Alan Cox Exits Intel, Linux Development 214
judgecorp writes "Linux kernel developer Alan Cox has left Intel and Linux development after slamming the Fedora 18 distribution. He made the announcement on Google+ and promised that he had not fallen out with Linus Torvalds, and would finish up all outstanding work."
Also at Live Mint, which calls Cox's resignation notice a "welcome change from the sterility, plain dishonesty of CEO departure statements."
Cox says in that statement that he's leaving "for a bit," and "I may be back at some point in the future - who knows."
Maybe it's really family reasons.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes a man needs to stop coding to take care of his family relationships..
Re:Maybe it's really family reasons.. (Score:5, Funny)
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No.
Re:Maybe it's really family reasons.. (Score:5, Insightful)
something people in our industry should do more
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Depends if that coding pays the family bills (Score:2)
If it does then stopping isn't really an option. Though I suspect Alan Cox has got a few pennies saved up by now so I hope he enjoys his time off but I suspect he'll get itchy fingers beforelong and be back in front of some kernel source - at least in an informal manner - before the year is out.
Re:Depends if that coding pays the family bills (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Depends if that coding pays the family bills (Score:5, Funny)
You mean the money he's shaved off haircuts?
Re:Depends if that coding pays the family bills (Score:4, Funny)
I hear it was a hatful.
Re:Maybe it's really family reasons.. (Score:5, Informative)
yes it is, it is written all over his g+ post:
I'm leaving the Linux world and Intel for a bit for family reasons. I'm aware that "family reasons" is usually management speak for "I think the boss is an asshole" but I'd like to assure everyone that while I frequently think Linus is an asshole (and therefore very good as kernel dictator) I am departing quite genuinely for family reasons
was the family reasons left out from TFA on purpose or what?
Re:Maybe it's really family reasons.. (Score:4, Interesting)
And this is why Alan Cox is a legend. I've dealt with him a few times and EVERY time I have he has been a pure joy to talk to.
He has a great way of telling things how they are and even takes the time to help relative newbies into improving their skills and contributions.
So, three cheers to Alan and I hope we see him back in the future.
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Sometimes a man needs to stop coding to take care of his family relationships..
Agreed, but he probably shouldn't go to the pub and announce he's going to hack his family.
Re:Maybe it's really family reasons.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The culture encourages it. You hear things like 'being there for the team', 'stepping up to the plate', 'putting in the extra 110% effort'. Then you have those who try to out macho each other with number of hours in a week (knew one guy who liked 110 hour weeks). Or those who actually dislike their family life and want to do as little as possible with it (funny making the problem worse). Then expect others around them to be doing the same thing. The old saying is true misery loves company.
Extra is ok once and awhile. But once it becomes every damn time you start to see the cracks of process that are wrong.
We keep making the same mistakes over and over as a group because we do not bother to learn from the 'old guys'.
If work is your life what happens when they lay you off/fire you/eliminate your position?
Re:Maybe it's really family reasons.. (Score:5, Funny)
'putting in the extra 110% effort'
Isn't 210% a tad unreasonable? 70% would be great, but probably unachievable. I'd aim for 60%.
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Typical work week is 40 hours a week. Extra 110% would put it at 84 hours a week.
If you take the 84 hours and work 7 days a week, that brings it down to 12 hour a day.
I'd say it isn't all that out of the ordinary when pushing a deadline to be asked to do that. Of course the point was once you start that , it gets asked of you more and more to the point it becomes the norm, and everything else suffers. If you let work consume your entire life, what happens when your work isn't required anymore?
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Effort != hours
If you put in 12 hour days, 7 days a week, you are not going to be contributing 110% more than someone who makes a full effort[*] for 40 hours a week.
Unless, of course, your job is to keep your seat warm.
[*] A full effort for 40 hours a week is also impossible in practice. Humans can't pay complete concentration to and give anything their all for 8 hours. If you pour all your effort into doing something for 15 minutes, and the limit is the human, not external factors, you are not going to
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Re:Maybe it's really family reasons.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In a recent PaulDotCom podcast about burnout in IT, Jack Daniels brought up a good point. We IT people love the 40-hour work week. It's why we never settle for just one.
