ONLY GNOME apps for a day, or KDE apps (NOT QT) and only KDE apps for a day. Very close to the same level of uniformity and integration, and they’ll both be at or past the level of Windows in two or three major versions’ time. The CHOICE you get is just that: you can CHOOSE to use apps that aren’t integrated with the DE of your choice, and most people do. What does this mean? Well, it means that to most Linux users, functionality is more important than consistent looks or “integration”. But if you want those two, you can have them.
I agree there are benefits brought by a company developing software, namely money and centralised development. However this doesn’t mean the software has to close-source, proprietry or not free from cost. Many companies do fine selling support or normally GPL’d products without the GPL.
In the long run nobody benefits from proprietry methods. Also in the long run Linux and other such open and non-commerial operating systems will be mature and overall perfectly adequete operating systems. At that point the impact of companies will be less important.
“Also custom software is the main way of things. I belive it’s something like 90% or software written is custom apps for people, not off the shelf stuff. And you can be damn sure software that falls into this catagory is not free. Asking someone to write you and app and telling them you want it for free, but they can charge you whenever you have a question is going to get a door slammed in your face. If they did go for it you can pretty much garrentee one crappy confusing program.”
Actually, since the GPL only makes you distribute your changes when you re-distribute, you’re free to use whatever GPL code you want in your in-house project. Go nuts! You’re not going to be redistributing it, so who cares?
it sounds like it’s targeting [email protected].
those guys really trolled you in the worst way if you wrote an entire article just to address them.
cause i know that article wasn’t written for me or most of the technical people i interact with.
makes for some really lame reading.
basically the fight with the zealots has left the bars and has broken out into the streets.
albeit wrapped up in a nicely worded official article.
why not just rename the article: “ATTENTION LINUX ZEALOTS, BUY YOUR FSCKING SOFTWARE, THAT WILL FIX EVERYTHING CAUSE IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT”
sigh.
Call me picky, but there is no such web browser as ‘Firebird’ or ‘Mozilla Firebird’. There is a ‘Mozilla Firebird Project’ that aims to produce the ‘Mozilla Web Browser’, but (and if you look on their page), it is clarrified, they do *not* publicly call their browser ‘Firebird’. ‘Firebird’ is a relational Database based on the opensource Interbase 6.0 code. I honestly with Mozilla had had a little more sense when stepping on other people’s IPR, but they didn;t. Could you please alter the article so that we all don’t carry on the myth that is Firebird.
Perhaps the problem of Free Software desktop stuff being a lot of inconsistant jumbled crap has absolutely nothing to do with the concept of software being Free (as in speech or beer) and absolutely everything to do with the fact that the Free Software community (and for that matter, Open Source) is largely populated by traditionalist Unix geeks who have long had hostile or indifferent attitudes towards such things as GUI’s, usability, and non-geeky people getting things done easily. Why do we keep expecting people who spend all of their time in a terminal and who goose step to the book-on-tape version of Neal Stevenson’s “In the beginning there was command line” to produce usable software? Why do we keep expecting a next several years worth of quality after 30 years of nonsense?
How could we make Linux software more consistant? We could have folks just use one toolkit/desktop environment, and they could (horror of horrors) design the UI before they start writing the code (which is what any usability guy worth their salt would tell you to do to have a truly consistant, integrated experience). What would be the response of any Free Software (aka unix geek) to these suggestions? Utter disgust and denial. You’d get responses like “quit trying to enforce your proprietary software views on us” or “one toolkit? it’s a matter of choice” or “that’s what you want. That’s not what I want” or “you obviously don’t understand the open source method”. Yes, I’ve been personally told all those things a number of times by a number of different Free Software developers.
Apache and the Linux kernel have succeeded independantly of commercial involvement, so if such polished technical projects that require a massive amount of resources and coordination succeed, we have to start asking the question “Does Free Software not produce usable, highly polished desktop projects that require lots of resources and coordination due to a lack of money, or is it because the Free Software developers really don’t consider that area to be very important?” Furthermore, it begs the question as to whether bringing in commercial companies is truly the panacea for the many ills of desktop linux, since the real problem has nothing to do with money and everything to do with lack of developer interest in solving the problem.
In my opinion (which is just my opinion, any may not be valid in all 50 states and is subject to recall at any time), if the you have to bring in commercial companies to save your ass from the apathy of your own developers, you never really had an ass worth saving.
That being said, I’m all for the success of Free Software; once the harmful unix culture has been exorcised from Free Software, things will get better.
