Editorial Archive

In the news media, it is generally shown that flame wars and forks are detrimental to the growth of FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) But if we see the history of FOSS, both flame wars and forks have played a crucial role in determining both growth and direction of important projects. There are also arguments that this leads to fragmentation and marginalization. There is some truth in these arguments but there are a lot of benefits which are often overlooked. This article looks at some of the benefits of forking and flame wars through history.

I have been keeping a log of my Linux experiences since August of 2002. At first, I set it up as a textbase of tips. Using the wonderful program Tuxcards, I maintained a diary.

Problem: Even the most powerful PC’s become non responsive during resource-intensive computations, such as graphic design, media, image rendering and manipulating. The traditional solution has been to upgrade to a faster computer and throw more computing power at the problem to lessen the wait-time. But there's a simple solution that utilizes multiple machines, but without using grid/clustering. For now, this involves a hack, but how hard would it be for an OS vendor to streamline this process?

Jason Walsh, in an editorial for The Guardian, wonders if the kind of fawning devotion that Mac users have for their computers could persist if the Mac were to achieve more widespread use. For example, fans of the ill-fated Cube and Newton are fanatical, but is it really cool to love an iPod, now that everybody has one? It's a timely question, with the spectre of a low cost mac on the horizon.

The topic of combining a database system (usually a conventional relational db system) with a file system to add meta-data, a richer set of attributes to files, has been a recurring discussion item on this and other sites. The article published last week, Rethinking the OS, under the heading "Where Is It Stored?" talks about the ability to locate a file without knowing the exact name or location.

A KDE developer opines that the move to port the top open source applications to Windows will undermine the potential for a widely-used open source desktop operating system.

Though Microsoft is the behemoth that everyone loves to hate, the computing world actually owes a lot to Bill Gates and co. And though it's possible that someone else would have blazed the trail to "a PC on every desktop," in our world, it was Microsoft that did it. Update: Now with page breaks! (My fault -- David)

I just spent the last several days reading the lengthy essay "Ying and Yang of Security" which explores the origins of security on the personal computer and explains why the current models are outdated. It seems to argue that security systems designed to keep the system safe are relics of the days of mainframes when the system was more important than the user, but for a personal computer the user is more important than the system.

The IT sector today is a complete mess. The end-users rarely understand this, but most insiders reach a point when they realize that things should be different. The problems are numerous but they all reduce to a basic principle. IT and consumer electronics companies are interested more about money than helping people solve their problems. Of course companies need to make a profit and nobody denies that. They should however make money by helping people and not by creating more problems for them.

The software industry is undergoing a gradual transformation, and consumer fatigue is at its root. The licensing model that has formed the basis for the modern software industry is facing challenges on many fronts, and the industry is scrambling to keep its footing. Where this period of change may lead software producers and consumers isn't quite clear, but some trends are emerging. Since the proliferation of the internet, unauthorized redistribution of digital goods has become rampant. But although software sharing probably won't kill the software industry, the reasoning behind it shares some pedigree with the customer revolt that promises to transform the way software is sold.

In Russo's A Response to the Paradox of Choice, I interpret this paragraph to be the crux of his essay:

After reading Adam Scheinberg's original article "The Paradox of Choice" and Kevin Russo's response, I want to add my personal comments to this discussion. I will quote Adam and Russo several times and pick up their arguments.

Microsoft's Chris Anderson responds to Novell's Miguel de Icaza and then Miguel responds back. Elsewhere, Red Hat's Havoc Pennington talks about Open Source software subscriptions.

Tim O'Reilly has spoken often over the last year about how to apply the ideals of open source with the slow and eventual shift from dependence on software to dependence on information. The new software is 'infoware'. In Applying Distributed XML toward The Open Source Paradigm Shift to Infoware, I propose that we can preserve the freedoms to innovate with data and to fork infoware by working with locally hosted xml files like we do with RSS.