Interesting Linux Article

Just more of Lyon''s trash talk.

Newsflash: Red Hat is not the only Linux. If Red Hat wants to treat it as an imitation Windows (as this Carey fellow seems to suggest), that''s fine. But there are many other (and many better) installations out there, Enterprise class or otherwise. And anyone who thinks Linux is just an imitation Windows is an idiot who does not understand the deep-seated differences, in architecture and paradigm.

I understand that there are reasons one might want to go with Windows over Linux, and I''m okay with that. But holding up Windows as some sort of model of innovation and denouncing Linux as merely a wannabe imitator is wrong and wrongheaded. At least, try to choose reasons that are accurate or at least plausible.

Lyons has lost a great deal of credibility with his uninformed FUD attacks, his childish and pathetic (and fruitless) attempts to slander Pamela Jones of Groklaw as being a paid IBM shill, and his blatant, fawning SCO-lackey-ism. Bring me an article in a similar vein by an unbiased journalist--or at least one who isn''t as controversial as Lyons--and maybe we will have a friendly discussion.

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Golem
Blender--The Gimp--Python--Lua--SDL
Nethack--Crawl--ADOM--Angband--Dungeondweller

Agree with VertexNormal there, if you think X (or linux, hard to tell) is just an imitation of windows, then windows is simply an imitation of mac os . After all, apple was first with the mouse (which I think is a swedish invention from beginning, but long gone forgotten). etc etc.

I happen to run linux AND windows on two seperate machines, but after learning linux, I must say I will most likely dump windows for linux than the other way around.

IMO you can''t say that windows has better applications because applications is just that, it''s not that hard to code for other operating systems than windows, and then the audience turns to linux, so must the applicaiton developers.

Noone say linux must be open source right through, it just happens to be that most of the time. Not saying open source sucks, but you can sell products for linux too...

Albert

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Original post by thec
Agree with VertexNormal there, if you think X (or linux, hard to tell) is just an imitation of windows, then windows is simply an imitation of mac os . After all, apple was first with the mouse (which I think is a swedish invention from beginning, but long gone forgotten). etc etc.

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Unfortuantely, Apple ripped off the GUI interface and mouse from Xerox. Apple is not as innovative as one would think.

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Original post by Yohan

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Original post by thec
Agree with VertexNormal there, if you think X (or linux, hard to tell) is just an imitation of windows, then windows is simply an imitation of mac os . After all, apple was first with the mouse (which I think is a swedish invention from beginning, but long gone forgotten). etc etc.

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Unfortuantely, Apple ripped off the GUI interface and mouse from Xerox. Apple is not as innovative as one would think.

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No, but it''s a well established myth.

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There''s no place like 127.0.0.1

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Original post by Yohan

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Original post by thec
Agree with VertexNormal there, if you think X (or linux, hard to tell) is just an imitation of windows, then windows is simply an imitation of mac os . After all, apple was first with the mouse (which I think is a swedish invention from beginning, but long gone forgotten). etc etc.

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Unfortuantely, Apple ripped off the GUI interface and mouse from Xerox. Apple is not as innovative as one would think.

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Of course, his original point still stands; you just have to change it to:

"then windows is simply an imitation of mac os , which is an imitation of xerox''s OS."

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Original post by Yohan
Unfortuantely, Apple ripped off the GUI interface and mouse from Xerox. Apple is not as innovative as one would think.

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Incorrect.

First, the concepts of the GUI predates Xerox PARC. It was being talked about in conceptual form (even at Apple). Xerox was just the first to put it together in a semi-usable form. Second, Apple *paid* Xerox to have the right to bring in programmers to see the technology. Then Apple developed their own GUI based on what they saw in that demonstration. There was no "ripping off" involved.

The mouse was first presented by Douglas Engelbart at Stanford in 1968 I think. Swedish inventor Håkan Lans, who also claims to have invented VGA graphics but lost his patent suits in the US, is sometimes attributed with the invention of the mouse but that''s, at best, some minor improvement to Engelbart''s team''s original mouse.