“Linux users don’t want to pay for anything”
This statement is so wrong… There was _never_ any statistical proof for this, this rumor just came up because it made sense back then but that doesn’t make it true. In fact, every informed statement about this seems to imply the opposite, that Linux users pay just as much for worthy software than anyone else (of course there are many Linux users not willing to pay for anything, but so are many Windows users who pirate 99% of their software!).
But that doesn’t mean that I will pay for software if I don’t think it’s worthy. This includes most proprietary software because it usually lacks integration, gets lost for me when I switch architectures (because it lacks portability) or even stops getting developed all together (BeOS comes to mind or this expensive text editor I buyed for Windows which still suffers from very annoying bugs which were never fixed up ’til now).
Please spare me all this “proprietary software is good for you, you should spend money on it, even if it sucks”, I just can’t hear it anymore. I’ll pay for whatever I feel is worth paying for and whatever I can effort. When I don’t really need proprietory software enough to pay for it, it’s probably just not good enough, won’t you agree?
Confusing free software with uncommercial software won’t impress me neither, I thought we would be over this by now.
To sum it up, this article is basically just a summary of FUD and redundancies which are constantly spread against free software. Again, no real substance there. Maybe you’ll call me an idiot now for not acknowledging your wisdom, but I’m growing tired of it.
There are times that I need to use use Microsoft products. For example, while I dislike it tremendously, Word is the lingua franca of word processing. I know I can send the vast majority of my business contacts a Word document. They likewise expect that I can open/view/manipulate Word docs, as well. Is this bad? I dunno… Is it reality? Definitely.
There are however times when it absolutely a no brainer for me to use Linux and other OSS software. I find it personally offensive that I have to buy licenses for *BOTH* my file/print services (once for the server and then CALs – and those add up quickly!). Samba not only gives me finer grain control, but I don’t have to worry about hidden costs or reliability. It just works!(tm)
I find it unfortunate that people will try judge Linux based on what is (or is not) available? I remember when Adobe made a beta of Framemaker available to the Linux community. It was a flop. So what? I do remember people saying things like “Adobe’s giving up on Linux.” So what? If you can afford Framemaker’s cost (big $$$) and need its power, then neither Linux nor Windows is really a good choice. You need dedicated horsepower. And that’s been Adobe’s thrust with it all along. Believe me, it eats resources like candy.
Not withstanding the MS propaganda, sever commercial entities have swung support over to Linux. SAP has recorded some of their best performance numbers on x86 Linux. (They have a really nice Open Source DB, btw. Check it out at http://www.sapdb.org good stuff even if nobody knows about it.)
I really do think everyone worries/evangilizes/complains about the Linux/Windows GUI too much. I started with a CLI. I will probably always stay with the CLI. My preference. Have a sseen mouse slowdowns with X? Definitely. Have I seen the same slowdowns in Windows? Yes from good Windows 286 (boy that dates me) all the way through XP. What is remarkable is that everyone seems to be able to criticize the other guy’s OS while ignoring or downplaing their own OS’s weak point(s).
I have and will always for things that work. I have no real ethical paying for Microsoft products when they meet a need for me. I likewise have paid for all my Linux distros and have donated money to support certain OSS projects. I refuse to support crap, either monetarily or in actual use. BTW, as far as Linux and MS support goes I have had successes and failures with both. This is why I will never use Exchange (paying $299 to discover my problem is a known “issue”) nor sendmail (I like human readable configuration files, thank you very much).
One final thought, a friend gave me an interesting perspective on the whole MS vs. Everything Else debate. Microsoft would still be an also ran if the original TCP/Ip code wasn’t BSD licensed. IE wouldn’t exist if Mosaic had not been developed. Likewise, Apache devlopment has been spurned on by IIS. MySQL (or Postgres) would still be minor or research RDBMs if there weren’t people looking for cheaper, (and in a lot cases) more reliable alternatives to SQL Server or Access. (One interesting tidbit here, I have come across many customer who were told by so-called MS experts that their websites were SQL Server driven only for me to discover an Access MDB as their backend. Ahh the power of perception).
In short, for me it’s the right tool for the right job. Sometimes it’s Linux. Sometimes it’s Windows. And even sometimes it’s something else.
-d.
Ever heard of people who lived under Dictators say : “yes it was terrible, but at least the trains ran on time” That’s what this is like.
At its best democracy is a lot better, at its worst it’s also a lot worse. So what do you want : open code with all the mess that comes with it, or order with the occasional dissappearance (of competitors)?
