Proclamations of Linux’s commercial success are frequently punctuated with statements about how some analyst firm has found that sales have grown faster than has any operating system since 1999, or that Linux server shipments make it the second most popular operating system for servers. Read the editorial at C|Net News by Ian Murdock, Debian founder.
Editorial: Reconsidering Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The article is absolutely correct. The point of Linux is as a component in a GNU framework for freedom, not to replace one lockdown corporate solution with another.
Possibly, the most reasoned, well-written article on the philosophy of the opensource model put together from a tech editor yet.
Sure, it was not detailed and it did not go into specific examples of linux solutions for different business models and all that. Still, it went into the concept of linux as a platform of a collection of opensource packages as opposed to a single packaged OS in a way I have rarely heard outside of tech circles. Kudos to C|Net News.
“from a tech editor yet. ”
Ian Murdock is more than a tech editor
He is one of the men who founded debian !
“he is one of the men who founded it”
he is more than one of the men that founded it, he was the man with the plan!!! heck!!! he named the project after him and his GF (wife now or is she long gone?)
DEBbie and IAN
Yet the business models that are built around today’s leading commercial Linux distributions are remarkably similar to those built around the proprietary operating systems they seek to replace: Position the OS as a standard, then control the standard by locking customers in through proprietary technology, subscription agreement legerdemain or an “embrace and extend” approach to existing standards and best practices.
I don’t see that happening. Where is that happening? I guess it can only mean Red Hat, and really I would have expected more from such a guy. He gives no solid examples, other than a vague assertion that if you modify the product you lose support. Well of COURSE you lose support – how is anybody supposed to support and patch a product which you modified?
I found this article is heavy on rhetoric and light on information or insight.
I will have to agree with Mike. Ian does not give any examples on HOW this “Linux way” can actually work in the commercial and IT market without being able to be a “product”. When companies are buying products they need support, they need to have a single place where they can file for problems and get a resolution immediately. If this can’t be addressed by having Linux as a “non-product”, then Linux won’t be adopted. And that’s why companies like RH or SuSE are providing “products” and not “projects”. Because products sell, projects don’t.
how is anybody supposed to support and patch a product which you modified?
Perhaps there’s a market that wants to pay for that type of support?
Yeah, and then have titanian headaches of the worst kind to try to support something like that. Sorry, but it doesn’t fly.
Ah but that’s just it. You only lose vendor support. Thanks to the openness of the source there are many other places you can go. Growing old waiting for Debian to include the latest widget? Don’t wait compile it yourself. Can’t wait for Mandrake to add the latest KDE? Get RPMS from texstar.
I don’t know one serious Linux user who hasn’t got stuff that didn’t come in the box. (except Debian and Gentoo users who don’t even have a box.)
So Ians point is that any vendor who thinks they’re going to get rich pushing boxed sets is not making the best use of Linux and is wasting their time on an inherently unprofitable idea.
And I believe the proprietary jab was against such things as Red Hats’ up2date licenses, YaST, Mandrake club etc.
Excuse me, but you can’t be serious. So, what you are telling us that if a company needs the X feature right now, all they have to do is download it off Texstar’s??
Sorry, but if Texstar’s RPMs have a problem who are going to fix it for them? Texstar? Texstar does not provide any support to any of these guys. Companies need SUPPORT. Without support they don’t even bother looking into a solution. And as for fixing it themselves, that might end up being more expesnive, as you will need people who understand the CODE of the linux kernel, drivers or X, and I can tell you, the GOOD OS programmers are very few.
From the article:
Let’s step back a bit and look at why people are flocking to Linux. It’s an open platform that is not owned or controlled by any single company. It comes with unmatched customization, optimization and integration possibilities.
Speaking from the point of view of a business Linux customer, I can say that this is wrong. Whatever the support structure, the reason people are buying linux is because it’s the right tool for the job at hand. And it’s cheap. The openness is a plus, yes, but it’s way down the list.
Excuse me, but you can’t be serious. So, what you are telling us that if a company needs the X feature right now, all they have to do is download it off Texstar’s??
It depends on how badly they want it. Atleast they have that option. If they just want to sit around for Mandrake what advantage do they have over just sitting around for Microsoft, Sun etc.?
You’re right companies need support. Support is where the money is in the Linux business not “product.” Red Hat are realizing this and have come to the same conclusion as Ian. They are deemphasizing retail sales and outsourcing some of the actual package-building to the community.
That’s why Linux is not such a good choice after all. Use whatever parts you want and build your own system, yes but to get any low TCO you have to stick to a functional distribution. But hey, in that case, what’s the point of Linux at all when there are fully functional free full operating systems which just works???
Having admins running around searching updates rather than just getting updates sound really expensive to me…
And since like the author says, everything get’s developed independently, it’s pretty hard to make consistent choices that will last years and let your companys IT strategy evolve. Probably a lot safer to stick to Solaris or BSD or something where there is clear information of what you can expect.
I agree with this guy about some people sharing that idea about some people trying to force a lock in the Linux universe, but fortunately no one owns the base operating system. As long as no one owns the underlying operating system there’s no vendor locking.
There’s space in linux for everybody, comercial (RedHat) or hobby driven (Debian).
If RedHat makes a comercial product which gives better support to business than the “philosophical crowd” and a company chooses the business aproach than the philosophical one there’s no one to blame, business only understand business language.
The diference between the Linux universe and the MS one is that in MS space there’s no room for anybody else.
