Ask Bruce Perens About Linux and Open Source

A lot is going on these days, ranging from the endlessly amusing SCO soap opera to plenty of mostly positive news about Linux and Open Source adoption by both corporate and government users, not to mention an increasing number of commercial applications being ported to Linux. And, of course, LinuxWorld is right around the corner. Bruce Perens is certainly as appropriate a person as any to help us get a handle on the current (and possibly future) state of Linux and Open Source. We'll send him 10 of the highest moderated questions, and post his answers as soon as he gets them back to us. As usual, one question per post, please, and don't bother asking questions that can easily be answered with a couple of minutes' worth of online research.

Re:Sustainablity of open source

[RevMike]

Uber-Geek ESR already wrote an excellent tract on this subject - The Magic Cauldron [catb.org].

One of the key points is that very few developers are involved in developing "commercial" software. The vast majority (maybe 95% or more) do implementation and custom development for in-house projects.

If OSS were to eliminate "commercial software" completely, these jobs would still need to be filled, and since less budget would be spent on licensing, more money would be available in corporate budgets to fund custom development.

Re:Do you understand dselect?

[Anonymous Coward]

dselect Documentation for Beginners [debian.org]

Re:Do you understand dselect?

[SquadBoy]

apt-get install aptitude

Much better front end also what I do a lot is search the package archive on the web site and use apt. dselect sucks and just about everybody thinks so that is why there are better tools out there now.

Re:Cross-licensing

[Cyno]

I think GNU and the FSF threaten the current state of the patent system and the concept of cross-licensing in general. Capitalists are so inefficient. OSS just shows the masses an alternative. Its like taking out the middle man, only in this case, the middle man is lawyers, store owners, merchants, CEOs, Marketting departments, etc. Just about everyone besides the developers themselves.

So naturally everyone loves/hates it.

Re:Open Source and Apple

[JoeBuck]

Speaking as a very small part of the GCC [gnu.org] team, I am very happy with a lot of the work Apple is now contributing: they have a sizable compiler team now and are contributing all that work back. Some of Apple's team are long-time gcc hackers, others are well-known C++ gurus, who can work almost full time on free software thanks to Apple picking up their paycheck.

In particular, gcc 3.4 will have precompiled headers (this work was contributed by Apple).

Re:Linux replacing Windows on the desktop

[MrResistor]

Are you on crack?

Any distro can be run headless. I've done it several times. The only problem is if your BIOS halts boot on a keyboard error, but that's easily fixed. I typically use SuSE with a non-graphical install.

Mod parent down

[sleepingsquirrel]

The parent's question was copied verbatim from the original Perens interview [slashdot.org]. It was question #5 and submitted by a Mr. John L Grantham.