“It’s YOUR tax dollar. Would you be willing to fund a public program that other countries can steal for free —- and because of that —- people in other countries (where no public funds were spent) paid lower taxes than you.”
This is called Aid for Developing Countries. In the case of free software, it has the enormous advantage of not costing the programming country anything.
If some people in the developed countries want the GIMP, their tax dollars pay for it, and they get to use it. If somebody in Africa wants to use it too, it doesn’t cost any more money. Your benefit is theirs too. There is no additional development cost.
Compare that with shipping out free water treatment equipment. Here there is a real cost to the taxpayers in the donor country.
So I think the concept of “stealing for free” (isn’t stealing usually free?) is inappropriate here.
A lot of this article is simply not factually correct.
1) It’s not “just” companies like Xandros who hire graphics designers, virtually all distro companies do. Garret LeSage works full time at Red Hat drawing bluecurve.
2) Latency in the GUI is nothing to do with threading in XFree, I have no idea where this idea came from whatsoever. It’s affected by many things, multithreaded servers are not one of them.
3) WTF is this “Linux users don’t pay for software”? CodeWeavers don’t seem to agree…. neither do SuSE, neither do PomPom etc etc.
4) The central argument of “not everything should be free” is not argued, there isn’t even an attempt at arguing it. Snipes at the process or some developers have nothing to do with the question of whether software should be free or not.
I mean for the lords sake, I thought OSNews was finished with ridiculous stereotyping of open source and its developers, then an article like this one comes along.
The author of this story confuses methodological issues of software development (open source) with licensing issues (GPL). Other than this, the article is riddled with assumptions about Linux users, what they do, what they think and how they behave.
There used to be a day when journalists or aspiring journalists had to provide evidence in the form of a rigorous study to back up their assumptions. This site is the worst example of unexamined assumptions being published without any form of editorial rigor. You have a responsibility to your readers, and you are not fulfilling it.
All these preposterous claims about Linux will be put to rest in the next 3 years. Most of them already have. Governments and citizens around the world are waking up to the fact that they like ownership of their data, meaning that it has to be encoded in an open and documented file format.
To those that read this post, ask yourself whether you find it in you to support the cumulative creation of knowledge, which is what the GPL allows in the software world, or whether you prefer to have this knowledge withheld from you.
The point of the article seems to be that Microsoft, with uncounted billiions of dollars and twenty-some years of prior versions of everything, can deliver a polished, well-integrated product, and that the free software competition is not as mature. That does not sound very newsworthy to me.
I would not dispute that the current Microsoft products do the job they are intended to do. Basically, I do not have a problem with Microsoft engineering, I have a problem with Microsoft’s business practices. Microsoft seems to believe that they have an indelible right to be paid by all users of desktop OS and office productivity software for all of eternity, and they will do absolutely everything (legal or illegal) to maintain that monopoly.
This probably wont get read because it’s the 73rd post, but anyway, you said:
“You have misconceptions here regarding the development of the Windows NT-branch which only started in 1991. And in 1999 they already had a great product out, Windows 2000. The desktop version of it, XP, came 2 years later out. Win2k3 Server is even better. ”
I believe they started work on the NT kernel in 1988, and this work was mostly performed by people at DEC.
In NT4, the GUI unsurprisingly starts looking like windows 95. Umm, do you think they rewrote the GUI from scratch for NT 4? No they reused code from the win95 project.
When windows 2000 first came out, it was still buggy and had problems and it took a couple of service packs to become really good. So I am suggesting it took Microsoft 12 years to create a decent operating system.
Since Microsoft started NT in 1988, that gives them a 3 year head start on Linux (the kernel at least). Linux was also a very small hobby project in its early days (though NT development only started with 8 people I believe, 7 from DEC, 1 from Microsoft).
Also, only in the last 2-3 years has Linux started to become really hyped and more mainstream. This means in terms of catering for the non-technical user, it is still in its infancy. I believe with continued feedback from non-technical users, outstanding issues with the Linux user experience will be resolved.
If that were true, then why did I spend $50 on the crossover plugin support extension and Win4Lin v5 this month?
1) I bet a lot of people bitching about Linux on the desktop don’t actually use Linux on the desktop. I’ve used every version of Windows since 3.1, and now I use a 100% KDE desktop. At its worst, KDE is merely unpolished, and its its best, it displays a level of integration that Windows cannot touch. GNOME 2.x, on the other hand, is much more polished (moreso than Windows in many cases — its more streamlined anyway) while it doesn’t have the advantage of tight integration. Neither are UI disasters, unless the ways of Windows XP are strongly ingrained in you.
