Open Source Spreads Beyond Software 241
B'Trey writes "Britain's Prospect Magazine is running an article entitled 'The Microsoft Killers.' The article covers the success of Open Source software in particular but also looks at how the methods and practices of Open Source are moving outside the software environment."
will this work... (Score:5, Interesting)
by the way, i'm allergic to flames!
Tim
Re:will this work... (Score:5, Insightful)
the only thing that might prevent this is Opencoke having higher operating costs due to small-scale production.
Re:will this work... (Score:4, Insightful)
Word of mouth will always be the best advertizing method. IF the advertizing is good, of course. When people spread the word about something they really believe to be of benefit to themselves, it naturally brings in new customers. And it doesn't matter what the "thing" is either. It could be religion, cars, long-distance, restaurants, or whatever. And since this kind of advertizing costs nothing to the company, they can try maintain lower production costs.
Re:will this work... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:will this work... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:will this work... (Score:4, Funny)
And how many died, often completely exterminated, in the process each time. Analogies can be stretched to far. ;)
burned at the stake (Score:5, Funny)
I think the historical cases where this happened peacably are the exceptions, rather than the rule. There's almost always anger and political fighting, and often actual violence, all the way up to outright war.
Since most religions view their picture of the universe as The One True Path, it's typically more of a "freely distributable; do not modify under pain of eternal damnation" sort of license.
Disassembling religions (Score:3, Informative)
Most people can't separate three distinct parts of religion (that is also called spirituality in modern speak) from each other. These parts are beliefs, morals and mysticism. There can be myriad systems of beliefs and morals, but most of the mystical systems have a lot in common. And "properly" can be related to the mysticism, but only barely. Most of the properness stuff is usually related to the beliefs or morals.
Beliefs are "Jesus is Lord", "No God but Allah", "Reincarnation ex
GNU is not open source, it's free software. (Score:3, Interesting)
I realize you were only kidding, but GNU has nothing to do with the open source movement. GNU was started over a decade before the open source movement began. The start of the GNU project marks the beginning of the free software movement. The free software movement and the open source movement are different movements [gnu.org] within the same community and, ironically [gnu.org] (emphasis mine):
Re:GNU is not open source, it's free software. (Score:3, Insightful)
However, not all open source software is free software. For example, software which is "free for non-commercial use" may be open source but it doesn't meet the definition of "free software." It's free as in beer, but not free as in speech.
Re:will this work... (Score:5, Insightful)
You might be abe to run this sort of thing in the model of the CAMRA 'Real Ale' or Micro-Brew campaigns. Kind of a local coke micro-brew.
But I still find it a bit ironic that the folk wittering on about open source can then segue instantly into complaints about lack of jobs, outsourcing and such. This morning a guy contacted me saying he was unemployed and wanted some advice on starting an open source project that might establish his reputation.
Well what happens if everyone does that?
Re:will this work... (Score:4, Interesting)
The questions programmers are asking have been answered over and over, industry by industry. The answer is, there will be few programmers using more efficient development means to create better product. It happens to all but the 'commodities' among us (artists, celebrities, etc.).
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
OpenCola Recipe (Score:5, Informative)
Introduction:
Contained hereunder is a HOW-TO for brewing up kitchen-sink OpenCola. Amazingly enough, every soft-drink vendor we spoke to acted like the preparation of cola was some kind of deep, dark trade-seekrut(TM). With much reverse-engineering and creative shopping, the research kitchens at OpenCola have coopered together the following makefile for brewing up The Black Waters of Corporate Imperialism(TM) in the privacy of your own home.
The basis for the whole thing is the 7X, Top-Seekrut(TM) formula. Our sources tell us that 7X is the internal Coca-Cola codename for their syrup. You'll note that the 7X formula contains eight ingredients: still more evidence of the deviousness of the Soda Gnomes.
As it turns out, mixing up a batch of cola's pretty easy. Finding the ingredients is damned hard. Most of this file is about finding and handling ingredients so as to produce a tasty bevvy without blowing up your kitchen, melting your flesh off your bones, or poisoning yourself. As with all undertakings of great moment, read and understand the instructions before attempting to commit cola on your own. Pay special attention to the "Warnings" section.
This recipe is licensed under the GNU General Public license. It is "Open Source" Cola, or, if you prefer, "Free" Cola. That means you're free to use this recipe to make your own cola, or to make derivative colas. If you distribute derivative colas, you're expected to send email to the recipe's author, Amanda Foubister (amanda@opencola.com) with your updates. In the future, we expect to have a CVS server up to handle additions, bug-reports, etc.
