LinuxWorld: Business, Business and More Business

Clarkson University wins a server from IBM. Sun is bringing embedded Linux to its UltraSparc IIe processors. Wired has an overview of LinuxWorld, talking about how it's all business and the joy is gone; and so does Internet.com; and so does Newsforge, which also has a story about LinuxWorld in Paris. The Register has a lengthy interview with Miguel de Icaza, in which he notes "Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET".

Linux turning into Business..no fun anymore...

Hey,

I thought that's what everyone wanted? To be taken serious as opposed to hey look at the nice kids playing with Linux?

What's wrong with this?

Re:Linux turning into Business..no fun anymore...

What's wrong with this is that we're intermingling Open Source and vehemently Closed Source ideologies. This isn't making us a serious contender; this is making us a white flag waving wannabe. Yes, we want intercompatibility, but not because we've adopted our foundation from a company known for changing public standards and republishing them into a monopoly environment with every year's mandatory upgrades.

Microsoft's .Net initiative, not to be confused with the ".net" top level domain, is still bound to a company with a long and thriving history of imposing itself on everything it touches. I don't trust their HTML, let alone their XML, let alone their fill-in-the-blank that's supposed to be "open" and "cross-platform". I'd rather work in an environment where my desktop won't just be 'poof' expensive, closed source, and reporting home to a monopoly every time I open a web page or a file manager. Microsoft's "beautiful security model" has landed them more exploits and holes than a block of swiss cheese with telnet, plus an FBI warning. No thanks. Not for me. Not in a million years. No offense intended, but I don't see what's "right" about this.

Re:Linux turning into Business..no fun anymore...

I thought that's what everyone wanted? To be taken serious as opposed to hey look at the nice kids playing with Linux?

I'm with you. I don't understand why Linux getting into the business world is a bad thing. I have to assume it is because there are still too many people that want Linux to remain the domain of geekdom. Personally, I look forward to Linux picking up steam and getting seriously entrenched in the business world. It will make it easier for me to bring in more tools that work on Linux - "Hey, we already have the system, I just have to download the source and build it." I've been getting so much resistance to putting in Linux based anything, that I can't see Linux getting serious as a bad thing.

RagManX

Re:Linux turning into Business..no fun anymore...

When you have IBM/HP/etc. stepping in and saying "hey, stop coding that MP3 player, we need you to work on this database backend"...well, I just don't see that going over well with most hobbyist Linux developers.

I don't think that's the case at all. Just because big companies are using and contributing to Linux doesn't magically take Linux away from the hobbyist coders. I really doubt that IBM, HP, et al. are going to tell anyone except their employees what to do. There is no reason that people developing for Linux for a hobby, and people developing for Linux as a job, have to be mutually exclusive. I think that's kind of the point--that everyone can contribute.

I agree with previous posters, though, that there's a resistance from Linux backers to allow "big business" to become involved in Linux for fear that their exclusive club won't be so exclusive anymore. What they fail to notice is that some companies (I won't name them due to my personal bias) are making some solid contributions to the Linux community, without co-opting it. Not every company is building a giant space laser to take over the world, you know ;-)

KDE declared the winner due to Gnome scandal.

"I'd like to see Gnome applications written in .NET in version 4.0 - no, version 3.0. But Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET," he told us. "A lot of people just see .NET as a fantastic upgrade for the development platform from Microsoft.

If this was US politics, a candidate has just stated he supports a communistic form of governement and cant wait till he gets it installed.

Interesting concept though, using .NET. But it will be a cold day in hell before Billy and the boys would do anything (even for profit) for an open source project that uses the GNU licence for many of its parts.

Re:I'm sorry, but someone throw some cold water on

Come on spaceman, you use linux, you should be able to write your own.

Actually, I use a tweaked-out Commodore 64 for basic web browsing and email purposes. The rest of my time is spent improving Knuth's algorithms with pencil and paper methods in order to achieve a better run-time.

Re:Reaganomics

The more money is going to trickle down to the little guys, read us, to develope more business solutions.

I found this to be true in my consulting business: When I don't have to charge them $250 a seat for Widnows, $400 for MS Office and $250 for various CAL and NT Servers - they tend to spend more money on my cool database applications. Less money going to Billionaire Bill means more for me.

