linux-watch.com— Last week, SJVN listed the top five things Linux can learn from Microsoft. Well, it's a two-way street. Here's SJVN's list of the top five things that Microsoft could learn from Linux.
Jul 28, 2006View in Crawl 4
I think the "bashing" he was referring to was from the comments in this thread, not in the article. Simple fact is everyone can learn from their competitors.
@flash200You may be correct. I did not do too much research on this topic since GNU themselves claimed salaries would decrease... <a class="user" href="http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html">http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html</a>Quotes from the document include:"Many programmers are unhappy about the commercialization of system software. It may enable them to make more money, but it requires them to feel in conflict with other programmers in general rather than feel as comrades."That quote is located in the section "Why Many Other Programmers Want to Help." Of course, that document is several years old and may be outdated.I suppose I will have to do more research; the only reason I opposed the GPL is the economic consequences it may (or may not?) have.
Come on, don't be arrogant about this. Microsoft produces the number one selling operating system in the world. I think they know anything some person is going to post on some obscure linux forum/website.
While only a small percentage of people may look at the source code of a program, as you state probably less 1% of people, that could still end up being a lot of people looking at the code. For instance, if an open source application had a user base of one million users and 1% of people inspected the code than that would mean a lot of people had inspected the code. I know that I don't look at the code for every application that I run, but in some cases I do.Also, just because an application is open source doesn't mean that people will look at the code. I'm sure there are applications on source forge that no one has bothered to look at the code, because they are insignificant and of little interest to most people. On the other hand, major application that others care about have many people looking at the code, such as Apache, PHP, Firefox, and Gnome just to name a few.
"The only worthwhile incentive for anything is $$$..."What are you, Ferengi? Did you buy your wife?Seriously, I hope you have more in your life than $$$. I pity you.
"Using them in all situations" ?Compositing software works at the level of an entire desktop session. If you use Xgl, your whole desktop will be composited with Xgl. Everything that gets drawn to the screen will go through the compositing manager.
I said nothing about Windows developers. I have nothing against MS developers, or most other parts of MS for that matter, but this is a completely separate issue from what I said previously. My point is that money != prosperity. If money == prosperity then monopoly == ideal future, because nothing is more profitable (on paper) than a monopoly. This is inherently non-Capitalistic which *requires* competitive behaviour in order to counter-act degenerate behaviour, for example, the total lack of innovation in Internet Explorer for the 9 years between the death of Netscape and the rise of Firefox."No I should not support it for that reason."You shouldn't necessarily support OpenSource, that was bad wording on my part. There were really two points in that paragraph:1) You *should* support competitive behaviours. This is why the gov't creates legislation, and it's why MS gets sued every other day. If OS were anti-competitive it would be bad to support it, but onto point 2...2) OpenSource has shown itself to be competitive, the proof as you say, is in the growing number of investments. Not to mention the fact that Redmond is finally getting off it's behind to update it's aging software (when will Vista get here anyways??)Adding futher to this, if some people think OS products are worth investing time and money into, then you should not discount them simply because you don't understand the economic model that allows them to prosper."That is not capitalism, ... poor distribution of resources."You should be careful what you say BobTurbo. You have contradicted yourself in the same paragraph. You say first that (1)"Consumers support what they like, not competition", but then in the same breath you say (2)"Consumers should not support both" (referring to both the 'good' and 'bad' products). If your point #1 is true then #2 cannot be true because the market will support the products it deems worthy, in this case both the 'good' and 'bad' products are supported. If #2 is true, then who is it that judges whether one product is 'good' and another is 'bad'? You?"It is a poor distribution of resources."It is impossible to determine what is and what is not a 'good distribution of resources'. Trying to do so is what is called Communism. Under Capitalism we support all viable alternatives (viable meaning that someone somewhere thinks it worth investing in, which obviously is true of OS or the products would not exist at all). It doesn't matter one tiny bit if one of the products is a peice of crap that BSODs all day, if someone supports it then it is viable (if you your line of thinking were correct, Windows would not exist because Windows 1.0 was laughably inferior to anything else at the time)."If investors think a product can make money, they will invest in it,"We are on exactly the same page here. The problem is that many people (e.g. KryptoniteKid, maybe you?) have not yet come to understand the economic model that allows OS to make money. There are way too many people that can't "see the bank for the dollars" so to speak. To discount OS on the grounds that money==good, risk==bad, is like saying we should never have invested in such technologies as AC current. AC was hotly contested in it's time as being inferior to DC, thank goodness Tesla was very persistent at 'selling' it or we might not have many of the technologies we take for granted today."Capital is not a right, it is something that is earned."Exactly, OS has earned alot of capital*, and it should be respected for that. I'm certainly not advocating throwing your money into something you don't think will provide a return, but neither should you discount the obvious opportunties just because you have been trained to think that anything free of cost is inherently cheap and shoddy.