Video Jon 'maddog' Hall On the Future of Free Software (Video) 47
Timothy Lord:Jon, you talked today here at the Northwest LinuxFest in part about the future of free software.One thing you mentioned and I want to ask you to expand on:What is the connection between the drop in price of hardware and free software?
Jon “maddog” Hall:Well when hardware used to cost tens of thousands of dollars, a lot of times the vendor would blend the software directly into the hardware cost, and you didn’t see the price of the software.As the price of the hardware continues to drop, the price of the software can tend to become overwhelming as to what the price of the total system is.And so people start looking around and saying, “Oh well, maybe I can get”—they start seeing this cost.It is the same type of thing with people who get caught with what they call a Microsoft tax of buying a Notebook with the $34 or $35 to $70 type Microsoft charges for an operating system.When the Notebooks were thousands of dollars, that price was a little hidden.But now as they drop down to $400 or less, people become more aware of it.So this is one of the issues.The second issue is when people start having the ability to create embedded systems, where they are not just buying one operatinglicense but they are buying the license thousands of times, all of a sudden, we were only buying one or two licenses, it is one thing, but when you are buying thousands of licenses a $35 license may be $35,000.
Tim:In connecting the worlds of open and closed software, one of the things that you mentioned is that you think that even closed source projects would be able to hire open source people. Can you talk about that?What do you mean by that?
Jon:Well, let’s say I am developing a project of some type and I intend selling it as closed source.If I hire a closed source programmer, somebody who has only worked in the closed source world, they really may not have looked out to see what types of software is available.They may not understand free software licenses, the fact that different licenses have different requirements.They may not have worked in a distributed, collaborative environment before.But if you hire somebody who has been a free software developer, who has paid attention to all of those things, they can oftentimes say, “Well, instead of you having to buy this database to make the project, you could use this open source database and not to have to pay the database company a lot of money to buy the database for this solution.” And there’s really no reason not to use an open source developer for a closed source project as long as that person realizes that actual project is going to be closed source and their understanding of that, when they go into the project.So I see the downside of hiring an open source programmer and as I said, everything else being equal, the difference between hiring an open source programmer and a closed source programmer to me makes a lot of sense to hire the open source.
Tim:One thing I have been picking for a lot of years is that Microsoft could become the world’s biggest open source vendor.It is just not their model right now.
Jon:Well, I have given a lot of thought to this.Clearly, of course, I don’t work in Microsoft so I don’t know what their thinking is but they have a business model based upon a product.And they have a channel of people who buy their products and sell their products to customers.Their channel makes money off of that.And if Microsoft were to start giving away their products for free, that channel would not be able to make as much money.So that channel would be very upset with Microsoft, just like the channel was upset with Microsoft when Microsoft started selling the Microsoft Office functionality in the cloud.It kind of cut the channel out from that—the channel was upset.The same type of thing happened with SCO UNIX when SCO was a company that was selling Linux Box, they had a whole bunch of OEMs and channels and VARs and things like that, that made money selling the product.And when Caldera bought SCO they said, “Oh here’s Linux, and Linux is for free” and basically cut out this.And Caldera thought they were getting this huge channel group of VARs and OEMs and when they actually started_____ 5:02 the channel disappeared.
Tim:They walked into that.
Jon:Yes, they did.
Tim:In the world of closed versus open too, when it comes to open source software, one thing you mentioned is that, people complain sometimes that there are a lot of stagnant projects.You don’t seem concerned about that. Can you say why that is?
Jon:Well, I don’t seem concerned about it, because my observation has been that from time to time people pick these projects up, they start over again,_____ 5:32 that sometimes the project is stagnant because there has been another project that can port off of it and those people are live, and doing things with it.There are other alternatives of open source out there, with_____ 5:48 to do.So I see this as no different than companies selling closed source projects and product and that company goes out of business.
Tim:It happens all the time.
Jon:It happens all the time.
Tim:Or the project dies. Closed or not.