The only way to win is not to play

If you play
Society's Rules
Then you become
Society's Fools....
Devo, Society's Fools

Porting Gnome to .Net is playing Microsoft's game. The problem is that the first rule of Microsoft's game is "Microsoft wins".

I love the idea of a common runtime environment that supports C++, Java, Perl, Python, etc., runs on all platforms, etc. etc. etc., but I DON'T want that platform in any way controlled by Microsoft (or by Sun, or RedHat, or me!) If any one entity controls the platform, that one entity has entirely too much power - we've simply traded one monopolist for another.

Now, if Miquel wishes to create such an environment under GPL, with no patents held by any organization, then I'm all for it - that way no one organization can embrace and extend the spec. But .Net is neither under GPL nor is it patent unencumbered - the owners can change the rules as they see fit. The fact that the owners are Microsoft is only minimally relevant - Sun, Apple, SGI, RedHat, or IBM could also force the issue.

Beating MS to the punch

I think - I THINK - that Miquel's goal is to out-Microsoft Microsoft, by beating MS to the punch on .NET.

If you can make .NET as widespread as HTTP _before_ MS can get a signifigant foothold, then you have a certain element of control over the Beast From Redmond.

But that's a really dangerous game to be playing, methinks.

Miquel scares me sometimes.

DG

http://streetmodified.org/books.html

Re:More Mono Trolling, Don't You Folks Get Tired?

Answer the following questions, truthfully:

1) If Microsoft changes the spec for C# or CLI, can ECMA deny the changes?
1a) If they can deny the changes, can Microsoft still call C# "C#"?

2) Are C# and the CLI completely free of patents?

If the answer to 1) is false, then at any time MS can change the spec on what C# is, and leave Miquel to play catch-up.
If 1) is true and 1a) is true, again MS controls the table.
If 2) is false (it is, by the way...) then at any time MS can jerk Miquel up short and deny everybody the right to use the code without paying them a royalty (think Unisys and LZW).

I assure you, I am neither a troll nor an idiot - rather I am a person who can see beyond "that's cool" and ask myself what the downsides are.

You make the common mistake

Both your questions are irrelevant. The first set of questions about whether Microsoft can change the C# and CLI spec is irrelevant because already a lot of stuff in .NET is not in the C# or CLI specification. Miguel has stated that creating a compatible implementation of .NET is not his goal [microsoft.com] yet people keep assuming it is. The CLI and C# are good technologies that fix some of the mistakes that Sun made with Java (and made some new ones) but somehow assuming that implementing the development platform now means that Ximian will have to mirror the .NET development environment when MSFT probably has twice or thrice the number of programmers working on .NET fulltime versus Mono's five fulltime and about fifty volunteer employees.

Quite frankly, I don't ever expect Mono to be a port of the .NET framework to Linux. Instead I assume it will be a successful port of C# and the Common Language Infrastructure which is good enough for me.

As for your second set of questions, I somehow doubt that MSFT can hand over their technology to a standards body yet still threaten to sue anyone who implements it. However, IANAL and stranger things have happened.

Ximian is already on life support

Microsoft is playing the favourites game again. First MS gives the rights to MFC to Bristol (where is Bristol today? Notice also that Bristol did not get the rights for COM?), then COM and MFC to Mainsoft (where is Mainsoft today? Notice that Mainsoft does not have the rights for .NET?), and now finally Ximian is the "annointed one".

This is a Microsoft play through and through. And it surprises me that Michel is that STUPID to fall for it. I think the reason is because MS seriously sweet talks into into Michel's ear. And most likely the Ximian team went through various scenarios and thought, "Hey this is a win win situation." But the reality is that it is not a win win situation. Microsoft will string along Michel until they do not need him and Ximian anymore. And then there will be a new annointed one.

What disappoints me is that Michel thinks he can outfox Microsoft. Bigger people have tried and have their problems. Michel is a small fry and when Bristol or Mainsoft or Software AG tried to get more action MS stopped them dead in their tracks. Standards mean squat to Microsoft. How many people does Microsoft have on the standard bodies and how many does Ximian? Get my point folks!!! Sorry for being so harsh, but after having talked and written about Microsoft for a decade (switched to Open Source) I am amazed that people still fall for this tatic.