The Formula
7X (Top SeekrutTM) flavoring formula:
3.50 ml orange oil
1.00 ml lemon oil
1.00 ml nutmeg oil
1.25 ml cassia oil
0.25 ml coriander oil
0.25 ml neroli oil
2.75 ml lime oil
0.25 ml lavender oil
10.0 g gum arabic
3.00 ml water
OpenCola syrup:
2.00 tsp. 7X formula
3.50 tsp. 75% phosphoric acid or citric acid
2.28 l water
2.36 kg plain granulated white table sugar
0.50 tsp. caffeine (optional)
30.0 ml caramel color
Preparation
7X Flavoring:
Mix oils together in a cup. Add gum arabic, mix with a spoon. Add water and mix well. I used my trusty Braun mixer for this step, mixing for 4-5 minutes. You can also transfer to a blender for this step. Can be kept in a sealed glass jar in the fridge or at room temperature.
Please note that this mixture will separate. The Gum Arabic is essential to this part of the recipe, as you are mixing oil and water.
Syrup:
In a one gallon container (I used the Rubbermaid Servin' Saver Dry Food Keeper, 1.3 US Gal/4.92 l), take 5 mls of the 7X formula, add the 75% phosphoric or citric acid. Add the water, then the sugar. While mixing, add the caffeine, if desired. Make sure the caffeine is completely dissolved. Then add the caramel color. Mix thoroughly.
Cola:
To finish drink, take one part syrup and add 5 parts carbonated water.
Scavenging and Handling Ingredients
7X flavor:
Measurement: I used a dropper purchased at a Shoppers Drug Mart (normally used to measure infant portions of medicine, I believe).
Oils: Oils can cause skin irritation. Wear latex food-prep or surgical gloves. If oils come in contact with skin, wash with soap and water.
I purchased all oils from health food stores and the herbalist store, Thuna's (see notes on gum arabic).
Everything could have come from the herbalist's. Try for 100 percent pure, undiluted oils. I used oils from the following companies:
CK Solutions, Ft. Wayne, IN 46825
Aura Cacia Oils, Weaverville, CA 96093
Aromaforce Essential Oils
Frontier Natural Flavors, www.frontiercoop.com
Karooch, Peterborough, ONT K9J 7Y8
When I purchased the oils, I specifically asked whether they were food grade or not.
Coke's recipe (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:3, Insightful)
What frustrates many people with Linux is in details like... Joe Average buys a digital cam, hooks it up
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:5, Informative)
Try The latest version of Mandrake, SuSE or FEdora if you dont believe me! The ONLY people who say linux is hard to use these days are Debian users stuck with their 2.2 kernel and 2.2 KDE desktop because its "stable". Moderators, please stop handing out mod points to FUD.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:5, Interesting)
I tested the fix myself, then submitted it to the owner of IDE individually multiple times, then to the proper list. Not so much as a response from anyone.
Yes, I can install Linux with the Ultra-66 DMA disabled, edit the source file (/drivers/ide/pdc202xx_new.h), recompile and reinstall the kernel, enable DMA again in the hardware, and reboot.
Am I willing to do this every time I want to update my system to newer kernel code? No.
If the system doesn't work because the people who control the kernel are unwilling to even answer their email, then I'll just use an operating system that does support my hardware.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:5, Informative)
Or that they did not try because they knew it would not work?
There is also a huge difference between Linux supporting your hardware and your hardware manufacturers supporting Linux. The former implies that Linux provides APIs and ABIs for which drivers can be written, the latter implies the makers of your hardware thinking of Linux compatible hardware design and driver development as something more than an afterthought that they community will address for free.
And if Linux doesn't suit your needs now, you may wish to try it it in the future. Things change quickly.
By the way, why where you recompiling your kernel to enable DMA?
Look at
Re:So.... simple solution. Stop buying non-interop (Score:3, Insightful)
You have things typically backwards. I have a computer and wish to try Linux. I try a good linux distro on it and there's some very frustrating parts to getting simple things done. You come along and say I should buy better supported hardware. As Joe Average, I say to you "Oh well, It works on windows" and boot back into windows, and continue getting work done.
THOSE are the little differences that make the difference between averageman conside
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:3, Interesting)
My ass windows has better hard
Excellence takes time.... (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, your specific example has been dealt with by Mandrake and Suse for the past 2/3 years. Where have you been?
And how do they do it? Better than Windows, most times.