“Companies need SUPPORT. Without support they don’t even bother looking into a solution. And as for fixing it themselves, that might end up being more expesnive, as you will need people who understand the CODE of the linux kernel, drivers or X, and I can tell you, the GOOD OS programmers are very few.”
I dunno. Debian maintains and supports its packages pretty well, free of charge. The maintainers are generally very responsive to bug reports, and then there are the mailing lists and BTS…
Besides, his point was simply that you can still get paid support, just not from the vendor. Just using Debian as an example, http://www.lemon-computing.com is a UK, London-based company that will provide support. At least one of the employees is a regular on the mailing lists, so they’re involved with the Project whilst being independent of it.
“To think of Linux as a product is to freeze an inherently dynamic thing in time and to close something that is inherently open. It cannot be done without losing something–and something significant at that.
No, Linux is not a product. It is a process”
This is really flimsy rhetoric. I know he only means to swipe at commercial distributions, but even the non-commercial distro he founded “productizes” Linux. The very point of Debian Stable is to be static and unchanging until the next release. Each release is the end *product* of the labours of the Debian *Project*. And I personally think this is a great thing – it’s a great product. Okay, there’s Unstable on offer as well, for those that want to be on the leading (and occasionally bleeding) edge of development for whatever reason. This does have its advantages, but it’s not for everyone, as evidenced by the fact that the bulk of the Debian installations in existence are one of the Stable releases.
“The seller, rather than the customer, once again controls the evolution of the platform and dictates the timeline on which the customer must release or implement new products and services.”
He’s just stating the obvious. Nobody in their right mind is going to offer paid support for an unknown quantity. When you buy support, it makes sense that that support is going to be tied to a specific product which the support vendor understands inside and out. Anyway, if people honestly agreed with Ian, the Enterprise commercial distributions wouldn’t have a following at all. Plus, if you *need* to make such major changes as to invalidate your support, you either bought the wrong product or you paid for too many years of support in the first place. No point in forking out cash for someone to support something that doesn’t do what you want.
“By pursuing traditional platform lock-in strategies, the Linux distribution industry is in effect attempting to turn an infrastructure technology into a proprietary technology. The source code may be available, but what good is that if I’m stuck with the company who gives it to me?”
If the only “traditional platform lock-in strategy” that Microsoft used was to invalidate paid support when the customer tweaks things beyond certain pre-specified parameters, software like OpenOffice and Wine would be able to perfectly support the Microsoft Office file formats and the Windows API. Migration to other operating systems such as BSD and Linux would be a comparative doddle. As it stands, Microsoft don’t document their file formats or the API, thus ensuring that a competing product seeking to replicate this functionality can never be 100% compatible and will struggle being compatible at all. Thus far, I don’t see any of the commercial distributions using comparable tactics against one another. If the one remaining snare is support, that sounds like one heck of an improvement to me.
I was almost brought to tears reading this man’s plea for someone to please support linux with their pocketbook.
Sorry pal, the main attraction to 90% of Linux users is the price, zero. And that’s just not a solid business model, no matter how enticing the thought of a permanent ‘project’ might be to you. If I’m going to pay for something, it better work, I better be able to get quick and reliable support, and I damn well better not get some letter in the mail saying I’m going to get sued for using it.
“I was almost brought to tears reading this man’s plea for someone to please support linux with their pocketbook.”
To whom are you referring? It can’t be the CNET article itself, because there’s nothing remotely like that in there.
Sorry it was over your head, but he had many statements like this:
Sure, Linux distributions–integrated collections of software combined with the Linux kernel to form complete operating systems–have been the primary drivers of the commercialization of Linux over the past several years.
…the business models that are built around today’s leading commercial Linux distributions are remarkably similar to those built around the proprietary operating systems they seek to replace…
Linux distributors need business models that better match the fundamental differences that Linux brings to the market in technology, culture and process.
“Sorry pal, the main attraction to 90% of Linux users is the price, zero.”
Same old same old then, really, eh?
Not to be picky, but that’s the main reason a majority of people use proprietary software, too. It’s “free” – just pirate it, or buy only one copy and install it on multiple machines. If they had to pay full price, they’d be far more tempted to look at alternative solutions.
Big companies can’t get away with this, but the home users and small businesses are immune from BSA audits and can pirate to their hearts’ content.
Also, people think of Windows as being “free” because it comes with their computer. They’re obviously mistaken, but the perception is there.
I beg to differ.
That’s nothing like the same as begging for money for a community-supported distro, which is what you originally claimed he was doing. There is *no* “plea for someone to please support linux with their pocketbook”.
Personally, if I were going to read as deeply into it as you have, I’d’ve thought the words “need business models” would preclude donations, as that would then be a charity, not a business.
Not to be picky, but that’s the main reason a majority of people use proprietary software, too. It’s “free”
That sounds like someone who is attempting to justify their own personal theft of property under the guise of ‘everybody does it’.
More to the point I was making, the author didn’t even mention ‘free’ as any possible reason anyone would use linix. Instead he says:
“Let’s step back a bit and look at why people are flocking to Linux. It’s an open platform that is not owned or controlled by any single company. It comes with unmatched customization, optimization and integration possibilities. It is the ideal “invisible engine” for driving the next generation of applications and services. And it gives its users greater control over the evolution of the underlying platform, putting the user firmly in control of product release timelines and rollout schedules. In short, with Linux, the balance of power has finally shifted back from company to user.”
That’s a boatload of BS that’s only true in his own mind.
There is *no* “plea for someone to please support linux with their pocketbook”.
That’s exactly what it is, his plea for ANYONE to come up with a better “business model” as he directly referred to it more than once, which is desperately needed since the current one isn’t working too well.
