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January 29, 2008 at 2:32 am #166138DavidParticipant
@VvWolverinevV 226020 wrote:
Yes, the developers already do work for free.
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No, there is a difference between a code monkey and someone that is competent at the highest levels of design. There are far fewer of the latter, and this is why the FOSS community has such a hard time with direction, there isn’t any real leadershipQuote:Yes, but my point is that even if open source coders are slower than hired coders, 100 or 1000 of them will still certainly be able to accomplish more than a single hired coder (even if they each only work on open source for a few hours per week.)Man-hours of coding isn’t the issue, it’s the design, which is the hardest part of the project, not the implementation (actually coding it up).
Putting that aside, it is far more likely that a smaller team will generate a better application, since the advantage of large numbers would only be the review process, which happens with OSS, but at a slower and more disconnected pace.
10 Might do a better job than 1000, because those 1000 may need to explain their reasoning for a design choice to 999 others, instead of 9. This also don’t account for the massive problem of only working on, and understanding, a small component of the project vs. the entire application.
Quote:Not really sure how that’s relevant…
It’s completely relevant! Corporations innovate because they can be better than the competition (and thus better for the consumer)–but it’s really to benefit the shareholders. I want to build a better “Microsoft Excel” so I can sell it for more money, or gain more market share. If someone else thinks they can make it even better, then they will do the same. The consumer ends up with a better product. It all comes down to money, it always will. FOSS is an alternative, and always will be, It’s little more of a copy of the successful non-free software. It’s taken more than 15 years for Linux (Fedora, Ubuntu, whatever common distro) to “match” Windows (and they still haven’t, but lets say for the sake of argument that it has). How could it possibly advance at a rate faster (better) than the paid alternatives?
Companies like Microsoft don’t really care about the personal computing, its about the corporate licenses. That is where the real money is (for Windows), can Linux offer a robust alternative? Not a chance, the entire model is based on releasing early and often, and making changes to the underlying libraries and components which have a high risk of breaking high level user software. This is COMPLETELY unacceptable in the corporate world. And this is why Vista is, in some senses, a Frankenstein OS–in some senses its completely new, and in some it feels like XP. This is to support the market that matters, to ensure compatibility. It’s not acceptable to have to resolve dependencies or compile software when an update to the kernel is released. It’s not acceptable to upgrade the core OS every 4 months, it’s not acceptable for official support to end just 2-4 years after the release. I see no movement to shift away from any of this. I see no push for forums to support the “point and click” solutions. Everything is still very centric on the CLI “because its more powerful”–this doesn’t encourage users to explore the OS more, and doesn’t encourage developers to build more intuitive interfaces. Nerds building an OS for the nerds, not for the people, not for the corporations.
Quote:There’s no doubt in my mind that you would be able to hire Linux experts to fix your bug for way less than it would cost to get the kind of attention you’re describing from Microsoft.The kind of attention I describe is free, that’s one advantage of being a Microsoft partner.
🙂
February 2, 2008 at 7:54 am #166158VvWolverinevVParticipantInteresting points, David. I’m not necessarily convinced, but I have no strong counter-arguments either. I’m curious how you explain Firefox and Pidgin, though, which are arguably much better than their proprietary counterparts – even on point-and-click operating systems.
February 2, 2008 at 7:22 pm #166139DavidParticipantI personally don’t really like Pidgin due to the GTK+ windowing, but it is a better alternative than AIM. AOL is out to make money off the ads from AIM, and they have made quite a few large changes from the 5x series to 6x. I would see Pidgin as a niche where FOSS works really well, since it’s not a mission-critical application, but more of a tool that does things that the corporations that manage the networks (Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL) would never include–because it just isn’t in their best interest.
I’d really like to see Pidgin with a GUI that doesn’t look like ass, since the library (libpurple?) is quite solid.
Firefox… I use Firefox, but mostly because I need to make the min-fontsize bigger so I can see them, and IE won’t allow this, and a user-CSS still breaks things. I use IE when Firefox breaks on a page, which is pretty often, but partly related to the font-size.