No driver CD necessary. If it's supported, plug in the camera and it shows up on your desktop. Click on it and get your pictures. Now that was easy, wasn't it.
I am not impervious to criticism and there are tons of things that need improvement, but they are coming. Anyone who has used Linux for the past five years cannot be blind to the huge improvements in ease-of-use and consistency that have been made.
Finally, the community aspect of Linux is not to be dismissed. When I set somebody up with Linux, I make sure that his/her every whim is satisfied so that the experience is more positive than it was with their prior OS.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:5, Interesting)
If your user is an engineer ... mounting devices as drives is something the customer may know how to do so your software must be intelligent enough to do that well.
Apple ... fault them if you must but ... they have such great attention to the user experience. Hide the bits in an abstraction known as Macintosh, their customer does not want to see drivers and mount points. This is their starting point, that is their customer. How can we delight the user with the Macintosh expeirence, not the low level details of the O1 scheduler. I don't mean to start a Mac/Linux/Windows holy war but I do need an example here .
With Linux that starting point and customer are different. Most of the distributions which are ready for the desktop have a customer in mind who is using Windows 2000 at work or Windows ME at home. This is the user experience which they start with. I think some people here agree that is starting off a bit handicapped.
The Mac customer does not even want to know what a driver is or does.
The point I'm bearly making here is its about the customer ... and what experience you want for that customer. Will Linux overtake the desktop? ... Sure if the desktop really begins to abstract the fact you are running Linux and does a better job of creating the a great customer experience for more customers than everyone else.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:2, Interesting)
Notice the fierce loyaty of the Linux customer and the Macintosh customer. Their customers will fiercely defend their platform. Their customers will tell others of the Linux and Macintosh experience with great reverence. The Windows customer many times (at least in my experience) will go right along (contribute as well) with the Windows jokes (reboot ... reboot...BSOD) and jabs. These success stories, or customer feedback, will help in the effort to going
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a valid comparison. Mac achieves this by 'monopoly' control of the hardware. This isn't an option for Windows and even less so for OS's such as Linux or NetBSD, designed to support as many architectures as possible.
I agree it's about the customer but not with your implicit assumption about them. Macs are the superior solution for a delimited subset of users, those too busy, unwilling, or incapable of tinkering with their machines, willing to live with the attendant limitations and pay the premium for ease of use. It supports them extremely well but by no means is the best solution for all purposes, as Apple's market share makes obvious.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:5, Interesting)
A linux loving friend of mine who's not short on smarts (but perhaps a little behind on cluefulness when it comes to anyone but pure geeks) would say "It takes three seconds to mount the camera as a drive. duh". For Joe Average, finding out HOW to do that in 3 seconds can be 2 days of frustrated chasing information on how the OS works on a device level around the net.
On the one hand, yes, this is a problem (for distributions that don't automount it right away) - this should be default on any distribution, and for non-USB-mass-storage cameras, gphoto should be included in an obvious way, if only a link to the installer in some sort of control panel's "digital camera options" section.
On the other hand; linux is now better at detecting hardware, and having the pertinent drivers installed out-of-the-box than windows is, except for the most proprietary of hardware. For example, my FujiFilm S304 required extra "USB Mass Storage" drivers to be installed, even though USB Mass Storage is pretty much a standard. My non-standard archos jukebox requires drivers to be installed on every windows box I want to hook it up to. Again, linux recognized its fairly oddball chipset out of the box, and I the only thing I had to do is mount it (the machine I tried it on doesn't have no steeking gui installed, so no biggy
And the number of times I wished windows had a
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ugly as heck, but uniform
Nowadays people love bashing OSS (and Linux especially) for being "inconsistant". They also enjoy pointing out that Linux's cryptic CLI scares away new users. Now I have to wonder, why did DOS and Windows 3.x become so popular? The command prompt to DOS was as cryptic as *nix, and in addition it was quite retarded as well. Win 3.x doesn't win any prizes for consistency either. Plug and play hardware was non-existant. Yet it was hugely popular, more so than the more user-friendly Macintosh. If people could put up with the crappiness of DOS and Win 3.x (the infancy of MS operating systems), why is Linux being bashed constantly during its infancy for stuff MS got away with?
