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Torvalds: Business World Boosts Linux 90

Posted by Roblimo from the stuff-to-read dept.
XGN writes "News.com has an article posted, quoting some of Linus Torvalds' keynote speech and getting into detail how business is boosting Linux. "Technologists often forget the general user," Torvalds said. "Technology is only as good as the user experience. That is something that technology groups very often forget." Linux companies aren't just parasites because they make sure much of the "boring" bug-fixing and other maintenance gets done. "
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Torvalds: Business World Boosts Linux More

Torvalds: Business World Boosts Linux

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  • Right. Linus said that he would release the pre-releases when he got back.

    You may remember that before 2.2.0 came out, there were 'pre-2.2.0' kernels. The same thing will happen with 2.4
    --
    Ski-U-Mah!
    Stop the MPAA [opendvd.org]
  • --- You silly twisted boy, you. Have a gorilla.

    Oh! Thanks. Oww! Oww! Ooh! Oww! Hey! These gorillas are strong. Here! Have one of my monkeys -- they're milder.

  • Ext2 has no 2GB file size limit. It was a limitation of the VFS layer and the user-land API that bigger files could not be used on 32-bit systems. However this is no longer the case with 2.3.x or future 2.4.
  • > The more you layer GUI on top of the system, the
    > more you clutter its ability to process
    > efficiently

    Not true, if you layer it and have well defined access points between the GUI, application and OS layers. Absolutely true if you lump everything into a single space, like certain other operating systems produced by a company in Redmond.

    > Properly designed software should have a generic
    > interface that provides hooks for both scripting
    > (including command line parameters) and GUIs

    Already exists, and has done for a long, long time. What you are talking about is the basic Model/View/Controller paradigm of Smalltalk.



  • You said:

    "The more you layer GUI on top of the system, the more you clutter its ability to process efficiently and security is more easily compromised. Windows has and continues to
    prove that fact over and over again."

    I am not disagreeing with you, but I do need to point out that for most applications that non-geeks use, GUI is a MUST these days.

    No longer can we expect the non-geeks of the world succumb to our level of command-line-interfacing thingy.

    We do have to understand that most of the non-geeks just can't function properly if they are faced with command line prompts, and we do need to acknowledge the facts that for _SOME_ of the applix we geeks use, command-line interface sometimes is NOT enough.

    Whether or not we like GUI, it is here to stay. For a program that does not survive solely on command-line interface, some type of GUI _is_ necessary. Even the good old WORDSTAR (remember that?) has its own GUI, you can click on something and have one or two thing pulled down, and you can click on those things to get what you want. Of course, you can use the shortcuts like the ctrl-something thingy, but there are times our brain just couldn't handle ctrl-this or ctrl-that anymore and we went through the click-this-pull-down-that-click-that-other-thing routine instead.

    And there is one more thing I like you to consider . . .

    About GUI... which one do you think is better?

    A. A unify GUI where all applixes share similar GUI and the similar functions.

    B. Each applix comes with its own unique way of GUI, and user have to re-learn each and every single applix GUI in order to work from word-processing to spreadsheet to plotting graph to simulation to whatever.

    If there _is_ a need for GUI anyway, why not have a simplified but powerful GUI which can be shared by all the applix?



  • "Sometimes getting a good old-fashioned butt kicking is good for the soul."

    The above quote should be repeated by many a Linux-advocates. We should remember that we are not YET the best, and good old-fashioned butt kicking is what many of us truly need right now.



  • Stock prices may be gravitationally-immuned, but they are not immune to the up-down cycles.

    The RH, VA and Andover examples that you have picked are examples of stock prices that have gone TOO HIGH, TOO FAST.

    Let's say if RH discovers a VERT CHEAP way to produce REAL DIAMOND, its stock price will shot up, but after a while, cool-headed thinking takes over, and people will realize that there are only so much DEMANDS for diamonds (including industrial uses) and after a while RH's stock prices will come down, real-diamond or not.

  • I like the fact that Linus made his stand on the issue on the DeCSS case. Way to be outspoken, Linus, although we all knew where you stood.