The big problem I have with the Firefox project is its’ direction. Version .8 is nearly the same as 3.0b2. It’s still slow to start up, still takes a ton of memory and doesn’t render pages very fast. I’m not a fan of the XUL interface model. I don’t like that the browser I’m using making use of native windowing objects. There is this huge abstraction layer, all so it will run on Linux/OSX, and I don’t like that. It’s a waste of my processing power–there is very, very little advantage to a fully cross-platform browser. (Especially when 70-80% of the product users are running Windows) It’s unnecessarily slow software.
And all the FOSS people tout cross-platform compatibility…but the mac users are using Safari, or Camino–because Firefox sucks on OSX, it’s slow and unstable. So where did that giant abstraction layer get the project? Well, it installs on every Linux distro…and windows. It doesn’t run well on either.
But it has extensions! Yeah, it has extensions. But do you really need to block ads? I used to use Adblock+, and then (when I changed to 3b2 and it wasn’t supported) I stopped. I see them now and they don’t really bother me. They aren’t pop-ups–so what’s the big deal? Yeah, there is some cool stuff, also a lot of poorly built or designed stuff, and maybe some useful things, but I wouldn’t ever justify a browser based on its’ extendability. Safari and IE and Opera all have this.
But why is Firefox so successful? Because for the past 4 years everyone in IT (myself included) has been telling people that IE isn’t secure, and that Firefox is a “safer” browser. IE7 on Vista is in a sandbox, it’s just as, if not more secure than Firefox. Normal people don’t care about extensions, they don’t care about cross-platform compatibility, they care about a product that works, not something that’s constantly changing or needs updates every few months.
Firefox is not innovating for the masses, and thus will not succeed in the way that FOSS people/geeks want it to. There isn’t any difference between IE and Firefox for someone normal, except that Firefox doesn’t always work.
At the end of the day, Firefox is a great project, because it means I (the tech-savvy consumer) have more choice, and more choice is always a good thing. But there is massive difference between one software application, and an Operating System. I’d never make the argument that FOSS can’t thrive in application space, but it won’t happen for a long time as an OS, some big things need to change, and I just don’t foresee that.
February 10, 2008 at 4:25 am #166145EEDOKMember@David 225977 wrote:
I understand the advantage of “free,” but open source? Unless you are a developer (are you? I’m not sure), it doesn’t really matter. This is a big part of the reason I dislike FOSS people, because they push that corporations are evil without realizing that true innovation usually happens when its backed by a fiscal investment (R&D). FOSS has its place, but I don’t see it for a consumer-grade OS.
Just my two cents. 🙂
(I have used Ubuntu, as well as Fedora, but I just don’t see it as a very good graphical consumer OS)
It doesn’t matter if you’re a developer or not to benefit from open source. I’ll give you 3 situations where it benefits you even though you’re not a developer, where I’ve personally seen improvements due to the source being open, even if I wasn’t the one who modified it:
1. When you have an old piece of hardware(in this case was an old laser printer), that the vendor no longer supports, and no driver exists for the newer commercial operating systems, I look and there’s a cups driver contributed by someone outside the main circle of developers
2. When you want a version of something(like say a more secure version of NetBSD), there’s the freedom of developers that are so inclined to, can make a fork(OpenBSD) that will attend to your needs better. (Another great example of this is the Mint fork of Ubuntu, or even the Ubuntu fork of Debian).
3. Ports of open source programs happen more often than closed sourced ones(I can play Doom on my computer, my DS, an ipod, I’ve even heard it can run on a digital camera).@David 225984 wrote:
So these developers… they are all going to work for free? The entire OS will be based on developers working for free, just “for the greater good of man”?
So companies like Red Hat, Novell, IBM, Sun, Canonical, Google and HP quit paying their employees? If you look into the background of most contributors to open source projects, the majority of them are employed to do so, Linus Torvalds doesn’t even work for free anymore.
