Software, whether application software like gcc or system software like Linux which are part of the Free Software Foundation attract masses by their appeal of being free. In reality, this in-born-nature of FSF software of being free (in the sense of freedom of speech and not free beer) is not so clear and cogent to a common man. More significantly, if one takes an in-depth look into the Linux world, things seem to go the other way. Update: Fanatic OSNews reader Hubert Figuiere lets us know of the Paul Ferris’ rebuttal to this editorial. Thanks Hubert!
Free Software in Reality Isn’t Free
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 guy seems to discredit anybody supporting Linux professionally who doesn’t have a certification. I don’t know how it works with Sun certs, but when it comes to MCSEs, they have bootcamps where they’re turning out MCSEs a dime a dozen. Hell, it’s possible to get one of these certs without any real-world experience at all. I’d say the certs are pretty much worthless. If anything else, it shows that you know where to find the braindumps and cheat your way through it (as many people do).
As for Linux as a success, considering it started out as a hobby coded by one person, I’d say Linux has done pretty damn good for itself.
Why is this even posted? He never supports any of his statements and the only real point he has once you dredge through all the filler is “RHCE isn’t as good as sun certs”…and his proof there is what?..That an RHCE cannot handle a turbolinux box? I like hysterical ramblings as much as the next guy, but can’t we raise the quality of them just a little bit?
Note: Look at the bottom of the “in-depth look” …he is studying for a sun cert…..
I think this must be a joke. There is no way he can be serious if he has been awake for the last 5 years and not in a coma as I suspect.
UNIX and Linux now cost exactly the same (see Sun’s new pricing model), and Solaris will be released under an OSI license sometime in the next few months. The remaining differentiating factors will be the subtleties of licensing between the GPL and Sun’s OSI license and the preferences of users. UNIX is no longer the enemy as it had been when GNU started. The real enemy is Microsoft, because Microsoft is the main resistence to open systems, right now. FOSS will win, that is clear–people really do desire open systems.
Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing
First things first…which cardboard box have you been hiding in.
Seriously, If you have a look at Sun’s intentions with Solaris you may just happen to notice that they plan to place Solaris 10 under an OSI approved license (CDDL?) Which would place Solaris in the same category as Linux according to your little rant, that is a shame because it appears to me you were basing alot of your argument upon Solaris ebing proprietary.
As for qualifications, to me vendor courses in the end only ever only offer a framework for the student to build upon and as far as these courses go for preparing student’s for the real world I would say the RHCE courses are amongst the best. MSCE’s on the other hand – I usually ask whether they have attended kindergarten instead.
I do feel sorry for you, it is obvious you have put quite alot of time and effort into your little rant, I must say I did find it amusing so I guess that counts for something.
Don’t take it personally, I just don’t agree with you.
I don’t think his statistics are very accurate (and some just aren’t relevant). He mentions that Red Hat (RHAT) has a stock price of around $6, and that most other GNU/Linux vendors have stock prices around $1. As far as I can tell, that’s not correct.
RHAT: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=t&s=RHAT+
NOVL: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=t&s=NOVL+
Granted, Novell isn’t purely a GNU/Linux vendor, but Suse seems to be the second most popular enterprise distribution.
I also fail to see how his argument that GNU/Linux lags behind in terms of support is valid. He says:
“Linux (and the community as a whole) provides no guarantee of support and maintenance to its users whatsoever.”
The reason people pay for the aforementioned enterprise distributions is the support. Even free (as in money) distributions like Debian provide security and bug fixes (admittedly, there is no concrete guarantee). It seems like he is comparing commercial UNIX variants to free GNU/Linux distributions in terms of support, which isn’t fair at all.
He also mentions that Sun still has 34% of the UNIX market share. I don’t see how that is relevant. GNU/Linux wouldn’t be included in that statistic, as it isn’t UNIX.
“Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing”
Even if your time is worth nothing, proprietary software STILL isn’t free.
It’s basically a series of unsupported assertions, half-truths and logical fallacies. Hack journalism at its worst.
Seriously, OSNews should be above this kind of tripe. I’d suggest that the editors actually read the articles they link to.
“A Red Hat Linux Certified Engineer (RHCE) well qualified in Red Hat Linux server administration would be pretty useless in a corporate environment which consists of 100 Pentium 4 workstations running TurboLinux.”
That’s total BS. Though Linux distributions differ, it wouldn’t take long for a RHCE to learn the relatively minor differences and apply his knowledge of Linux to a Turbolinux network. It’s all Linux inside!
Another gem:
“Nicely put, hardware systems running free software are not easily upgradeable, and even if they are, are not upgradeable to a great extent. Linux performs the worst in this case. FreeBSD on Intel platform though is horizontally upgradeable to some extent, but miserably fails (like Linux) when vertical upgradeability is considered.”
This is so wrong on so many levels that I frankly don’t know where to start.
The lousy article aside (mistakes, bad logic, and clear misdirection)… The “free software isn’t free” mantra is tired at this point. The premise being that, even if it doesn’t cost anything up front, that you’ll pay for it somehow (support, personnel costs, etc.). Gee, isn’t that insightful — and besides the point.
The point is that free software has a very low cost of entry. You pay only for the support you need or want, and obtain such support on your own terms. In many cases, organizations may already posess the skills and knowledge necessary, so the software is truly “free” in the economic sense (and perhaps less, depending on how you account for it). The “Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing” (implying that working with Linux is particular time-consuming) mantra is also tired. While this may be true for those with considerable experience in one non-UNIX environment and no experience in a UNIX-like environment, in practice it doesn’t matter to novices (where everything is frusterating and time consuming if it departs from the most basic usage), and for experienced users (where Linux is pretty straight forward and no different than anything else).