    <OffTopic> What's most interesting is that, in the DVD case, the prosecution submitted the *source code* as evidence, thus making it publicly accessible, above and beyond what has already been done with respect to the DeCSS source distribution. They've shot themselves in their own foot. Even if they win, the source will always be available, since it's now cataloged as evidence.</OffTopic>
  • If you understand the technical issues behind USB and "FireWire", you would know that they solve two different problems.
  • Umm, Firewire and USB are not competing
    standards. Firewire is high bandwidth and
    USB is low bandwidth.


    They no more try to tackle the same problem
    than say, IDE and parallel ports. Which is
    to say that there is a little overlap at the
    high-end USB/low end Firewire bandwidths, but
    you wouldn't put your primary hard drive on
    your parallel port. Nor would you put it on
    your USB hub.

  • Test of the moderation system - will it go to -2 ?
  • It did. It's a bug I would think.
  • I meant the bug is how I did it...
  • <I>I wonder what the fate of transmeta would have been without Torvalds. would anyone even had given them a second look without such a powerful name? They certainly appear to have a great product, but would we even be hearing about them if it weren't for him?</I>

    Sure. Anybody who make/sell a x86 compatible chip get some press. Here, in pc magazines, in places like Tom's hardware, and so on. Cyrix didn't have Linus, we heard about them too. Transmeta even have a x86 compatible chip using unusually little power, and with some cool technology too. I am sure slashdot would cover the release even without Linus.
  • "Technologists often forget the general user," Torvalds said. "Technology is only as good as the user experience. That is something that technology groups very often forget."

    Wow! This guy is pretty smart. Any chance I can woo him to come work for the company I work for? ;-)

    He's not doing anything really important now, right? :-)
  • Ack! Phttph! Barf!
  • Maybe there haven't been articles about it because a popular IPO is expected to drop in price after the initial interest. And you can't seriously measure stock "performance" in less than a year. Go back to the articles which appeared when the stocks were coming out and read them again and you'll see all that was mentioned.
  • Quote from Linus' reply to Bruce Perens' question on the DVD issue, this morning: "I do watch DVDs at home, in Linux, but I cannot release the binaries."
  • Even if the intentions are honest, it is extremely difficult to set up a fair benchmark. Mindcraft, with the 4 cpu, 4 network card setup and a carefully selected scsi was intentionally unfair from the beginning. It would be interesting to see the results with 5 cpus and 3 network cards.

    Slightly off topic, regarding the "Crack this Server" contest (by ZDnet?), after the publication and public reception of the Linux hack (which wasn't really an OS problem anyway), if I _did_ have a crack of the MS box, I would shut my mouth, stifle it, and keep it closed. Something like "a hard act to follow." After the Linux crack, beautifully explained, an MS crack would come off as lame enough to be worse than useless.
    What happens with all this is that slowly Linux gains the type of credibility that takes years to acquire.
  • It's not done with the license, but I imagine the effects would be much worse. Red Hat is positioned between the suits and the hackers, and to survive must have the trust and cooperation of both, ie reputation. Trying to kill the goose (ok, penguin) that lays the golden eggs is bad strategy. In this case it wouldn't be the goose, (er, penguin) that dies.

    To see that Red Hat can have an extreme advantage, imagine an IS manager (closet technophobe, promoted from keypuch supervisor, doesn't grok the new-fangled stuff) with a problem, and he goes to Ask Slashdot, and the kindest words are RTFM. The threat may not be that severe, but the _perceived_ threat can be enough to cause panic. A phone number with a comforting voice on the other end is essentially a life-or-death matter.

    What we are looking at is the start of some kind of symbiosis (read that as mutual parasitism) between the suits and the hackers. For an ecological analog, consider the warfare between grasslands and forests. Grass raises gnus (couldn't resist) to trample and destroy tree seedlings, and probably does something to help out lions which keep the gnu population in shape.

    We live in interesting times.
  • Considering the moderated post, looks more like a feature. (browsing at -6 threshold).
  • Here [crn.com] is another article. Also has a quote from Ransom Love of Caldera that basically dodges the DVD question. He didn't really say what he thought about the current cases. What we need now is someone like Bob Young, Larry Augustine and maybe even someone from IBM's linux division to publicly condemn the actions of the DVD-CCA and MPAA. IBM would be unlikely though since they have interests other than Linux like DVD on PC's with WINDOWS installed.
  • NT only journals Meta-Data though ! Something MS forgots to tell people.