Vote: Miguel de Icaza for Troll of the Week

Thought: maybe Miguel was just getting bored at LinuxWorld and decided to throw out this little hand granade into the crowd to liven things up a bit? He definitely has my vote for Troll of the Week!

:Peter

That's the great thing about open source!

You can use it for business and have fun with it! It's two! Two operating systems in one!

Seriously, back in the good old days (circa 1980) IBM's VM/370 OS was "available source", and we used to play with and modify it. Some of those modifications even got picked up by IBM. We also used it for business (the customer of those modifications).

There's (obviously) nothing to stop businesses from exploiting the benefits provided by those that play with the OS.

And, as long as there's source, there's nothing to stop people from continuing to play.

IANALWA, but this can't be all bad

I am not a linux world attendee, so I have not experienced the letdown that these people are describing, but it reminds me of people lamenting the loss of the "cool" internet when it was just a bunch of random people putting up sites, before mass commercialization came in and "ruined everything".

I say the same thing to this as I do to that. There are still plenty of cool sites put up by random people. You still have to look for them just like you used to have to in the early days. YOU DON"T HAVE TO DO WHAT THE MASSES DO. YOU DON'T HAVE TO WATCH THEIR TV SHOWS OR LISTEN TO THEIR MUSIC.

Getting depressed about what the masses do with a new concept is silly and counterproductive. All that does is shows how much you are buying into what Madison Avenue is trying to sell. You get irked because some knockoff is getting all the attention. Well, why do you care who all the masses are being told to pay attention to? Why are you letting them tell YOU what to pay attention to?

Britney Spears does not annoy me--that may be because I never see her or hear her music. If I want to hear edgy, innovative, gutsy music I know where to look--off the beaten track. Lamenting the fact that it isn't on the radio is a waste of a lament.

Enterprise stuff may be getting all the industry/press/expo attention right now, but that doesn't stop a single GPL/open source product from getting done, nor should it have any bearing on our passion for the freedom, quality, and community of open source/free software.

Personally, I am thrilled to see people there to make money. And an important part of that is just the "to see people there" part. With this economy we should totally expect that a lot of the fun, innovative, exciting, and cutting edge stuff would be gone. A lot of that was funded by the pre-bubble-burst wild-eyed investment community. The fact that ANYBODY showed up this year is wonderful. And if IBM and HP are not only there, but completely bullish on linux's future, well, I'm ecstatic. It's a huge victory for us that they are there at all, and that they are as enthusiastic as they seem to be.

Linux in the enterprise might not be what excites you about Linux, but it is still an exciting possibility.

These may well be the people that create your next Linux using job--I say we welcome them with hearty handshakes and reciprocal enthusiasm.

New Proposed Icon

I've created a new Slashdot Icon for Gnome that I'd like to propose. It can be seen at the following location:

http://www.geocities.com/heavenstrash/gnomeicon. jp g

A few random points:

I spent a couple of days working in the KDE booth, way in the back with the rest of the non-profits. Personally, I had a great time -- it's the first computer event I've attended (except for 'Geek Pride Day' back when Andover.net was flush with cash) so I'm probably a lot less jaded than most.

I also got to experience the feel of the old days, having brought my TiBook for a demo system. There were quite a few Apples in evidence, and I proabbly spent more time talking PPC Linux than I did KDE. The PowerPC Linux crowd continues to have all the community feeling that Linux as a whole lost when the gold rush started. Curiously, the Apple guys who stopped by the booth seemed completely uninterested as all the Linux guys drooled over the TiBook.