That said, can any software be truly free? You’re at least going to have to buy some hardware to run it on, or at the very least the electricity to run that hardware. Then, you have to pay whoever pushes the buttons on that computer even if it’s just the power-button once everytime you swap out some DIMMs.
Obviously, there are techncial advantages to open-source software, and Linux in particular, that stem directly from the openness itself. Sun recognizes this and is trying to cash in themselves (albeit, I’m not sure how that’s going to work out for them).
“Sun recognizes this and is trying to cash in themselves (albeit, I’m not sure how that’s going to work out for them).”
Some businesses like the conservative approach in Solaris, other businesses like the price and open nature of Linux. Sun has matched the price of Linux and will match the open nature of Linux, thus becoming worthy of consideration by both groups of businesses.
It takes real balls for Sun’s executives to come out and tell shareholders they are giving away Solaris for free, but the long-term benefits of doing so show that Sun really knows what they need to do to stay on top of the UNIX market. OpenSolaris, Sun Opteron servers, and all the features of Solaris 10 will really put the market on edge this next year.
Ctrl i
From what I have gathered, this article is meant to inflame the BSD/Linux community and tarnish its OSs. It’s a nice try, but falls very short of delivering the intended goals. BSD/Linux will grow, get better and prosper. On the other hand, the era of big and easy bucks for proprietary OSs is over.
:wq
The “free software isn’t free” mantra is tired at this point. The premise being that, even if it doesn’t cost anything up front, that you’ll pay for it somehow (support, personnel costs, etc.). Gee, isn’t that insightful — and besides the point.
It’s only old, Don, because the FOSS crowd oversold its “open source code is freeeeeeeeeeeeee…” mantra. Your emperor has no clothes on. People aren’t idiots. They realize that the cost of a *nix license is only a drop in the bucket compared to the long-term support costs.
The guy is right:
@Kristo:
No way Solaris is in the same category as Linux. Not before OSI and not after. Their roots are completely different. Just cause you can run GNU Bash on both does not make them the same, not even close.
@A nun:
Have you studied for the RHCE? It teaches you many, many, RHCE specific ways (and tools) to do things. If all you know is RHCE you will be lost for sure in many other distrabutions(besides the Red Hat ripoffs). And, to the comment about “It’s all Linux inside” –for many of these distros the Linux part is about the only thing they have in common. To the user this does not matter.
Few days back there was an article on osnews from an IBM guy giving steps of configuring Active directory client on Linux and it was quite different on each Linux distro he mentioned.
I have used two different distro in Linux, redhat and Lindows and both are quite different from each other. The difference may not be as big as between windows and linux or osx but it is still sufficient enough to consume some precious time of mine.
And once again….too many distros in Linux are actually preventing its growth now.
The guy seems to discredit anybody supporting Linux professionally who doesn’t have a certification.
I agree.
I think anybody that is pushing a cert on you is either trying to sell you something or is too lazy to judge skills and knowledge for themselves. Personally, I think certs are a joke. The company I work for has an IT department full of cert holders and one of the worst network setups I’ve ever seen.
When Linus gets a cert, I’ll start taking them seriously (or not).
“Even if Free Software was 100x as expensive as proprietary alternatives, ran at half the speed, took twice as long to get bugs fixed, etc, it would still be superior because you would be free to look for cheaper support from another vendor, free to improve the speed at which it runs, free to fix the bugs yourself or hire someone to do it for you, and free to share the result with others when you do.”
You do understand that this makes zero sense, right? Open source is very valuable, but only due to its convenience (for most people). If open source cost 100x as much, then people would just write their own, like they did before, because the labor would be cheaper.
Of course, there will be people who care so much that the Freedom is worth 100x the cost, but, ultimately, they are a minority. Most people would prefer to take the 99x money and spend it on beer and pizza.
I haven’t seen this level of FUD since the elections where about to go down. (don’t flame, it was on both sides)
I absolutely LOVE osnews, but this type of “article” has me hesitent to recommend this site to others, or even come back as much.
Oh, I’m sure I’ll be back, but not for long if this is the type of junk to read in the future. It’s not even supported, it’s just FUD, FUD, FUD.
Other than you ignoring that the freedom to change vendors will drive prices for support down, I agree with your sentiment of zero sense. Why? Cause you can’t apply economic rationalism to Free Software. It’s not about saving money, it’s about freedom.
Have you studied for the RHCE? It teaches you many, many, RHCE specific ways (and tools) to do things. If all you know is RHCE you will be lost for sure in many other distrabutions(besides the Red Hat ripoffs).
I would hope that an IT department who has a Turbolinux installation wouldn’t hire someone whose sole qualification is RHCE. You see, that’s the problem with FUD: bogus, biased examples and exaggerations. Half-truths, in other words.
In any case, my point stand. A RHCE would be able to work with another distribution with a minimal training and reading period.
And, to the comment about “It’s all Linux inside” –for many of these distros the Linux part is about the only thing they have in common. To the user this does not matter.
Were we talking about users? No, we weren’t. We were talking about system administrators. And for these folks, the “Linux part” is mostly what matters.
SmarterThanYou
People aren’t idiots. They realize that the cost of a *nix license is only a drop in the bucket compared to the long-term support costs.
All independent studies have shown that cost of maintenance is lower with Linux-based servers than with Windows-based ones (who have their own long-term support costs). The only studies to claim otherwise were all sponsored by Microsoft.
Not to mention the fact that Linux security has dramatically improved over the past two years:
http://www.vnunet.com/news/1160588
“…on average, Linux systems today take three months to fall prey to hackers, up from 72 hours in equivalent tests conducted between 2001 and 2002 […] By contrast unpatched Windows systems exposed in a similar way in tests last year by Symantec lasted a few hours, or in some cases minutes.”
And once again….too many distros in Linux are actually preventing its growth now.
Please provide data to back this up.
