Linux Advocate Suggests Using More Closed-Source Software (techrepublic.com) 268
An anonymous reader writes: Open Source advocate Jack Wallen is a writer for Linux.com and Tech Republic. He predicts that both Windows and OS X will be Open Source within 5 years, writing that "neither Microsoft nor Apple make serious money from operating systems any longer" (with both companies giving away major OS upgrades), but argues that smaller software companies still see close-sourced code as a profit center. So yesterday Wallen wrote a surprising column urging Linux fans to begin considering closed-source software.
"That doesn't mean, in any way, you are giving up on the idea of freedom. What it means is that the best tool for the job is the one you should be using...be that open, closed, or somewhere in between. Should you close your mind to close sourced tools, you could miss out on some seriously amazing applications. On top of that (and this is something I've harped on for decades), the more you use closed source applications on open source environments, the more will be made available."
I'd be curious to hear how many Slashdot readers agree with Mr. Wallen...
"That doesn't mean, in any way, you are giving up on the idea of freedom. What it means is that the best tool for the job is the one you should be using...be that open, closed, or somewhere in between. Should you close your mind to close sourced tools, you could miss out on some seriously amazing applications. On top of that (and this is something I've harped on for decades), the more you use closed source applications on open source environments, the more will be made available."
I'd be curious to hear how many Slashdot readers agree with Mr. Wallen...
free as in libre not as in beer (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not giving up the idea of freedom, by giving up freedom.
yeah, i don't think that word means what you think it means.
Re:free as in libre not as in beer (Score:5, Insightful)
For closed source software to be the best tool for the job, at least one of the following must be true:
1. The best available open source software doesn't do what I need and can't be readily made to do what I need.
2. The closed source software has sufficient APIs to cleanly integrate in to my environment and does a substantially better job than the best available open source software.
3. I just want a throwaway: something cheap that does the job I need done now without requiring any effort on my part. If I throw it away next year, no big deal.
Anyway, those still fighting the closed source/open source divide have missed the boat. The modern threat to open source software is software as a service. When you don't have possession of the object code either and can't even choose to stay with the version you liked, you well and truly have no freedom.
Re:free as in libre not as in beer (Score:5, Insightful)
4. It should work, and not annoy me to figure out why and how it is broken.
For any competent user that is able to use a debugger the ability to actually figure out what is broken, and save significant amount of time doing so, is something that doesn't work for closed source software. Close source embraces a philosophy that any outsider is not competent and the product is pure magic. The fact that no public bugtrackers exists for close source software magnifies the root cause.
Re:free as in libre not as in beer (Score:5, Insightful)
Users can't use debuggers, whether they are competent or not. Only programmers can. Sure, programmers also have software that they use. So then the claim should be any competent programmer that is able to use a debugger... But even then it's wrong. I'm a professional programmer who uses a debugger every day. But I wouldn't dream of wasting my time debugging other people's software that's broken. Throw it away and buy something that isn't broken. It will cost me far less, because my time isn't worthless.
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For indie closed source apps, I find the developers to be very responsive to bugs and requests. So the difference then seems to be small scale developers vs big developers. Far more so than closed or open.
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That would actually be the AGPLv3.
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If you regret purchasing them, why keep using them? Clearly you actually still prefer them to the open source alternatives.
Personally I try to steer clear of closed source for core infrastructure stuff - If I don't own my OS, I don't really own my computer, and the dominant closed source OSes are all pretty clear about the fact that I don't own the OS.
For "mission critical" stuff, I insist on open formats. I'll happily use closed source if it's the best tool for the job, and in many cases it's substantial
Open source Windows in 5 years? (Score:5, Funny)
I'll believe that when me shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet.
Re:Open source Windows in 5 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft and Apple won't open source their operating systems. They rely on DRM and/or spying to make money, and an open source version without that stuff would undermine their profits.
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People still use Google's spyware version of Android, rather than the open source version.
But I agree that neither Microsoft nor Apple will open source their OS. There's no benefit to them from doing so. Apple in particular uses Mac OS as a feature to sell their hardware. Letting people use OSX or iOS on any hardware would be completely completely negative for them.
