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Linux Business

LWCE Reports Continue 132

Posted by timothy from the not-many-plushies-this-year dept.
Linux World continues, and reports from the floor continue to roll in; below are some more tidbits on what was on the floor or announced at today's show. Notably absent this year (besides a whole raft of companies, like formerly large exhibitors like Penguin Computing, Oracle, VA Software and subsidiaries like OSDN) were the sort of toys that crystallized dot-com risk-taking. On the other hand, companies like IBM, HP and Compaq seem as gung-ho as ever, with all sorts of info on how large customers will save (favorite trade-show words) Real Money with free software, and the dot-org booths where a lot of the show's spirit lives are happily sharing their projects' visions and toys.

wo1verin3 writes: "Trivia for geeks... and nerds. Or rather geeks vs nerds. Read about the contest of the people with oddly and randomly shaped heads here." This site also links to MoC chrisd's page of questions and answers.

abel wisman submitted news that GNU Bayonne and PreViking have merged into a single project, which will keep the name GNU Bayonne. Not familiar with either? Bayonne is a telephony application server, and PreViking is a telephony-switching daemon, both of which are open source. David Sugar of the Bayonne project also demonstrated an automated web-based callback system used to provide callbacks to form-based online queries. The newly combined Bayonne / PreViking teams will also be working on www.phonestreamer.com, built on top of GStreamer. The Bayonne booth at LinuxWorld offered booth visitors today free calls to anywhere in the world using these technologies.

red_gnom writes: "Linux is in the running to power the world's biggest computer, we learned this week at LinuxWorld Expo. A bid is being prepared to provide the computing power behind the US government sponsored Project Purple, which will pool a vast server farm to the three leading U.S. research labs, which is scheduled to come on stream by the end of 2004."

terrywin writes: "Apparently, the company that licensed Corel's Linux has indicated that the beta is now available. http://www.xandros.com/news.html, their home page has a link to the beta form. The last report I saw on this was back in September."

Finally, cnmill points to this story on CNET about today's announcement of version 1.1 of the Linux Standard Base. Congratulations!
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

LWCE Reports Continue More

LWCE Reports Continue

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  • VA Linux^H^H^H^H^HSoftware (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31, 2002 @07:02PM (#2934643)
    Well, they are completely out of the linux biz, [yahoo.com] or so says their CEO, so no wonder they blew it off!
    • Just watched that. How ironic the ajoining "stock ticker" table cell to the left of the video reminded me of how proud good ole' Larry A. was to aquire the LNUX symbol and carry the Linux torch high (in what seems like just a few months ago.) The new video in the window in front of me (and just to the left of the LNUX symbol) was 6 minutes of good ole' Larry stressing (in not so many words) how they are "oh so past that yucky Linux thing" now. I don't know about you all, but that makes my stomache churn a bit. (Not quite in the "selling your own mother" category -- but not far off.)

    • VA Software still is supporting Debian (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @08:06PM (#2934918) Homepage

      VA is still supplying network connectivity to Debian, not a cheap proposition given their bandwidth needs. Try a traceroute to www.debian.org:

      ...
      13 s6-0.border1-7206.valinux.com (209.81.23.54) 102.552 ms 86.615 ms 86.868 ms
      14 fe0-0.dist5-3662.vasoftware.com (198.186.202.86) 95.753 ms 134.836 ms 95.819 ms
      15 e2-2.community8-bi8000.vasoftware.com (198.186.202.102) 124.682 ms 88.352 ms 114.626 ms
      16 klecker.debian.org (198.186.203.20) 91.755 ms 96.514 ms 93.637 ms

  • Hey (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Exmet Paff Daxx ( 535601 )
    Link to the Slashdot booth? Wanting to see pictures of Glorious leader Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda and Jeff "Hemos" Bates I am! Where is the important Slashdot booth pictures! My enquiring mind knows to want!
  • Wonder if we are going to see the new Purple Hat Linux :)

  • Making money (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As the VC money dries up and projects that aim for the stars get blown up on the launching pad, the true beneficiaries of all the free programming labor become obvious. It isn't those companies that hold to some ideal of Freedom of Software or other tripe like that. The ones who are making it are the closed source shops who have a product to sell. IBM, Oracle, et al.

    Linux to them is simply another market to tap. It isn't about the love of coding, but the love of money. So much the better for them that people are willing to give away their work for free.

    When the dust finally clears a year or two from now, you'll likely see a single company responsible for Linux development and multiple software houses offering server software for the platform. "Linux on the desktop" is dead if these big-iron companies are the ones left supporting the platform. So much the better, I'd say.

    • Re:Making money (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SomeOtherGuy ( 179082 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @07:35PM (#2934785) Journal
      Ya. Look at what IBM has done for the desktop products they have aquired in recent years...(let them die horrible deaths..) anyone remember the Lotus 123 spreadsheet, Amipro word processor, et all...If it wasnt for a steady stream of cash they would find someway to kill Notes also...Read the article in todays USATODAY...They are in the Linux thing for servers only...They will spend a gazillion dollars on getting 5000 VM's to run on a mainframe -- but I bet you wont see them spend a dime on anything for the desktop...

    • Re:Making money (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mamba-mamba ( 445365 )
      When you say, "you'll likely see a single company responsible for Linux development," what exactly do you mean? Responsible for what and to whom?
      Do you mean that somehow all the people who now spend their time on the kernel and all the other software that makes linux tick will be somehow forced out of doing any linux stuff? How would that happen? Do you mean that they will just get sick of doing linux stuff? I don't really envision that. There might be some attrition, but not total abandonment. Also, do you think Linus is going to sell the rights to the Linux trademark to this one big company?