February 10, 2008 at 7:20 pm #166140DavidParticipant@EEDOK 226465 wrote:
It doesn’t matter if you’re a developer or not to benefit from open source. I’ll give you 3 situations where it benefits you even though you’re not a developer, where I’ve personally seen improvements due to the source being open, even if I wasn’t the one who modified it:
1. When you have an old piece of hardware(in this case was an old laser printer), that the vendor no longer supports, and no driver exists for the newer commercial operating systems, I look and there’s a cups driver contributed by someone outside the main circle of developers[/quote]
So you switch operating systems to use a printer? What’s the difference between just using that old OS that it did support, then? This is a niche situation anyway, and I never tried to argue that FOSS wasn’t good for niche stuff. Normal people wouldn’t bother, and wouldn’t know how to do that.Quote:2. When you want a version of something(like say a more secure version of NetBSD), there’s the freedom of developers that are so inclined to, can make a fork(OpenBSD) that will attend to your needs better. (Another great example of this is the Mint fork of Ubuntu, or even the Ubuntu fork of Debian).I’m pretty sure anyone using NetBSD is a developer, or close to it. The example you could have used was Firefox->Flock, but both of those are of poor quality.
Quote:3. Ports of open source programs happen more often than closed sourced ones(I can play Doom on my computer, my DS, an ipod, I’ve even heard it can run on a digital camera).You’re right, but who the hell cares about playing Doom on any device other than gamers/geeks/nerds? That isn’t really helping anyone except those that want to screw around with computers. It has been installed on a digital camera, though.
Quote:So companies like Red Hat, Novell, IBM, Sun, Canonical, Google and HP quit paying their employees? If you look into the background of most contributors to open source projects, the majority of them are employed to do so, Linus Torvalds doesn’t even work for free anymore.The only companies in that list that are focused on FOSS are Red Hat and Canonical (though arguably Novell/NetWare). Both of them spend their time/efforts/funds on making their distribution better, how much are they really putting back into the community? Are they the ones updating the core services that end up in every distro? Or are they building a semi-proprietary package that they intend to sell support for?
IBM primarily supports Eclipse, which is in their best interest, since they would need a solid Java IDE for their products anyway. However, AIX isn’t FOSS.
Microsoft and Apple also have open source ventures, as how these companies have closed-source ventures.
February 12, 2008 at 2:11 am #166146EEDOKMember@David 226495 wrote:
So you switch operating systems to use a printer? What’s the difference between just using that old OS that it did support, then? This is a niche situation anyway, and I never tried to argue that FOSS wasn’t good for niche stuff. Normal people wouldn’t bother, and wouldn’t know how to do that.
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Had the PSU on the box not conked out, it’d make a great print server by changing the OS, but unfortunately old hardware has a tendency to fail. I will agree with you on normal people shouldn’t know how to do stuff, they should just plug it in and have it work, in the case of printers I only see it work like that on the unpopular OSes.
@David 226495 wrote:I’m pretty sure anyone using NetBSD is a developer, or close to it. The example you could have used was Firefox->Flock, but both of those are of poor quality.
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I think a better example would be that of the Firefox fork of the Mozilla Suite(Or Seamonkey as it’s now called, which kind of brings in another additional benefit, of the community supporting something after the developers stop, like the case with Blender).
@David 226495 wrote:You’re right, but who the hell cares about playing Doom on any device other than gamers/geeks/nerds? That isn’t really helping anyone except those that want to screw around with computers. It has been installed on a digital camera, though.
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It adds value to the device.
@David 226495 wrote:The only companies in that list that are focused on FOSS are Red Hat and Canonical (though arguably Novell/NetWare). Both of them spend their time/efforts/funds on making their distribution better, how much are they really putting back into the community? Are they the ones updating the core services that end up in every distro? Or are they building a semi-proprietary package that they intend to sell support for?
IBM primarily supports Eclipse, which is in their best interest, since they would need a solid Java IDE for their products anyway. However, AIX isn’t FOSS.
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I doubt you can find an essential Linux service that hasn’t been touched by one of the developers I listed. I’m surprised you’d think that businesses wouldn’t do what’s in their best interest, as I’ve yet to hear of a business that succeeded by doing otherwise.
@David 226495 wrote:Microsoft and Apple also have open source ventures, as how these companies have closed-source ventures.
Their open source ventures are laughable compared to the companies I listed.