Linux is an alternative. An "every-day-better" one.

Not a replacement.

With that in mind, you can enjoy what it offers (for free), and not what it doesn''t.

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Original post by rohde
I must admit that I can really relate to that Carey fellow.

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Poor you.

Let me place the entire debate in completely different terms: Certain technology should be commodity, allowing for the creation of more complex and powerful technology built upon it thanks to ready availability. Need an example? Google exists because of the commodity that is Linux (and Apache and Python, and other such tools), and its ability to run on a wide variety of hardware and turn even low-grade machines into server-grade. Powerful application built on commodity.

Note that the articulators of Open Source (which should be differentiated from Free Software) are not opposed to commercial, proprietary solutions. Eric Raymond, called the "father of Open Source" by many, and definitely its resident socio-anthropologist, says that opening the sources makes sense when the source is "icing on the widget" (support material to make your core product more marketable/usable, such as device drivers for GPUs) and when the source is not the "family jewels." Salesforce.com's software is the source of its value; it makes zero sense for Salesforce.com to open their sources.

As you can see, nowhere has price been mentioned, because price is ancillary, at best, to the issues under consideration here. Red Hat doesn't make money by selling Linux (you can download most of the pieces that make RH Enterprise Server from Red Hat); their business is in providing support and services for clients who have installed Red Hat Linux. It doesn't make sense to support "Linux" (ask VA Systems and Linux International), so all successful Linux service vendors support specific, quality-assured distributions of Linux that they supply themselves. This eliminates variability and ensures consistent familiarity (technologies, layouts and configurations vary significantly between Linux distributions), which results in a smoother support experience.

Further, the focus on services and the commoditization of the majority of software components allows resources to be invested in the design, development, deployment and administration of solutions for the business - spend money on your business processes rather than on equipment, so to speak. This difference in licensing/pricing model is why each version of Windows (Server) must bundle so many new components and improvements. Any other approach and the proposition loses relative value exceedingly quickly.

Hopefully, that has given you some insight into the Linux fiscal ecosystem.

[Edit: Typo.]

[edited by - Oluseyi on April 2, 2004 2:52:31 AM]

I don''t know, I don''t think we have enough distrobutions. Perhaps we should add 10 more for good measure.

MindEngine Development
http://medev.sourceforge.net

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Original post by Oluseyi

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Original post by rohde
I must admit that I can really relate to that Carey fellow.

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Poor you.

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Why? Why am I poor? Because I agree with the sentiment of the article? Well then a majority of decisionmakers in the IT and business world is poor as well. What a poor retort (it also distracts from the rest of your otherwise good post).

I am in no way saying that Linux is bad. I don''t even wanna go there. I actually agree with most of what you said, but obviously you didn''t understand my point (or rather the article)

What am I talking about are the pros and cons in choosing Linux over Windows and vice versa, and for most companies it simply makes no sense in choosing Linux - basically because it do cost money and because it is "just an imitation" (what I mean with imitiaion is that in most cases it will most likely replace Windows and will be used as a Windows imitaion).

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There''s no place like 127.0.0.1

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Original post by neurokaotix
I don''t know, I don''t think we have enough distrobutions. Perhaps we should add 10 more for good measure.

MindEngine Development
http://medev.sourceforge.net

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According to distrowatch there are 278 distributions, of which 32 have been discontinued, so that makes 246 total. Plenty of distributions, if you ask me.

Why does everybody alwas bitch and complain about Linux?

It''s free! FREE you cry-babies!

You get what you pay for, and damnit that''s a lot for paying NOTHING.

That said; the mouse was created in ''68? Holy crap.