    Can you tell me more about this? I dont want to buy an out of date print about a microsoft product to find out. what is meta data? url?

    thanks


    john
  • I suppose this will help the Linux on IMac cause.

    Yeah, maybe I can configure my son's iMac to dual-boot so he can play my Linux games ...

    Has anyone been using the FireWire with Linux - I'd like to hear about how robustly this was implemented?

  • I kinda disagree. When one company is developing a system it's inherently limited to several goals - many, if it's well managed. But the people who write device drivers now or utilities probably don't do it for the attention and won't change what they do because of a change of linux focus. People write to solve problems, it won't change much.
  • Glad Linus cleared that up for us.

    They aren't just parasites... they are parasites and more?

    Neato
  • Shut up, Eccles!
  • Apparently USB 2 is going to be faster than Firewire

    Nope, USB 2 is going to be faster than USB 1,
    but still slower than Firewire 1. (Faster implementations of Firewire are expected to be around before USB 2 is finalized.)
  • How the hel does layering more GUI effect sercurity and efficiency? Take properly desgned example.
    The BeOS tracker can respond to serveral messages that tell it to adjust various parameters. Take for example the count lists message. It returns the number of files in a listing. One way to invoke it would be a command line app like so...
    trackerParams countlistings
    where trackerParams would be a program that sends a message to tracker and returns the listing.
    Or you could have a GUI app that sends the same message. If you design is implmented correctly, so security stuff should be in the interface. Tracker gets teh same message wether it is recieved from the command line or from the GUI. The same should be true of other things. You have a web server? It should respond to a specific set of calls and have security built in. It shouldn't know or care wether those calls came from the GUI or from a command line app. In a good design, a GUI shouldn't contain any security code, just GUI code. And second, how does Windows prove GUIs make the system inefficient and insecure? Security with windows is not a issue, its a consumer OS. (NT security is not due to the GUI, but flaws in the security model.) And the GUI is not to blame for the bad efficiency of windows. Hell, the GUI isn't even a part of the OS. Its in explorer.exe which is essentially the window manager. The flaws in windows come not because of the GUI but because of bad programming. Case in point. BeOS is a lot more efficient than Linux, but it is heavily GUI oriented. The reason is that GUI or no GUI has not effect on the core. If the core is secure and efficient, the program will be secure and efficient regardless of wether it is GUI or command line.
  • This is an enlightenment (i assume that's what you're using) issue. Although I love its flexibility, it does come with some odd defaults (such as weird keyboard focus)...I recommend mucking around with the E settings to resolve this tho!
  • Emmanuel Goldstein??

    Wasn't he the head of the underground rebellion in '1984', by George Orwell?

    Just thought that if it's a pseudonym, it's great, but if it's the guy's actual name, it's a wonderful coincidence.

    DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
    DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
    DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
  • If I remember correctly, firewire support was added to 2.3 a few patches back. Hasn't been in for long, tho...
    ---
  • I wonder what the fate of transmeta would have been without Torvalds. would anyone even had given them a second look without such a powerful name? They certainly appear to have a great product, but would we even be hearing about them if it weren't for him?
  • The fundamental problem is poor software design. Properly designed software should have a generic interface that provides...

    I agree completely; however, the operative word in your very well-written reply is should. It has been my experience that alot of the software does not provide the flexibility that it should. For example, I've had to administer an encrypted MTA server. You can access the main admin console via command line or GUI. In training, I chose command line and the other guy there chose GUI. I was able to connect directly to the other guy's MTA and bring it down through command line. He could connect to me directly but couldn't figure out how I was able to bring his MTA down. Most people who use this MTA server prefer the GUI and that distresses me.

    I realize this isn't so much related to Linux and that I'm getting off-topic and for that I apologize. I'm just frustrated by the paranoia about command-line interface. I realize GUI shouldn't be a liability but sometimes software isn't designed as it should be. While the core of the operating system may stay secure, having the software continually crash because of a poor GUI is not what I consider efficient use of the core's processes.