      Also, when you say that the "true beneficiaries" of free programming labor are these companies (or this company), you seem to be ignoring the customers and other users. I would argue that the true beneficiaries of all this free coding are the people who use the code. If it turns out to be the case that established companies find a way to make money off of linux, I don't think that necessarily means that all the coders labored in vain. I mean, if I wanted to get rich writing code, I don't think I would have published it or allowed it to be published under the GPL or other permissive license. So the programmers haven't really lost anything as I see it. They knew the rules of the game and they played it willingly. They're just like all the other former startup employees who worked hard, but didn't quite get rich.

      The investors, though, they lost something. They lost money. And I think its fair to say that they actually were trying or at least hoping to make money. I do feel a bit sorry for the investors, whoever they are.

      MM
      --

      • Re:Making money (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        When you say, "you'll likely see a single company responsible for Linux development," what exactly do you mean? Responsible for what and to whom?

        Good question, one that I figured would come up. I mean that one single company will do the bulk of Linux development and will be recognized as the "standard Linux". They will conduct themselves in a very business-like fashion and likely refuse patches from the wild. They will become the OpenBSD of Linux. Their revenue will come from large contracts with corporations for setup and support.

        Sure, there will be hobbyists who still tinker with the OS and the OS will still be "free", but the true money to be made in gratis software is the support of it. This single company will be the only one that will emerge from the current crop of distro vendors with the money, reputation, and knowledge necessary to be the main Linux distributor in the Western Hemisphere.

        Also, when you say that the "true beneficiaries" of free programming labor are these companies (or this company), you seem to be ignoring the customers and other users.

        Yes, I am. Because I don't say that customers are the main beneficiaries of Windows either. Rather, it is Microsoft (and in like manner, Redhat) who makes money *off of Linux*. Other companies and people may make money *with* Linux or Windows, but discussion of the customers is peripheral to the discussion of those companies making money off of Linux.

        The investors, though, ... lost money. I think its fair to say that they actually were trying or at least hoping to make money.

        That's the way the cookie crumbles. It's a little like the stock market: It isn't the ones putting the money in that are getting rich (VCs), it's the ones brokering the sales (IBM, Compaq...)

        • Re:Making money (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cduffy ( 652 )
          Sure, there will be hobbyists who still tinker with the OS and the OS will still be "free", but the true money to be made in gratis software is the support of it. This single company will be the only one that will emerge from the current crop of distro vendors with the money, reputation, and knowledge necessary to be the main Linux distributor in the Western Hemisphere.

          Not likely. There may be one Linux distribution which gains general usage, but they'll still only be a distributor; they'll still take their software from "the wild" before packaging and QAing and selling it, and there will still be smaller companies which do better in other markets.


          I work for a Linux company doing embedded systems work (MontaVista Software), and we have to accept patches from the wild. As it is we can provide and support a huge amount of high-quality software on a very wide array of platforms with a staff of under 200 people. To accept only in-house patches would either require a massive growth in staffing (and a corresponding growth in expense) and, further, would stop us from benefitting from the concurrent development done outside the company.

          Indeed, there've been times when we've considered keeping work we did in-house between ourselves and our customers, and came to the decision that there was a very strong business case for merging our work into the community tree to ease the costs involved with software maintenance. Doing internal development is just too expensive, and the advantages to justify it just aren't there. This is true no matter who you are -- it would be no more cost-effective for Red Hat (or Microsoft) to work on an internal fork of some Linux distribution than it would be for us.


          As for what I said about having smaller companies succeeding in niche markets, let me use MontaVista as an example. We have a fair number of experienced kernel coders working for us, and several very large companies have found our "money, reputation and knowledge" to be enough to justify purchasing our products and services. By the numbers (less than 200 people) we're small fries compared to what you'd think you need to run an OS company, yet we've been doing remarkably well. Largely, this goes back to OSS development methodology. Because we can take advantage of the concurrent work done elsewhere, we can focus on work closely aligned with our specialty -- embedded systems -- and not have expend undue time on software maintenance. Because we do embedded systems so well (due to our focus!), we win customers in that market over differently focused competitors. This demonstrates how smaller companies can survive and even thrive in an OSS environment despite the potential presence of a 900lb gorilla.


          ...but the true money to be made in gratis software...

          Our customers don't care about gratis -- our product isn't gratis to them (though it is cheaper than many proprietary alternatives, particularly if they're producing a large quantity of units; Linux, of course, carries no royalties). Rather, they care about libre. Because of the GPL, they can take their existing product (including the software they got from us) and go to another embedded systems company at any time or switch to working in-house if they don't like the service they receive from us. Our customers have absolute freedom from vendor lock-in -- nothing to sniffle at. Thus, they're assured that they'll receive quality service and honest pricing -- or they really can just go somewhere else.

        • It is likely that there will emerge a single Linux vendor that will provide Linux to the masses. On the other hand, this is unlikely to cut into the community, because the community has never been about that, nor needed that.

          Furthermore, there's no way that the big vendor will get the size necessary to actually produce even a significant fraction of the Linux software. And there's no reason they should: if Apple and Adobe can have a relationship such that people generally buy both MacOS and Photoshop if they buy either, there's no reason that a commercial Linux vendor and a bunch of free software projects can't have this relationship, too. The case of Microsoft, where a single company can actually provide all the software, is unlikely to arise in the Linux world, just because the structure of Linux makes it hard to create or maintain a monopoly, and lacking a monopoly, it is impossible to get the money or the army of programmers.

          I think there will be a company that makes a lot of money on packaging Linux and selling it to people who don't want to change it very much and want support for it as is.

          I think there will be a number of companies selling Linux software, once a significant portion of consumers can be presumed to have Linux; since there's no Microsoft there, there's the opportunity for another company to sell software.

          I think the main effect of the free software which will be available will be to limit the space that companies will write software in. If there is really solid free software in place, companies will use it rather than competing with it. The projects I see as this solid are the kernel, the common libraries (libc, ncurses, libjpeg, zlib, openssl, etc), the GNU utilities, XFree86, emacs, and vi. Companies will, for instance, not try to compete with X, but also not contribute much to it, and use it. Sure, they benefit from it, but only as consumers of a free and useful raw material.