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ehem. Apple Macintoshes. They had nice friendly GUI's, but more people bought PC's with the "cryptic" DOS and the "inconsistent" Windows 3.x.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet curiously it does not work the same way with software. Now, it is Windows that is locked down in proprietary mode, with expensive and draconian licenses. Linux distros can be assembled by everyone and his dog, but yet, it is still a mostly a niche OS on the desktop.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:3, Insightful)
You only have to hang out at newsgroups if you are anti-social and don't have friends with similar interests.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:2)
Mmmm, yes but still wrong, kinda. People at work were forced to use PCs with DOS & Windows 3.x. If you used a PC at work for a bunch of months and you needed one at home to do some hardcore "WordPerfect"ing, then you bought a PC. Also, as far as I can recall, I never even HEARD of a Mac back then. ( Mind you, we're talking about the Netherlands at around 1990 here... )
Then again, OS/2 seemed to be a small, fierce and ultimately disastrous rage around here at the time. There were a few months where
People didn't buy DOS or Windows. Companies did. (Score:2)
Oh yes? (Score:2)
Back then, as now, people with a clues where using Macs or OS/2 which were technically and from a usability point of view immensely superior to Windows.
In the UNIX side of things Sun was offering OpenView that was pretty good and X already existed.
MS was a success because they understood that software exelency is not all, but you can't make a living out of mediocrity forever, eventually people will realize that t
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhh, MacOS, GEM, GeOS, AmigaOS. Need I continue?
DOS/3.1 "won" because it had the right apps and came at the right price.
This is the exact same reason why Linux will be 90% of the market in 10 years. Assuming it survives SCO.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:4, Interesting)
Today, people expect the user interface to be graphic, self-explaining and consistent. They get frustrated if something does not work the first time.
And -- what's most important -- they have a choice. If they try Linux, they will switch back to Windows if they encounter problems.
If we want Joe Average to use Linux, there is the need for a consistent user interface that is similar to Windows.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:2)
To see the contents of a directory:
DOS: dir
Unix: ls
To display the contents of a file to the screen:
DOS: type
Unix: cat
Sorry, but whatever limitations DOS may have, it's commands are clearly less cryptic than Unix's.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:5, Insightful)
A noble cause is providing free choice to people. That's what OSS is and should be about and someone needs to get this message to the media. MS should rise or fall based on their own merits, even if those merits are questionable or at odds with the OSS community. If Microsoft falls because of OSS, so be it, but if that's the cause, and Microsoft falls, then OSS no longer has a cause. The cause to provide choice will always be there.
Re:Microsoft Killers : Premature? (Score:2)
Speaking for myself, there's some of us who use Microsoft and are thereby Microsoft-haters. We hang out here because it offers hope for the future. The impression I have is that for the most part, OSS simply ignores Microsoft. I know I would if I didn't have to contend with it.
I'll tell you why. (Score:2)
It's because so many people hate Microsoft that's why. They hate MS so much that they project that hatred out to the people writing OSS and presume that the authors of OSS software must hate MS even more then they do. This goes for journalists too.
Of course nobody can blame them for hating MS. They are a sleazy company and they have made lying, cheating and stealing a core part of their business plan. If MS was a person they would be diagnosed as b
finally, its free! (Score:4, Funny)
or at least, if not a meal, a free beer
Re:finally, its free!...not really (Score:2)
Re:finally, its free!...not really (Score:2)
The Free as in speech bit is the important bit. Anyone with access to a machine and internet connection can download debian etc, modify any part of GB's of code, and so on.
There's no problem in distro's charging for their service. After all you can download redhat (well thread anyway), debian, and a few other major distro's 'free of charge'.
It's not surprising really. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Creative Commons licenses could eventually have an even greater impact on the world than the GPL although the latter's impacts have only begun to be felt.
Software patents movement (Score:5, Informative)
Participants were able to convince the EU parliament by massive protests. FFII and the other groups of the network created a kind of watchgroup for IP policy issues. They were able to put light in dark backyard where patent attorneys and servants of the DoJ decide what may be beneficial for the information society.
I think in europe we were able to show: "Hacking politics works."
Best religeon ever... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Best religeon ever... (Score:2)
Didn't some open-source religions exist in England in the early middle ages? Something along the lines of "there are no gods but which we make ourselves". The idea that the truth about the Gods is whatever we believe it to be: it doesn't get any more open-source than that
Open Source impossible for capital intensive apps (Score:5, Interesting)
For bigger open source projects, the problem is monetization -- converting the fruits of open source into money that goes to pay the burgeoning and unavoidable expenses of a large project. The free-software, expensive service model (RedHat) or free software, expensive hardware & service model (IBM) seems popular.
But there are limits. I doubt we will ever see open source retail stores, hardware factories, or apartment buildings (except on an unusual donation basis). Probably the only capital-intensive forms of "open source" is university science -- the scientists provide the labor, release there findngs to the public, and the government provides the money for the equipment (even here, university IP people try to own the fruits of the academic labors).