2) I really think Adobe is missing the boat with Photoshop. Linux has shown a good deal of acceptance in the high-end media community. There are Linux versions of XSI, Maya, Toonz, and many other high-end media applications. Many desktops at ILM only run OS X because of Photoshop — they would have been switched to Linux otherwise. New versions of some Photoshop software is based on Qt, which might prove to indicate a forthcoming Photoshop Linux port.
Eugenia,
Well ask people who actually work in KDE development, they can tell you different stories.
When a friend of mine was building KBear for RHL 8.0 he had tremendous problems. All sorts of hackery had to go into the .spec file.
Additionally, several KDE internals were changed, at least in RHL 8.0, that made work difficult.
I too thought that it was just cosmetic changes until he pointed out to me that the changed Red Hat Software made go deeper than just the UI.
@ Owen Anderson:
> Actually, you’re not entirely right either. The GPL is
> about protecting the code. The entire GNU philosophy is
> that code itself should be free.
No. Access to source code is but a means to an end. The end is the freedoms of users. Code does not exist in a vacuum (figuratively that is). Free code is meaningless without some entity to take advantage of it.
> If it was about the rights of the users of the code, it
> would be more like the BSD license: give credit, and do
> what you please with it.
There is more than one BSD license. None of them protects the freedoms of ALL users.
@ Jonas:
> It’s about cooperation since if someone finds another use
> for your code (s)he has the moral and legal duty to make
> the changes availlable to you.
The GPL does not require that you make changes available. You have neither moral nor legal duty to do so. It is generally appreciated if you make your changes available. However, there is no obligation.
> It’s, definitely, NOT about making money with your code.
You are correct. If your values favour making money over freedom, then the GPL is not for you. [Note: I’m not implying anything about your values.]
do they monkey around with it much?
“It’s YOUR tax dollar. Would you be willing to fund a public program that other countries can steal for free —- and because of that —- people in other countries (where no public funds were spent) paid lower taxes than you.”
Which countries are you refering to? “Steal”? Lets look at real economics here. I would argue that any country that it is classified as “third world”, “developing”, “ex-colonies”, etc. are stolen from everyday as a part of economics. The wealth that we have in the North (North America, Europe, Japan, Australia) is largely begot from historical and present pilfering. Said again — your high standard of living is at direct expense of others.
So yes, yes I would be *glad* if some of my tax money was spent on software that could be used in countries (especially by citizen enttities), to improve their life in someway or another.
Kudo’s to Don Cox who pointed out that others can benefit from the bounty of Free Software at no expense to the creators and the said tax-payers.
with gross generalisations for a diverse community? who said that Linux users don’t want to pay for software? Linux users WILL pay for software, however, unlike Windows users (whom the majority are NOT technical (which is not a put down, just a fact of life)), Linux users will look at great detail and compare it to either a free or low cost alternative.
Just look at Photoshop for example. How many people really need Adobe Photoshop for what they do? lets be completely honest, how many users actually need all that power when something like Corel Photopaint or JASC Photo Shop could do the job at 1/2 the price.
I purchase software for Linux. I buy all my distributions, I subscribe to the Red Hat Network, I use Crossover Office 2.0, I own a copy of Opera 7.11. So as you can see, I do actually purchase software.
If Macromedia came out tomorrow and said they’d port Macromedia Studio MX natively to Linux, I would be more than happy to pay for a copy, in fact, I would pre-pay and willing to pay up to $100 more than the Windows version. That is how much I am committed to seeing more commercial software on Linux. I am sure there are many others out there like me willing to put their money where their mouth is and back companies willing to port their software.
Why don’t Macromedia do it? I don’t know. Why don’t they help Codeweavers to develop wine to support their products and thus get a barometre to whether there is a demand in the Linux community? I don’t know. These are questions I want answered by Macromedia and Adobe, I don’t want cheap anti-GPL rhetoric, I want a solid business arguement to why not and some evidence to back it up.
Source code should always be peer-reviewed, and always be available to you.
Consider: if Toyota sold cars with the hoods welded shut and a license agreement saying that the end users wouldn’t try to reverse-engineer them, they’d be laughed out of the industry.