          I put a couple hundred dollars into VA a while ago. It seems to me that this money went toward improving Linux software. I lost money on it, of course, but I think I got more back in terms of, say, software I could find due to SourceForge and more reliable hardware and software. While investors are normally in it for the possibility of getting more cash back for the stock than they paid for it, some people invested in Linux companies because, even if the money didn't produce more money, it would produce more value.
    • The great benefit of Open Source if it becomes the mainstream will not be that some of the volunteer contributors will make money off it. As we have all seen, it is hard to make money off things you give away.

      The great benefit will be that everyone can share the huge value of what economists call the the "network effect" that comes from everyone else using the same system. Every new user to a shared system like an OS makes the system more valuable to those who already use it. That is the source of the huge inertial power of Windows, but we have to pay Microsoft billions for the priviledge of sharing their protocols.

      With Open Source, not only don't we have to pay to enjoy the network effects (if Open Source really takes off), but we are free to modify whatever part we think needs tweeking.

      Big corps don't work for charity. The will support Linux iff it makes money for them. The benefit to the rest of us is the expanding network of Linux users. Let's hope all the big corps jump on the bandwagon and make this system the standard.

      John Gallup
    • IBM has openly stated they would like to move all their hardware to Linux. Does this mean they are closed source simply because they sell hardware?

      The irony out of all this is that IBM had their lunch eaten by Microsoft because they thought the money making in computers would be from hardware. They gave away the farm, at the time.

      But what if all the predominant operating systems are free software? Where is the profit to be found? Why in hardware and Services, of course. Linux perfectly fits the earlier vision for them.

      It is unfair to categorize IBM with Oracle. IBM has taken a real leadership role in the community, and has stayed fairly agnostic, supporting many different companies and endeavours, but not tying to any one. One can probably argue that IBM may have even saved a few along the way.

      As far as Linux on the desktop, you obviously wish it doomed to failure. Why on earth would anyone wish an effort like giving every computer user on earth the best software for free to fail?

  • The Register Article (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Prisoner Of Gravity ( 555440 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @07:07PM (#2934668)

    Linux is in the running to power the world's biggest computer, we learned this week at LinuxWorld Expo.

    This is clearly really exciting news. If Linux ends up being used on the world's largest (or fastest, or sexiest, etc...) computer, it's reputation for being both A)A valid solution for high-load calculations and B)A superior solution, worthy of being used on expensive hardware.

    If Linux is used on this largest computer, imagine what this will mean for managers choosing it for mere 'large' computers. The future looks good for 'Big' Linux.

  • "We have not released Xandros Linux yet. However, for Linux enthusiasts who would like to try the Open Circulation version of Corel LINUX OS Second Edition, we are now providing it as a no charge download from the Xandros FTP site.


    I loved playing with corel linux when it first came out. It was really easy to setup and gave my little brother a computer that would surf the web and do simple things for him since he didnt have enough money to purchase a copy of windows. Though I hope they include alien or a package converter. One of the small problems my brother ran into with Corel Linux was since its Debian based and not off the RPM it was tough trying to teach him how to convert the packages and get them to run.

    • Re:Corel /Xandros Linux (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      posting as anonymous (you never know who reads /.)..

      The people who bought the Lindows beta version (umm "Lindows Insider") were getting a... Xandros version of Linux with a new version of Wine. Nothing more then that..

      As someone who got the beta I can say - that they added few wizards, a file manager (a bit better then konqueror's file-managment session, but with tons of bugs)..

      It's based on debian, with KDE 2.2 + some tweaks. Nothing really impressive..
    • Corel Linux was nice, and the apt interface was nice too. The biggest problem I had was that it isn't even potato based. It took me about a week to get the 3dfx stuff to work properly.

      Then I tried installing Ximian on it...

      -WS
    • Though I hope they include alien or a package converter. One of the small problems my brother ran into with Corel Linux was since its Debian based and not off the RPM it was tough trying to teach him how to convert the packages and get them to run.

      From their Desktop OS [xandros.com] page:
      * Xandros supports both DEB (apt) and RPM package formats


      I agree that it's sometimes tricky to convert/install RPMs and have things work as expected (not surprisingly). However, there's already a lot of software packaged in .debs. Just search at packages.debian.org [debian.org] to see what's available.
  • I couldn't make it to LWCE (still waiting for one in Seattle), but the rest of the Open Source Web Design [oswd.org] crew is out there. I don't know what exactly we're showing off, except our really cool site. I hear we're across from an IBM booth and on a corner, somewhere in the .org pavillion. And the booth number is less than 10 ... like .. 4. We have some pictures of the setting up on Skatters [mac.com] homepage. Anyway, check it out!
    • Oh wait, duh, I think we're done. Luckily someone remembered to take pictures, I don't think any of them feature our booth, but I could be wrong. Anyway: Pictures [oswd.org].

  • the scene was beat (and the schwag sucked)... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Maybe it was just the bad weather but the convention center felt like a ghost town compared to last year. We all know many software companies that were there last year don't exist anymore but besides that the scene just seemed boring and lacked any feeling of excitement for linux. Not to say that there aren't cool things on the horizon, but i don't think the expo reflected that vibe.

    I suspect this is only a temporary lull as times are tough right now for much of the tech scene. Perhaps next year and beyond will be a bigger event as OSS projects gain more mass appeal and more new users get introduced to linux.

  • Why no represent? - Karma to burn (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SomeOtherGuy ( 179082 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @07:29PM (#2934760) Journal
    How bad is VA and OSDN hurting to not represent at such a big event?? -- I guess 1 look at themes.org is a good example of how fast something can go downhill. (Saw the article on the Loki timeline -- will we see a VA/OSDN timeline?)