“which is desperately needed since the current one isn’t working too well.”
Again, you’re putting words in his mouth. He’s critiquing the commercial distributions from an *ideological* standpoint, not a monetary one.
Besides, you’re contradicting yourself. Now you’re saying that donations *would* be a better business model than their current one?
I also repeat again that I don’t think donations would count as a “business model” if we’re really going to nitpick the article to death.
“That sounds like someone who is attempting to justify their own personal theft of property under the guise of ‘everybody does it’.”
Not really. Besides, it’s obvious that the proprietary software companies themselves see piracy as a big problem – no. 1 example being the “Product Activation” in the XP line.
“More to the point I was making, the author didn’t even mention ‘free’ as any possible reason anyone would use linix.”
That’s because he’s obviously only talking about people who pay for the product. His whole argument centers around support locking people to a particular distribution. If you get it for free, you don’t get any support. Hence, it’s irrelevant for the purposes of the article.
Again, you’re putting words in his mouth. He’s critiquing the commercial distributions from an *ideological* standpoint, not a monetary one.
No I’m not. I simply pointing out the fallacies of his request.
He wants the money that only a commercial distro can provide (you’re dreaming if you think a major software project can live indefinitely off donations), but he is unwilling to accept the long lived and undeniable laws of market economics that demand accountability.
The two cannot co-exist except in his dream world. Yet somehow, after years of analyzing this, he still can’t put the two together.
His whole argument centers around support locking people to a particular distribution.
No, actually, he was against that, remember? He just wants the benefits of doing that, ie money.
If you get it for free, you don’t get any support.
Ah, I see you finally caught on. Now take your statement to heart and re-read his article. Then the fallacy of his position will be clear.
Lol!
And how about my point about Ian only talking about customers that purchase support, since the whole article is about support locking customers to a particular disto…?
“He wants the money that only a commercial distro can provide”
What, now you’re saying that he wants to make his own distro? I don’t see that in there, either.
I agree that donations is not viable for the *commercial* distributions, except for the fact that a) he didn’t say it and b) it’s irrelevant to what he *does* say in the article. Again, he’s only talking about those customers that are locked in by the support that they’ve paid for.
“you’re dreaming if you think a major software project can live indefinitely off donations.”
Debian’s still here… 😉
“>His whole argument centers around support locking people to >a particular distribution.
No, actually, he was against that, remember? He just wants the benefits of doing that, ie money.”
English must not be your first language. Saying that his argument concerns support locking people to a particular distribution, is not the same as saying that he is for it, simply that that is what he is talking about.
“He just wants the benefits of doing that, ie money.”
No… again, he’s arguing from an ideological perspective, not a monetary one. He just wants a new business model that is viable *and* coherent with his own views on how development should take place. He does *not* say that the current business model is failing monetarily.
“>If you get it for free, you don’t get any support.
Ah, I see you finally caught on. Now take your statement to heart and re-read his article. Then the fallacy of his position will be clear.”
You’ve still missed the point. He’s talking about support; you only get support if you pay; therefore, people getting Linux for free are not mentioned, and rightly so, because they don’t get support and so are not subjected to the lock-in he’s talking about. They are irrelevant for the purposes of the article.
now you’re saying that he wants to make his own distro?
Obviously, I did not, my quote simply could not have been any clearer when it said “He wants the money…”
You are dishonestly trying to defend what he said.
Debian’s still here… 😉
Again, ignoring the obvious meaning of my words when I said “major project”.
Bottom line, his article title is “Reconsidering Linux”, and his attempts at somehow insinuating that there is somewhere out in space a business model for linux that will allow it’s distributors to continue to survive while still refusing to provide stability and accountability back to those customers (or donators whoever has any money to spend on linix at all) is a pipe dream that by it’s own contradictory nature will never happen.
He just wants a new business model that is viable *and* coherent with his own views on how development should take place.
Exactly. Except that it doesn’t exist. *ideological* you called it, and that is what it is. Which has nothing to do with reality, no matter how many pleas he writes.
“Obviously, I did not, my quote simply could not have been any clearer when it said “He wants the money…”
It’s as clear as mud. *He* wants the money? Nowhere in the article does he ask people to give *him* money. He may well have an indirect, ulterior motive as chairman of Progeny, but that’s not the same as soliciting donations or custom – in fact, he doesn’t mention his company at all. CNet do that as a courtesy underneith, in his bio, and don’t even provide a hyperlink to Progeny’s web page.
“Again, ignoring the obvious meaning of my words when I said “major project”.”
Lol! 😀 You’ve obviously never looked at Debian. With 10,000+ packages and 11 supported architectures, it’s pretty large-scale.
“Bottom line…”
No, I think he’s just critiquing the “one size fits all” methodology. He’s a fan of more flexible support options. And, indeed:
From http://www.progeny.com
“Progeny’s Platform Services is an alternative to the “one size fits all” Linux distribution. Platform Services provides a componentized Linux distribution that can be customized easily and inexpensively.”
All the stuff about refusing to provide stability and accountability is just a load of hot air. How can you claim he refuses to provide what his own company sells?
Also, the fact that you deliberately mis-spell Linux doesn’t lend you much credibility. You’re as bad as those 1337 D00DZ who write “M$” or “Windoze”.
I don’t see that happening. Where is that happening? I guess it can only mean Red Hat, and really I would have expected more from such a guy. He gives no solid examples, other than a vague assertion that if you modify the product you lose support. Well of COURSE you lose support – how is anybody supposed to support and patch a product which you modified?