Re:Open Source impossible for capital intensive ap (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually it would be very hard to find "closed source" varients of the same. Imagine that if you shop at WallMart you couln't even look at Target. Imagine you couldn't check out competing apartments to the one you live in.
As for capital intensive, seems like bridges, dams, tunnels, skyscrapers are all pretty much open source.
Basically, open source benefits the industry at maybe a bit of cost to the individual corporation whereas closed source benefits the individual corporation at the expense of the industry. If "reinventing the wheel" is perceived as a loss, closed source is a good way to ensure the perpetuity of that loss.
BTW, open source does not mean free (as in beer) or cheap. Methinks open source may actually wind up more expensive than closed because it is sufficiently more effective that things will be done using open source that would never be attempted with closed source.
YAHOOSSA .... (Score:4, Troll)
Please don't take this as flaimbait, but ... this article tells me nothing new. Its a great one to pass on to my boss .. but come on.One more summary of the open source movement article and i'll puke.
I mean no disrespect to the author. it was written very well. There is no News for Nerds here. I don't mean to be negative. I enjoy the community and most of the articles are really good. But I just can't take another ... history of open source software/anti microsoft article for the world to cut its teeth on.
I'm sorry to sound critical but I wonder how many others here feel the same way.
The solution is in your own hands. (Score:2)
Why if you have the solution you pretend that it is up to others to do something about your likes and dislikes?
Re:YAHOOSSA .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sic ! (Score:5, Funny)
Sic ! Now I think I wonder what those magazines of lesser quality are alike.
CC.
They have it backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They have it backwards (Score:4, Insightful)
Excellent point which can be stretched when thinking of (natural) 'language'. We might then even draw the conclusion that 'Open Source' is quite a natural (not to say plain vanilla) phenomenon.
CC.
Open Music. (Score:5, Interesting)
My only concern is, is it free for the idea of freedom or because nobody would pay for it anyway?
Re:Wow ...So much Music! (Score:2)
Oracle (Score:5, Insightful)
Please. Oracle's supposed dominance in databases is under far more threat from Microsoft and IBM than it is from MySQL **at this point in time.** IBM earns more database revenue than Oracle, so it's not even fair to say that Oracle dominates.
Re:Oracle (Score:2)
If you go by $'s rather than # of installations (otherwise MSAccess would probably win), IBM is *normally* the market leader.
This is primarily due to DB2 being popular with Banks and Universities.
Re:Oracle (Score:2)
It's going to be a long time before MySQL even makes a dent in Oracle. It's obviously nowhere close to Oracle in performance and deatures, and even when it is, it still has about 20 years of abuse that it needs to take before it earns the reputation that Oracle has. I read this line, and in my mind, the credibility of this article went down the toilet.
Re:Oracle (Score:2)
> is under far more threat from Microsoft and IBM
> than it is from MySQL **at this point in
> time.** IBM earns more database revenue than
> Oracle, so it's not even fair to say that
> Oracle dominates.
It does not, but it's still a reference. Nobody was fired to have choosen Oracle as a database.
Although MySQL is light-years ahead from Oracle, it is enough for many people. When talking about databases, many people will think 'MySQL' befor
Short honeymoon? (Score:5, Funny)
"Until Feb 25th, I am going to be extremely busy with my wedding and honeymoon. I will be slow replying to non-wedding related emails during this time so please accept my apologies in advance. I expect to have a backlog of mail when I return so give me a few days to respond to these (probably by early March)."
Now, I hope his honeymoon was short, not his marriage. Perhaps they have an OpenMarriage though
LPI (Score:3, Interesting)
Open Source and Free Software (Score:4, Informative)
Please check http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-f
Nokia? (Score:2)
Groklaw is a non-programming example of this (Score:5, Interesting)
The open source movement eschews proprietary controls and its software is usually produced not by firms, but by networks of volunteers who look after different pieces of an application."
Groklaw [groklaw.net] is an example of this exact method, even though it is not involved in software development. It is a legal site that encourages anyone to join in, the results are not produced by law firms, but by networks of volunteers who look after different pieces of the legal brief. It started as one woman's personal blog and then took off when the FOSS community saw the usefulness of having a subject matter expert in law commenting on cases that mattered to the community. So the community joined in and now it's a distributed project on the exact model of an Open Source programming project.
So these principles work for more than just programming. It's a useful model for any community project. The power of the community made manifest. We're stronger when we work together.