If they sold a car that could only reach 40 mph and called it a “city car,” and charged triple for a car that could reach 80 and called it a “highway car,” and filed a lawsuit against you when you Mod’d your “city car” to run at 80, they’d no longer sell cars.
Yet in the software world it seems normal to have a powerful operating system that only accepts six file sharing clients at a time, even though the “Server” system accepts more. This is because we’ve been made used to it. And we have no choice in the matter.
I read an article with a Linux guru in which he was asked whether Linux was ready for the desktop, or if it was still better as a server OS. His response was classic: the Linux answer to the question is, what’s the difference? In the Microsoft world we’ve been molded to become the customers they want to sell products to; we believe that there is a difference between a “server” and a “client.” Well, of course there is … but for HTTP, or POP3. Not for operating systems. You box should be able to do anything you want.
The free software world is one with less VC and less coordination. But it feels a whole lot better, and the more you get used to it, the more insane the world of proprietary software gets.
Adobe, Macromedia, and other large software companies know the audience – they know Linux users don’t pay for software.
This is definitely not true. I personally take offense to this. The author makes “Linux users” sound like some cheapscates or software pirates. Neither are correct characterization of “Linux users”. I think it’s unfair to make generalized statement as such. It is as offensive as making a statement such as “[insert any race, gender, religion] are [insert any corresponding stereotype]”. I know numerous people who would gladly pay $600 for a copy of Photoshop for Linux. The simple fact is that I cannot pay for software that doesn’t exist.
Adobe or Macromedia is not developing Photoshop or Dreamweaver for Linux because they feel that they won’t sell enough number of copies to justify the cost of their investment. The situation of commercial software companies developing Linux version is really a catch-22. Anyone remember the slow adoption of CD-ROM? People didn’t buy CD-ROM drives because there weren’t enough software titles available. Software companies didn’t produce the titles because there weren’t that many CD-ROM drives out there. Of course this didn’t mean that there was fundamental technical flaw in the CD-ROM technlogy. This sort of catch-22 is just natural during the early adoption of any new technology.
Great article, Adam – thanks for contributing!
I’m interested in the “dual license” mentioned by a couple of people at the beginning of this thread. I don’t want anyone to try to spell out the whole thing for me here, as that would be a lot of trouble to go to, but was wondering if someone could give me a url about it? Thanks!
Some people just can’t handle freedom, they need a prison because their emotional neediness can’t accept responsibility. So they choose safety over liberty. They choose convenience over flexability. They choose macdonald’s over home cooking. And they choose microsquat over actually learning something and making an open source os into their own creation.
STUPID PEOPLE SUCK!
I agree !!!
<snip>
“Linux users don’t pay for software.”
Because right now they’re more sophisticated. Unsophisticated users need to buy software — users that right now use Windows. If they used Linux, they’d be buying software because they can’t build it. They’d even have more money for it.
</snip>
I am so sick an tired of hearing this bull. All the time “Windows users are not as smart as Linux, blah, blah, bull.” I use Windows and am quite tech savvy – why? Becasue a lew of apps are windows dependent. Palin and simple. Has nothing to do with sophistication at all.
For all the people here who claim to be “personally offended,” you must be unfamiliar with the concept of plurality. The “Linux users” who don’t pay for software is not a reference to individual people – it’s an “on the whole” statement. I needn’t convince anyone this is true, just look at the percentage of successful software packages available for Linux. They just aren’t there. That’s all the proof anyone should need, if comapnies thought they could make money, they would. That’s not to say that not one copy of Linux Photoshop would be sold, just that in general, open source people know how to fake it with open source alternatives, some sub-par, others decent.
I have my issues with Microsoft, but I don’t hate them to be stylish. I don’t care about a headstart of 12 years, I don’t care about Windows 95. I care about today. Today, Linux has some catching up to do to be a competitive desktop OS, and there’s very few arguments I’ve read that have done anything by reconvince me of that. Generally, the people who say Windows is a terrible, insecure, beta-quality OS and Linux is the saviour haven’t used Windows lately and couldn’t hack into a properly configured Windows box to save their life.
all software was free via Kazaa? 🙂
You really are completely clueless, lets look at the list of failures:
1) Loki, little or no demand for games.
2) Applixware, Office suite crap when compared to StarOffice which was sold by Star Division.
3) Corel Wordperfect and Corel Draw, sucked terribly due to the immature nature of wine.
4) Mandrake, every release until 9.1 sucked terribly. Rushing releases and poor QA. Now they are getting to the end of their money box and finally worked out people aren’t going to buy crap.