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The reality is there is room for both open source software and closed source software in the market. For overall socio-economic cost efficiency as a whole, the core software should be free open source software, the software the majority of people, corporations and governments use on a day to day basis, this managed by a consortium of governments and universities, with inputs from the rest of society, individuals and companies. It just makes sound economic sense to do it this way as it provides by far the m
Re: Open source Windows in 5 years? (Score:2)
Let's see? You can run Linux on Azure, vew the source code of c# and .net, make Android software and run the emulator under visual studio, run the full non crippled version of studio for free, run visual studio code and visual studio online natively on Linux, run MS office on Android, run Ubuntu natively on Windows 10 anniversary edition, etc.
MS is definitely quite different than when Bill Gates was at the helm. Yes, prepare for purple shit I believe MS is heading that direction to attract more app develope
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I would have said the same thing 5 years ago if someone told me at the time that SQL Server might be on its way to Linux.
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I'll believe that when me shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet.
My shit turns purple whenever I drink fresh beet juice! A nice magenta color. Colors the whole bowl, too. First time it happened I thought I was gonna die, until I woke the rest of the way up and thought about it more carefully. Carrot juice produces a nice light orange color that sticks to the paper. The cheap juicers produce less color than the good "slow masticating" types, which crush the cell walls and release more goodies.
I understand the Japanese have various products to add fresh scent.
I'm quite sur
Parts of OS X are already open source (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mac OS X kernel and many other system components are already open source and available on Apple's developer site. This has been the case for years.
Similarly, Microsoft has started to open source .NET, ASP.NET and related tech as well as their plan to bring SQL Server to Linux. I think at this point a mix of closed and open source is already happening. Even in the Linux world, some people run Oracle or IBM software that is commercial on linux. This isn't a new thing.
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And yet the open darwin project shutdown entirely because Apple made it impossible to keep an open version of the kernel around wasting developer hours and generally disrespecting the developers involved.
As a result everyone abandoned the project and Apple was happy about it. Apple OS X is not open source and doesn't support it.
Re:Parts of OS X are already open source (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not wrong, but I think open source developers find ways of making code difficult to use as well. For example, the GNOME project seems to hate non Linux operating systems. Many tools are pushing systemd or wayland integration now.
One can argue that since it's open you can re-implement systemd or write a wayland compositor yourself but this is significant work and it's also a moving target. Just because something is open, doesn't mean it's useful.
We all forget that sometimes.
Fall down and hope to miss the ground (Score:3, Insightful)
He's wrong on all counts.
- Apple will not be open-sourcing their OS modifications to BSD
- Microsoft will not open-sourcing their OS
- NEITHER OF THOSE POINTS Is relevant to software applications available for LInux
(In other words even if both Apple and Microsoft open-sourced their OSs that has
nothing to do with application availability under Linux)
Finally regardless of all the above, FOSS supporters aren't here to "get more apps".
We want freedom to enjoy our apps as per the freedoms of open source software.
Sure, we COULD have MOARE apps. If they're closed-source or blobs we don't
want them.
Ehud
Tucson AZ
It's hot here, but not as hot as the hell that those who want to adopt closed-source
software on Linux will burn in.
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I can't imagine why. VMWare on Linux is nowhere near as effective as KVM. The only reason to use VMWare on Linux is compatibility of guest images.
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"The only reason to use VMWare on Linux is compatibility of guest images"
The only reason to use VMWare is ignoramus management mandating so.
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It's hot here, but not as hot as the hell that those who want to adopt closed-source
software on Linux will burn in.
This is a religion for you............ I think you need to step away and get a glimpse of reality for a while.
Hard to make games, movies, and tax software free (Score:5, Interesting)
We want freedom to enjoy our apps as per the freedoms of open source software.
Sure, we COULD have MOARE apps. If they're closed-source or blobs we don't
want them.
Free software is distinguished by the end user having the right and ability to make and share improvement to the software. It works well for libraries and for applications used by businesses, which can afford to hire someone to improve the software and contribute improvements back upstream. But there still exist several categories of software for which a viable free software business model has not yet been demonstrated [pineight.com]. How would high-production-value video games, software for playing rented (as opposed to purchased) movies, and annual updates to tax return preparation software to reflect amended tax codes be developed under a free software model?
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I'm still waiting for an open source XML editor that's as good as oXygenXML.
(Or, for that matter, an open source equivalent to Visio. At least I don't need that any longer, so I'm not tied to Windows any more.)
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You may think you're speaking for others, but I'm equally sure that you're speaking only for yourself.