    I'm constantly struggling to keep up on everything and to learn more than the meager amount that I do know. I have a manager who is continually authorizing software purchases because the GUI made it all look so easy to use, only for me to find that the GUI causes more problems than it's worth. When I switch to a better software program whose source code I can poke at and access via command-line, I have to be on the defensive even though I'm not trying to cause problems, just use the best solution. It's frustrating.

    Sorry for the rant.

    - tokengeekgrrl

  • I am not disagreeing with you, but I do need to point out that for most applications that non-geeks use, GUI is a MUST these days.

    Oh, of course. I know that. There are some applications that I like using the GUI and others where I find command-line is much, much easier. Now, I use command-line first and then go to the GUI second so when something in the GUI doesn't work, I know where to look for it via command-line. Mind you, my command-line skills are only okay, though, I am being sent to UNIX sys admin school next month, (yeeaah!), and will be undergoing training by the current sys admin so that should improve them immensely. Still, I'll take command-line sql*plus over any database developer tools any day.

    In regards to GUI, I think option A would be ideal thus, it will never come into existence. ;)

    - tokengeekgrrl

  • I recommend mucking around with the E settings to resolve this tho!


    I have! No mention of it in the e-conf program or the Gnome Control Panel or in the Gnome Help Browser yokes (which goes into great detail about how to configure Enlightenment.
    I hope I don't have to patch and recompile it to get this

  • He's right.
    Being a programmer myself I have to admit to being more interested in writing beaufiful code than whether it works the way the user expects.
    The most productive interfaces (be it GUI/commandline) generally tend to be the hardest to pick up. I found this with GNOME. I've only started using it v.recently and still haven't figured out how to click on the taskbar ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Panel and get the window to come to the front (not just become active). The developers of any project shouldn't just be saying "that's the way I like it"
  • Maybe he's learning a few lessons from MS.
    FUD et al. :-)

    Seriously though, that's nice but I think the PC industry has "standardised" on USB.

    Damn. I nearly forgot that Linux exists on other platforms too! I suppose this will help the Linux on IMac cause.
  • Sorry, I suppose you're right but...
    Apparently USB 2 is going to be faster than Firewire

    Anyway, I wasn't really saying they weren't competing. I was making the point that for the majority of users USB is more important than Firewire (just the same as 3d support would be more popular than say Winmodem, and they're completely different) and I wouldn't want the quality of the USB implementation to be worse because too much time was being spent on the Firewire.

    Actually, they probably will both be fine, so put it this way :!

    I don't want 2.4 to be held back to get Firewire fixed if the USB is already 100%

  • IMHO, the attitude of Linus towards the benchmarks shows a certain quality he has, that could very well be one of the major reasons Linux is so successful. Unlike many kneejerk-reaction slashdotters, he actually takes criticism in a positive way, and works to improve his product, rather than throwing up his hands and crying "foul".

    This quality of Linus' should be something we as open source software supporters should learn from. The open source community would benefit so much from having people who do not react to criticism by protesting and flaming, but actually doing something to improve their product.

  • I thought the 2GB file size limit was a 32bit x86 problem or something? anyone?
  • Well, article seemd ok enough, and I must say that I look forward to the USB suport, as well as the improved 3D support(whatever they mean by that...)

    karma -=1;

  • In the keynote address this morning, Linus said 2.4 will have support for firewire. Anyone know more on this subject? I haven't exactly followed the evolution of the 2.3.x branch, but I thought firewire still had a long way to go, more so than USB...

    There is firewire support in at least the most recent 2.3.x kernels. I haven't actually tested it myself (lacking any firewire ports and equipment) but it is there. FWIW, there's also support for UDF, the file system used on DVDs and some CDs (particularly those written by programs like DirectCD).

  • The article is basically the same as most other linux business/news related articles excpet the fact he mentioned the DVD industry and the intangible fight that's happening. Maybe this will be another push for DVD and DeCSS to be cleared up... It's indefinate that Linux and other unix style operating systems NEED DVD. How can an operating system be competition with another 'bigger' operating system if the same standards cannot be used on both. It's a shame... Makes me wonder if Microsoft secretly owns the Motion picture industry also. :-) Anyways....
  • The Mindcraft benchmarks *were* FUD. Mindcraft *did* tell outright, bare-faced lies in their reports about it (at least one lie). The tests *were* unrealistic, and Linux did always perform better than NT for realistic loads. The fact that Linux's networking stack was improved even further as a result of some hugely unrealistic tests that exposed a particular bottleneck that NT didn't have, that was later fixed, shouldn't tempt us into thinking that Mindcraft did right. They didn't, and they deserved the "pay for the benchmark results you want" pillory that they got.