The difference you saw between RedHat and Lindows were from a user’s point of view. As far as administration goes, most distros are similar in many respects (not all, of course, which is why I said that some training would be required).
This is why it’s called a half-truth, because part of it is true, and the skillful propagandist uses the true part to validate his lies.
Meanwhile, how many MSCEs will have to take supplemental courses to stay up-to-date with Win2K3 Server and Longhorn, whenever it comes out?
“On the other hand, Linux running on Intel Pentium 4 systems guarantee no support, no proper functioning of the software as well as hardware, no regular fixes, patches and upgrades to the system-level software…”
He has gotten this so spectacularly wrong that it is not funny.
Free software is the ONLY way you can guarantee support, fixes, patches, etc. in the future. How do you know? Because you support yourself, supply your own fixes, etc. (Yeah, this may suck, but it’s better than nothing.) You can do this because you have the freedom to use and modify the software.
Proprietary software has NO guarantee of support, fixes, patches, etc. in the future. If Sun Microsystems closed up shop, you’re screwed. If Microsoft drops official support, you’re screwed. Not so with Linux. It is free now and forever more.
I mean, geez, this is all covered in Free Software 101. It’s not rocket science.
“Sun Microsystems Inc. is still the UNIX industry leader with around 34% of the UNIX market share (closely followed by IBM in the second-place) with Sun Solaris being the most widely used commercial UNIX. So, what went wrong with Linux?”
If I believe those statistics, it means Linux is taking more of its share from Microsoft than expected.
“it still lacks the efficiency of NetBSD when it comes to free portability”
Yet it still runs on at least as many architectures, although with less consistency.
“So, what’s wrong with Linux and other free software when it comes to NASDAQ? Why aren’t the corporate still embracing Linux freely and openly as when compared to proprietary hardware and software vendors like IBM, Sun and Microsoft?”
It’s the same reason local stores haven’t overthrown WalMart. IBM, Sun, and Microsoft are huge companies. It’s hard enough to compete fairly, but what’s RedHat supposed to do when the US government allows Microsoft to keep an illegal monopoly?
The whole 3rd paragraph is about a decision every company needs to make. Are you better off getting the software free and paying for support (or supporting it in-house), or buying an overpriced commercial solution bundled with support you may never use?
“…guarantee no support, no proper functioning of the software as well as hardware, no regular fixes, patches and upgrades to the system-level software, no maintenance of the application-level software…”
It’s FREE! You want Linus, et al to cook and clean for you too? And how does that compare to Microsoft, for example? Some companies gaurantee hardware, but not all. In Microsoft’s case, you can’t even be sure about the sofware side. Open source OSs fix usually fix bugs faster, especially security holes. Oh, and good luck submitting bug reports, talking to the developers, and trying to fix the problem yourself. I guess if you pay anyone enough they’ll listen, but in the open source world anyone with a good idea or major complaint can generally reach the highest-level developers.
On the certification issue, Linux is Linux. Package managers differ, but so do RedHat, Solaris, and Windows deployments. It’s nearly impossible to find someone certified for exactly what your company needs done.
Here’s a quick summary of the article- all the best features of proprietary systems combined are better than the worst features of free systems.
…”He has MCP, MCSD and MCSE certifications, currently preparing for Sun SOLARIS Systems Administrator Certification”
So, the guy is PRO-COMMERCIAL – from ground up! No wonder he is writing such a selfpropeling garbage more suitable for joung unemployed sysadmin resume then for serious
articles about operating systems.
The rticle he wrote is more of personal view and belive then a result of profound research so it’s not that serious. It’s rather explanation why HE is taking all these particular certifications and guy himself IS serious at it.
Everithing else he wrote is just a compilation of common places (among linux basher camps) misconceptions , simplifications , narrowed horisons and propaganda.
He would be better taking LHCE, RHCE and alike certificates or just stay where he is now – E.T. ( not for Engineering nor for Technology)
Sorry, you little E.xtra T.errestrian.
”
I have used two different distro in Linux, redhat and Lindows and both are quite different from each other. The difference may not be as big as between windows and linux or osx but it is still sufficient enough to consume some precious time of mine.
”
<rant>
Probably about the same difference as Windows XP Pro and Windows Server 2003, hey? Possibly because both sets of products have 2 different target markets. Also, Windows Server 2003 and WinXP Pro being as alike as they are has often been viewed as a problem, as it teaches admins to treat security on the server the same as they treat it on a desktop.
And honestly, what system administrator do you know of that runs their bloody servers on Linspire? This article was not about end users. That is one of the few things I was able to get out of this article. Although, this article may be to blame. I had to force myself to read it, I kept losing track of where the idiot was going with it.
To Author of pathetic article:
RMS was one of the founding fathers of the free software movement. How did he distribute his software (starting with Emacs) before the internet became so popular? By charging $100 for a tape backup of the software’s source code. The Man who started the Free Software Foundation charged for free software!!!! Also, in every interview he is in he is careful to differentiate between free beer and freedom.
Oh well, some people are slower than others. Please look up the definition for homonym. That is exactly what free as in freedom and free as in free beer are. Post back if you need a better explanation, those of us that aren’t idiots will be happy to explain it again. Don’t worry Subhasish Ghosh (author of this wannabe article), one day you will have the capacity to understand such a simple concept. Well, I would hope so (for your sake) anyways.
Also, I don’t know how everyone else here feels, but anyone who thinks someone will provide them telephone support 24/7, indemnification, absolute guarantee of security updates (note that neither Sun nor Microsoft provide absolute guarantees that all security holes will be patched in their products, just like Linux distributors) and will train their employees, all for free, is a bloody friggin idiot.