Nah, screw that (Score:3, Insightful)
I want more open source stuff, not more free stuff. I don't want more closed source applications on Linux, I want more open ones. Linux moves fast, and any closed source software is a pain in the ass.
There's also that free as in beer but closed source is pretty much synonymous with "we track your every move", because they've got to pay the bills somehow.
Hell, Windows 10 costs money, and it has bloody ads in the start menu. Screw that.
This is not a new argument (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Use the best tool for the job..." Now remember, we wouldn't have Git if it were't for some stubborn activist
This is the open source walled garden philosophy. As long as we make a major stink about any non-free software and chase them away to keep the sanctity of the garden, sooner or later an open source alternative will appear. If Photoshop came to Office it'd be bad for GIMP. If MS Office came to Linux it'd be bad for LibreOffice. Competition is bad. Choice is bad. If the open source alternatives are shit then you either eat shit or create a better open source solution. And those are the only two options.
The on
Sun Microsystems (Score:3)
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I think Sun's move to open source was more of a desperate ploy to become relevant again through the mistaken belief that people would flock to their software if it were free (when, of course, nobody actually wanted their software at all).
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Posted from my Android phone.
Microsoft doesn't make much money on OS? Eh? (Score:2)
Seriously?
https://www.microsoft.com/inve... [microsoft.com]
One sentence says it all.. (Score:2)
>> What it means is that the best tool for the job is the one you should be using..
I couldn't agree more.
Re:One sentence says it all.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd pick a tool that I can debug over one that i cannot, even if the latter seems superior
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Then it seems that a tool you can debug is the right tool for the job.
it was never about money (Score:5, Insightful)
What he seems to be missing entirely is that free software isn't about the money, it's about freedom. I admit I've used closed software when it was convenient, even one of the programs he listed, Insync. It seemed like it was a perfect solution but after a while I ran into performance issues and without being able to debug the process to identify the cause, I could only report the bug as best I could which resulted in a "can't reproduce, ticket closed" situation. So now, I have software that works kinda but I cannot fix or even say what needs to be fixed. This is the true cost of closed-source software.
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Hundreds of Millions of computer users around the world can barely or not at all afford to pay $100 for a piece of software.
How much did they pay for the hardware on which to run it?
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How much did they pay for the hardware on which to run it?
Not necessarily much. You can buy a nice refurbished PC for $100, and it will be perfectly sufficient for people who don't play modern games or do heavy graphics work - that means most people. Then you could spend another $100 on the operating system, $100 on the office suite, $100 on this and $100 on that... or just grab some Free software.
Support business model doesn't always work (Score:2)
It would be nice if all software was open source, but i don't think the business model always works. I think we have to recognise that software which is open source (free libre) quickly becomes available via other sources (legally), even if the original source charges for it.
For big organisations like Red Hat, despite the software being repackaged and made available for free as in beer, they make a lot of money on the support contracts for enterprise companies. So it works well for them.
For smaller companie
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"It would be nice if all software was open source, but i don't think the business model always works."
Of course the business model of selling licenses to use software that doesn't need licenses to be used doesn't always work.
Maybe it is the business model which is the problem. I for one much better prefer a business model that pays for writing the damn software, for instance.
"switch to Windows, that's where the apps are"... (Score:2, Insightful)
I have seen this argument since the dawn of Linux: Drop what you are doing, join the rest of the world and run Novell/MS-DOS/Windows, because that is what the "cool kids" are using, and where the applications are.
How about no? Desktop Linux is getting to a point where it is viable for day to day work tasks, and gaming is becoming not just a wish, but actually something coming around (slowly but surely). Going back to having to use Windows or a closed source OS will set Linux back by years. The fact that
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Desktop Linux is getting to a point where it is viable for day to day work tasks, and gaming is becoming not just a wish, but actually something coming around (slowly but surely).
Sorry but this is BS. I've used Linux since 1995 and the only time it was ever remotely viable as a desktop was during the really bad days of Windows XP. Every Linux DE looks dated, is buggy as fuck, has really horrible config settings, missing options people have had for decades........ the list goes on. The closest to a viable desktop I found was MATE but even that had massive issues.
I love Linux and FreeBSD but they will never be main stream desktops for the sole reason that the people who are developing
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Ok, fine, I switched to Ubuntu MATE and within 5 minutes of adding the nVidia PPA for the latest drivers the system crashed and wouldn't boot anymore due to kernel/nvidia driver issues.