Please. enough out of your kind. There are companies whose values are far more questionable. Off the top of my head, Xandros, Lindows, SuSE do not develop as openly as Redhat. Redhat even recently changed its model to a more community based model, a la Debian.
Plus Redhat gave us
ext2fs, ext3fs
NPTL
some LVM
rpm (Love it or hate it)
PLus a whole industry of distros based on it.
Contribute(development wise and financially) to GNOME. (They host the server IIRC)
I read the article, and I agree with the author, that Linux, (Open source in general) is so much more powerful because we have all this software ultimately becoming a resource rather than a product. As a resource, it can be put to good use to actually create more value.
“Exactly. Except that it doesn’t exist.”
Yes, it does. His company claims to offer it… see my last post.
Progeny is the leading independent provider of Linux platform technology.
Is that a lie right on his front page?
“Is that a lie right on his front page?”
It’s called “marketing” 😀
Here’s another: “Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Premier technology solutions for mission-critical deployments”
Not sure I would let them in our front door, much less trust them with the back one.
Redhat even recently changed its model to a more community based model, a la Debian.
That recent change was likely because Red Hat no longer has enough profits to continue to employ as many professional programmers, and also likely why we are now seeing a guest editorial on C/Net called “Reconsidering Linux”.
Courtesy of dictionary.com:
hacker, n.
1. One who is proficient at using or programming a computer; a computer buff.
2. One who uses programming skills to gain illegal access to a computer network or file.
Number 1 is both the original meaning of the word and the correct one in this context.
I think people ultimately fail to realise how the component model is one area where, for all the advancement in terms of computer speed and software capability, the proprietary model mirrors very old, ancient business practices.
Imagine a world where each model car has to have its own model wheel nuts, its own model tires, own wiper blades, own gearbox, own pistons and own whatever it takes to make a car.
Now imagine if instead of maybe modifying each product to suit a model car in the above scenario, you actually had to design a new bolt, a new type wheel etc from scratch each time you made a new model.
One of the outcomes would be prohibitively expensive cars. One just has to look at cars like top of the range Ferraris to see how this can be. Yes, some of these do have parts specially made for them and they are very expensive.
At the other end of the spectrum, you would have very cheap cars, which are mass produced in the truest sense of the word. e.g. Corollas, especially back when mass production meant thousands if not millins of identical cars on the road, or even think Model Ts by ford. These would benefit because development costs are offset by the numbers produced.
But then the world would be very boring if we all drove model Ts.
The thing about open source is that it allows all these components, once developed, to be reused, much like a car maker hardly worries about getting tires that fit on the car they make. They know these components are there, and all they have to do, is design their car to be able to take avantage of the existing components to lower costs of development, whilst bringing out better cars.
A case in point is how the cars are designed on ‘platforms’ now in the auto industry.
A huge maker like VW has rationalised its all model lines into a handful of platforms, about 5 or so, yet the product range they offer is diverse. VW, Audi, Seat, Lamborghini.
In fact, component sharing is so widespread in the auto industry, and the industry is ultra competitive, in terms of pricing, regardless what Bill gates has to say about the progress in computers compared to the auto industry, the computer industry is nowhere near the auto industry when it comes to efficiency.
Plus there is an eerie absence of IP lawsuits in an industry where innovation is the main driver, rather than where conformance which seem to be the only thing some software companies have going for them.
One who uses programming skills to gain illegal access to a computer network or file…
Sorry, this is the version I think of when I hear the word “hacker”, and especially when I come across a website called hackers.something.com. And as a paid security consultant, that is how I would advise any potential clients to deal with the issue as well. ‘Trust’ is not something you should grant when you hear the word “hacker”.
Imagine a world where each model car has to have its own model wheel nuts, its own model tires, own wiper blades, own gearbox, own pistons and own whatever it takes to make a car.
Uh, Maynard. Sorry to disappoint, but the truly interchangable auto parts like “wheel nuts, tires, and wiper blades” are the most ignorant pieces of the entire design, tires and wipers even being made of plastic.
All the ‘technology’ in cars is propreitary, especially the computers. Try putting a Mustang chip in a Corvette, see how well it runs.
Sorry, meant to say made of rubber. Trying to get some food down!
BMW and Jaguar currently use the same gearbox in their cars. These are different caompanies, but they use the same component suppliers (ZF) in the end.
The things you mention, like chips and so on, are well, just design choices. Besides, they mostly use TRON as an OS for their systems, which is real time and free. And they are not nearly as critical as say, the pistons, or the gearbox.
The point is, they are not making new chips every time they make a new car. There is a lot of reuse going on there. You miss the gist of the argument. Car makers are barely interested in developing stuff like chips for their use. The reason they use that proprietary technology is because to them its just another component, plus you are talking of the hardware, but the software is many times not proprietary.
And well, I wouldn’t expect to see a corvette and a mustang with exactly the same chip. The truth is, many components are pretty standard anyway, and differ in their programming, which is why they wouldn’t run nicely if you put them in the wrong place
And they are not nearly as critical as say, the pistons, or the gearbox.
That’s simply just not true. Without the chip, most modern cars won’t even start, much less run at all.
You miss the gist of the argument. Car makers are barely interested in developing stuff like chips for their use.
Again I totally disagree. When the “goodwrench” computers showed up on the repair room floor, which could simply plug into the car and tell you much of what might be wrong, this was a major improvement in car design/repair.