ZeD - "Open source television" (Score:3, Interesting)
ZeD [zed.cbc.ca]
Similar Article in Wired (Score:4, Informative)
Dangerous Misconception (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when has the open distribution of recipies (Score:4, Insightful)
I always thought of it as the standard model.
Even when it comes to making Cola that secret has been out of the bag for over 100 years and thousands of little bottling plants around the world churn out psuedo "Coke" by the billions of gallons. If you think there's really some deep dark secret to it you've been reading marketing as nonfiction.
It's flavored sugar water. You play around with the flavorings until you get it right. When you make your own you even get to use real sugar in your sugar water.
You don't really think that KFC's spices are a secret, do you? You can taste them. Any decent cook could figure them out if he really wanted to. In fact, here's a list. Make your own:
KFC's "Secret" recipe [recipecircus.com]
When commercial entities and large sums of money are at stake comapanies even employ chemists to analyze ingredients of competitors products. You can't hide physical reality. It isn't like code, and even code can be reverse engineered as soon as you know what it does.
I'm all for open distribution of knowledge, but to claim that Open Source invented it is a bit daft. The libraries are full of the stuff.
Ok, let the monogram bashing begin.
KFG
Re:Since when has the open distribution of recipie (Score:2, Insightful)
fluffy article (Score:2, Insightful)
Oracle's dominance in databases is coming under threat from MySQL, whose software was downloaded over the internet around 10m times last year.
The only people who can afford Oracle aren't going to jump to MS Sql, Postgres or MySql. The biggest threat Mysql has is on Microsoft Sql Server. The reason is because the price point of SqlServer. Oracle, DB2 and Sybase are very expensive. People buy expensive database se
Open Source & Process before Product... (Score:4, Insightful)
To be somewhat on topic, the OpenCola idea is great and I'd like to buy a case and pass it around to give a little shove to folks who don't get what open source is and what it isn't.
My sig (if you have sigs off);
Specifically: Open source is mainly a plan not a good. Closed source is mainly a good not a plan. That said, give me a good plan -- or a well planned good (closed or open) -- and I'll take it.
From that: Linux does not matter, GCC does not matter, Windows does not matter, Office -- Open or MS -- do not matter. Who is interested -- who is motivated -- is the only thing that matters.
People are motivated when they are interested. Motivated interest that comes from personal interest -- not externally imposed by mild or excessive force -- tends to be most effective over time since the person is not running away from the motivator but is cheerfully compelled to act.
In general, open source and closed source -- commercially driven or not -- have different built-in motivators. None of these are absolutes, though they do pull people in different directions;
Open source motivators;
Transparency (corillary: Look if you want)
Process over products (corillary: harder to 'buy')
'Natural' growth;
Closed source motivators;
Secret formula (corillary: Joe Isuzu "Trust me!")
Products not projects (soft goods)
Action imposed by past or likely sales;
I don't care if you use open souce, though the built-in motivators alone are what make it strong. The goods -- the soft-wares -- are entirely secondary.
Microsoft Google Ad (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft is running an adwords on Google for if you search on "Linux Development Grants". I imagine it costs them $1 a click or so....
Simputer - Hardware device license (Score:3, Informative)
Highlights of SGPL
* Any individual or company can download the hardware specification, PCB layout details, the bill of materials, etc., henceforth called "Specifications" free of charge. The act of doing so binds the individual or company to the SGPL.
* Any derivative work has to come back to the Trust to allow for further dissemination. To allow the commercial exploitation of the derived work, a one year delay in putting back the derived work is permitted. This does not however preclude others from independently engineering a similar derivative work during this period.
* Any derivative work is subsumed as Specifications and hence, they are also governed by this same license.
* The word "Simputer(TM)" is trademarked and cannot be used without the permission of the Trust. If an individual or company is interested in using the word "Simputer(TM)" in conjunction with their products, they can do so only if their product conforms to certain rules that will be put up on the trust website (and which may undergo periodic revision). The product has to provide a visual clue to attest it being a Simputer by way of displaying a logo issued by the Trust.
* While recognizing the possibility of using the Specifications in application other than as a Simputer, the License deems that such derived work be called "Simputerized" products. The product description should state that the product is "Simputerized" and provide a visual clue on the product by way of displaying a logo issued by the Trust.
* Any commercial exploitation of the Specifications (whether Simputer or Simputerized) involves a nominal one time payment to the Trust. The payment will be $25,000 for developing countries and $250,000 for developed countries.