  • 1st time conference attendee (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jamienk ( 62492 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @07:40PM (#2934800)
    This was the first computer conference I've ever attended. Most of it was what I expected it would be -- a bunch of bullshit: the big companies and the little companies were hawking their wares, acting slick and SELLING SELLING SELLING.

    There were a ton of proprietary software vendors, wholely clueless that Linux users may prefer Linux because of the Freedom. NuSphere, for example, was showing off their Linux port of the Windows PHP IDE product...acting like Linux was just another platform, like a port to a Mac. (The port was incomplete.) Compaq held an expensive-looking gameshow contest with questions like "Why is Compaq considered a leading expert in Linux?" and where all the answers were "all of the above." Ximian came accross as a slick, funded, bullshit corporation, selling their MS Exchange connector. I fear the future of GNOME in their hands. Best propritary software was the guy from Taiwan, selling a program that grabs all relevent Windows config files and translates them to the correct Linux equivs (Sendmail, Appache, SAMBA, etc.). He said his product was big in China.

    The Hardware vendors seemed less bad -- at least they're selling a THING, not IP. Of particular note was the Sharp Linux PDA -- much better than I imagined, more like a little laptop than a PDA.

    Best, though, was the small "ORG" section of the convention. The enthusiasm and lack of bullshit was palpable, and it put the salesmen to shame. It made the whole thing seem like two events, one of salesmen, and one of artists. In particular, the Linux Terminal Server guys were cool as shit. (http://www.ltsp.org/) The KDE guys (especially Ian) were also amazing. I was pleased that they all had fresh ideas, but were dedicated to the old-fashioned, core hacker concepts (client/server, language neutrality, extensibility). These guys had a VISION and were advocating, teaching, and arguing for it with great gusto and humor. The sales people, on the other hand, seemed insincere, ass-kissing, and downright dumb.

    All-in-all, just what you'd expect...
    • There were a ton of proprietary software vendors, wholely clueless that Linux users may prefer Linux because of the Freedom. [...] Ximian came accross as a slick, funded, bullshit corporation, selling their MS Exchange connector. I fear the future of GNOME in their hands.

      Ximian Connector's purpose is to allow you to transition to Evolution, which is open-source. (And a very nice product, btw.) I'd hardly call Ximian a proprietary software vendor.

      The connector itself is not open-source. My guess is this is because (A) they may have had to do some sort of NDA to get the info for it to talk to Exchange and/or (B) it's not as important that it be open-source, since the only people using it already have at least one proprietary product - Exchange.

      The Connector is also commercial, which makes a lot of sense. It's targeted at enterprise people, who aren't afraid to spend money. News flash: businesses (such as Ximian) like money and will get it how they can. You should be glad...it means they will stay in business.

      • no, it's closed because that way they can actually make money. You know, like a business plan. You guys get an excellent email program for free, and all you can do is bitch about how one small piece of the puzzle, which only corporations are going to need, isn't open. At some point reality must set in.
    • If you thought this conference was bad, obviously you didn't catch the David Letterman impersonator at Comdex this year spouting out a mock Top 10 list of projected internet growth.

      Jesus christ, IT'S NOT FUNNY. STOP IT!!!!!!!!

    • Re:1st time conference attendee (Score:4, Funny)

      by lkaos ( 187507 ) <anthony@codemonke y . ws> on Thursday January 31, 2002 @08:03PM (#2934901) Homepage Journal
      Last year I went with two other people from my company. We went around doing the whole business thing and at one both, received a demo from some goober pushing a SourceForge replacement.

      Of course the demo equipment was running RedHat at a time when RedHat defaulted to having edge flipping turned on. The guy had the most horrible time trying to figure out where his netscape kept going, finally to give up in frustration saying, "I wish I had a Windows machine here."

      Needless to say we casually walked away... There was not very much Linux knowledge floating around, just lots of suits. The worst part was that there were _very_ few hot chicks!

      That's the best part of going to Expos, the Booth Babes!

      • That's the best part of going to Expos, the Booth Babes!


        That my friend was CES in Las Vegas. But like ALL trade shows/expos/conferneces their will be two things slimy sales guys and keynote speakers. Sales and Marketing folks must get some high off spending gobs of money for the oppurtunity to spew sales pitches at complete strangers for hours on end. The only thing I get out of the shows is the ability to get face time with the engineers/programmers to discuss the tech and find out where they hangout online, before the sales guys stuffs a phone book size amount of marketing crap into my arms.
    • you know what, Linux World has been going that way for a few years now. The first two shows were pretty nice (in SF) but overall it's become nothing more than a buzzword driven show filled with whoever marketing felt like sending to the show. As a wise friend of mine described it, the type was "Have your people call my people and we'll see how much money we can make with this linux thing.."

      The geekfest that it once was has been bought out. =/

    • Wrong, wrong, wrong (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There were a ton of proprietary software vendors, wholely clueless that Linux users may prefer Linux because of the Freedom.

      Happy to burst your bubble on this one. "Linux users" are not the target of the companies at LW. Those companies know that you can't sell anything to people who are either too ideologically "pure" or just too damn cheap to spend money for anything except hardware.

      Those companies are marketing to the people running big business systems, who see Linux as a very attractive alternative for small to mid-range servers. Whine all you want about commercialism and the lack of OSS purity and all that nonsense, but the bottom line is Linux is very significant success in the real world, even if not on your terms. Live with it.

    • Well, this is what will inevitably happen as Linux becomes commercially successful. There are really only two directions that things can go. Either Open Source will remain a comparatively local phenomenon based on the original ideals of the community, or it will become commercially successful and shows like this one will tend towards Comdex. It really can't be both.