    Ever since Linux fixed the problem, lots of people have gone around talking as if it's been shown that Mindcraft were right all along. They weren't - they're outright liars and makers of biased tests to order.
    --
  • So that puts VA trading at, what, 100 to 1? Those stock prices were INSANE. VA's just a PC maker, dammit! The best thing to be said about them is that they aren't beholden to Redmond, but that's faint praise. PC manufacturing is a low-margin industry, which means constant engineering efforts to keep the product up-to-date, as well as excellent warehousing and production business practice, which has *nothing* to do with Linux. Even Dell and Compaq are insanely overpriced... VA is just surreal.

    The same goes for Red Hat. They made what, ten million last year? How in the name of Gawd can you justify a valuation in the tens of billions? I know RESTURANTS that do more business than Red Hat!

    I wouldn't buy a single share of a "Linux" stock at this point. By any reasonable investing standard, it's a bad idea. Established, profitable companies with long-term predictable growth should trade at something like 20:1... maybe 30:1 if you wanna be wacky. Microsoft trades at roughly 65:1 (not counting questionable accounting practices), and i think their doom is written in their stock price.

    If Internet/Linux stocks are "suffering", it's because their valuations mean not just unreasonable, but impossible expectations of long-term performance.
    ---
  • naturally, there's often an 'S' curve as the initial enthusiasm yields to reality check - the fed is currently expected to boost interest rates 1/4 point to slow the economy down some, which will deflate a lot of stocks across the board, but I'm expecting the aging, nearing retirement baby-boomers to contine to invest and save a significant part of their incomes for some time to come. Day traders may as well be playing in a casino, a lucky few will get rich quick - but it's those who buy and hold for the long term who eventually get a steady growth/income from their investments that beats inflation or what they can get at the bank.

    Personally I'm chomping at the bit to see some Linux sysadm jobs show up - there was one in our local Sunday paper - so I can ditch this embarassing McSE 'rebooter' job and get something I can work with and add value as far as system design goes, not just popping in CD's from Redmond and praying, and getting bitched at every time msft craps out.

    Agent 32
  • This is absolutely true. Red Hat (and others, but RH is the foremost example, so I'll use them) is utterly dependent in the long term on free (speech) software. if RH began abusing free software, it would be simple, and, I think, not inconsistent with the views of the FSF, to insert a clause into GPL-type licenses saying "This license does not apply to Red Hat, Inc., it's subsidiaries, assigns, heirs, (other legalspeak terms to make sure they can't get around this clause). Red Hat is specifically forbidden to distribute this software program in any form."
  • i'm not a stallman fan, but this is NOT what the GPL is about. and therefore will NEVER happen, if the FSF is what i think it is,

    I could easily see the FSF excluding specific companies from their licenses if the GPL was found to be unenforceable, in whole or in part. Sometimes it's not enough to be quiet and leave other people alone; sometimes you have to fight for freedom. If the FSF is not willing to fight for freedom, then they're not about freedom...
  • I think they interpreted this:

    [Linus]"People didn't want to go through the onerous process of productizing a development kernel," Torvalds said. He resolved to change this process with the next edition of the heart of Linux, the kernel version 2.4."

    as this:

    [news.com]"In the past, development of Linux has been driven by technologists interested more in new features than in having a product that works more reliably than an experimental system. That resulted in a years-long development of the current heart of Linux, version 2.2 of the kernel. "

    even though the order of appearance in the article is reversed here. I think they are confusing packaging with reliability. The above description seems much more applicable to
    win 9X/NT/2XXX/name_of_the_week/etc.
  • they answered quite nicely: i wrote them about being biased, about the place where the benchmarks happened, about the tuned nt system and the raw linux setup. they talked back about a reputation they have to loose, etc ... finally they made a fair test to us (this time with open source people involved) and it had nearly the same results ...

    people we have to learn to ... i think some of us did!
  • i'm not a stallman fan, but this is NOT what the GPL is about. and therefore will NEVER happen, if the FSF is what i think it is. the opensource definition is different too. if such things happened, they would hurt the community in the long run.

    but you can hurt a company in other ways, and nobody buying/supporting redhat is the strongest by far ...
  • In the keynote address this morning, Linus said 2.4 will have support for firewire. Anyone know more on this subject? I haven't exactly followed the evolution of the 2.3.x branch, but I thought firewire still had a long way to go, more so than USB...
  • Actually (I just got back from the keynote address), he said the release of 2.4 was still a matter of months.