• The Linux on PS2 demo was gorgeous. The Linux on Dreamcast demo (way in the back, with the .orgs) was given by one of the hackers and had hardcore authenticity. And they gave me a boot CD, elimiating the problem of burning the crazy Sega format.
• I think the iPlanet demo was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek satire of cultists, the humor of which was lost on the attendees.
• I spoke with a number of indivduals known for their inflammatory viewpoints. I won't mention names, since I insisted on speaking off the record with them, but they walked up to the booth and launched right into their monomaniacal rants. I'd have thought they'd be better rounded in real life.
• I got to thank David Korn for answering my question in his Slashdot interview. He was really nice, down to earth and an excellent teacher.
• On the whole, the level of social grace was higher than I had expected, but there was still a large population of weirdos. Mind you, it's not like I normally associate with supermodels - compared to scientists it's a weird bunch.
• Oh, and this Mono thing? You know how everyone's always complaining about duplication of effort from KDE and GNOME? It sounds like Miguel wants to take GNOME into a direction that KDE won't be touching, so I suppose that's good. As long as X-chat and grip keep working.

Don't forget Oracle will run/dev on Linux

I saw this in the Business Wire - apparently Oracle will be ditching Unix to run on Linux, and will then do versions for the different OS as well.

But their main servers will all be Linux.

As to those who gripe about "darned business Linux" stuff - what's stopping you from doing your own Open Source projects? We never paid attention to Windows - you don't have to pay attention to Business glomming on to Linux either.

-

I've often been confused by the Us vs. Them

I understand from what I've read over at Wired [wired.com] that many an old attendee of Linuxworld are dissapointed with the new business-sponsored Linuxworld.

I've read comments on it 'not being fun' any more. I've also seen comments here stating that the Opensource-ness of Linux is being attacked by the close-sourced monsters. I was wondering if that comment was referring to just the spastic comment aout including .NET into GNOME or the fact that IBM, HP, Compaq and other major hardware vendors are embracing Linux?

I think IBM doesn't sit up all day thinking of somehow 'stealing' linux for themselves. They see it as a viable, important alternative to the closed and controlled Microsoft, and probably even Intel regime. They see the gartner charts that show with current trends that Intel servers running MS OSes are going to account for 85% of the money spent on IT infrastructure in the server market.

The reason I think they're even against Intel is that all of their big-ticket-lots-o-press-with-linux in it adds are about the zSeries or the iSeries products. There is hardly a mention about Linux running on Intel based systems (xSeries).

I think IBM sees Linux as a way to sell more of their 'big iron' high margin systems and to not have to continue to fight the idiots at Dell who try to commodotize the server market when they see the server market as more than just a commodity...

Just My $0.02. I may be wrong.

Miguel can't be serious

Miguel? Do you have any idea of what type of fire you are playing with? Seriously, what you plan on doing is taking a large chunk of gnome users and kindly giving them to Microsoft in their battle to control EVERYTHING there is to control. Listen, if this came of it's own because of need then I would have no problem with it. Especially if it came from the free software movement or other companies/monopolists who weren't convicted of abusing said monopoly. The problem I DO have is that simply this may make things easier in short term but in long term horrible for the industry. The infrastructure of what we call the internet today (application wise) is built with many different, compilers, archs and setups; it works and it might not be efficient but it allows for choice. What .NET plans to do is basically eliminate choice in the long run.

Can't you see that Microsoft isn't doing this to be nice, they aren't even doing this for web services. They are doing this to own the whole goddamn thing. The internet, what developers develop in, how things operate.. EVERYTHING!! And you are gonna sit there and honestly interview with someone on some bullshit about how this is good for you/us/me/developers because it makes things easier and that Gnome 4.0 will support this. This is Microsoft getting out of the OS business and into a much larger market. If they become the standard (standard meaning widely used) this will set off World War 3.. Everyone trying to break ties with Microsoft will again have no choice but to follow a standard they created and will no doubt make proprietary extensions too breaking said standard submitted to the ECMA when their standard+extensions becomes standard (widely used) you are fucking OWNED.

I hope this doesn't happen because if it does, you'll be known as the fucking typhoid mary in the free software movement.

"MS = .NET taking over the world, using dumbasses and tiny amounts of cash in retrospect as pawns and they are too blind to see me coming.. man I'm good"

Difference between JVM and .NET

To those giving MS praise for coming up with .NET (including Miguel): Face it, there isn't a significant difference between CLR-type functionality and the JVM. Getting the JVM was a much bigger step than going from JVM -> CLR. In MS's defense, though, since it's an incremental and obivous step, WHOEVER had made that step would be embracing and extending the innovation of the JVM work at Sun (and the efforts to bring other languages to the JVM).