Now we hear of ‘black boxes’ under the seat that have no telling what all kind of capability, or On*Star type emergency equipment. This is the future, not pistons and gearboxes, which haven’t once revolutionalized the industry like the computers have.
“Sorry, this is the version I think of when I hear the word “hacker”, and especially when I come across a website called hackers.something.com.”
Apology accepted. Anyway, thanks to dictionary.com, now you know better.
Anyway, thanks to dictionary.com, now you know better.
I already knew hackers had tried to redifine the word. But I also know, they’re the only ones who believe it.
Linux isn’t intended for ‘everybody’or as a replacement for all other OSes. If you like it use – if you don’t like it don’t use it.
I’ve tried a few distros over the past 2.5 years. I got sick of them after a few weeks. I will prbably go back and try again in 6-12 months. I expect in 2-3 years Linux will be a great replacement for my XP Pro.
“I already knew hackers had tried to redifine the word. But I also know, they’re the only ones who believe it.”
Lol – besides the dictionaries, you mean? 😀 Give it up! Or else provide proof of your claims.
Oh, and FYI, despite the common mis-use of the word by the media, dictionary.com mentions in its *detailed* etymology at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hacker
—
8. (Deprecated) A malicious meddler who tries to discover
sensitive information by poking around. Hence “password
hacker”, “network hacker”. The correct term is cracker.
—
I think it likely that the original meaning is
—
6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an
astronomy hacker, for example.
—
top speed:”That sounds like someone who is attempting to justify their own personal theft of property under the guise of ‘everybody does it’.”
Syntaxis:”Not really. Besides, it’s obvious that the proprietary software companies themselves see piracy as a big problem – no. 1 example being the “Product Activation” in the XP line. ”
Sure, but microsoft is a bad example, microsoft’s relationship with piracy is more symbiotic than parasitic.
That was a joke, a good one obviously.
Perhaps from hacker, amateurish or inept…or perhaps from hack, practical joke, clever scheme (from dialectal hack, to embarrass, confuse, play a trick on).
Like I said, *I* wouldn’t trust those guys. You might, though.
Lol!
I honestly hope you’re joking. Surely no-one could really be this dumb in real life. You’re obviously just choosing the negative interpretation out of sheer perversity and/or hatred of Linux in general (shown by the deliberate mis-spelling of Linux earlier).
Just one final thought: If it were pejorative, why would Progeny voluntarily pin that label upon themselves?
But I’m fairly sure that mere logic won’t be sufficient to sway you.
“Like I said, *I* wouldn’t trust those guys.”
Yeah, okay. While we’re at it, I’ll call your earlier bluff and ask you to provide the details of where you work as a security consultant (as you claimed in an earlier post) and your real name, so I can be sure never to hire you.
“microsoft’s relationship with piracy is more symbiotic than parasitic.”
Personally, I agree with you. As I said before, if people *had* to pay full price, they might start looking elsewhere. Rather than increasing revenue as Microsoft hope, the increased anti-piracy measures may well cost them mindshare. *If* it’s any good – everything’s been cracked fairly quickly thus far.
Of course, they obviously don’t share this view, else they never would have implemented Product Activation in the first place. I suspect that they’ll only continue to ramp it up in their future releases, out of greed.
Listen my company’s proprietary product uses psutils, and gs and xpdf in its processes to do document management on the server side.
We ran into some issues with pdfinfo and other utilites bundled with xpdf so we sent the maintainer a couple of patches and he put them in right away even. Other issues we even provided him with some workaround code that he worked into a patch. All the while his opensource program was being called by our proprietary stuff and everything was working along quick. Have you ever asked adobe to change something in its pdf utilites?
We have and they can suck my left nut. I have seen how the big software companies can ignore the customer. Just like I see some patches sitting dormant on some projects while other projects move like light-speed. These proprietary software is always best people or even the opensource is always best folks all make me want to slap them.
Surely no-one could really be this dumb in real life.
Your personal attacks are as pitiful as the plight of this author himself.
If it were pejorative, why would Progeny voluntarily pin that label upon themselves?
Who said they did. That looked anything like a front door.
I’ll call your earlier bluff and ask you to provide the details of where you work as a security consultant (as you claimed in an earlier post) and your real name, so I can be sure never to hire you.
Sorry, those are personal details I’m not at liberty to release, at least not that I’m willing to chance. Deosn’t matter, I’m not available for additional work, anyway. Why, who do you work for, Progeny?
There is ONE way to make money off Linux in the traditional means (Proprietary software and Single Seat Licensing) This is to put as much proprietary software and graphics NECESSARY TO RUN THE DISTRIBUTION AS A WHOLE as far away from the Kernel and QT Free Edition as possible therby avoiding problems with the GPL ;-).
I believe that SCO used to engage in this practice before ending their sails of Linux due to the lawsuit and that Lycoris and Lindows are also using this hybrid Propritary-Open structure and perhaps would even pay royalties on the stolen code because of their desidedly pro capitalist pro Intellectual property orientation which I think is quite refreshing amongst Linux distributers. In fact Lindows may already be paying royalties on it. (SCO considers Lindows to be the first “clean” linux distro for some reason.
And as for Linus Torvalds’s foreign status I would like to remind Top Speed that Finland was the first nation on earth to SUCCESSFULLY RESIST COMMUNIST AGRESSION in their 1930s “Winter War” with the Soviets. It is hardly an enemy of America. Finland may have a lot of Socialism today but when you look at even the VOLUMES of laws and regulations of our country I would like to ask WHO DOESN’T!!!