  • Actually, I hope nobody licences the software. If they do we should boycott it. If we can't watch purchased DVD's on our terms, then to hell with them. I bet as Linux grows for home use that the economic blunder the MPAA is engaging in will start to sink in.

    Clearly, if someone releases a closed source application for viewing DVDs in Linux we should definitly boycott it, but the issue is likely to be more complex. Specifically, If someone releases an open source application to view DVDs with a closed source decryption tool we will need to descided our actions based on the following question: Is the application realitivly interoperable with the open players that are currently being developed? i.e. I must be able to DL the open source application (without paying any money to the MPAA) and DL a module based on DeCSS to make a regionless player which uses no closed source code.

    Message to you Linux companies: It would not be an intelegent move (politically) to release an open source player without a trully open source alternative. You should develop the player in the open and make shure that you are not putting the truly open alternative at a disadvnatage. A very well documented "decryption/region module" interface would be essential (document this one part of the program jsut to prove to the community that your intentions are honerable).

    Jeff
  • "As soon as Torvalds gets back to his home state of California, he will release the preliminary production versions of 2.4, he said."
  • > Windows NT offers JFS???? Did I miss something??

    Probably. ;-)

    Inside the Windows Nt File System - Helen Custer [amazon.com]

    NT only journals Meta-Data though ! Something MS forgots to tell people.

    Cheers
  • Meta means 'above' or 'about'.

    Meta-data is any kind of info ABOUT a file.
    i.e. it's filename, it's attributes, etc.

    If you study philosophy, you will come across the term meta-physical. Same idea. (Bad pun, since ideas are meta-physical ;-)

    > url?

    A directory is also meta-data. The OS opens the directory as a file, but treats it specially.

    So I guess in once sense you could call a url meta-data, since it points the way to the data, i.e. the .html file.

    A true journaling system also backs up file data. Meaning no data loss. There is a minor speed hit with "mirroring" the data, but usually filesystems use B+ Trees and other database concepts so they can be just as fast as a "simple" filesystem.

    > I dont want to buy an out of date print about a microsoft product to find out.

    Its actually not too bad. Quota's and Encrytion aren't covered, but the rest of the book is good.

    Hope this helps.

    Cheers
  • Bill!

    Perhaps when you run for president again in 2004, you should consider Linus Torvalds as a running mate. I realize that attracting him to the Meadow Party may be a bit difficult, but I think the party's promise to make a talking pengiun Secretary of State will win him over.

    Yeah, and how is the whole clone thing working out for you?
  • Yeah, if your filesystem is 32bit.
    If you give NT programming a try, you'll notice can read files using 64bit pointers. Notice Win32 functions like GetFileSize etc work with 64bit numbers.
    GetFileSize as an example, returns the low order dword or the filesize, and takes in a dword pointer which it fills with the high order dword.
    A bit yucky, but makes it so 32bit users can use ignore the highword parameter (use NULL).
  • yes :P

    NTFS uses 64bit descriptors, so supports up to 16EB (ExaByte) volumes :)....and it doesn't have a 2GB filesize limit like Ext2/HPFS/Fat etc
  • <i>
    "Technologists often forget the general user," Torvalds said. "Technology is only as good as the user experience. That is something that technology groups very often forget."
    </i>

    Geee, sounds a bit like something Bill Gates and Microsoft have been saying themselves for years. Why do you think they're so successful developer and user wise? And why they have so much public support.

    It's not suprising now that Linux has got corporate support that Linus starts leaning in different directions.

    And it's nice to know that he now admits NT 'trounced' Linux then. I remember Linus being rather angry about those tests, going on about Marketing, and how Microsoft would do anything possible to survive.
  • ...is really starting to grate on me. Of course we all know making Linux more accessible to the average user is important but there are drawbacks to accessibility.