Also, the author of this load of crap says that Red Hat skills aren’t transferable to TurboLinux. While…I don’t know about you, but I don’t know of many enterprises basing their infrastructure on TurboLinux. Please enlighten me and name a few. Most enterprises choose SLES/NLD or RHEL…and if you can’t learn 2 operating systems (that aren’t all that different)…well (for your sake again) please consider a new line of work. Many sysadmins have had to learn Solaris and maybe even one other Unix (not including Linux), Windows for the desktop and now are learning Linux, they seem to be able to handle it. Maybe you should job shadow one of them.
</rant>
Person with MCP, MCSD and MCSE certifications and banking on Sun SOLARIS Systems Administrator Certification discrediting Linux and OpenSource – as obviously biased as it gets.
Has anyone ever really dealt with Suns software support? I have never once found them useful or insightful. And as for their software…it is always lagging the linux community. How many Sun machines out there have some OSS software on them, whether it be gcc, ant, ssh, openldap (cause suns directory server is nothing special). When it comes to Microsoft, I dont believe I have ever had to go further than page 2 on a google search to find the answer. Yes, solaris seems to just keep chugging along once you get it the way you want, but for god sake there is no consistancy in Solaris. Just take a look at the differnces in sendmail configurations on different verions of Solaris 9. It seems like they just decided to close thier eyes and point to a number for the version, then grab a .conf out of a bag. I kinda find freebsd to be a little easier, consistant, and better documented. Please, all vendors come up with a kerberized directory infrastructure that will integrate securely (and ldap over ssl is not an acceptable option) with all the others. If this is accomplished, I can guarantee that companies will start using the best OS for the application. As of now there is no way i am spending the time to integrate two non-cooperative systems just because one servers files slightly better under a certain load environment.
What standing does a student in training of Sun certification have anyways…or anyone in training. It is hard to see what is really going on until you are in the pits with the politicians.
Not particularly unbiased, sounds similiar to getthefacts.com.
What is the definition of free in 2005 ?
Free Software in Reality Isn’t Free… Free as in Freedom, not bear. A lot of software IS free, and most software is cheap.
And secure Windows in reality isn’t really secure… even though a lot of corps pay big bucks for it…
Big Shock this.
Yet again spreading confussion on what “free” denotes. Bad for osnews IMHO for putting attention into an article that deliberately prevaricates and brings the “freeness” of Linux into a debate of which software is least expensive (a legitimate debate, mind you), not mentioning a single time that self-called free software has nothing to do with its cost, since there is usually commercial free software. Two completely different debates.
$6 stock price isn’t better than $1 stock price. This is an elementary mistake.
A company with $6 stock price might have 1 million shares valuing the company at $6 million. A company with $1 stock price might have 1 billion shares valuing the company at $1 billion.
Rest of the article was nonsense too…
Just opinions, no facts.
In my high school he’d have gotten a 5 (more or less a “D”).
Bye
What a bunch of crap. Of course you’re not getting guaranteed support if you pay nothing, that’s how the world works.
I think he’s just insecure and trying to convince himself he’s doing the right thing preparing for his solaris systems administration certification 😉
There are many false statements, considering upgrades, etc.
I’d like to comment support. There are different support
options and solutions, and there is no need to limit yourself on vendor for support. Good sysadmin can handle dozens of machines at the same time, lowering the cost very much, and
that is certainly not the case with microsoft systems.
DG
Is OSNews desperately looking for news articles, that they have to post something like this?
Leave the kid alone, people. Can’t you see he’s just trying to position himself for a job interview at Sun ….
Eugenia should stop posting links like this one because either the author has no clue or he just wants to bash linux and bsd without providing any solid reasons. RMS always says that the term “free software” means FREEDOM. ie free as in free speech, not free beer. Free software is free because you get freedom with it. For what this freedom means, I suggest the author please go to fsf.org and do his homework, or better yet at least read the GPL. It does not mean that free software costs $0. Atleast the OS news editors should have known this. A pity.
I don’t quite understand this guy. AFAIK more or less all statements are totally wrong. Check this one, fx:
A Red Hat Linux Certified Engineer (RHCE) well qualified in Red Hat Linux server administration would be pretty useless in a corporate environment which consists of 100 Pentium 4 workstations running TurboLinux.
With my best will I can’t see what he’s trying to say, cause this statement is just totally wrong. Would a Win2k certified engineer be ‘pretty useless’ in a winxp envoirement? Don’t they give their workers a minimum of learning? LOTS of other things than the software are company-specific, you know…
If I am the author’s lecturer, I will give thumb down on him since not only the article lack of supporting prove but also full of incorrect statement. Maybe he just know only on the surface about the Linux, *BSD etc world. Maybe he just bought all the certificate that he got????
He defines free as in freedom, them proceeds to talk about money related to linux. I love how blogs let idiots make their role very very clear.
I almost laughed on the BSD* lags behind windows 2k, I’ll be sure to tell my half dozen or so routers I installed over a year ago without onsite visit since, that they are lagging behind and need to catch up.
Take it or not FWIW.
Next time you choose an article about “free software”, at least regarding any GPL software, be careful to pick one that doesn’t have the word “cost”.
It will spare you a lot of trouble. BTW, does Greek have different words for “free==gratis” and “free==liberated”?
What rock has the author been hiding under???
“Though industry-leaders (in the Linux arena) Red Hat looks quite steady with stocks rated less than a 6.0 US dollar value,….” RHAT closed yesterday at $11+ US. and has not closed below the $10 mark in at least a year and ahalf.
“Though it has been ported to a larger number of hardware bases later, it still lacks the efficiency of NetBSD when it comes to free portability.” —- again the Linux kernel has been ported to every platform that is out there — nearly — if you can think it, we can port it.
Support??? Dude, unless you are a huge, mega-corpoation, I hate to tell you this but, none of the OS vendors like MS nad Sun, pay the least amount of attention to you. And as far MS, their “TechNet” subscription/Knowledge base, has to be the worst of any sort out there. I have more success googleing than searching KB articles.