There's a fairly serious problem within the general IT realm that has to do with burnout. A lot of professions (firefighters, air traffic control, medical field) have people watching out for those burning out and have ways to help them cope. Because we just deal with computers and sit at a desk most of the time, it's presumed that we have a cushy job and we're not really at risk. We also, as Jack mentions at about that same time, are often hit by a hero complex: only we can do this particular job right now. That might be arrogance--only we can do it--or it might be justification--it will take longer to show someone else how to do it than for me to just do it myself--but it still can stack up until something in our life breaks. That something might be our job when we can no longer do it right or we blow up at the wrong person, it might be our career when we come to hate the work in general, it might be our family or friends because we're not spending time with them, or it might be ourselves when our health suffers. Of course, if we do try to balance it, we face the wrath of our peers who become convinced that we can no longer cut it. Whether real or imaginary, that adds stress, too, and in general there are few mechanisms to catch someone pushing the edge.
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I wondered who the Jack Daniels corporate spokesperson was and why you didn't name him.
Then I wondered how many hours per week they work on average in the whiskey business, to be giving advice in this way.
After finishing reading your post, I began feeling sorry for the guy, wondering how many whiskey jokes he's the butt of.
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"I wish I spent more time at the office" ... said no one ever upon their death bed.
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Male porn stars.
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The interviews I've seen with various ones suggests that isn't true. A lot of them are jaded and burnt out as well.
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Re:Maybe it's really family reasons.. (Score:5, Insightful)
My job is much better but its still here, I just choose to ignore it and can get away with doing so. My manager just had a new kid (well his wife did) and get was back at work the next day and working his normal 12 hour day. A woman I work with had a baby and didn't even take a month off, she was back at work full time.
Disgusting if you ask me and I think a far bigger cause of our societal problems than anything else out there. If you can't enjoy life or be bothered to care for you family then what are you doing this for??
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Welcome to the Machine
I realized this about halfway through my career, after watching so many layoffs. I realized that the company could care less about it's employees and will "squeeze as much blood from a stone" as they can. Sometimes I wish I lived in Europe where a 2 week vacation is not considered a bad thing.
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Hmm.. Sounds like you're not too bad off then. My company couldn't care less about me.
Re:Maybe it's really family reasons.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometimes I wish I lived in Europe where a 2 week vacation is not considered a bad thing.
Two weeks? Four weeks in the summer, one around February and another at Autumn (and, depending on your job, you can either take the latter two then or combine them with your summer vacation). And the time between xmas and new year is pretty much dead business-wise, so at least at our company everyone "works at home" then (basically answering emails if needed, nothing else). I can't imagine having only two weeks, let alone less.
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Some times it is the person as well. I've been at some companies where one person is working like that, non stop all day every day with code checkins at midnight, even when there's not a deadline crisis looming, yet the person down the row in the same group will do a normal 9 to 5 job.
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He'd rather feed, house, and clothe his family, perhaps?
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What makes you think there isn't another way? Oh right, you were indoctrinated with that fear. Such pretty little sheep.
Bonus twat points for not even getting "sheeple" right.
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If your developer claims they are "putting in the extra 110% effort" I don't even want to know about the off by one errors in their code.
Re:"Extra is ok once AND awhile" (Score:4)
Pedantically speaking (and all grammar flames are an invitation to pedantry), your correction should be more contextual. The phrase "a while" is, indeed, two words when used in the noun form such as in the idiom which so efficiently ignited your pique. However, in adverb form, the spelling "awhile" has been in use for at least 8-1100 years (depending on source), so your 'correction' is unnecessarily broad.
Oh, and 3/5 of your post are also malformed sentence fragments.
*pushes glasses up on nose*
(And this is one of the ways I avoid developer burnout. ;) )
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After reading last night's article about his other G+ post, I was really thinking /ragequit.
After reading both of the posts, I was thinking 'midwinter blues'. Somebody drop a bottle of high-dose vitamin D on the fellow! Then again, perhaps he's headed for the beaches as we speak.
Re:Maybe it's really family reasons.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seasonal affective disorder is a serious problem at northern latitudes. Personally I've been much more productive and happy since I had my employer buy some full spectrum bulbs for the lights over my cube. It's probably the best investment they ever made since it was like $20 and they're already 3 years old, 3 winters of increased productivity has to worth over $100k.
Worthless? More like delicious. (Score:3)
A chocolate teapot would most likely be delicious, not worthless, unless made with a terrible chocolate. You are just trying to use something for which it wasn't designed, like trying to use
Family Reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
I always thought it was management speak for "the board realized I'm incompetent and demanded my resignation." Maybe it has a different interpretation in the UK?
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Depends on the size of the company maybe?