    The more you layer GUI on top of the system, the more you clutter its ability to process efficiently and security is more easily compromised. Windows has and continues to prove that fact over and over again. I wish Linus had touched upon that issue a bit more so that the general non-tech business community might have more of an understanding as to why GUI interfaces are not readily embraced by techs as they often require more maintenance and cause more problems.

    Sometimes I even think business people are paranoid that techs are plotting some conspiracy to make their lives more difficult by choosing certain technology when we're just trying to find the best solution.

    Or have I just been out-of-the-loop on the conspiracy thing? Was there a meeting I missed?

    - tokengeekgrrl

  • Re:The whole users issue... (Score:3)

    by Eccles ( 932 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @10:06AM (#1311022) Journal
    The more you layer GUI on top of the system, the more you clutter its ability to process efficiently and security is more easily compromised.

    The fundamental problem is poor software design. Properly designed software should have a generic interface that provides hooks for both scripting (including command line parameters) and GUIs, with sufficient flexibility to support internationalization. That core should then be easily portable, with mainly the GUI layer needing porting for different systems.

  • Linux industry and open source (Score:3)

    by Camelot ( 17116 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @10:21AM (#1311023)
    If anyone has doubts about Linux companies making big bucks and then dumping Linux - consider what Linus said. In the open source world, reputation is everything.

    RedHat et al have obligations to their shareholders - that is - they need to keep doing stuff that benefits their owners and increases the company value. Microsoft does this, too - their way is trying to lock everyone into a Windows-only world. Fortunately for us, the success of Linux companies relies (at least partly) on the community, so they need to maintain good relations with the people. And this also that the best thing they can do, from the shareholders' view, is to embrace the open source community with open arms - which is what they have do, have done, and will be doing.

    Of course, this characterization only includes companies whose sole business idea rests on Linux. The attitudes of others (like Sun) may be different, as is proper, considering what they have to do in order to satisfy their shareholders.

  • Here something slightly offtopic (Score:3)

    by kjj ( 32549 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @12:03PM (#1311024)

    2 February 2000

    Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 07:13:47 -0500 (EST)
    From: Macki <macki@2600.com>
    To: dvd@2600.com
    Subject: Press release - Anti-MPAA event planned

    February 2, 2000

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DAY OF ACTION PLANNED AGAINST MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION IN 100 CITIES

    Members of the hacker and open source communities worldwide, along with various civil liberties groups, are planning a massive leafletting campaign on Friday, February 4 to call attention to the recent attempts by the Motion Picture Association of America to shut down thousands of websites.

    Lawsuits have been filed against hundreds of people, as well as an Internet Service Provider and a magazine, for having information the MPAA wants to keep secret.

    The controversy centers around a computer program known as DeCSS, thought to be written by a 16 year old in Norway. The program defeats the encryption scheme used by DVD's which prohibits them from being viewed on non-approved machines or computers. It also enables DVD's from one country to be played in another, contrary to the wishes of the movie industry. It does NOT facilitate DVD piracy - in fact, copying DVD's has been possible since their introduction years ago. In its press releases on the subject, the MPAA has claimed that this is a piracy issue and they have subsequently succeeded in getting injunctions against a number of sites that had posted the program in the interests of free speech.

    This is in effect a lawsuit against the entire Internet community by extremely powerful corporate interests. The lawsuit and the various actions being planned promise to be a real showdown between two increasingly disparate sides in the technological age. The consequences of losing this case are so serious that civil libertarians, professors, lawyers, and a wide variety of others have already stepped forward to help out.

    Friday's action will be coordinated in 74 cities throughout North America and 26 cities in other parts of the world. Leafletting will take place outside theaters and video stores in these cities - all of which participate in a monthly "2600" gathering. 2600 Magazine has been named in two lawsuits regarding the DeCSS program and has joined with the the growing number of people who will fight these actions by the MPAA until the end.

    The lawsuit has been filed by the Motion Picture Association of America, Columbia/Tristar, Universal City Studios, Paramount Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Twentieth Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, and Time Warner Entertainment.