Jon:But the difference between those is that when that company goes out of business, or that project dies, that closed source, you can’t get the source code to pick them up later on and continue with it.You can’t close the project, it just dies. I saw so many projects back in Digital that were good projects but never made it to the light of the day, because the companies didn’t seem they could make enough profit off of it.Not that they couldn’t make a profit, they couldn’t make enough profit off of it. When IBM sold the desktop and notebook division to Lenovo, it was profitable.But it was profitable in a 2 to 3 percent profit level. That is not enough profit to sustain a company like IBM.So they sold that off to Lenovo.Lenovo had a much better method, much less overhead and IBM took the profit from that and they bought Price Waterhouse Cooper.They doubled the size of the support organization literally overnight.Because the support organization including solutions found a place that they could get enough profit to be able to sustain IBM.And IBM took a lot of the people from their laptop and desktop division with good producers, good people and moved them into the solutions category.So it is the same thing.You have to juggle with it around.It is not magic.It is not magic.
Tim:No magic or not.
Jon:No magic.
Tim:Well, Jon, thanks very much for your time.
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Cheaper Hardware / Expensive software argument is odd. When I got to these linuxfests, Mac-book Pros are by far the most common. Kind of hypocritical there. Apple does not represent anything free and open.
Nothing changes, I went to one in the late '90s and it was VAIOs all over the place.
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>Apple does not represent anything free and open.
Any more. My apple ][ comes with the schematics and ROM listing.
Re:Ironic (Score:4, Informative)
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Not that I'm defending Apple's inflexibility, but why would fixed entry points limit the size of the subroutines? Let each entry point have a single instruction "JMP start_of_actual_subroutine". The previous instruction can then be "JMP current_instruction_address + 2" in order to skip over the redirection, and all the surrounding ROM can be used however you see fit.
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Not that I'm defending Apple's inflexibility, but why would fixed entry points limit the size of the subroutines? Let each entry point have a single instruction "JMP start_of_actual_subroutine". The previous instruction can then be "JMP current_instruction_address + 2" in order to skip over the redirection, and all the surrounding ROM can be used however you see fit.
That was done. I think the Beagle Bros did exactly that with their improved images.
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Quite so on timing, though with far more primitive caching (if any), jump instructions were not necessarily significantly more expensive than any other. Then again it's been a long time since I programmed a 6808, I can't say that I remember the instruction timings, aside from the usual "multiplication sucks, and division is a yawning oubliette". Cassettes may not be the best example though - I remember my mother jerry-rigging a standard cassette drive to act as a C64 tape drive, and that without understandi
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Do you enjoy building strawmen to attack?
Apple were very open with their products back then. They didn't conform to any notion of free software though. The claim was they represent nothing free and open. I pointed out that they used to be open. I made no claims about the freedom of their software.
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Apple does not represent anything free and open.
Hush, you fool! If an Apple Genius overhears you saying that, or anything else that questions Father Steve, you'll get excommunicated for life! FOR LIFE!!
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Apple does not represent anything free and open.
Hush, you fool! If an Apple Genius overhears you saying that, or anything else that questions Father Steve, you'll get excommunicated for life! FOR LIFE!!
I dont know it think Steve Wozniak would agree with the sentiment however L Ron Hubbar^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Steve Jobs would not.
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Yes, terrible audio. I cleaned it up as well as I could. There was some sort of broad-band static in those rooms. Not a single freq like a 60 Hz hum. Grr....
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Ask Tim Lord. He shot it. And where does he send it? To anonymous@coward.ly?
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MacBooks are definitely hipster accessories, as proven by their idiotic flat-key keyboards. Any serious user would not have such a keyboard on their laptop.
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MacBooks: I have an old MacBook Pro I keep around for Mac software testing. I typically carry an Acer sub-notebook, dual-booting Linux and Windows, when I leave my home office. BUT now I'm getting accustomed to carrying a 7" Asus MemoPad tablet and this nice Bluetooth keyboard [androidguys.com]. I also have iRig directional and hand-held mics, and a clamp-on wide angle lens, so my tablet is a total "reporting machine." At some point I want to get a 9" or 10" tablet with a 12MP (or so) camera. Then I'll *really* be in busines
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Well the MacBooks have the style, so you look good. However Apple hardware often means you get a good Laptop without much extra research.