Re:Family Reasons (Score:5, Informative)
No in the UK 'family reasons' usually means 'The torrid affair I;ve been having with my secretary has been found out and plastered all over the red tops'. Hence 'I need to spend more time with my family'.
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Take a look at the man, that must be one rough secretary if you think Cox has been bonking her.
Re:Family Reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't think of anyone who has given more to the Linux community than Mr. Cox - not even Linus, actually - and his departure will be felt immediately, and profoundly.
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Re:Family Reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Cox has always been extremely helpful to those contacting him directly. He used to work for NTL (broadband supplier in the UK that gobbled up local smaller outfits until Virgin ate them up), after dealing with support drones you could get put through to the real admins, and I ended up with him once because I was using that strange thing called "leenoox" and the first genuine tech I got knew he was "into that stuff". Chatting away, he grilled me on databases once he learned I worked on AS/400s. A few years later after I jumped ship, he was very helpful with dell server drive controller driver woes.
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I think you've mistaken that for "health issues" ...
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Sometimes it actually does just mean "I would actually like to see my family a bit more often".
let him rest for a bit (Score:3, Insightful)
great work dude. Take a nap and come back soon
Google+ (Score:5, Funny)
Well, one thing's for sure: He was clearly hoping to avoid wide-spread notice of his move or he would have chosen a different venue.
Happens (Score:5, Insightful)
Within some interval, he'll likely be back doing something. It's hard to stay retired for someone that good.
Re:Happens (Score:5, Informative)
He'll be back. He's done this before.
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/03/08/20/1331205/linux-guru-alan-cox-takes-a-year-off [slashdot.org]
Re:Happens (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks. I was also thinking of the time he quit TTY development [slashdot.org]... thankless job that it is.
-l
Good decision Coxy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good decision Coxy (Score:5, Insightful)
I quit Linux development 10 years ago and I never looked back. You get your life back.
You never get your life back. The arrow of time doesn't allow that. You can get a new part of your life reminiscent of the old, but it won't ever be the same. What's gone is gone, so look forward.
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In this case, the idiom "you get your life back" has the meaning "there are many fewer demands on your time, thus freeing you up to live your life".
Nobody actually thought it meant reversing the arrow of time.
+5, huh? Sheesh.
He's done it before (Score:5, Informative)
Went off for a few years to learn Welsh and commune with sheep or something. But he came back then and he'll come back again. You can't keep a hacker (in the old sense of the word) like Cox away from a compiler for long!
Re:He's done it before (Score:5, Funny)
learn Welsh and "commune" with sheep or something.
I believe I've just learned a new euphamism.
Re:He's done it before (Score:5, Funny)
I think you meant "ewephemism".
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More like eeew-phemism!
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Actually it was to focus on getting an MBA...ohh wait, that's what you said.
Re:He's done it before (Score:5, Funny)
learn Welsh and commune with sheep
Isn't that redundant?
No, it's ruminant.
Re: He's done it before (Score:2)
My two corgis (corgwn) aprove.
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"He went off to do an MBA."
Commune with sheep - MBA, whats the difference?
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MBAs complain less when you send half their number to the butcher.
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Was she hot?
Priorities (Score:3, Funny)
He is finally going to stop wasting time on Linux and do something important like writing Abermud 6!
> kiss runesword
> get runesword
rampage!!!!111!!11ONE
That was quick (Score:5, Funny)
"Linus is an asshole" - Alan (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFG+: "I frequently think Linus is an asshole (and therefore very good as kernel dictator) ... I've had great fun working there."
The funny part is, Linus would probably chuckle and agree with that statement. You can tell these two have been working together for a long time because there isn't any malice in what he said. He's being absolutely authentic.
Re:"Linus is an asshole" - Alan (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. I've worked with some people who pretty much *had* to play the a**hole in their job-role at times. It was great when they were on your side, but if you ever had them come at you, heaven help you. That being said, if said person was in your face, it was usually for a reason. One might feel that the dictator was being an a**hole, but really they're just pushing you to get things done in a way that (they see) benefits the project/team as a whole.
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It may not be the most effective, but it is the most common by far. Shaming performance "meetings", stern "talking-to" and threats of poor performance reviews are the standard motivational tools. Bonuses, free pizza and beer on fridays, and the occasional "attaboy" are far and few between, from my experience.
As my father once said to me: "The highest praise you'll get in life usually is the absence of complaints."