      Sure, commercial vendors are selling commercial, proprietary products based on Open Source. That's their job. There's nothing wrong with selling software - it's been keeping me employed for over 10 years. Many, if not most, Linux users may prefer the fact that it's Free, that's true. But that is not the audience for the folks showing on the .com side here. Yes, Linux *is* just another platform, and don't you ever forget it. The sooner Linux and BSD become ubiquitous, the sooner we'll see business software available for more than Windows as the standard. If I was an IT director and I needed to do PHP development or move my users off of Outlook, I would be thrilled to buy $10,000 worth of software to do that.

      Ximian may seem slick, funded, and bullshit, but two of those attributes are awfully important for establishing credibility. As to their stewardship of Gnome, let me remind you of the example of Berkeley Software, who sold the After Dark screensaver for a number of years. It was wildly popular (you almost never saw a Mac or PC back in the day that wasn't running it). They made a lot of money, deservedly, on it, and used those profits to fund (*warning: wayback machine failing*) software for disabled and deaf/blind users. The thing is, if a company is run by people that are not completely greedy, they can, and often will, do Good Things with the money they make.

      It sounds like there are some killer products available for Free and for money. That's great. That's perhaps as it should be, depending on how you see Open Source's future. But don't worry too much about the cloying, claustrophobic feeling you get from a trade show like this. Trust me - they're all like that. Go to Comdex or (shudder) E3 sometime, you'll see.

      As to the sales people, some of my best friends are sales people. Most of them are incredibly smart, sharp and damn good at what they do. They may seem insincere, dumb and clueless bacause they really don't understand what the hell they're talking about most of the time. Imagine yourself plopped into the marketing department for a few weeks, having to do whatever it is they do up there, and I think you'll see what I mean.

      That said, there are far, far too many sales and marketing units out there that seem insincere, ass-kissing, and downright dumb because they *are* insincere, ass-kissing, and downright dumb. Unfortunately, these are often the very characteristics the enable them to survive and propagate in the corporate gene pool.
    • ...like Linux was just another platform...

      Linux is just another platform.
    • acting like Linux was just another platform

      Yep and you know what - shock for you IT IS

      Linux is another OS - its not a wonder drug, a miracle cure, a religion or a fabric softener - its an operating system for computer hardware.

      Corporates are the only way for open source to survive - it might make you feel dirty but reality is like that - software costs money to develop and linux costs money to make, companies like Ximian have to employ programmers, advertise and all other costs with software, this needs money and unlike college or high school where you can code all night and mommy and daddy, the government or that part time job will cover the costs when you talk about real world solutions your talking real world money.

      No corporate will ever put their trust in the hands of a few evangelists or guys who are 'artists' - these people deal with companies with proffesional images, sales plans, documentation and support (yeah and i know what im talking about - i work as an IT manager for a muli national) - they want reliability and a trusted name - its why they buy RedHat instead of using slakware, why they trust compaq and dell and not bobs linux services and why they stay with MS when it costs money.

      Linux is dying slowly again - the "artists" out there are one of the reasons why there is no such thing as a simpe all in one install of linux that works fully with all apps and without resorting to console windows and make files - in short a simple easy to roll out corporate desktop.

      Vision is great ! its a way to move to the future, but whos paying the bills?

      And a comment on the selling IP - companies pay to develop IP and in the case of linux they even develope their own docmentation and training courses - thus the IP is theirs to sell - not everything in the world is free whether you like it or not.

      Reality is harsh but thats the way it is.

      PS yeah yeah im gonna get modded down - damn it i dont really know if i care or not - i have given up on free software in most ways - all my home equipment has gone back to MS software and ive stopped recommeding it to people - the fact is theres not one distro. out there that works properly out of the box - dont believe me think like a newbie and bung in Mandrake or Redhat and install it without any idea of what it means - then play an MPEG or AVI movie (NO changing compilers or libraries and NO console) You cant do it can you.

      Open source is a wonderful thing but making this into a religion turns people off not on.

      LINUX IS JUST ANOTHER PLATFORM - WAKE UP
      • PS yeah yeah im gonna get modded down - damn it i dont really know if i care or not - i have given up on free software in most ways - all my home equipment has gone back to MS software and ive stopped recommeding it to people - the fact is theres not one distro. out there that works properly out of the box - dont believe me think like a newbie and bung in Mandrake or Redhat and install it without any idea of what it means - then play an MPEG or AVI movie (NO changing compilers or libraries and NO console) You cant do it can you.

        Yes, you can, if you use a modern up-to-date distro and don't have weird hardware.

        If Linux is too hard for you Mr IT Manager then I fear for your company.

        Linux is very easy to roll out for a corporate desktop. Install it on one machine, tune it up to what your company wants. Ghost the install. Or use terminal servers. (I do for my group). This isn't rocket science.

        And the day MS software works 'out the box' on all machines will be a great one I assure you.

        • Yeah yeah linux is too hard - Thats not what i said at all.

          I started out 10 years ago on HP-UX and moved from there to solaris and onto BSD and VMS - i have varied experience and worked as a System Admin, NEtware Admin, Server Manager, SOE specialist and Now i manage 15 staff. I hold a CCNE, CCNA, MSCE+1, Exchange admin and various other shit - NOT ONE COURSE - ALL STUDIED FOR.

          In short im not a moron or some newbie MS lover you can throw this shit at - ive been working with MS software in a corporate environment since 3.1 came out.

          Linux isnt to hard - i simply cant be fucked to open a console every time i want to do something simple (and very little in Linux is ever simple)- i have over 60 servers in my environment running Windows NT4, 2000 Enterprise, SCO and RED Hat and i use my home computers for movies and pleasure - linux is not too hard for me its pointlessly complex.

          Ive supported open source, pushed it and even replaced our firewalls with an open source solution, i would never be considered anti linux or anti open source, im anti whiners and religious zealots, be they christian, muslim or linuxite.