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What extra research? The only other real alternative to consider is an X-series Thinkpad. A Macbook with an old school Thinkpad keyboard would be pretty much ideal, but since that's not an option, it's just a matter of what you prefer more. For me, the Macbook touchpad and general lack of issues with OS X seals it. The nipple mouse is nice, but for extended use it gets really annoying, and the multitouch gestures are really convenient.
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Well there are other laptops out there. But if you want good brands you either have to go with a Macbook or Thinkpad.
The think pads design is Classic, You can have one for years and it will still look like the new models for the most part.
However if you get a Macbook, every generation will look newer and your old model will show.
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Yeah, Thinkpads are still black rectangular prisms with hinged screens. Apart from that, they've changed a lot design- and aesthetics-wise, and almost exclusively for the worse, while keeping their drawbacks (e.g. dim unevenly-lit screens).
I just checked: you can't even get a Thinkpad with the original keyboard anymore.
I rescind my earlier comment. Thinkpad is dead; thanks, Lenovo. If you want a decently-designed laptop, there is unfortunately no alternative to the MacBook Pro. I wish that someone would com
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While the original keyboard is gone, the new think pads keyboard is just as good. I have swapped from one to the other without noticing. Unless you actually type on the key bevel?
I put my hand on the home row and then look at the screen, I don't even realize that I am typing on a Chiclets keyboard.
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Actually, Jon likes being outdoors (as do I). He just doesn't get stupid about it to the point where he turns red.
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Scary how long I've been working on Slashdot, too. 1999 - 2008, then laid off with a nice buyout. Diabetes got bad, had some heart attacks, did some local (Bradenton, FL) reporting and editing, got on disability -- and here I am, working on Slashdot p/t.
Yeah, I remember that night. One of the good ones. Sometimes I miss the Balto/DC area. Then you guys had snow and my neuropathy (diabetes complication; cause mucho foot pain, sensitivity to cold) kicked up in sympathy and I was glad we moved to FL. Ah well
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Good luck finding good hardware not bundled with a proprietary OS though, and once you're committing to replacing the OS on whatever laptop you buy, then it becomes a strictly a hardware question: features, performance, quality, and Linux support, and Macbooks fair pretty well by those metrics. These days they mostly don't even carry the huge price premium over a comparable-quality Windows laptop. I tend toward the $300 specials myself, but if money were no object I'd absolutely spring for the better scre
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Dedicated hardware sure. But laptops? Especially *good* laptops of a build quality comparable to Macbooks? Please do share your findings, I'm going to need to replace this ASUS eventually...
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Dedicated hardware sure. But laptops? Especially *good* laptops of a build quality comparable to Macbooks? Please do share your findings, I'm going to need to replace this ASUS eventually...
System 76 has some good options -- I bought one a year back and haven't regretted it. $500 cheaper than a MacBook with similar specs.
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Interesting, I'll have to keep them in mind.
Specs are certainly nice, but the devil is in the details - for example Macbook screens tend to be among the very best for color calibration and outdoor viewing (at least they were 5+ years ago, I haven't used one recently), their speakers tend to be particularly good (for tinny little laptop speakers) and the build quality is typically top-notch. How does your laptop compare? The one thing I noticed that they don't match even in specs is screen resolution - eve
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Thanks for the extra info, they do sound appealing.
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Interesting... I agree with the above poster who laments the fact that at every FOSS/Libre conference, there are an abundance of those closed source HW/SW capitalist MacBooks floating around. Not exactly a good thing.
What's wrong with that? You do realize you can support the FOSS/Libre community without being religiously devoted to the associated ideology don't you? What would they really be using instead?
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Wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even harder.
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> Wait,
Please stop using "wait" that way. It's a bit limp.
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Supposedly that's going to change soon. All the people who actually do the hands-on work on Slashdot would like to watch the videos in Linux and on our phones and tablets, too. I believe the higher-ups are finally coming around to our (your) point of view.
You know who maddog is? (Score:1)
No.
"You know who maddog is, right? He's one of our favorite speakers on what we might call the Linux/FOSS circuit. So you know, despite the Noel Coward song that says, "Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun," Jon prefers shade much of the time when he's in a tropical climate, based on personal observations at Linux conferences in Florida and Hawaii. But sun or shade, maddog is an eloquent and interesting speaker."
That didn't help.