Also, sometimes someone can play the "asshole" role (strict or no-nonsense project management
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No argument here, that is definitely the most common, despite the fact that I don't think it works.
Also, sometimes someone can play the "asshole" role (strict or no-nonsense project management)
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It makes no such assumption. The assumption is purely yours.
Re:"Linus is an asshole" - Alan (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah pretty sure he would.
In an interview with Linux Format (issue 163) he says about Git "I'manegotisticalbastard,andInameallmyprojectsaftermyself.First'Linux',now'Git'."
And about his role in the kernel - "realistically what I maintain these days is not the code but the workflow for people. And that sometimes gets my goat in a big way when somebody does something stupid in a big way, and then I get really excited, and by excited I mean I curse at people."
Definitely detecting a tone of humour (and truth) in those statements.
Cox would finish up all outstanding work. (Score:3, Funny)
So his so-so work will be left incomplete then?
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Technically you are correct, since he's Alan Friggin' Cox. All his work is outstanding.
That's a shame (Score:2)
I always liked his soothing voice on those stargazing programmes on the telly.
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That was the joke...
Goodbye Cruel World (Score:3)
Didn't Alan Cox quit once before after Linus flamed him on the mailing list?
https://lkml.org/lkml/2009/7/28/375 [lkml.org]
Why and when did he come back?
Good job Fedora devs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good job Fedora devs (Score:5, Funny)
For a worldwide known top kernel developer to switch to ubuntu and leave development, Fedora 18 must be obscenely bad.
That's like saying the Pacific is pretty moist.
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Or you could have read the article and avoided such a ridiculous conclusion. Note that the statement may be true, but it becomes a ridiculous conclusion because you arrived at it by accident, not logic.
Can we blame Unity for this? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Right. Because Ubuntu isn't one of the thousands of distributions that use the Linux kernel he helped develop ... oh wait.
Resignation is good (Score:3)
Better than the bus thing.
He can always try for a comeback.
He replied. "Dear slashdot" (Score:5, Informative)
There is a followup post:
I hope slashdot gets better at journalism, because right now they stink almost as bad as us, users. We are either busy building funny replies to trolls or trying to craft an informative post, they the editors keep on posting submitted trolls or historic redirect links filled with ads.
Since its so short, here is TCFP (the complete f' post) as well:
Wishing him and his familly all the best (Score:5, Interesting)
On the website of a business that Alan seems to run separately from his job at Intel, he had aldready mentionned familly illness. (http://www.ultima-models.co.uk/news.html). I guess this is the "familly reasons".
Alan Cox has already contributed enourmously to Linux but hopefully things will get better for him and his familly, and he'll be able to contribute even further :-)
Lately he has been trying to cover a bit the mess than Intel had done with the Poulsbo hardware (GMA500). As an owner of such a hardware, I'm very grateful for this. So I now wish him and his familly all the best in the hard time.
Alan Cox has class! (Score:2)
That's got to be the coolest avatar I've seen in a long, long time....
Linux Kernel Developer want ad? (Score:2, Funny)
1. Must work for free
2. Must be willing to write tons of extra code to insure you dont break others incorrect code in their applications
3. Must be willing to listen to your egotistical boss act like he doesn't understand rule 1.
Maybe I am not seeing the ocean from the beach here but why the fuck would anyone want to do that sort of work?
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it's all a matter of transparency and visibility.
Now, for sure, some people doesn't want to know all the gory details, and just need to have something working. But you can just as easily ignore the different linux contributors, and just use a working distro. The only drawback(and perhaps it is not even one), if this attitude is generalized, is that you r
Re:Great, more OSS fracturing (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod this offtopic if you like
You're not offtopic, you're just wrong. I hope you don't get moderated at all.
Every time some individual developer or group of developers gets their panties in a bunch about something they disagree with, they take their ball, go home, and start yet another fork of whatever-the-fuck software.
This is the part where you should have read what you've written, considered the meaning, and then terminated your entire comment. You have successfully included the very reason why OSS is superior to closed-source, and then gone on to come to precisely the wrong conclusion based on the available facts. The truth is that this sort of thing happens all the time in closed-source software, too, except nobody produces another fork. Someone gets upset with their life and quits and the project has to be reorganized. But if the reorganized project is doomed to fail in the closed-source world, then it will simply fail, whereas with open source or free software it may be forked and the fork may be successful. Moreover, this kind of protection works for us whether the problem is someone deciding they don't want to play marbles any more (the marbles aren't theirs, so they can't take them all and go home) or someone pissing in the middle of the marble court; we just take the marbles somewhere else, like we're seeing happen right now with MySQL and MariaDB.