          Linux is not ready for the corporate desktop - full fucking stop - if you do a bit of checking on the subject (HINT - Linux sites are just as biased as MS sites - look further) you will find that Linux on the desktop does not save costs it increases them , then add on the costs for replacing all of my backend management and application database, a complete mail system rebuild and replacement for my SAP system (yeah it can run on linux as well, and they only butt fuck you a littl bit if you change over - like about 10 million in programming fees)

          Install another OS and learn about the enemy - i just installed it on this box again (XP) - 41 mins running fully and no issues - guess what it now works out of the box on most machines - in fact having installed numerous linux distros it works better and quicker than even red hat and mandrake.

          As for the wierd hardware this is what put me off my linux systems - Dell CSR400GT notenook, standard with 256 mb of ram and a NeoMagic 128 Video Card (the same card in millions of compaq, Dell and generic notebooks) - Mandrake 8.1 wont even run the Xfree server out of Dev mode and Red Hat doesnt like it much either - weird effects (slakware seems to work ok most of the time tho....) but i simply wanted to see how easy it was to do the simple things like play a div-x (i wanted to give my mother Linux on her desktop) - after downgrading the GCC and attempting several different software installs i gave up in a welter of make and config files and decided this was too much trouble to fuck with.

          until it is AS EASY to do this shit on Linux as it is on Windows it will NEVER be ready for the corporate desktop and may i suggest that if you got out in the corporate world and actually worked in it you would find reality to be very different.

          Linux is a fantastic OS - BUt its an OS - not a religion. It needs improvement and work - like MS products do - but im only saying that if that work doesnt get done and it keeps being a religious movement and you dont progress then MS will do so (XP is a massive leap forward) and Linux will die - and that is a major tragedy

          PS - I read some of your other stuff and seems really interseting and you have some good points but dont you dare throw off at my skills whilst working in the protected world of academia and universities - in the real world its very very different - i admire your knowledge and skills but i pose this point - have you EVER used a MS Operating System - im assuming you have a CS degree and that would have been pretty much nothing but UNIX and then you went to Linux so if you havent used MS Product then how can you comment. Im not being a smart arse im just sick of the /. mentality of attacking ANY disssenting opionion with a personal insult regarding someones skills - it pisses me off and i respond in kind.
          • PS - I read some of your other stuff and seems really interseting and you have some good points but dont you dare throw off at my skills whilst working in the protected world of academia and universities - in the real world its very very different - i admire your knowledge and skills but i pose this point - have you EVER used a MS Operating System - im assuming you have a CS degree and that would have been pretty much nothing but UNIX and then you went to Linux so if you havent used MS Product then how can you comment. Im not being a smart arse im just sick of the /. mentality of attacking ANY disssenting opionion with a personal insult regarding someones skills - it pisses me off and i respond in kind.

            Yes, I have used Windows since 3.0 and have had experience of 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, ME, NT4 and 2000 (and various DOSes inbetween) [This is both as a user and installer and through my own undergrad days and in my teaching IT courses I've seen the problematic nature of Windows in large scale networks, although it is getting much better since 2000]; a little experience with Mac OS 9, and a working knowledge of Solaris. I use 98 on a daily basis on hardware control machines.

            I don't have a single IT qualification, I am all self-taught (through reading up on systems, discussion with professional admins, a couple of years of experience running our group's systems and now training up a replacement for when I leave; teaching is a great way of learning yourself ;0).

            I hadn't used unix at all until 4 years ago and had had far more experience of RISC OS, a very 'user friendly' environment, far more so than Windows when I was using it but there's a difference between easiness and capability. If you've ever used RISC OS you'll know the stark difference between a RISC OS and Linux desktop but at the end of day you can still click on a button, write your letter/memo/presentation, draw a diagram, scan a picture and print it out about as well on one system as on another, especially in an office environment as it's people like me that make sure you can.

            I don't find Linux hard to use. When people here have been taught how to use it they don't find it overly hard (stuff like KDE2 really helps though). There's nothing I want to do that Linux can't do for me, but I happily admit this is not true for many people. But in a corporate environment? The machines I role out as well as being workstations have to handle the more corporate things such as WP, email, web browsing, CAD, address books, scanning, printing etc and with X terminals it's a piece of piss to 'roll it out' (we've since moved to local installs with networked applications but again we only have to update one machine to update the whole network immediately). Moving from Windows to Linux will obviously be a big outlay, but so would the reverse, possibly why Linux uptake is more in currently unix-based networks rather than out-and-out replacement of MS technology, possibly depends on the timescale the management is looking at; a shortterm outlay for longterm benefits or shortterm savings and hope for the best (the age-old quandry).

            Hardware I have bought has worked out of the box, even a few years ago. I've had problems on other systems that had no influence over, I've also had problems getting Windows working on systems that Linux runs fine on and vice versa. The scale of difference between Windows and Linux is getting less all the time and if you don't like it, fair enough, but for many people it can and does work. From my experience of teaching undergraduates Windows is not a guarantee that you will be able to use a computer effectively, more often what people have used before is a biggest factor (here Windows tends to win hands down but I've had good success with DOS users moving to Linux).

            Still, I know some people that love Linux but now use OS X instead. It's not as nice a 'unix' environment, but the integration of desktop tools makes up for it for them. I don't personally recommend Linux for everyone, I appreciate its current limitations, but if I feel someone can make use of it I will recommend it and help them with installing it if necessary.

            Some of these people now use it because it's a good alternative to Windows which they have grown tired of (for 'religious' or technological reasons). Some use it because it offers something Windows doesn't (varies, all the free tools at hand on a CD tend to be a good reason, powerful networking is another) and one because Linux works on his PC but Windows is quite unstable (it plays his TV card, plays HOMIII, browses the web etc and that's enough for him). The group area dual-boots 2000 and SuSE and apart from PowerPoint and SigmaPlot (plotting package with no unix port) they stay pretty much in unix all the time and despite this being academia this does not guarantee computer literacy, believe me.