What an dork.
You gotta love these PRO *FSF vs COM. arguments. It seems that the “author” of this piece is posing his view as though all companies use one sort of vendor specific architecture for every conceivable use. My point is that Commercial software has it’s place in a IT infrastructure, so as Free Software. As to what role they would play, certainly is a reflection on the skills of the IT manager. I take offense at PRO…any extreme side of the coin because the logistics is very impractical. Case in point, would an extremely large financial company Use Windows Server for every conceivable role in it’s server backend? I don’t believe so! Or Solaris? I doubt that either! Why? Even though the OS software of proprietary systems May be good in their area, They are expensive because of licensing costs. Licensing schemes that are in place to call for revolving payouts per server, per CPU, per user, Per node, per connection, etc… can cost a pretty penny. Now as for the “Free” software. The argument is in support. This can prove expensive, but no if you have the correct internal crew supporting these systems. Every SysAdmin worth his salt knows how to acquire support in every way possible. And those SysAdmins supportting Open Source Software, I highly respect since they prove to be the most resourceful. For a particular corporate Environment, my personal choice for workstations may be MS Windows, with a Windows Server Backend for authentication. Linux may handle File and Print Services, Webservices and firewalling maybe by FreeBSD or OpenBSD or Both, and DBase Services maybe by Solaris or IBM. I know I left out a some services, but the example clearly shows that every OS can have a role. Now as to that role, You have to take into acocunt the size of the company, The services provides, the userbase, the skillset, Your crew on how to support it, security, support for mission critical ares, etc. So my lil example may not fit the needs of another’s corp. So the lesson learned? You can’t just rule out a particular genre of OS just because of “political” views for a business’ solution.
He is desperate for a job in Microsoft marketing I assume.
This article offers nothing new to anybody who is even remotely familiar with anti-FOSS arguements. The guy is just parroting the msft/sunw party line.
The arguement goes: “the software itself is free but -OMFG – you have to pay for support! Sound the alarm!”
In Microsoft? no, no at all. He’s probably already been paied by Sun, it seems so clear to me..
What really irks me with articles like this, of which untold numbers thereof have been posted here on OSNEWS, is that these aticles are fielded as “points of view” or “opinions”- when in fact they do not even deserve to be handled with such respect.
Free Software is, was, and probably always will be a contenious issue. There is room in the world for many differing viewpoints and opinions on such an issue. I have little problem with articles which pose opinions or viewpoints oppossed to specific aspects of Free Software or opposed to the use of Free Software for specific purposes. Free Software, the philosophy, is sufficiently mature to be able to deal with critique in a constructive fashion-and an understanding of this philosophy does not mean any kind of full-scale endorsement or blind adherence-it means trying to understand the issues which are at play in software licensing and the consequences of the choices made in choosing licenses.
Richard M. Stallman conceptualized Free Software as a philosophy from it’s inception. For him and many others Free Software forms the basis of an ethos from whence an ethic can arise. In a sense Free Software is a code by which many programmers program by.
Unfortunately many confuse the ethical position taken with Free Software with a claim to morality-there are of course moral implications in any or all given ethical stances- but the two, ethics and morality are not the same-one does not follow from the other. Ethics is properly a question of choices made, morality deals with the value(evaluation) of such choices. Many see RMS as some kind of moralist when in fact what he does is to take a clear ethical stance as regards coding-this has moral implications for him but an understanding of this philosophy does not mandate that another person draw the same moral conclusions.
Open Source is not as much a philosophy as it is a methodology. Though there are some who passionately articulate some kind of motto behind Open Source, people like ESR, there is little in the way of common ethical concerns amongst those who promulgate Open Source software. And there is nothing wrong with this position-it is largely orthogonal to the issues raised by Free Software.
Free Software and Open Source software compliment one another-always have and probably always will and most programmers who publicly contribute code pick and choose the license under which they distribute according to the context of that particular code-what it’s used for, what other software is supposed to work with it, linking issues etc. Most people who code under Open Source license and code according to the methodology present in Open Source projects come to an understanding of the issues addressed in Free Software-at this point, the point at which the coders become aware of the implications of their coding activities, ethical considerations become “common sense”-and this is exactly what RMS and FSF demands.
Linux as a composition of Free Software and Open Source software-as the name GNU/Linux suggests-is always both -Free and Open Source Software(FOSS)-always has been and probably always will be. The mistake made in this article, the same mistake made in uncounted other articles, is that the author plainly exposes his own utter ignorance regarding the ethical concerns which surround the issues of software licensing.
If one simply refers to free in the context of software as meaning gratis one effectively negates and ignores the issues at hand. It is disinengous to talk to someone about something and negate the issue at hand which is being talked about. This article is a wonderful example of sophmoric sophistry.
This kind of sophism is akin to some kind of free-for-all relativism, which posits any and or all discourse as merely being points of view or opinions about an issue. What is ironic is that relativism implies that things are related, whereas the kind of relativism at work in this article, and at work in the choice to present this article in this forum is precisely contrary to the question of relatedness. This kind of relativism exists in negating the question of relatedness by effectively negating the issue at hand from whence discourse concerning how things are related arises.
The stance taken in this article, and in the choice made to post this article, is an absolutist stance-for it unilaterlay claims for itself that there is no issue at all-and this is what “free” understood exclusively as gratis means. If there is nothing common being viewed there can be no view point. If there is no issue at hand opinion has no meaning and no reference. If there is no_thing to which one takes a stance there is nothing to debate about, criticize or discuss.
Unfortunately such articles degrade the value of the offerings at OSNEWS and actively degrade the quality of discussion on these boards. I am responding to this article because I value the discussions here at OSNEWS and I wish the articles posted here were less frequently intellectually repugnant.