Will Microsoft bring on a new dark age? (Score:3, Interesting)
This happened to the American auto industry in the seventies--and that was with three big competitors--there was no way for a small company to break in or innovate. Then cam the oil crisis and foreign cars, and America had no choice but to follow the leaders.
Of course, an OS is a lot different. It's possible to hide all your "IP" below an access layer (think PS/2) and that's that--only the hardcore hackers will be able to get to it, and you can charge a pretty penny for the right to modify it...which is pretty much how IBM and the other big iron computer companies treated their customers until recently. It's tough for anyone to compete with that.
There is a war between the MS controlled corporate desktop and the internet going on right now.
Lately I've seen "free computer classes" and "free developer training" popping up in the papers, and these classes are hilarious. The first five minutes is like a religious event--the speaker intones about his years as a professor, his years as an engineer, and how he loves computers, and how great they are...and then starts talking about how much innovation MS solutions provide and what a fantastic company they are. Then he starts in with the discussion of this fantastic MS-only solution.
Although they hate to admit it, I got one "professor" to admit he was being paid by a company that was taking a beating from open source, a company that sells only MS products, and he was just repeating the messages in the documentation kit they sent him. In other words, he's claiming to be an authority, but he's really a used car salesman, an infomercial "talking head". It's a shame, because he really had an impressive resume and career.
Funny thing is, he had that engineering career and professorship because he could go to libraries, universities, read books about all the math underlying enginneering, and he didn't have to get certs or attend corporate training sessions to do all of that. He has forgotten what freedom of information and technology did for him, and is now working to deny it from others. He doesn't even realize it, all he knows is the nice company is paying him to promote their product, and that product looks impressive to him, and that's about all he knows. He's retired, etc.
A lot of people in the audience were buying it. His credentials, like that of a priest, made his opinion mean something. And he is right to a certain extent...MS runs the corporate desktop. But there was no mention of the internet, open standards, other huge success stories (ebay, google) that use open source happily and succcessfully.
So which way will it go? Will the internet technologies work their way into the corporations, or will MS bust out of the corporations and creep into the internet? It will be a mix; many internet companies can't afford to lose a sale because a browser failed with their website. Thus they have to work to the lowest common denominator. They won't budge from that, and if people outside the corps use free software, that's the only real way to stop MS, prevent them from locking technology.
The problem is raising the lowest common technology level is a free way, and MS can't do it. They want to use pseudo open standards and then break them subtly when the time is ripe, and then blame the failures on non-standard platforms.
They've done it before, and that's their true goal with these patents and opening up of the C# bytecodes, etc...get people using a partially free implementation and lock it down. Ximian is betting they can come up with a free platform that will end up on MS boxes, but who knows?
No D&D players here? (Score:3, Informative)
This has been going on for 2-3 years with Wizards of the Coast. Called the Open Game License, it's not the same as the GPL, but it's easy to see that they got the idea from it.
The OGL boils down to: if it's designated open game content in a book, it can be reprinted in another book freely as long as credit is given. This includes incorporating someone's open content rules into another, different rules book, and various other stuff a non-rpger couldn't care less about.
Amusingly enough, many rpgers are mystified by the OGL and don't understand that they can still use closed content in their own games. But there's hope for them: I'm willing to sell them closed content openers at very reasonable prices, and I'm honest enough to tell them that they're not allowed to republish closed content material. ;-)
To summarize, the basic OSS idea is indeed catching on, albeit slowly, and in rather surprising places.
Whatever happened to... (Score:3, Interesting)
...Open Source Toys [tomo.gr.jp]?
Get it to spread into other languages in addition to Japanese, and add some open source electronic and mechanical toy designs and it might take off.
On a related note, I see O'Reilly and Associates is putting out a "Hardware Hacks for Geeks [oreilly.com]" book as part of their excellent "Hacks" series - possibly a starting point?
Ecosystems (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent years in the environmental world, and to this day every time I walk in the woods I see examples of cutthroat competition and stunning examples of cooperation. I think the rise of free software/open source in a sense mirrors this property of complex systems of individual agents to have cooperation emerge as a major form of interaction. It is a restoring of a natural equillibrium that was disrupted by a decade or so of exponential growth. Closed operating systems and software that performs other, nearly universal functions are like weeds that prosper by being able to use the resources freed by the disruption to colonize new niches. Cooperative models can't self assemble quickly enough at first to compete.