(And if you are also either Bush 2000 or Golden Eagle we REALLY should be taking this political stuff to the Linux,
Microsoft, SCO and IBM threads on Free Republic where it actually IS on topic. I recently signed up for a posting account there under the same screen name I use here. So I should be easy to recognize as in Black, Yellow and Red ;-).
“Your personal attacks are as pitiful as the plight of this author himself.”
I stand by my comment. Besides, read it again… I didn’t say you *were* stupid. Rather, I expressed disbelief that anyone “could really be this dumb in real life”, and said that I thought you were obviously trolling out of anti-Linux bias and/or sheer argumentativeness.
“That looked anything like a front door.”
No, wrong. Search for “PGI” in Google, for instance.
http://hackers.progeny.com/pgi/ is the seventh entry down on the search results.
It’s indexed and spidered by the major search engines. It’s a “front door” as you crudely put it, for all the projects hosted there. A majority of the projects are in the Debian tree in some shape or form as well, and the homepage is listed as the respective address under http://hackers.progeny.com. Besides, you found it without too much trouble, so you must have followed the link from somewhere.
“Sorry, those are personal details I’m not at liberty to release, at least not that I’m willing to chance. Deosn’t matter, I’m not available for additional work, anyway. Why, who do you work for, Progeny?”
Lol – not “willing to chance”? Not willing to have your professional reputation linked with your comments here? Shouldn’t have used it as a card to try to bolster your position, then, should you, i.e. “as a paid security consultant…” 😀
“Why, who do you work for, Progeny?”
I don’t work for anyone, being a student. But that’s by the by – I’m not the one who brought up his career in an attempt to lend credence to his vacuous arguments.
topspeed said:
>Like I said, *I* wouldn’t trust those guys. You might, though.
If you are a security consultant you have heard of SANS and other security alert networks that notify software distributers of exploits, open doors and hacks.
I trust the opensource hackers more in general than I do Microsoft simply based on the level of support and speed of action in terms of projects like openssl and openssh in terms of responding to open exploits. I have Microsoft leave big doors wide open for long periods of time before gracing the world with there holier than though fix.
On the other hand, I respect Sun and their attitude toward fixes for Solaris almost as much as the general respect I have for the opensource project maintainers. The patches available for say the Sendmail exploit was available in a patch cluter pretty darn quick.
Do I trust the hackers? I have met some of the guys. A good number of these guys build the software they code for fun. A good number get paid. These are not wild eyed l33t script kiddies on the rampage. They are programmers trying to in general scratch an intellectual itch.
Coral Snake you continue to impress!
Yes, I regualarly post on Free Republic, that bastion of US patriots where we scrutinize the evil ways of the world, as Golden Eagle. I am very astonished that not only are you even aware of Free Republic, but that you were able to deduce that I may be one of their posters. I look forward to discussing MANY more topics with you in the future there.
Concerning your latest post, as usual I totally agree with your assesment:
There is ONE way to make money off Linux in the traditional means (Proprietary software and Single Seat Licensing) This is to put as much proprietary software and graphics NECESSARY TO RUN THE DISTRIBUTION AS A WHOLE as far away from the Kernel and QT Free Edition as possible therby avoiding problems with the GPL
While you are very likely 100% correct, unfortunately the author seems to seek income from the “Linux distribution industry” as he calls it. You go on to say:
I believe that SCO used to engage in this practice before ending their sails of Linux due to the lawsuit and that Lycoris and Lindows are also using this hybrid Propritary-Open structure and perhaps would even pay royalties on the stolen code because of their desidedly pro capitalist pro Intellectual property orientation which I think is quite refreshing amongst Linux distributers
Fantastic insight here, basically saying that many Linux distributors might betray Linux, and in my opinion IBM may already be the very first case. However I may not agree with this Coral Snake:
Finland was the first nation on earth to SUCCESSFULLY RESIST COMMUNIST AGRESSION in their 1930s “Winter War” with the Soviets. It is hardly an enemy of America.
Coral Snake before that even happened Finland was an ally of Germany in WW1. Later, they were one of the ‘Axis’ consisting of themselves, Germany, and Italy. I feel these ties along with others that expose IBM as a likely ally of Nazi Germany are much more questionable, especially in light of recent events.
I’m sorry if these topics are disturbing to others, but Coral Snake and I enjoy discussing the true and worldwide implications of the current lawsuit.
Nice post, and I agree some open source guys do a pretty good job, Apache is a good example. However, I believe that the level of support that open source programmers can successfully provide is a finite amount.
There is a ceiling to the amount of support you can expect to continually obtain from a volunteer force, especially if that force has obligations to a seperate paying employer.
I believe that was part of the enigma the author must have found himself in before he was willing to write the above piece. The ability to ‘guarantee’ adequate support, especially in times of crises, is somewhat dependent on the whims of the unemployed, or at least the whims of those employed by others.
I’m not saying they’re not good guys, many of them are. But the problem is the potential ‘tipping point’ should the number of hackers ever exceed the number of volunteer fixers. The ‘many eyes’ security model gets turned on it’s head when the ‘bad eyes’ one day outnumber the ‘good eyes’.
What makes this more likely is the exponentially increasing versions of Linux. We have several different vendors, and from each vendor there are many different versions. Without a model that increases the number of “good eyes” or “hackers who patch code” to keep up with the increase in Linux code, their ability to keep up is certain to fade.
I might as well post it here as every bit of news I post via the submission form is completely ignored for some flaim bait orientated garbage.
“The Department of Corrections will go live in two weeks with an open-source content management system to provide an intranet for its 4500 staff.