Eugenia there is a strong correlation between the discerning judgement you and others editors use in determining which articles get linked to and the willingness of others to post their own articles here for publication. If you do not exercise sufficient judgement in choosing which articles to link too many will be less inclined to offer their articles for publication on your sight. Why would one want to go to the trouble of carefully researching and crafting an article only for it to get lost in a sea of such useless articles….I do my best to *overlook* such-for on occassion there are really good articles here and interesting discussion.
this article really is garbage
1) os x is the most shipped unix, hands down
2) stock price has absolutely nothing to do with market cap
3) linux has a much bigger install base, and more individuals supporting and working on it than any other unix BESIDES os x
4) you can do more with $5000 and x86 hardware than you can achieve in > $20,000 of sun hardware thanks to liscensing and economies of scale — say goodbye to proprietary server unix. (desktop unix, aka os x, isn’t going anywhere though by the looks of it).
“Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing”
Hm. Walking through a park takes time and effort but is still “free” isn’t it? How about compared to taking a taxi? Or buying a car that breaks down regularly?
Besides, the notion is freedom not free of cost, something that, no matter how often it is repeated, seems utterly beyond some people. If a project regresses, it forks. You’re never locked in to proprietary formats. You’re always able to fix bugs or pay someone to fix them for you if necessary and you are never beholden to others unless you choose to be.
In book 5 the tao clearly states:
“Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained.” http://fullsack.com/tao/wisdom/book5.xml
this is true of all code, propritary or otherwise. No program is free of maintenance.
There is no such thing as a free lunch yet my heart fills with joy when someone else picks up the check. — Sphinx
shooting for the lowest common denominator only brings everyone down. shoot for the highest common denominator and it will bring everyone up. and those who just don’t get it, screw them.
…enough said.
“Can’t you see he’s just trying to position himself for a job interview at Sun ….”
Sun wouldn’t necessarily agree with him. Sun accepts Linux and has RHEL as an option on their x86 servers. Sun is also open-sourcing Solaris sometime soon. What Sun would agree with is that free software in a business setting still incurs maintenance and support costs, but that is true for all software so it really doesn’t matter.
“He’s probably already been paied by Sun, it seems so clear to me..”
No, Sun would have picked someone with coherent thoughts.
YAWN………………………………………………….
First of all, like I said many times before, OSS is free as in liberty not in the financial sense. You want X piece of OSS you’ll need a computer+peripherals, internet connection, and electricity. Free as in rupies? No. Free as in I_CAN_H4X0R_APACHES_B0X0R5, yes. “Haxor” here being used in the traditional sense. You know build, not crack.
Dunno whether to feel sympathy towards the author, but s/he should’ve done alot more research before submitting his editoral to LXer or at least done a thorough grammar check.
Anyhow I really wanted to respond further but don’t feel like it anymore. Bad editorial.
“Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing”
While technically true, the above statement fails to recognize that all platforms have an inherent support cost. In terms of general support costs, Linux seems to compare quite favorably with other platforms.
In terms of acquisition cost, however, Linux is generally much less expensive per seat than its commercial counterparts, and that savings can be significant even in a smaller company.
Oh almost forgot the point I wanted to make. You shouldn’t strive for a homogenous environment where you have a single platform to run your sheep counting business off of, instead you should diversify and have a hetrogenous environment. Keep your stuff safe with OpenBSD, run your Oracle DB on your GNU/Linux boxen, Apache on Freebie, etcetera, etcetera.
Anyways good luck to the author, hope he gets a good gig after this graduation.
A firm choosing to purchase 5 Sun UltraSPARC stations is better off than purchasing 5 workstations powered by the Intel Pentium 4 microprocessor.
I my sure that is why pixar droped sun.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-983898.html
And I’m also sure that is why Industrial Light & Magic moved from SGI
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6011
just to name a few.
oh yeah. Check this one out.
http://www.lugod.org/presentations/ca4h/who_uses.html
Why is this even posted?
Its called pageviews and it involves fishing using other people’s troll- and flamebaits. Works well… for the wallet.
This guy is spot on in regards to linux in the enterprise. He says exactly what i have been saying about Linux for years. Good job! (Hopefully articles like this will sink into the skulls of some of the over zealous linux users)
All the things you linked to had to do with render farms. The thing people care about with render farms is getting the most CPUs into a rack for bottom dollar. Of course renderfarm people would replace older SPARC and MIPS systems with Pentiums. But for other applications, racks of Pentiums just are a waste of money, which is why it would be just as easy to find three links to people moving to Sun or SGI for other things (e.g., financial services, big databases, etc.).
Just because he agrees with you doesn’t mean it’s true. As it happens, there are tons of logical fallacies, half-truths and outright lies in the article. You should be condemning it rather than praising it, because it actually damages your cause.
Just saying…
… but I do not want to ever get any of it, that’s for sure.
Eugenia should stop posting links like this one because either the author has no clue or he just wants to bash linux and bsd without providing any solid reasons. RMS always says that the term “free software” means FREEDOM.
And why should people care what Stallman’s definition is?
Many see RMS as some kind of moralist when in fact what he does is to take a clear ethical stance as regards coding-this has moral implications for him but an understanding of this philosophy does not mandate that another person draw the same moral conclusions.
Nobody wants to be associated with Stallman or his unethics when he calls programmers that don’t release their software source code evil.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/my_doom.html
Unfortunately such articles degrade the value of the offerings at OSNEWS and actively degrade the quality of discussion on these boards. I am responding to this article because I value the discussions here at OSNEWS and I wish the articles posted here were less frequently intellectually repugnant
The article was flawed, but learn how to deal with differing opinion karl. Not every OSNews article is going to go your Stallman extremist point of view way.