Why did you need to use a PPA for that? The drivers are already in Ubuntu's repos and while I can't say about the Mate-version at least in the Unity-version you just clicky-clicky a few times through the settings-app's "Additional drivers" or whatever its name was to download and turn them on.
OLD drivers are in Ubuntu. The best you'll get out of Ubuntu is 361, you need at least 364.19 for Vulcan and nVidia is already pushing 367. Ubuntu won't see those drivers for another 2 years at best without using a PPA.
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I recently installed FreeBSD on an old Thinkpad laptop that used to run XP. I decided to give the Enlightenment window manager a try. I Click on the terminal button which causes the whole thing to freeze. I switch to another console and see Enlightenment has the cpu pegged at 100%. Oh and Chrome is also buggy as hell and segfaults every other page. Oh well that was a few hours wasted. Back to Windows 7 then.
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It is so god damned hard to get nVidia drivers let alone NEW drivers that its fucking pointless to try.
Oh, yeah, it sure is... [nvidia.com]
--Nvidia/Linux desktop user.
Secure Boot; non-HP inkjets (Score:2)
I've downloaded and burned Ubuntu cds for two people who don't know how to do that themselves not too long ago, because they for some reason decided to try Linux and asked me how to do it. Both installed Ubuntu without anyone present to hold their hands
How long ago was this? Were the PCs made before the release of Windows 8 in late 2012, when Microsoft started requiring manufacturers of new PCs and desktop PC motherboards to default to Secure Boot with Microsoft's keys?
and got their email and printers to work without needing to ask me more than two or three simple questions over the phone.
True, setting up a mail user agent is similar no matter the OS. Some printers and scanners do work out of the box, but those are more hit-or-miss, especially if the printer isn't PostScript and/or the manufacturer isn't as cooperative as HP.
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I've downloaded and burned Ubuntu cds for two people who don't know how to do that themselves not too long ago, because they for some reason decided to try Linux and asked me how to do it. Both installed Ubuntu without anyone present to hold their hands
How long ago was this? Were the PCs made before the release of Windows 8 in late 2012, when Microsoft started requiring manufacturers of new PCs and desktop PC motherboards to default to Secure Boot with Microsoft's keys?
And aftrwards as well! I've had no problem getting Linux installed and ruuning on recent computers. Just have to enable "legacy boot". Most recent was a Acer Touch screen laptop that had W8.1 on it.
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"How long ago was this? Were the PCs made before the release of Windows 8 in late 2012, when Microsoft started requiring manufacturers of new PCs and desktop PC motherboards to default to Secure Boot with Microsoft's keys?"
Well, my home PC dates back to 2009 and it runs Linux.
My corporate-provided laptop dates back to a month ago and it runs Linux.
Your point is?
"Some printers and scanners do work out of the box, but those are more hit-or-miss"
Yes. Trying to print out of a lawn mower is also a hit-or-miss.
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Basically, it took me about 20 minutes for the install, 15 minutes for customization, about one hour for the update and five hours for my personal data recovery with the update and the recovery running together. ...
6+ hours to do a desktop installation and restore? You keeping Wikipedia on that thing?
I can take a system from "tabula rasa" to "completely ready to use" in about 2 hours. And I'm probably not anything special in that regard.
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unless you want to share printers and files in network
Your Linux box can share files through FTP, NFS, CIFS (via Samba), BitTorrent, or any of several other free services. If you're willing to run proprietary apps on a free OS, you can also use Dropbox. As for printers, a Mac or Linux box running CUPS can share them with any other Mac or Linux box running CUPS.
unless you want to open a docx file someone sent you
LibreOffice Writer has opened every .docx I've thrown at it, but I admit that my work flows have not included mailing a file back and forth several round trips for revisions.
unless you want to fill PDF forms
In this comment [slashdot.org], another user
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The same can be said of any OS...
Windows often comes preconfigured on hardware with a set of drivers and customisations, if you try to install it yourself using generic rather than oem-supplied install media it can be a huge pain in the ass.
OSX is designed specifically for Apple hardware and works very well, but trying to install on a hackintosh can be difficult and unreliable.
Sounds like a fucking realtor... (Score:5, Insightful)
The market's up! It's a good time to buy/sell!
The market's down! It's a good time to buy/sell!
The market's crashing! It's a good time to buy/sell!
The market is so fucked you shouldn't buy or sell right now! It's a good time to buy/sell!