“Open-source software is free to licence and is developed by a global “community” of programmers in their spare time.
“IT manager Derek Lyons said the intranet system, using the free OpenCMS software, would replace a mixture of static web pages and ordinary database access. Its purpose was to improve access to internal information, such as manuals, and there might be an opportunity to add other functions such as forums…”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/businessstorydisplay.cfm?storyID…
I will have to agree with Mike. Ian does not give any examples on HOW this “Linux way” can actually work in the commercial and IT market without being able to be a “product”.
I think the limiting fact in this case in that people are used to a certain paradigm and can’t think past that. For example, a few years back the big question was “how can we make money with Linux”. I always thought that was a poorly reasoned question.
With the exception of Microsoft, nobody makes money on Windows directly, but rather through support contracts, commercial products that run on Windows, selling hardware with Windows pre-installed, writing programs that run on Windows, etc. They didn’t control Windows, but still were able to make money on it. Why they figured they had to control Linux, or put Linux in the same mold as Windows, in order to make money was something I never understood. Just do the same things with Linux that your doing with Windows. You don’t control Windows either; after all.
Of course, your market was and is a lot smaller, but sometimes doing the same thing that everyone else is doing, only doing it in a niche market, can a very lucrative thing indeed.
When companies are buying products they need support, they need to have a single place where they can file for problems and get a resolution immediately.
You know, I find this sounds like a good argument against Linux on paper, in corporate executive meetings, and probably here on OSNews, but in reality I think it is a poor argument. First of all, how many people get good support from Microsoft directly? Very few. Most people have service contracts through other 3rd party companies. You can get 3rd party service contracts for Linux as well.
Through my company I have a support contract with Microsoft; however, I never use it because everything I’ve ever need is either obtainable in a more timely, less frustrating fashion on the internet via Google, or for the cases when I couldn’t find the answer I needed, Microsoft didn’t have it either so I had to do without or figure it out myself. So at any level, how is that any different from Linux? It really isn’t. The one thing that is different, however, is that Linux, being open, has a lot more information readily available on the internet.
If this can’t be addressed by having Linux as a “non-product”, then Linux won’t be adopted. And that’s why companies like RH or SuSE are providing “products” and not “projects”. Because products sell, projects don’t.
I have to disagree to some degree (but agree to some as well). The reason is I have many friends who’s companies are using either Linux or BSD to serve some vital function within the companies IT infrastruction, only without the buy-off from upper management. The people actually doing the work know that BSD and Linux are excellent platforms so they implement them. By contrast, the upper management know more about golf.
Since Linux and BSD are free, these implementations, while very successful, remain a secret to most of the company. Adoption of “projects” is happening, and will continue to happen, at that level.
Where I agree with you is that the people in control of the money feel more secure when things fit into their existing paradigm, which is why Red Hat, SuSE and others can succeed by offering a product.
For the most part, I think the problem is people and a stubborn resistance to do things in a different way, not “projects” vs. “products”. I think things will change eventually though. A good example is screwdrivers. Craftsman makes a great screwdriver with lifetime support should it ever break; however, people came to accept other tools available to them as well, which is why people often times can be seen loosening screws with a butter knife.
It’s late, so I hope at least parts of this make sense.
Yeah, and then have titanian headaches of the worst kind to try to support something like that. Sorry, but it doesn’t fly.
Then why do companies have internal development teams who write bespoke programs? What’s the difference between me as a developer downloading a set of perl modules from the net or C headers or VB classes from MSDN and using them in my program than to downloading the new KDE? I, as the developer, am responsible for the support in the company. MS doesn’t offer any more support on the code they give away for you to use on MSDN than an OS company does for their source code, code that developers use every single day in their applications.
You, as the administrator, developer etc. are responsible for making the decision of wether you value that code enough or wether you feel you should invest time and money developing it yourself. Most developers come to the conclusion that the code of the net is a lot more tried and tested and reliable and cheaper than their own and they don’t sit their howling about how their isn’t a support contract.
In light of this article and the recent articles on “Linux vs. Windows” I thought I would take this opertunity, again, to say: “Linux” is not an OS.
But I think I’ll rather say this: “Linux” does not exist!
What I mean by this is not “Linux is a kernel. A kernel does not make an OS”. I mean that people generaly define “Linux” as the mess you get when “make && make install”-ing the stock distributions of various sourcecode projects such as Linux, GNU, XFree86, GNOME|KDE.
Problem: there is no single product satisfying this definition, there are thousands. So when talking about the single product “Linux” and comparing it, IN ANY WAY, you are bound to fail. This is the major flaw of the “Linux” brand.
Mabey the best thing for Linux would be if the various OS vendors stopped marketing their products as Linux. Instead just based their kernel on the Linux codebase.
I agree with Ian, OSS should not be seen as products. And definitly not products aimed at some end-user. For crying out loud, OSS implies Sourcecode. No end-user should ever have to be concerned with sourcecode.
A good example of the split personality disorder OSS projects suffer from is Gentoo. The distribution would/could be the perfect platform for developing tailored OS’es for your products/customers. However the community is mainly “users” and they tend to develop the distribution for end-users. The distribution is a development tool for it self in a way.
Note: I’m not a native English speaker.
>>>Coral Snake before that even happened Finland was an ally of Germany in WW1. Later, they were one of the ‘Axis’ consisting of themselves, Germany, and Italy. I feel these ties along with others that expose IBM as a likely ally of Nazi Germany are much more questionable, especially in light of recent events<<<
And what exactly has this got to do with the editorial ???