            It all depends on what you want to do and whether you're prepared to work at learning a more complex but more capable system or stick with what you know.

            I apologise if I offended you but you too seemed to be emitting 'X is crap, Y is brilliant' trollery ;0).

            • Its cool - i understand what you mean - a lot of the issue with rolling linux for me on a croporate is increaased staff requirements - we did a small scle rollout for 20 staff testing Redhat 7.1, KDE and K Office etc, the general user feeling was that it was really cool but the issues we had with domain connections (win2k Active directory), proxy and file shares, but the problem i found was it increased the support time my guys needed per call, these are skilled staff who work damn hard for me and they had no trouble understanding the OS it just took longer to do things but im prepared to accept that part of that may be unfamliarity with the OS.

              We simply found linux not up to our standards - were a global company and we require full interconnectedness at all times, linux cannot offer that with our existing backend infrastrucutre(not yet anyway).

              I dont want you to believe i dont like linux, i do actually, rather a lot, im simply frustrated with it in so many ways as its no going forward. Developers dont think about the end user and documentation is not existand, libraries ar the wrong version and software behaves in unpredictable ways, i understand the freedom of the GPL but as an end user i dont want the issues.

              I agree that Linux on UNIX environment is dead easy and if all of your apps and network run it then its dead easy - but you see corporates dont have the luxury - we use stuff like Exchange and SAP on global envronments and that means a change has to roll across them all.

              My point about Linux and i keep singing it is that it will win as the OS for everyman only when everyman can use it with ease, the constant anti MS evil empire stuff and religious zealoutry that leads to attituded of read the source code for doc is defeatis, MS wont stand still forever, they will take the best bits of open source and move ahead unless we as a community work together.

              I personally have never had a problem with a windows OS on a machine, sure sometimes they need a little fiddling but im prepared for that - and linux will work on most machines without to much work - Distros like Mandrake making it easier and for firewall and web serving i would not use anyother solution.

              I apologise if i was a little harsh - its just that im sick of the religious aspect (an attitude which Linus himself dislikes in many ways) and the way people attack me, like you my knowledge is hard won and learned through years of work and the common /. attitude that if you dont rave over Linux youre a mental defective or an MS employee/troll is insulting and defeatist.

              Eveyone has a point of view and if you disagree you point out why, you reply to me is excellent and points out some more good reasons - its a pleasure to talk to you.
    • "Best propritary software was the guy from Taiwan, selling a program that grabs all relevent Windows config files and translates them to the correct Linux equivs (Sendmail, Appache, SAMBA, etc.). He said his product was big in China. "

      I saw that last year. Let me tell you, if I worked in a shop that had NT4 servers laying around, I'd PAY for that. That piece of software costs less than the money I'd make back reselling all the dumb NT server licences, and I'd get a nice base to work with which is the SAME (on the outside) as the other machines. It makes testing a lot easier.

  • Apple, Industry Shift, and Brazil Nuts (Score:3, Interesting)

    by d.valued ( 150022 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @07:41PM (#2934806) Journal
    I don't know if anyone here recalls the Brazil Nut theory of Economics. In a nutshell (unintentional humor), it parallels the unusual and easily reproducible fact that in a can of mixed nuts, if you shake it long enough, the brail nuts (the largest ones) rise to the top. I've seen this phenomenon in piggy banks as well. In economics, what this means is that certain companies eventually will rise to the top of the corporate world.

    VA Linux^H^H^H^H^H Systems, IMHO, should've tried to duke it out a little more in the hardware market. Now it's a company basing itself on software and intellectual property (like, oh, Slashdot and other Andover.net aquisitions). Penguin is starting to feel the crunch of smaller margins in this commodity market. Oracle's probably taking a breather before Comdex, or maybe it's laying off the trade show circuit to save some $$ (after all, upholding a legally and ethically built monopoy takes a little work to hold together).

    One of the things to keep in mind about trade shows is that, oh, they are intended FOR THE TRADE. They are pitching their products and services to organizations that could potentially purchase them. So you won't see the Linux-based PDA's except as an item to be resold or maybe as a remote network monitoring tool (think a Sharp Zaurus with an 802.11b CF card).

    Something that slightly itches at me like an Asian Ladybug's bite.. Is Apple there? I know some people are belligerent over the BSD vs GNU/Linux thing, but right now Apple is the world's leading supplier of Unixish systems thanks to the miracle of OS X. (My next system is going to be an iMac2 with OS X.1 and PPC SuSE dual-boot.)

  • Pictures of the Event (Score:3, Informative)

    by advtech ( 176011 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @08:16PM (#2934962) Homepage
    The Edge Report [edgereport.com] has posted a series of pictures from the event. Every day until our 100+ pictures are exhausted, we will be posting a new set. Check out the first one at:

    http://www.edgereport.com/article.php?sid=123 [edgereport.com]
  • if you want a shot at winning a 'coveted' gold penguin, i suggest you sit in the front row of the Golden Penguin Bowl (that's right, take a Press seat). Mr. Petreley will select at least 1 (usually 2) volunteers per team, and he usually selects from the first row.

    that's how i got mine, yay!

    oh ya, this doesn't apply to dumbasses, at least know yer shit.

  • ASCI Purple sample requirements... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by crt ( 44106 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @08:31PM (#2935017)
    (from the 96 page requirement document.. btw - TiB = tibibyte - 2^40 bytes or so)...

    Example: For a 60 teraFLOP/s peak system, requirement 2.1.1.2 specifies that the system shall
    have at least 30 TiB of memory, 1.2 PB globally addressable user disk, 6.0 TB/s intra-cluster
    network aggregate link bandwidth, 3.0 TB/s intra-cluster networking bi-sectional bandwidth, 30
    GB/s system sustained productive disk I/O bandwidth and 75 Gb/s external networking.
  • The Edge Report [edgereport.com] has posted a new crop of pictures from the event. Here's a list of all three sets.