Eugenia there is a strong correlation between the discerning judgement you and others editors use in determining which articles get linked to and the willingness of others to post their own articles here for publication. If you do not exercise sufficient judgement in choosing which articles to link too many will be less inclined to offer their articles for publication on your sight. Why would one want to go to the trouble of carefully researching and crafting an article only for it to get lost in a sea of such useless articles….I do my best to *overlook* such-for on occassion there are really good articles here and interesting discussion.
Nobody forces you to read osnews karl. Do you have numbers to support your claim that “many” will be less inclined to submit articles because one article or many articles because you don’t like it?
Just because he agrees with you doesn’t mean it’s true. As it happens, there are tons of logical fallacies, half-truths and outright lies in the article. You should be condemning it rather than praising it, because it actually damages your cause.
Just saying…
I understand problem is i don’t have a “cause”. What he stated is exactly what my personal experience has been from working in the Unix SA industry for the past 4-5 years. Alot of those that are so quick to beat the enterprise Linux drum don’t don’t have the first clue about staging, deploying and supporting an enterprise server environment.
Nobody wants to be associated with Stallman or his unethics when he calls programmers that don’t release their software source code evil.
One should only speak for himself if he wants to be taken seriously.
It’s obvious from this comment that you didn’t understand the point Karl was trying to make (i.e. the distinction between “morals” and “ethics”). Rather, you say this as an occasion to make inflammatory comments, as usual.
Meanwhile, nowhere in the link you provided did Stallman call a programmer evil. Lying isn’t very ethical, you know?
Oh, and “unethics” is not a word.
The article was flawed, but learn how to deal with differing opinion karl.
This coming from the person who said he had no respect for those who believed in RMS’ definition of free software?
You should learn to deal with differing opinion, Lumbergh. That means respecting those you disagree with.
How long before you start calling people in this thread communists, I wonder…In any case, the article wasn’t “flawed”, it was simply a poor FUD piece, incendiary but full of gaping holes. Linking to such hack pieces doesn’t serve the OSNews community in any way.
Nobody forces you to read osnews karl. Do you have numbers to support your claim that “many” will be less inclined to submit articles because one article or many articles because you don’t like it?
Do you have numbers to support your claim that “nobody wants to be associated with Stallman”?
You’ve already posted a clear lie in this thread, I guess you’re not above making unsupported blanket statements…
I understand problem is i don’t have a “cause”.
Replace “cause” by “argument.”
The problem with such a piece of hack journalism is that it’s so packed with easily-disprovable half-truths, misconceptions and lies that it will likely eclipse any real issues with using Linux in an enterprise setting.
These exist, just like they exist with other OSes such as Windows and Solaris, however it’s not by saying idiotic things like “Linux systems are not upgradeable” or “a MSCE is useless if you have to deal with other distributions” that you help improve things. It’s just inflammatory FUD, nothing else.
Alot of those that are so quick to beat the enterprise Linux drum don’t don’t have the first clue about staging, deploying and supporting an enterprise server environment.
Can we stop with the blanket statements for just one minute? Unless you can come up with some data to support this allegation, I’m going to have to call BS on you.
where is the Report Abuse for the article ????
I agree that the “free software is not free” thing is just stupid handwaving, and should not be on OS News, unless OS News aspires to be a Tabloid of the Tech Sector.
But, it also seems that societies cannot turn on a dime. Some ideas, even bad ideas, need to be hashed out a few times (or a few dozen) before they really go away.
My answer is that free software is free, sort of like air or water are free. You can go outside and breath, or go to the river and drink. Free, free – but what happens when you try to organize an enterprise using air and water? You’ve got to process it on an industrial scale. You add ducts, pipes, pumps, blowers, heaters, coolers, air-conditioners … does that make sense?
Of course free software is free … but the enterprises you build with it are not going to be free, any more than enterprises using air or water would be free.
I just Paul Ferris’ rebuttal to the original article…he basically destroys the original author’s arguments. A very good read, and kudos for OSNews for choosing to present both sides of the debate. I still think the original article was just a FUD piece, but at least now people can read both article and rebuttal and make up their minds.
Read the link again. You can deny it all you want, but it’s right in front of your face.
Other evils involving information rather than physical violence were common also. For instance, some New York police regularly lied on the witness stand, and even made up a word for it: instead of “testifying”, they described court appearances as “testilying”. Some New York programmers fell into the lawful but socially destructive practice of proprietary software: they offered other people attractive software packages without source code, and exacted a promise not to share them with anyone else.
Stallman’s own words. “Other evils” to “perjuring cops” to “socially destructive” “New York Programmers”. You can be blind because of some irrational devotion to RMS or FSF, but the words are right there in your face.
It’s known as ‘polemic’. I’d love to see you argue with a straight face that you’re not aware of the term.
good one Matt, but some things never go away. it depends on whether they become infrastructure.
i’m sure you’ve seen the old story of how the size of a space shuttle booster is related to the gauge of a railroad, which you can work back to the size of a roman chariot, or to the size of a horse’s butt.
another good one is that threads on a standard incandescent light bulb match the threads of a turn of the century kerosene can .. because someone in edison’s lab cut down a kerosene can to make their first screw-in lightbulb.
at this point it looks like both UNIX and Windows have a chance at becoming long-term infrastructure … and if anything is sad about that, it is that contenders are so completely locked out.
see also rob pike’s essay on why OS research doesn’t matter.
Stallman’s own words.
No, your creative quotation of them. He doesn’t say that programmers of proprietary software are evil. He calls proprietary software is socially destructive. The word “evils” here is a noun, and refers to the act, not the persons. There is quite a difference. Good people do bad things every day, and you’re not “evil” because you engage is socially destructive acts. People who short-sell stocks are not evil, though they are greedy.