EVERY instance where commercial companies have failed has been due to poor management and poor business decisions, NOT the marketplace. Just look at Borland for one example who makes Kylix for Linux.
Had Corel spent the time on porting Corel Draw and Wordpefect Suite NATIVELY to Linux instead of wasting time on “netwinders” (the company that bought the netwinder division has recently gone bankrupt) and “javaports”, they would have had a VERY sucessful product, but they didn’t. They wanted to do it the easy way, which as a result definately showed up in their product.
There IS demand there. The demand IS for mainstream applications on Linux. When I don’t spend $800 on a full version, NON-OEM, NON-UPGRADE version of Windows XP, that is $800 I don’t have to spend on their product. When I spend $34.95 on a Linux distro, that leaves me with $750 I can spend on their product line up. If these so-called “business gurus” can’t see it, then god help them.
I so far bought for Linux/BSD:
– Maya
– Softimage / Eddy / Mentalray
– Blender (books/and paypal)
– Wordperfect 2000 suite
– CorelDraw!
– StarOffice 5.2/6.0
– OpenOffice (donated money)
– WineX
– Crossover 1/2 series
– Pagestream
– Kylix 1.0 /2.0/ and 3.0
– JBuilder
– RedHat 5/6/7/8/9 series
– Lindows
– Xandros
– Mandrake 7/8/9 series
– Suse 6/7/8 series
– Rav Antivirus
– MainActor (BETA!)
– Real3D
– Black Adder
– TK (Zaurus apps from thekomany.com)
– FreeBSD cds
– OpenBSD cds
– Debian cds
– Tribes2, Soldies of Fortune, Decent
– tons of books and magazines
total is far over $50.000!
Yeah i like commercial software just as i like free software. I really am not intressted in seeing to source code of Maya but there a situations where you WANT to see/have the source, for me that are:
Operating system, webserver, email server etc..
Ooops forgot:
– GearPro
– Win4lin
– Zend Accelerator
– Bru pro Backup
– IBM developer kit
euhheuh…lots of more i guess
Are ya freak’n kidding me – I am going to assume that you have never been in a position to rely on either of these products in order to make a living. I’m not saying that GIMP isn’t a good piece of software for giving your ex-girlfriend big hips and a mullet prior to posting it online for the world to see. The point is that a professional designer or a prepress person would be laughed out of town for even suggesting that GIMP be substituted for Photoshop even in jest.
I can only laugh after reading your comment:
first…
1) Loki, little or no demand for games.
then…
There IS demand there.
Which is it?
I don’t know where you shop, but the full version of XP has never, ever cost $800. Sorry, but that’s either a flat-out lie or evidence of your ignorance. XP Pro costs 299.99, and has since day 1. And it’s even cheaper on the net:
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=20345073&loc=105
The rest of your coment doesn’t support your argument, you seem to imply that the current Linux companies have terrible management and make poor decisions. So what? I didn’t claim that the embarassingly long list of failures is evidence. I said the companies that market professional software go where the money is. And they aren’t selling Linux software. Draw your own conclusions.
P.S. I’ll eat my hat if you’ve spent $750 dollars of your personal cash on after-market add-ons for your Linux distributions.
I bet a lot of people bitching about Linux on the desktop don’t actually use Linux on the desktop.
Rayiner Hashem – You can consider me the first member of your fan club. Anyone else interested in joing a BS-free (as in lack of BS), straight shoot’n club?
Anyway in my case you are dead on correct. I use windows as it is the only environment that fulfills my simple requirements – can I run the following apps: Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and of lessor importance Word, Powerpoint, and Excel. And finally will the It guy allow me to connect it to our network. As soon as Desktop Linux allows me to answer yes to the above then I’m in. Until then Bills Got my business (sorry apple our IT team has more clout then me in such matters;(
I bet a lot of people bitching about Linux on the desktop don’t actually use Linux on the desktop.
Probably not, but a lot of us have tried it
And no, most of us didn’t spend the 3 years (or whatever) that is required to get a handle on it. If it ain’t happeneing within a couple of weeks after I install it, it ain’t happening. (And no, it didn’t take me ‘years’ to learn Windows, so don’t even start with that shit.)
>> I don’t know where you shop, but the full version of XP has never, ever cost $800. Sorry, but that’s either a flat-out lie or evidence of your ignorance. XP Pro costs 299.99, and has since day 1.<<
I think this full version comes with office XP and that will add $579 on top of that $299.
http://members.microsoft.com/partner/products/officefamily/officexp…
Wow. How about if he has more than 1 PC, e.g. 3 PCs and 2 notebooks -> multiply that with 5. Go figure. Where does the money come from? His salary of course.