    Set One [edgereport.com]

    Set Two [edgereport.com]

    Set Three [edgereport.com]

    More sets to come after our photography from today and Friday is processed.
    --
  • ...Was that all the HP and Compaq machines were running windows.

    I also played in a game show near the compaq booth. It was acutally nothing more than a long advertisment. The funny thing was they were running windows with microsoft powerpoint on the big screen tv.

  • phonestreamer (Score:4, Informative)

    by abdulwahid ( 214915 ) on Thursday January 31, 2002 @09:43PM (#2935288) Homepage

    The newly combined Bayonne / PreViking teams will also be working on www.phonestreamer.com, built on top of GStreamer.

    Just to elaborate on this project a bit for those interested. The aim of the phonestreamer project is to provide an easy frame work on which to build telephony applications. The system works by having a series of modules linked together connect through sources and sinks. For example, a source might be a MP3 file pulled from a web site, it might then go through a series of modules that do various manipuplations that convert the audio stream to 8bit U-Law that can be played straight out on an ISDN line. The sink would then be an ISDN card or something similar.

    The phonestreamer project will provide sources and sinks for many different types of hardware starting off with those already supported in GNU Bayonne and PreViking. For example, Dialogic, NMS, Capi and eventually SIP and H323. If someone then wanted to create GUI telephone applications under Linux most of their work would already be done and they could concentrate their efforts more on the application and the GUI functionality and wouldn't need to worry about the low level telephony programming.

    There will also be source/sink modules for all sorts of audio conversion. Many of these have already been written for the GStreamer architecture anyway.

    Those visiting the show, don't forget to come and check out telephony under Linux by making free International calls at booth #13.

    • The system works by having a series of modules linked together connect through sources and sinks.

      So they're reinvented QuickTime, but only for audio used for telephony applications.

      Whoop.

      -pmb
      • So they're reinvented QuickTime, but only for audio used for telephony applications.

        Actually GStreamer [gstreamer.net] supports any media type but these guys are writing a telephony application, hence they are only using a subset of its features.

      • So they're reinvented QuickTime, but only for audio used for telephony applications

        You can see from the gstreamer download page [sourceforge.net] that there are many plugins for gstreamer and that it is not just limited to audio. Gstreamer is an application frame work which can be used for any application that requires streaming. This would of course typically be audio/video apps.

        Phonestreamer is built on top of the gstreamer architecture and provides a framework for building telephony applications. It does more than gstreamer because there are two major parts to telephony applications. The DSP functionality and the Call Control. The DSP functionality is where gstreamer comes in and the Call Control functionality is where phonestreamer comes in.

        • It actually sounds more like ffmpeg, to me. I mean it comes down to it take an input from a source in one format, and streams it out in another format, through a series of plugins. That pretty much sums up what ffmpeg does
  • Linux conferences are a big thing now. so are expos etc etc and LWN etc. But through all the coverage its the marketing and the muscle which gets the hypoe. have the developers, the faceless men who tiol through the nigh so that my mozilla dosnet crash or my Gnome is smooth or my kernel is secure just are forgotten.
    Okay Linux, Eric etc have fame. but by and large all these things have become corportate focused! Everybody has myopia when it comes to developers. This really has to change
  • The Edge Report [edgereport.com] has a new batch of pictures from LinuxWorld Expo in New York City. Set 4 [edgereport.com] - NuSphere, IBM, Caldera, Dice.com, Sony; Set 5 [edgereport.com] - Veritas, Sharp, Sun, O'Reilly, and Compaq's Game Show.

    The last series were: Set 1 [edgereport.com] - Walking in, CA, AMD, Red Hat; Set 2 [edgereport.com] - Ximian, IBM, Games, "The Tattoo Guy", MandrakeSoft; Set 3 [edgereport.com] - .orgs, Compaq, fsf, Sun.

    --
  • Here's The Edge Report [edgereport.com]'s last batch of pictures from LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in New York City. Set 6 [edgereport.com] - Veritas, Intel, hancom (they really like Commander Taco); Set 7 [edgereport.com] - AMD, Inferno, Linuxfund, Entertainment; Set 8 [edgereport.com] - Miscellaneous; Set 9 [edgereport.com] - Miscellaneous, Booth Babes, and New York City.

    Older sets include: Set 1 [edgereport.com] - Walking in, CA, AMD, Red Hat; Set 2 [edgereport.com] - Ximian, IBM, Games, "The Tattoo Guy", MandrakeSoft; Set 3 [edgereport.com] - .orgs, Compaq, fsf, Sun; Set 4 [edgereport.com] - NuSphere, IBM, Caldera, Dice.com, Sony; Set 5 [edgereport.com] - Veritas, Sharp, Sun, O'Reilly, and Compaq's Game Show.

    --
  • Here's The Edge Report [edgereport.com]'s last batch of pictures from LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in New York City. Set 6 [edgereport.com] - Veritas, Intel, hancom (they really like Commander Taco); Set 7 [edgereport.com] - AMD, Inferno, Linuxfund, Entertainment; Set 8 [edgereport.com] - Miscellaneous; Set 9 [edgereport.com] - Miscellaneous, Booth Babes, and New York City.

    Older sets include: Set 1 [edgereport.com] - Walking in, CA, AMD, Red Hat; Set 2 [edgereport.com] - Ximian, IBM, Games, "The Tattoo Guy", MandrakeSoft; Set 3 [edgereport.com] - .orgs, Compaq, fsf, Sun; Set 4 [edgereport.com] - NuSphere, IBM, Caldera, Dice.com, Sony; Set 5 [edgereport.com] - Veritas, Sharp, Sun, O'Reilly, and Compaq's Game Show.

    --

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