So this dumbshit is advocating closed source so we can lock ourselves into proprietary software, hoping that "someday" the owners of the proprietary shit MAY open source it. "Out of the goodness of their hearts."
Dude needs to stop huffing his compressed air cans... He's delusional.
Sounds nice on paper (Score:2)
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Of course, expensive non-redistributable commercial software can provide source code too (as mine does) and that can address some of the issues.
One Word (Score:2)
Mathematica.
Until somebody comes up with an open-source Mathematica clone (and manages to survive Wolfram's lawyers), the world will never be 100% open source. Mathematica is unique, and is decades ahead of its nearest equivalent.
Not a chance (Score:2)
There is just about 0 chance that either Apple or Microsoft will produce even mostly open source operating systems.
I think the concept is so stupid that I'm more likely to ignore anything else he says, other than to respond:
"Use the best tool for the job. There is value added if you can read, modify, and fix tools that are open source, as is the great value of not being required to pay for it. If there is a closed source tool that is free, there is value in that as well. And if there is an expensive clos
Doubtful.. (Score:2)
Windows and OS X will be Open Source within 5 years
It will not happen. First, there really isn't any significant upside for Microsoft and Apple. It's not going to win over folks not already on board their platform. If Apple suddenly wanted more 'hackintosh' footprint, this could help, but they don't want that, they want to control the entire experience. Even given their limited support of their hardware, they still manage to do things like release an update that screws up a currently-shipping product (iPad Pro). They see the open ecosystem as a huge hea
Ideological purity is a powerful drug (Score:2)
Ideological purity is a powerful drug, and like all drugs you can overdose on it. The hard core addicts in either camp won't listen. I've been using free/open source on Windows for years. Why? Because I like the OS for some things, and the applications for others. I don't know where I fit on the ideological purity spectrum. It's hard to self-analyze and be objective. That said, I don't think I'm much of a zealot in either direction.
Anyway, it's just a bit interesting to see somebody who identifies wit
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Being open adds value, being proprietary removes value.
Wether those values matter to you is down to individual needs. Other values which are unrelated to being open or proprietary may be more important to you.
All else being equal, open is better.
Best tool for the job (Score:2)
Best tool for the job in the long term is the one you understand, trust and maintainer yourself if need be.
In the short term there may be closed source tools that are better, but be aware you are you are giving some control of you operations to a third party, both financial and security. Your are choosing to give up your independence. Dark side, leads to, it does.
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Best tool for the job in the long term is the one you understand, trust and maintainer yourself if need be.
That's a factor only if you realistically will ever have the time, expertise, and willingness to do those things. If you can confidently predict up-front that you will never actually understand, trust, and maintain the software yourself anyway, then open-source-ness is a bit of a non-factor. Of course you might conceivably someday hire a contractor to do those things, or luck out and find someone who is doing them for free anyway, so it's still somewhat relevant -- but usually it's not the deciding factor
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The deciding factor is whether or not the software will let you accomplish your goals
In what timeframe ?
Perhaps i should have bolded long term, because sometimes the best tool for the job in the short term is not the best in the long term.
Things too sensible to happen (Score:3)
1. Port Windows and Mac OS X to run on top of a Linux kernel (and merging the best bits of each) so that all have a shared foundation.
2. Allowing apps for each platform (and you may as well do likewise with Android etc.) to send objects via simple IPC and shared memory (data structures like those you see in clojure, are a good idea here) basically an improvement upon the CLR idea MS has.
3. Open sourcing much of those foundations.
4. Putting ARM cores like those on smartphones onto the GPU, and running most of the GUI on the GPU. This is a throwback to X11, but based around modern GPUs with the pcie backplane being the network.
5. Having the GUI frontend be a separate small OS running on said ARM cores, which both runs the GUI, sound and such, and brings up the main processors, which are then freed up for the general purpose processing tasks they are best at.
6. Moving away from binary code to higher level code (android runtime sort of illustrates this) which can be comipiled either AOT or JIT when loaded onto a system.
7. Using dynamic compilation for both performance and security purposes (this entail rethinking the syscall interface, so that a process can only access the syscalls it needs: something akin to capability security, which can be achieved via the AOT and JIT compilation so that a process is limited in what syscalls it can make: do not allow processes to create executable binary code without explicit permission, and so on. This would make reverse engineering much easier, which is why things probably aren't heading this way, but Free Software would not suffer in the same way. (The thesis on the Synthesis OS, from quite a few years back, is worth a quick perusal.)