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Even IF we accept that linux is just an imitation, they so what? If the version of something that''s just an imitations is better than the version that is/was innovative, I know which version I''d rather use. And if the innovation is being put on a shaky base then again, who cares about the innovation? Great, everything can look pretty and be impressive on the surface, and that''s fine for about 5 minutes, but its not what really matters.

Then again, I''m sitting here looking at my enlightenment desktop, and it''s just like using windows... no wait, it''s not *rolls eyes*

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Original post by metal leper
Even IF we accept that linux is just an imitation, they so what? If the version of something that's just an imitations is better than the version that is/was innovative, I know which version I'd rather use. And if the innovation is being put on a shaky base then again, who cares about the innovation? Great, everything can look pretty and be impressive on the surface, and that's fine for about 5 minutes, but its not what really matters.

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Yes, absolutely true. And Linux has been a good thing for computer science in general. No doubt about it.

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Then again, I'm sitting here looking at my enlightenment desktop, and it's just like using windows... no wait, it's not *rolls eyes*

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Funny...not. Companies adopting Linux are not using enlightment, and I'm sure you know that. Those companies considering a change wants a Windows replacement not some obsucre window manager. They want the same kind of productivity apps as they used on Windows etc.

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There's no place like 127.0.0.1


[edited by - rohde on April 2, 2004 6:21:04 AM]

Not everything open source is imitation.

• The Gimp (while there are many paint programs, I cannot think of any that allow such extensive and powerful scripting)
  
• gcc
  
• PLT Scheme
  
• PGP
  
• Emacs
  
• Perl
  
• NCSA Mosaic
  

I am sure if I spent more than 15 seconds thinking about it I could think of more.

WRT the article:

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NEW YORK - Two years ago, when Rick Carey was chief technology architect at Merrill Lynch, he was crazy about Linux and especially about Red Hat, the leading Linux distributor. At the time, he was leading the charge to migrate all of the computer systems at Merrill to Linux.

But these days, things have changed. Carey, who is now chief technology architect at Bank One (nyse: ONE - news - people ), says that although he still likes Linux, he's not rushing into any deployments of the open-source operating system. Chicago-based Bank One has run some Linux pilot programs, but it is not planning any big roll-outs, Carey says.

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I thought it was funny since ML is, from what I am told, almost all Windows systems. This is known as juxtapositional humour.

[edited by - flangazor on April 2, 2004 8:29:31 AM]

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Original post by rohde
Funny...not. Companies adopting Linux are not using enlightment, and I'm sure you know that. Those companies considering a change wants a Windows replacement not some obsucre window manager. They want the same kind of productivity apps as they used on Windows etc.

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You completely missed the point - enlightenment isn't popular, true, but that's irrelevant. I was talking about whether or not linux is an imitation, which is according to the article a bad thing. Yet now you're saying that people want their replacement for Windows to behave in a similar way to Windows (again, true, and relevant, and its half of the point of my last post, along with the fact that there are options out there for people who want something entirely different)



[edited by - metal leper on April 2, 2004 10:19:16 AM]

I think that the worst parts of the article are the claim that open source is imitation, and the implication that imitation can''t be innovative.

There are alot of open source initiatives which are blatant imitations of other applications, however there are a great many packages which are innovative, such as those listed by flangazor.

Imitation does not in any way remove the opportunity for innovation either; GPG is an imitation of PGP which has grown far beyond the initial compatibility that was offered with PGP. KDE and GNOME were started as projects to provide an alternative to CDE, and have grown far beyond the original intention.

Microsoft is also an innovative company, even though they steal ideas from other places, including open-source. The reality is that where Microsofts strength of innovation comes in is when they create user interfaces. I seriously doubt that any other operating system makes an operating system as easy to use as Windows XP (granted, I have not had enough experience with Mac OS 10, but what I have seen I like).

Innovation is not just purely original ways (originality) or improving existing processes (optimization), it is a combination of the two.

Imitation is the key to human ingenuity and the ability to "innovatively imitate" is what drives the technology sector.