I really wish there was some moderating here, I am getting rather tired of that fashist crap (excuse my ‘french’) from ‘topspeed’ and ‘coral snake’ (how old are you guys by the way – 12 maybe 13 ??? Your worldview and knowledge of history and your intellectual abiltiy to discuss certain issues certainly point that way).
top speed said:
“I’m not saying they’re not good guys, many of them are. But the problem is the potential ‘tipping point’ should the number of hackers ever exceed the number of volunteer fixers. The ‘many eyes’ security model gets turned on it’s head when the ‘bad eyes’ one day outnumber the ‘good eyes’. ”
Some of your comments turn big pluses of the opensource model on its head. The more diverse list of vendors looking at different projects that commonly make a linux distro the more patches and support the community as a whole receives. This is true when Ximian became involved with Gnome and when Suse (not particularily open in many ways) became involved with KDE. This was true when other larger companies became involved with linux and offerred patches and tweaks to the kernel. You talk about different versions. Many of the tweaks and the improvements that seen in this distro vs. that distro get back into the general code.
This is true with bugs and security exploits as well. In one sentence you lament that the bad eyes will outnumber the good eyes and then go into about how many different vendors are using the linux kernel to create distros. The larger the number of companies depending on the Linux the better the feedback has gotten in terms of security issues and a number of the patches to bigger programs have come from programmers attached to these companies.
The assertion that some projects do well in support and others do not is well taken.
This is true as I pointed out in another post about commercial companies as well.
Some take care to fix their security issues quickly and openly and others deny that there is an issue or fix the problem only after months of begging from the community.
Some opensource projects as you pointed out are very good about taking care of their issues and others let important patches submitted by the community sit while they argue over the general philosophy of the direction of their project while the problem lingers. I have seen both.
While X lets patches for support of certain video cards sit lagging, the maintainer of xpdf took the suggestions and sometimes re-wrote patches our programmers submitted to him and applied them almost immediately. Some kernel issues take priority and others do not. I have seen all of this.
The more interesting part of the article in my eyes is the assertion that you cannot look at a linux distro in the same way and approach in the same way that you do a Windows release. One is a collection of thousands of projects and the other is a unified product. Sometimes this is good when I get a project maintainer to quickly resolve an issue. Sometimes it is bad because the total unification of the product means that you have so many different places to look for in terms of support.
I am saying that taking a hard stance that either is completely superior over the other is short sighted and a completely dogmatic approach.
Posting at work and have an alias in my name section from cache. Sorry
“Reconsidering Linux” by Ian Murdock, is a well worded, clear and concise. It is not overly provactive, yet it makes a powerful case for what it is about linux which trully makes linux different from that of propietary software development models. I must admit I was surprised to find myself in such agreement with Ian. I have always had multiple problems with debian- mostly pertaining to user attitudes and the “atmosphere” around debian-which always was a profound turn-off for me. Yet I found myself agreeing with him, fundamentally.
The issue concerning lock-in which he describes is real: even in companies/institutions where linux has been accepted-only this or that distribution of linux is held to be viable because many software packages are only available, in a timely fashion, for one or two distributions(Redhat, SuSE).
As a rule of thumb the closer a distibution remains to the source the more “customization, optimization and integration possibilities” are available to system-integrators and sysadmins. Most of the *viable*, commercially speaking, Distributions have missed this point entirely, having chosen to support and develop what they percieve being the most *valubale* customizations, optimizations and forms of integration.
The degree of “pre-decision” made by the major Distributions effectively “pre-define” the role of sysadmin’s and system-integrators and severly curtail their ability to implement the best solutions for the problems they are dealing with in a custom fashion. This is the bane of “one-size-fits-all” and linux, very broadly speaking, should not even attempt to *compete* on this level with mass-consumer software-in so doing the beauty of linux, its simplicity and adaptability, is completely lost.
If one is a consumer of computer technology, such issues are moot-and for such people there exists mass-consumer software which for this purpose is quite good. But for those who work as sysadmins, system-integrators, software developers, enthusiasts and hobbyists linux at the source is and remains uncontested in terms of “customization, optimization and integration possibilities”.
Where sysadmins and system-integrators can take full advantage of these facets the end-users(consumers) profit immeasurably because these issues can be rendered completely invisible to their usage of the applications. Linux is to the computing world what jazz is to music in general.
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Thanks Elmo- somebody needed to say what you said. This thread is another *magical* example of OSNEWS. Every once in a blue moon I read an article hear which is really, really good-sometimes an interview, sometimes an introduction to some aspect of existing or new OS’s. Every once in a blue moon really knowledgable people post things here which are at once informative and thought provoking. %70 of all comments posted on all articles(and yes I pulled that figure straight out of my ass) are utterly useless- contributing nothing to the discussion at hand and are only nominally distinguishable from simple trolling.
“coral snake” and “top speed” belong, however, to another league- they are not *mere* trolls, for they have attained a level of mastery, if not as pertains to the topic at hand, but as pertains to rhetoric. Their neo-fascist rhetorical skills totally obfuscate the boundary between fine-point argumentation and ideological lambastry. Upon closer inspection the rhetorical saavy of the new-right in America is virtually indistiguishable from that of the national socialist party in the speeches they held in Germany in the early 1930’s.In France, Le Pen, and those so aligned are still primitive and unsophisticated rhetorically in contrast to the aspiring new-right of america(NRA).
Any security consultant who mistrusts OSS as a whole, is a MORON.
http://www.snort.org/
http://www.openbsd.org/
Many more exaples available, but these are the most salient ones.