* Capital comes in many forms, not just money. There is alot of money in OS products, but the market is still small and growing compared to larger corporate competitors so it is hard to compare the monetary investments on the same scale. The more obvious forms of investment in OS tend to be time and expertise. The key to the OS model is that the return for these (what I will call 'expertise') investments is often in the form of reciprical investments from others leading to a better product for all those who invested. OS fosters a community of like-minded 'expertise-investors' who are interested more in the product itself, than the monetary reward. This type of investment leads to very fast development and innovation (Ubuntu** is close to par with Windows in half the development time). The really brilliant 'have your cake and eat it too' moment is when you suddenly realise that all this expertise-investment will also benefit the monetary investors in the long-term as the product they invest in matures much more quickly at less money-cost. Thus, everyone wins***.** I say 'Ubuntu' here because 'Linux' is not an operating system and cannot be rationally compared to the Windows operating system. Ubuntu is a Linux desktop distribution that has functionality rivaling (though, in my opinion not yet equaling) Windows' functionality.*** Keep in mind that I never said an OS product could or should be developed without money-investment. On the contrary, money-investment is important to OS products. It often necessary to invest some money to hire developers to 'polish' the product by adding or refining user-friendly features. However, the money-cost of development and innovation is still significantly reduced and therefore represents a better margin for profit from the money perspective.
@bariusYep, I agree with you. But I was not pointing out that Linux is bad, merely that I don't agree with the open source model being very effective in many situations. Despite this, I would still only judge Linux based on my experience and knowledge of the product rather than pre-judge it based on a philosophical rule.And I certain agree with the point about FUD. Even if someone thinks a product is inferior, making up things just to support their belief never benefits the consumer. FUD, myths, misinformation, are all littered throughout internet forums. Of course it is usually the popular products that are on the receiving end.
neurofiendJul 29, 2006
I think the "bashing" he was referring to was from the comments in this thread, not in the article. Simple fact is everyone can learn from their competitors.
i440Jul 29, 2006
@flash200You may be correct. I did not do too much research on this topic since GNU themselves claimed salaries would decrease... <a class="user" href="http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html">http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html</a>Quotes from the document include:"Many programmers are unhappy about the commercialization of system software. It may enable them to make more money, but it requires them to feel in conflict with other programmers in general rather than feel as comrades."That quote is located in the section "Why Many Other Programmers Want to Help." Of course, that document is several years old and may be outdated.I suppose I will have to do more research; the only reason I opposed the GPL is the economic consequences it may (or may not?) have.
silentdudJul 29, 2006
Come on, don't be arrogant about this. Microsoft produces the number one selling operating system in the world. I think they know anything some person is going to post on some obscure linux forum/website.
nathanbalonJul 29, 2006
While only a small percentage of people may look at the source code of a program, as you state probably less 1% of people, that could still end up being a lot of people looking at the code. For instance, if an open source application had a user base of one million users and 1% of people inspected the code than that would mean a lot of people had inspected the code. I know that I don't look at the code for every application that I run, but in some cases I do.Also, just because an application is open source doesn't mean that people will look at the code. I'm sure there are applications on source forge that no one has bothered to look at the code, because they are insignificant and of little interest to most people. On the other hand, major application that others care about have many people looking at the code, such as Apache, PHP, Firefox, and Gnome just to name a few.
bariusJul 29, 2006
"The only worthwhile incentive for anything is $$$..."What are you, Ferengi? Did you buy your wife?Seriously, I hope you have more in your life than $$$. I pity you.
wyzardJul 29, 2006
"Using them in all situations" ?Compositing software works at the level of an entire desktop session. If you use Xgl, your whole desktop will be composited with Xgl. Everything that gets drawn to the screen will go through the compositing manager.
gravityboyJul 29, 2006
I think you'll find that those of us who are actually in the Free Software world do tend to focus more on improving things simply because it's more productive and fun. <a class="user" href="http://humorix.org/articles/1999/11/user-evolution/">http://humorix.org/articles/1999/11/user-evolution/</a> is an ancient, yet still true, classic. As for myself, since I hardly see windows at all, I'm far more driven to improve the system I do actually use.