It's not only hopelessly confusing to consumers (just TRY explaining the concept of "distros" to your grandma sometime),
Just use a car analogy. The car companies don't make all the parts that go into the cars, and all the car companies use parts from the same manufacturers.
but it make OSS feel like it's in a constant state of half-assed/never-finished/abandoned, as opposed to commercial software
Uh, how does that contrast with commercial software? It's true that there are commercial software packages which have seen continual development since their inception, but that's true of noncommercial, open source packages like Apache, the Linux kernel, and so on. And frankly, the average user is immune to the influences you describe. They're installing an Ubuntu LTS and they're simply not having the problems you're having because they don't have the needs you have. The battle for control of X.org didn't affect them at all. Most people have at least an nVidia 8xxx series or later, so they can use the current driver. Etc etc. You're attempting to describe a problem which doesn't exist. Have you seen how pissed off people are at Windows 8? Are you aware of how much used hardware is on the market because it's not supported by Windows 7, let alone 8?
I know this is not a popular sentiment on /. (to say the least). But, what the fuck. I've got some extra karma to burn.
If you lose karma it will be because you left a completely illogical comment, describing the strength of OSS as a weakness. The fact is that the closed-source world actually deals with this problem less well than the open source world.
Re:Great, more OSS fracturing (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the part where you should have read what you've written, considered the meaning, and then terminated your entire comment. You have successfully included the very reason why OSS is superior to closed-source, and then gone on to come to precisely the wrong conclusion based on the available facts.
Oh please, like constant fracturing and duplication of effort is always a benefit. Branching is one thing but full blown forks start with one issue and the rest of the code start drifting apart too leading to situations where you can have feature X in fork A and feature Y in fork B but not both and it has no connection to issue Z that caused the fork. Or your fork doesn't have the bugfix that other fork fixed and it doesn't even apply cleanly if you can cherry-pick it in git. Most forks don't fail because their solution shows itself to be so superior or inferior, but by who can attract the other developers and keep up the maintenance of everything else. It is far more a game of attrition than most would admit.
Analogy time, say you're 10 people who want to move a big rock. In the cathedral version, the leader supplies a rope and tell everyone to pull in the same direction and the rock moves. In the bazaar version they could all work out their differences and submit to a benevolent dictator in the same way, but 99% of the time they don't so they each fork off and try their own one and two-men solution except for the people who people who decided it wasn't their itch to scratch so they went home and those who didn't want to move the stone because they now assumed the stone was there and so absolutely nothing happens. Or for that matter, OSS developers are like herding cats so what would you rather have, a dog sleigh or a cat sleigh? Of course the downside of the cathedral model is that one person can lead everyone into the abyss.
Re:Great, more OSS fracturing (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh please, like constant fracturing and duplication of effort is always a benefit.
Oh please, like there isn't massive duplication of effort in the closed source world. In fact, there is substantially more, because there is so much less code sharing.
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Just use a car analogy. The car companies don't make all the parts that go into the cars, and all the car companies use parts from the same manufacturers.
For grandma, I would go with a grocery store. She can go to Safeway, or Albertsons. They will both sell 99% the same product. The store layouts might be a little different, but they both sell all the stuff you need to make dinner.
explaining the concept of distros to your grandma (Score:5, Interesting)
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Same guy for 22 years. Not "take ball go home" (Score:4, Interesting)
but it make OSS feel like it's in a constant state of half-assed/never-finished/abandoned, as opposed to commercial software--where a central leadership maintains control (and controls people's salaries and the IP).
There is a difference between proprietary and OSS there. OSS tends to not have less useful features like eye candy because people author the features they use. Proprietary software, on the other hand, is marketing driven, so it tends to have a pretty GUI for many features that don't actually work.
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but 99% of commercial software is ugly as sin.
Pretty much. Marketing dweebs somehow think that bells/whistles/idiot alerts sells software and that checkboxes mean something, even if the feature in the checkbox is implemented half-arsed, or even quarter-arsed and they hold sway over the specs and visual design of a commercial software package far too much than is deserved.
Let's just take a look at Windows malware detection packages. They are so full of bogus frou-frou to tell the user that it's "doing som
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Just don't burn your intellectual capacity or reading comprehension, both of which are clearly in short supply.
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>as opposed to commercial software--where a central leadership maintains control
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
--
BMO
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