    Contact:
    Emmanuel Goldstein
    (631) 751-2600 ext. 0

    See 2600 [2600.com]

    DVD-DeCSS Report: Fade to Black [villagevoice.com]

    Legal Report: DVD Desperadoes [villagevoice.com]

  • Linus Torvalds LinuxWorld Webcast (Score:3)

    by lamefrog ( 79872 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @09:40AM (#1311025) Homepage
    An archive version of the Linus Torvalds keynote webcast is available here [technetcast.com] (RealVideo 28.8). We'll post 80Kbps and mp3 versions *real soon*.

  • But Linux doesn't boost business world... (Score:3)

    by karzan ( 132637 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @10:34AM (#1311026)
    All the Linux stocks, after much anticipation, are suffering. VA, which started at 300, is now down to 100 (without splits). Redhat is also at a long-time low. Andover is in the pits too.

    Why haven't there been any articles about this? I would like to see these stocks succeed as much as anyone but hey, they're failing. All we ever see are articles about the great Linux stocks but their performance frankly sucks.

  • Free software and free markets (Score:4)

    by dsplat ( 73054 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @11:57AM (#1311027)
    Something the article cited caught my attention:

    He said it will be for the market to decide which journaling system gets chosen. Right now there are two main contenders, ReiserFS and ext3, an improvement to the current Linux file system, ext2. In addition, SGI and IBM have journaling file system work under way.

    It struck me that put simply, free software can be nothing other than a free market. The barriers to entry are very low. You have to be competent and credible, or you are ignored, but you don't need a marketing machine and shelf placement at nationwide retail chains. And the only constraints preventing project forking are cultural.

    Plus (and I know I keep bring this up), we adhere to publically documented interfaces. If nothing else, the source is the documentation of the interface. Anyone can read it.

    Together these factors add up to the opportunity for multiple solutions to arise. In the case of journaling file systems, the demand is clearly there, so the solutions are springing up.

    The two sides of the free market equation are both illustrated by this example. Multiple producers competing to be the best solution. And those same projects acting as customers bidding for developers to work on them. In both cases, they are bidding with technical merit and project credibility. On one side, they have to convince users to use them. On the other, they have to get programmers to enhance them.

    We are all consumers, and we are all producers. What makes the free software marketplace interesting to watch is that a large portion of the community acts as both in the same space. And the currency with which we buy is the most valuable thing we have, our time.

  • Positive things (Score:4)

    by molog ( 110171 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @10:01AM (#1311028) Homepage Journal
    Getting trounced by Windows NT on a networking benchmark encouraged the Linux developers to improve Linux so a single processor wouldn't be able to monopolize the network connection or the access to the file system, he said. "We had our asses kicked on certain benchmarks and we didn't want to have that happen again," he said.

    After many people complained about the Mindcraft benches thinking it would undermine Linux, something positive happened. Mindcraft pointed out where Linux needed help and the developers worked on it. The fact that Linus doesn't casually ignore problems like M$ does will insure that Linux will be superior (if it isn't all ready) to the other OS's out there. Next time a benchmark comes out with everyone yelling "FUD!! FUD!!" why don't you just take it with a grain of salt and then fix the problem that was exposed. Sometimes getting a good old-fashioned butt kicking is good for the soul.

    Note: I am not saying I support biased benchmarks just that we should encourage an honest comparison to other systems whether we like the results or not.

  • Linus quoted on DVD situation (Score:5)

    by bwt ( 68845 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2000 @09:39AM (#1311029)
    In the article, Linus is quoted about DVD:

    "This is a perfect case of companies who want to screw their customers over," Torvalds said today, drawing cheers from the crowd of thousands. The DVD industry "wants to control the market not by being a good technical solution, but by just locking customers into a certain solution."

    I wonder if Linus would consider testifying in the case. That would legitimze the "interoperability with Linux" arguement in the eyes of the court.

    Torvalds said he hopes "the DVD consortium will lose this lawsuit, and we'll just have DVD on Linux," but if that doesn't happen, he hopes commercial companies will license the appropriate software.

    Actually, I hope nobody licences the software. If they do we should boycott it. If we can't watch purchased DVD's on our terms, then to hell with them. I bet as Linux grows for home use that the economic blunder the MPAA is engaging in will start to sink in.

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