bariusJul 30, 2006
I said nothing about Windows developers. I have nothing against MS developers, or most other parts of MS for that matter, but this is a completely separate issue from what I said previously. My point is that money != prosperity. If money == prosperity then monopoly == ideal future, because nothing is more profitable (on paper) than a monopoly. This is inherently non-Capitalistic which *requires* competitive behaviour in order to counter-act degenerate behaviour, for example, the total lack of innovation in Internet Explorer for the 9 years between the death of Netscape and the rise of Firefox."No I should not support it for that reason."You shouldn't necessarily support OpenSource, that was bad wording on my part. There were really two points in that paragraph:1) You *should* support competitive behaviours. This is why the gov't creates legislation, and it's why MS gets sued every other day. If OS were anti-competitive it would be bad to support it, but onto point 2...2) OpenSource has shown itself to be competitive, the proof as you say, is in the growing number of investments. Not to mention the fact that Redmond is finally getting off it's behind to update it's aging software (when will Vista get here anyways??)Adding futher to this, if some people think OS products are worth investing time and money into, then you should not discount them simply because you don't understand the economic model that allows them to prosper."That is not capitalism, ... poor distribution of resources."You should be careful what you say BobTurbo. You have contradicted yourself in the same paragraph. You say first that (1)"Consumers support what they like, not competition", but then in the same breath you say (2)"Consumers should not support both" (referring to both the 'good' and 'bad' products). If your point #1 is true then #2 cannot be true because the market will support the products it deems worthy, in this case both the 'good' and 'bad' products are supported. If #2 is true, then who is it that judges whether one product is 'good' and another is 'bad'? You?"It is a poor distribution of resources."It is impossible to determine what is and what is not a 'good distribution of resources'. Trying to do so is what is called Communism. Under Capitalism we support all viable alternatives (viable meaning that someone somewhere thinks it worth investing in, which obviously is true of OS or the products would not exist at all). It doesn't matter one tiny bit if one of the products is a peice of crap that BSODs all day, if someone supports it then it is viable (if you your line of thinking were correct, Windows would not exist because Windows 1.0 was laughably inferior to anything else at the time)."If investors think a product can make money, they will invest in it,"We are on exactly the same page here. The problem is that many people (e.g. KryptoniteKid, maybe you?) have not yet come to understand the economic model that allows OS to make money. There are way too many people that can't "see the bank for the dollars" so to speak. To discount OS on the grounds that money==good, risk==bad, is like saying we should never have invested in such technologies as AC current. AC was hotly contested in it's time as being inferior to DC, thank goodness Tesla was very persistent at 'selling' it or we might not have many of the technologies we take for granted today."Capital is not a right, it is something that is earned."Exactly, OS has earned alot of capital*, and it should be respected for that. I'm certainly not advocating throwing your money into something you don't think will provide a return, but neither should you discount the obvious opportunties just because you have been trained to think that anything free of cost is inherently cheap and shoddy.* Capital comes in many forms, not just money. There is alot of money in OS products, but the market is still small and growing compared to larger corporate competitors so it is hard to compare the monetary investments on the same scale. The more obvious forms of investment in OS tend to be time and expertise. The key to the OS model is that the return for these (what I will call 'expertise') investments is often in the form of reciprical investments from others leading to a better product for all those who invested. OS fosters a community of like-minded 'expertise-investors' who are interested more in the product itself, than the monetary reward. This type of investment leads to very fast development and innovation (Ubuntu** is close to par with Windows in half the development time). The really brilliant 'have your cake and eat it too' moment is when you suddenly realise that all this expertise-investment will also benefit the monetary investors in the long-term as the product they invest in matures much more quickly at less money-cost. Thus, everyone wins***.** I say 'Ubuntu' here because 'Linux' is not an operating system and cannot be rationally compared to the Windows operating system. Ubuntu is a Linux desktop distribution that has functionality rivaling (though, in my opinion not yet equaling) Windows' functionality.*** Keep in mind that I never said an OS product could or should be developed without money-investment. On the contrary, money-investment is important to OS products. It often necessary to invest some money to hire developers to 'polish' the product by adding or refining user-friendly features. However, the money-cost of development and innovation is still significantly reduced and therefore represents a better margin for profit from the money perspective.
bobturboJul 31, 2006
@bariusYep, I agree with you. But I was not pointing out that Linux is bad, merely that I don't agree with the open source model being very effective in many situations. Despite this, I would still only judge Linux based on my experience and knowledge of the product rather than pre-judge it based on a philosophical rule.And I certain agree with the point about FUD. Even if someone thinks a product is inferior, making up things just to support their belief never benefits the consumer. FUD, myths, misinformation, are all littered throughout internet forums. Of course it is usually the popular products that are on the receiving end.