>>P.S. I’ll eat my hat if you’ve spent $750 dollars of your personal cash on after-market add-ons for your Linux distributions.<<
Where he will run the linux box on? PC hardware of course. That means he can spend that $750 on high end video card, high end sound card, faster processor, extra RAM, extra harddisk and so on. Think of it as an add on 😉
You are, of course, absolutely right. Large-scale and/or average-user-friendly software only gets developed by people who care enough to make the incredible effort required, and money (sadly) is the only thing that motivates anyone enough to make that effort.
Richard Stallman’s ideals work great if you assume that all users are also expert developers. Unfortunately this does not hold true outside the sheltered academic environment in which he grew. In the real world, developers and users are mutually exclusive sets of people, with the developers writing stuff for users and users not caring anything about source code.
The only major problem with the existing commercial software model is that design choices are made based primarily on profitability for the company, and only secondarily on the needs of users. Unfortunately these two things do not always align and are often, in fact, in direct conflict.
Yours is the rare voice in the OSS/FS community that recognizes reality. And for that, I’m certain you will be flamed relentlessly for days (if not weeks) by zealots in the community who choose to ignore reality and live with blinders on.
Please keep up the honest, intelligent writing despite such flames.
– Keith F. Kelly
Software Development Engineer, Microsoft
P.S. – It should be noted that while I work for Microsoft and feel that it makes me a very unique type of OSS/FS enthusiast, my opinions expressed here are not representative of my employer.
And this is just a partial list for Red Hat —
Available Application List
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Are the applications needed to run your enterprise available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Chances are, they are – or will be soon. More and more Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) now consider Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a vital platform for their future success. Here is a list of many of the applications available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux today*:
ActiveState
* PureMessage
Am-Beo
* Rate-Rec
Avalon Net
* Lancelot
* Percival
Avatier
* PasswordStation.Net
* PasswordBouncer
* Trusted Enterprise Manager
BEA
* BEA WebLogic Server 7.0 SP1
* BEA WebLogic JRockit 7.0 (J2SE 1.3.1 and 1.4.0 certified)**
BISIL
* Enj
BMC
* Patrol – Predict
* Patrol (coming soon)
* Control-M Agent (coming soon)
California Software
* Baby Family
* BABY/Access
* BABY/OLAP
* baby.net
* baby.com
* BABY/GUI
* BABY/iSeries
* BABY/36
* Unibol Family
* Unibol400
* Unibol36
Cincom Systems
* VisualWorks
Cleo Communications
* Cleo TN3270
CommVault
* Galaxy 4.1 (Data Recovery)
Computer Associates (CA)
* Unicenter AutoSys Job Management 4.0
o Console, Server, Remote Agent, Xpert
o Oracle 9i, 8.1.7, Sybase
* Unicenter Network and Systems Management (NSM) 3.0 (in beta)
* eTrust Antivirus (coming soon)
* eTrust AccessControl (in beta)
* BrightStor ARCserve Backup (coming soon)
Constant Data
* Constant Replicator
Database Systems Corp.