Of course, since your goal is demonizing Stallman (as you’ve shown with your obsessive habit of bringing him into the discussion to start flamewars), I understand why you would choose to misinterpret him thus.
“Other evils” to “perjuring cops” to “socially destructive” “New York Programmers”. You can be blind because of some irrational devotion to RMS or FSF, but the words are right there in your face.
I think we’ve established that you were the irrational one here quite a few weeks ago. I hold no devotion to RMS, though I acknowledge his determining role in the history of computing (like I would Linus’ or even Bill Gates’). I like the idea of free software, and will continue to use it, yet at the same time I am not opposed to proprietary software. After all, I earn a living making video games, which are proprietary products (unfortunately, not of my propriety!).
So you’ve already misrepresented what RMS says, and now are incorrectly labeling me as one of his admirers…even though I clearly disagree on him about proprietary software.
Maybe you should stop jumping to conclusions too quickly, and most of all learn to respect those you disagree with. You’d sound a little bit less trollish, and start to regain all that lost credibility.
It’s known as ‘polemic’. I’d love to see you argue with a straight face that you’re not aware of the term.
Very well said. Bonus points for concision.
I think we’ve already concluded that you’re the irrational one here if you feel a need to defend Karl’s little FSF pseudo-religion/cult manifestos.
Not at all. I just don’t like strawman arguments and ad hominem attacks, and that’s basically all you do. You say something false, I correct you. You can’t get more rational than that, I’m afraid.
I especially dislike the fact that you call other people irrational when you’re the one committing logical fallacies, disrespecting people you disagree with (as you keep proving to us) and obsessively trying to hijack any discussion to satifsy your personal war against RMS.
After all, you were the one that said “learn how to deal with differing opinion karl”, while at the exact same time showing that you obviously can’t deal with differing opinions without frothing at the mouth and calling people irrational cult member.
Perhaps if you practiced what you preach, we’d be inclined to consider you as something other than a troll. However you seem hell-bent into proving to us that this is all you are.
(Yes, I say “we”, and by “we” I mean the great majority of reasonable posters on this site. When you say “we”, you really mean you and the troll who impersonates Rayiner…speaking of which, he should be due for an appearance just about now!)
a nun did a rather good job of pointing out the essential problem with your statements. You say others should learn to respect different points of view, *as well as* dismissing RMS as a “wack job”. So may we conclude that we should all respect exactly as many points of view as you do not consider to be ‘wack’? Next time I need to know whether I should take an idea seriously or dismiss it out of hand, I’ll be sure to run it by you. Thanks for the service.
When RMS starts out a paragraph with “Other evils involving information rather than physical violence were common also”, and then starts the chain of perjuring cops to programmers who don’t release source code it should be pretty self-evident that RMS is a wacko.
http://www.anti-fud.org/node/view/9
—
The nice aspect of articles like this is that i don’t need to put some time into debunking it, because 1) its obvious its a load of BS 2) there’s a mass who’s on it
🙂
which is why it would be just as easy to find three links to people moving to Sun or SGI for other things (e.g., financial services, big databases, etc.).
big databases
google is running linux. We are talking about terabytes of data
http://www.internetweek.com/lead/lead060100.htm
The way back machine also uses clusters of linux and freebsd PCs.
http://librenix.com/?inode=1675
When RMS starts out a paragraph with “Other evils involving information rather than physical violence were common also”, and then starts the chain of perjuring cops to programmers who don’t release source code it should be pretty self-evident that RMS is a wacko.
As AdamW remarked, that’s called polemics. Look it up one day.
RMS believes that proprietary software is socially destructive, and in this instance he polemicizes on the subject. I don’t happen to agree with him, but I don’t feel threatened by his ideas to the point of calling him a wacko. That’s called having respect for people you disagree with – the absence of which you’ve demonstrated time and time again.
I don’t know why you have such an obsession with RMS that you feel the need to troll every comments section where he’s mentioned, but it’s really annoying. (And yes, you’re the troll, not I: trolling is making inflammatory remarks in order to provoke responses, and this is what you – not I – have been doing. At least acknowledge your trollness, since pretty much everybody else has.)
In the meatime, RMS still did not call those programmers evil. Words have meaning, you should stop trying to twist them to support your irrational anti-Stallman obsession.
These exist, just like they exist with other OSes such as Windows and Solaris, however it’s not by saying idiotic things like “Linux systems are not upgradeable” or “a MSCE is useless if you have to deal with other distributions” that you help improve things. It’s just inflammatory FUD, nothing else.
I will agree with you there linux being not upgradable is an inane statement which detracts from some valid points he does make.
Can we stop with the blanket statements for just one minute? Unless you can come up with some data to support this allegation, I’m going to have to call BS on you.
Again i can only speak from experience. Generalities seem too convenient in this particular discussion however I feel that the ones I used describing a typical Linux zealot(Linux or Die!) are spot on. Most have never worked in an enterprise environment.
Generalities seem too convenient in this particular discussion however I feel that the ones I used describing a typical Linux zealot(Linux or Die!) are spot on. Most have never worked in an enterprise environment.
The problem is that such a statement is a) unprovable (since you don’t know the personal history of posters) and b) useless (since one’s person opinion, be they pro- or anti-Linux, should not be mistaken for facts).
At least we agree that the author pretty much shot himself in the foot by make easily-disprovable assertion.
Besides, I find it an unlikely assumption anyway. Most Linux enthusiasts are geeks, many are coders. Such people often end up working either tech support, admin or hacker jobs – all of which are much in demand in large enterprises.
Hmmm… yes… what went wrong with Linux, indeed. It is only the standard for servers these days and is being adopted by governments around the world, and is going to be used as the standard for cheap desktops around the world to poorer nations.
Yes, what went wrong with linux, it is clearly broken. Got to LOL this bastard off, he’s so wrong and stupid that I see a great career in politics for him.