In the long term the equillibrium will swing the other way, although not totally because cooperation is not a natural model in many situations. For example in vertical markets, the disincentives of cooperations outweigh the benefits. In that case internally developed systems make sense, and closed "black box" COT software is an acceptible compromise which maintains at least a level playing field.
I think cooperative models of production will always exist as long as the contract doesn't become the sole form of human relationship. But it will always coexist with competition as a pardigm. Speculation: as long as world population grows exponentially, and the world economy grows exponentially with it, competition will remain the dominant form of human economic interaction. It's interesting to speculate what will happen if world population stabilizes and growth switches from exponential to linear growth or steady state.
Re:Very exciting indeed! (Score:3, Funny)
If they're reading Slashdot then they've tried Open Source Software.
Re:Very exciting indeed! (Score:2)
Why, exactly? What problem is open source software going to solve for me? Right now, all of my machines do their jobs, and do them well. I'm not going to try software just for the hell of it. I have better things to do. There's got to be something there beyond the "gee whiz" factor. A new web browser? Uuuh... why? IE has been working fine for many, many years. Why should I go through the trouble? Right now, the only OSS I use is VNC, and that's because it solves a problem fo
Re:Very exciting indeed! (Score:2)
My ass IE works fine. Pop-ups and -unders galore and scads of spyware come marching in through it. Don't get me started on what it does when you try to serve dynamically generated pdfs on a secure connection as well. For that matter, let's also ignore the way its cache behaves on secure sites. It used to be Netscape 4 that caused web developer hell. NS 4 has been dethroned. It's every bit the non-standard supporting cruft monster that NS 4 is. Oh, and t
Re:Open Source = (Score:2, Funny)
BSA == Corporatist Shills. (Score:2, Interesting)
1. That competition is good and is to be encouraged. This is nonsense. Competition fosters only an attitude of winning at all costs. That is why you have illegal drug use in sports and 85% of all CEOs who think that their books are cooked. Comepition is an objective moral evil.
2. That innovation is best accomplished in a proprietary environment. Well, that old canard has been laid to rest long ago. Innovation is best accomplished in an open and free environment
Not troll. True, wise and good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Read Stanislaw Lem's "Magellan Cloud" (or something like this, I don't know how they translated the title) - it depicts a world in which people were responsible enough for communism to succeed - a world in which one likes to live. No propaganda, slogans, terror, stiff norms. Just "open source" in all domains of life.
Re:Not troll. True, wise and good. (Score:2, Insightful)
I totally agree with the initial, non-troll-rated poster in the sense that the idea behind communism, socialism, is quite good
The problem being - and communism, that later became stalinism, is a clear example - that if you take a large enough group of people, this group will include people whose only goals are to become richer, more powerful and by doing less work than the other people.
I believe this is inherent to the human
Re:Not troll. True, wise and good. (Score:2)
Yes, and so is the idea behind free market Capitalism.
The problem being...that if you take a large enough group of people, this group will include people whose only goals are to become richer, more powerful and by doing less work than the other people.
But you do agree with me then?
Re:Not troll. True, wise and good. (Score:2)
In the other hand, need for power has nothing in common with capitalism-communism thing. It's entirely totalita
Re:Not troll. True, wise and good. (Score:2)
I'd say it was a meta-troll. You are the troll, and I have been trolled. Yay.
Now, to really be trolled, I do have to respond to you, right? Call me a cynic, but there's a reason why Utopias are called Utopias (From Greek: ou = not, topos = place): they will never work. Not on this planet. Because you simply can't have a society of fully responsible (and workaholic) people -- not without some kind of repressive organs and propaganda. Plato knew this, and so did Thomas More.
Re:Not troll. True, wise and good. (Score:2)
First off, we were talking about ideas and underlying rules, not about whether they are possible or what (wrong) methods should be applied to get them to work.
And second, never say never. It may be within our lifespan, when robotics expands so far, that only marginal amount of human labour may be required, and production already can provide more goods than the market can swallow (note around the half of XX Century that was not t
Poster is redundant (Score:3, Interesting)
Small business can pay as well as big business, but you have to wear at least one other hat, and you don't get stock options.
Re:Poster is redundant (Score:2)
If on the other hand, this tailoring is actually modifying open source OS's, tools, etc, it seems to me that the amount of work is actually increasing and the cost to a small business is going up. I don't see small companies shelling out this extra money in the long run.
On the other hand, if small companies expect to pay their staff less
Re:Poster is redundant (Score:2, Interesting)
Open source gives the potential for a company to be adaptive, dynamic and profitable in the marketplace, but you are correct in alluding to OSS not guaranteeing these things.