I'll leave the discussion of Java (the language) vs C# out of this.

The real difference is that with Java/JVM, when MS deviated from the spec (de facto, governed by Sun) Sun was able to get them to stop. Sun put the smack down on MS for trying to make MS-specific changes to MS's implementation of Java. This would have resulted in people developing for MS-Java thinking they were developing for Java, and then having issues when trying to get their code to "run anywhere" besides MS OSs.

With CLR/.NET there's no one to sue Microsoft when they go and take what is touted as being an open spec and change their implementation of it. That will lead to .NET software that people will think can run on any .NET platform that actually only runs on MS's .NET. Sure, it's an ECMA standard, but that doesn't keep MS from introducting their own "extensions" to it which lock users into MS.NET while still giving the illusion of not being MS-specific.

Or am I wrong? Is there any legal way to punish MS for the type of mischief they tried with Java/JVM and that I predict they will try with CLR/.NET?

Elitist whiners.

It seems some people yearn for the days when they where the only ones using linux. They are as bad as M$ trying to put themselves on a pedestal by sabotaging other peoples attempt to step out of ignorance.

Business is good. A "mixing of open source and close source ideologies" ends up making a very competitive and successfull candidate. It's not that one or the other is necessarily bad, but that extremes of either become self defeating. Sure RedHat has certain proprietary secrets which they use to make a profit. So what. They also make linux very accessable and allow more people to discover the 'joy' of linux. These heady idealist who scream down with all things proprietary are nothing more than neo-hippy-nihilist-posers who need to think before they parrot. Part of what makes linux and open source such an inspiring concept is that it makes information accessable to the people, and thusly empowers them to some extent. Successfull business' that push open source solutions manage to put the empowering project in more hands, and helps to fuel the ongoing development and exploration in the community. I think it's very symbiotic. The real bitch I think these people have is that money no longer falls out of the trees. Such is the state of the economy. Many of us are finding we have to work for a living. For some of us, this is no revelation. Some of us even find joy in our work.

Pogojesus

Why is it so easy to hate members of the "Linux community"? Is it because they are the whiniest bunch of computer users ever? Is it because they kick and scream like the children they are when they don't get their way? Is it because they are just fucking stupid? I don't really know which one to pick. Two years ago Linux geeks were complaining about not getting corporate support. Now they are complaining about actually having corporate support. Now when somebody suggests they have a method to interact with the rest of the world they kick and scream because the great satan was the one who came up with the buzz words. What the fuck?

Miguel de Icaza wanting to add real functionality to Linux is not a damning offence. Half the fucking posts on this thread seem to think Miguel is off his rocker or Bill Gates' bitch or something. That is just fucking retarded. He's a damn good programmer who knows Linux is way behind the times when it comes to interacting with the real business world. Stateful RPC methods need to hit the road. They don't fit into topologies where you have multiple servers behind a single address that are all processing requests for the sake up upping your throughput. Stuff like the LVSP isn't going to work with FTP or rsh connections though works well with HTTP. XML based RPC (or any stateless RPC method) are much more efficient in modern networks because I don't need to fuck with my external network configuration to add capacity. SOAP and the whole .NET system is based around stateless XML based RPC methods. This is a GOOD THING for interoperability. As long as you conform to the SOAP your program can talk with another program not matter what sort of machine it is running on or where it is running. A common runtime for languages isn't so bad either. You can write a program on any architecture and run it on any other architecture that has a compliant runtime environment and bytecode translator. Don't use the CLR if you wahnt to preserve certain functionality for a given language. It would be cool though to be able to write apps for GNOME that would run on any OS and architecture that has the CLR compliant GNOME libraries. No recompiling required. A house that does all C/C++ development doesn't need to learn Java in order to write a program they can sell to just about anybody running just about any computer. Just because the idea proposed by microsoft doesn't make it evil. In fact I'd say Miguel is doing the GNU thing by writing a free implimentation of non-free software. This is what the whole GNU crap is about. Slashdotters seem too fucking stupid to understand this point.