February 12, 2008 at 5:19 am #166141DavidParticipant@EEDOK 226521 wrote:
Had the PSU on the box not conked out, it’d make a great print server by changing the OS, but unfortunately old hardware has a tendency to fail. I will agree with you on normal people shouldn’t know how to do stuff, they should just plug it in and have it work, in the case of printers I only see it work like that on the unpopular OSes.
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Waste of energy and time for a normal person, but yeah, it has a place there, which is fine.Quote:It adds value to the device.
No, it doesn’t. A great example of this is the free applications available to jailbroken iPhone’s–they lack stability that can be guaranteed by the manufacturer. It’s a shame, but the quality of the software really is poor. Chalk it up to the lack of a formal SDK if you want, but it still stands as a major problem, in an area where OSS *should* have been able to pick up the slack.
Quote:I doubt you can find an essential Linux service that hasn’t been touched by one of the developers I listed. I’m surprised you’d think that businesses wouldn’t do what’s in their best interest, as I’ve yet to hear of a business that succeeded by doing otherwise.The services and kernel are the only part of Linux that work correctly! Why doesn’t X work properly? It’s been in development since 1984, and it still fails regularly. Why hasn’t someone picked this up and fixed it? Why does everything rely on using the CLI for configuration–even for basic user-oriented tasks? These companies do what is in their best interest, fixing the GUI isn’t in anyone’s best interest, and thus it still sucks.
Quote:Their open source ventures are laughable compared to the companies I listed.The companies you listed have laughable consumer-oriented products in comparison to those that I listed.
March 2, 2008 at 8:45 pm #166159VvWolverinevVParticipantSo… after a month and a half, I’m considering switching over to Vista for my main OS. I have actually come to prefer Linux for all things non-gaming, but most modern games are simply not supported in Linux. And when your game locks up in a 40-man raid where people are depending on you to do your job, 39 people begin to hate Linux.
My HDD started making a loud high-pitched hum that turns into a periodic “rubbing noise” as it spins down. I just ordered a replacement, and when it gets here, I will probably partition the majority of the drive for Vista. This makes me less of a man 🙁
March 3, 2008 at 5:29 am #166142DavidParticipantActually, it makes you less of a fool… Successful people don’t muck around with Linux.
March 3, 2008 at 11:15 pm #166149AwesomeSauceParticipantDavid;227390 wrote:Actually, it makes you less of a fool… Successful people don’t muck around with Linux.Utilizing Linux for hobby/interest’s sake or even for a general-purpose operating system is absolutely fine regardless of how successful you are, as long as you have another more mainstream OS to back you up.
This thread has been drawn out a little too long. I suggest we end the debating. Each man to his own.
July 11, 2008 at 4:02 am #166160VvWolverinevVParticipantI just got a third HDD for Linux. The CD image for Ubuntu 8.04 is downloading now at 1.5MB/s. Giggidy giggidy…
P.S. I will never let this thread die… NEVARRR!
July 11, 2008 at 6:09 am #166143DavidParticipant@VvWolverinevV 231399 wrote:
P.S. I will never let this thread die… NEVARRR!
Your OS still sucks. 😉
YES I AM A CHILD.
July 12, 2008 at 3:07 am #166151AwesomeSauceParticipantDavid;231401 wrote:Your OS still sucks. 😉YES I AM A CHILD.
quit being a hater, OMG OS FANBOY
July 12, 2008 at 6:58 am #166144DavidParticipant@AwesomeSauce 231420 wrote:
quit being a hater, OMG OS FANBOY
Actually, I “hate” on those that support Linux as the end-all to Microsoft Windows. Thousands of people running in different directions produces the current stairs of affairs – hundreds of different (unfinished and incomplete) distributions.
And if I’m really an OS fanboy, how come I like both Microsoft and Apple? (?!?!?)
July 13, 2008 at 2:52 am #166150AwesomeSauceParticipantDavid;231421 wrote:And if I’m really an OS fanboy, how come I like both Microsoft and Apple? (?!?!?)Hmm.. that makes me feel a little bit better.
It’s OK to be a fan.
It’s not OK to be a fanboy.
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