* PACER Call Center Phone System
* TELEMATION CRM Software Application
* CTI Software and Softphone Application
DataPlow
* DataPlow Nasan File System
* DataPlow SAN File System
EMC
* PowerPath v3.0.2 b069
Ericom Software
* PowerTerm Host Publisher
* PowerTerm InterConnect
FalconStor
* IPStor
GenaWare
* GenaMap Vector
* GenaCell Raster
IBM
* DB2 Universal Database Enterprise Server Edition 8.1
* DB2 Universal Database Workgroup Server Edition 8.1
* DB2 Universal Database Workgroup Server Unlimited Edition 8.1
* DB2 Universal Database Personal Edition 8.1
* DB2 Personal Developer’s Edition 8.1
* DB2 Universal Developer’s Edition 8.1
* Director v4.1
* Director Integrator v5.1
* Directory Server v5.1
* Tivoli Enterprise Console 3.8
o Enterprise Console, Server, Gateway, UI Server, Java Console, Endpoint
o Network Management Engine
* Tivoli Enterprise Console 3.7.1
o FP3 Endpoint on a TMF
o LCF
* Tivoli Monitoring for Transaction Performance 5.1
o Web Service Courier Endpoints
o Web Service Investigator Endpoints
o Quality of Service Endpoints
* Tivoli Storage Manager 5.1.5
o Server, Client
* WebSphere Application Server 5.0
* WebSphere Application Server – Express 5.0 – Remote Server
* WebSphere Application Server for Developers 5.0
* WebSphere Application Server for Network Deployment 5.0
* WebSphere MQ for Linux 5.3
Internet Security Systems
* RealSecure 7.0 Network Sensor
* RealSecure 7.0 Server Sensor
InterSAN
* PATHLINE
iPlicity
* Kashmere Web Management Suite
o Kashmere Content Manager
o Kashmere User Manager
o Kashmere Performance Manager
o Kashmere Customer Relationship Manager
Jabber
* Jabber eXtensible Communications Platform
o Jabber Messenger
o Jabber WebClient
o Jabber SMS Gateway
JJ Labs
* WatchTower
Legato
* Legato Networker 6.1.3
o LEGATO NetWorker Server, Storage Node and Client
o LEGATO NetWorker ClientPak for Linux
o LEGATO NetWorker Module for Oracle
Leostream
* Leostream VMC
Linuxcare
* Levanta
MessageSoft
* Secure Message Gateway Storm Mail
MicroFocus
* Object COBOL Compiler
N2H2
* Bess Internet Content Filtering v2.0
* Sentian Internet Content Filtering v2.0
netForensics
* netForensics
Nitro Data Systems
* NitroEDB 3.0 Data Management Library/Engine
Oracle
* Oracle 9i Server Enterprise Edition (9.2, 9.0.1)
* Oracle 9i Server Standard Edition (9.2, 9.0.1)
* Oracle 9i RAC (9.2, 9.0.1)
* Oracle 8i Server (8.1.7)
* Oracle Express Server (6.3.4, 6.3.2.1B) with 8.1.7
* Oracle 9i Application Server Enterprise Edition (9.0.3, 9.0.2.0.1, 9.0.2) with 8i or 9i Server
* Oracle 11i eBusiness Suite (11.5.7)
* Oracle Collaboration Suite (9.0.3) with Oracle Server Enterprise Edition 9i
Pervasive
* Pervasive.SQL
Platform Computing
* Symphony
* LSF 5.0
Pramati
* Pramati Server 3.0
* Pramati Studio 3.0
Ribstone Systems
* Ribstone Information Management System
* Ribstone Capture System
* Ribstone OCR Plus
* Ribstone Perfect Print
Roaring Penguin Software
* CanIT
* CanIT-Pro
Rogue Wave
* Rogue Wave Application Tuning System (ATS)
* Rogue Wave Lightweight Enterprise Integration Framework (LEIF)
* Rogue Wave XML Object Link
* Source Pro C++ Core
* Source Pro C++ Net
* Source Pro C++ Analysis
* Source Pro C++ DB
Sane Solutions
* NetTracker Professional
* NetTracker Enterprise
* NetTracker eBusiness Edition
* NetTracker for Business Objects
* NetTracker for Cognos
* NetTracker for MicroStrategy
Sistina
* Global File System (GFS) 5.1
SteelEye
* LifeKeeper
Sychron
* Global Workload Manager
Synopsys
* U-Foundation 2003.03, 2003.06, 2003.09
Talisker Solutions
* RHEA Content Rich Applications
Tarantella
* Tranatella Enterprise 3
TOLIS Group
* BRU 17.0
* BRU-Pro 2.0
TradeCity Cybersoft
* RexIP AppServer
Trend Micro
* InterScan Messaging Security Suite
* Server Protect for Linux
VERITAS
* VERITAS Cluster Server
* VERITAS Foundation Suite (Volume Manager and File System)
* VERITAS NetBackup Business Server (server and client)
* VERITAS NetBackup Datacenter (server and client)
VMWare
* VMware Workstation
* VMware ESX Server
* VMware GSX Server
Additionally, Red Hat is working with Borland, Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Novell, Rational, Reuters, Sybase, TIBCO and many more software vendors on ports to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and future Red Hat enterprise products.
*Note: All information given is Red Hat’s best estimate, and should not be construed as commitments by the software vendor or by Red Hat. Vendor support for a software product on Red Hat Enterprise Linux does not guarantee interoperability with other software or hardware products. Please contact the specific vendor for further details.
** BEA WebLogic JRockit 7.0 is available directly from Red Hat Enterprise Network for Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers. IBM’s JVM 1.3.1 ships with Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (version 2.1).
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