8. Do likewise as the coprocessed GUI for sound, and synchronosed sound and graphics, and IO (rather than taxing the main processors with the overhead of USB, having a small ARM core or similar doing this would get us back some of the advantages Firewire traditionally had over USB.
The thing is, small ARM cores (or similar) as we find in mobile phones, raspberry pis and so on, can be cheaply added to e.g. a GPU, and since main processors (intel and amd) are hitting a wall with single core performance, it is sensible to start offloading to coprocessors as we had to do in the old days. But these days a small ARM core together with a specialised processor would be the way to go. Making it ubiquitous would lead to economies of scale (provided patent nightmares don't rear their ugly head as they tend to).
Having done the above, OS architecture would need a bit of chanigng.
The frontier has moved (Score:2)
The free software movement was founded as a consumer protection movement. It was about having control over your machine. With free software, you have user rights and user freedoms to do what you want with what you buy.
Open Source ensures that you can review the code at any time to ensure it does what you want.
But that has completely changed. Everyone runs open source now, but we have even less control, because the computing doesn't even happen on user owned hardware anymore. It doesn't matter if Facebook or
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I've hit that wall on many occasions.
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There's also the different practices - tiny patch today for a single problem versus waiting up to three months for a huge patch for a long list of problems. Open source developers are willing and able to take responsibility for their own work instead of having to wait weeks to get it signed off.
Completely agree (Score:2)
Open source CGI meets closed source DRM (Score:2)
All the coolest movies you've watched had CGI done on open source.
Unless they're machinima, in which case all the CGI is done on closed source.
Besides, after the CGI is rendered, closed-source software called "DRM" is used to stream it to the end user's computer in order to prevent the user from teeing the video into an unencrypted file to keep the stream past the agreed rental period.
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Yes and no. (Score:2)
Free DAW software.... all of it sucks.
Pay DAW software.... $60 for Reaper and get something that utterly blows away ProTools and Logic Pro...
I gladly pay for software that is at a sane price and is exceptional. sadly big companies dont understand that.
Good riddance, desktop devs (Score:2)
If "using more closed source software" means the freedesktop.org guys and/or their target audience moves over to shiny new Mac Books and leaves the Linux ecosystem alone, I'm all for it.
Not just systemd, but a lot of the other work that has come out of the Linux-on-the-Desktop-is-right-around-the-corner community has destabilized lots of working server installations. Maybe once they can be convinced that the future of the App crowd is back in the closed source hosted or closed source ecosystem area (hint: i
Unfortunately, I used to use proprietary software (Score:2)
Unfortunately, I used to use proprietary software, and my experience during that time was a hideous mess of proprietary and undocumented file formats that couldn't be shared between applications, and caused trouble when an associate switched to a newer version of the software.
So I think it's a very poor suggestion.
Since I switched to Linux I've had very few problems with incompatible file types across different version of the software. This is far more desirable. Your mileage may vary, but please comput
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Unfortunately, I used to use proprietary software, and my experience during that time was a hideous mess of proprietary and undocumented file formats that couldn't be shared between applications, and caused trouble when an associate switched to a newer version of the software.
Don't forget feature bloat. Office eventually became a bloated pig of a program, with "features" thay 99.99999% of us would never use. But feature bloat was something that made life easier for reviewers, as they could rattle off the awesome new features that only reviewers and fanbois would brandish like a bludgeonn to claim superiority.
So I think it's a very poor suggestion.
Since I switched to Linux I've had very few problems with incompatible file types across different version of the software. This is far more desirable. Your mileage may vary, but please compute it over a period of years, not just at one point in time.
This - so much this. Back to the office comparisons, Microsoft can't even make it's own Office suite comptible with itself between Mac and PC - and with inherent incompatibi
The problem with closed software (Score:2)
The problem with closed software, regardless of how amazing they may be, is that they're closed and eventually whatever company is making the software is either going to abandon the project or go out of business. It happens even with big software houses like Microsoft and Apple, they have abandoned some very excellent software products they respectively bought and made in favor of either established in-house software or totally different architectures.
I've run into that problem time and again, the only thin
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he's right! (Score:2)
> the more you use closed source applications on open source
> environments, the more will be made available."
and the more you order burgers with turd sauce, the more shops will keep turd sauce in stock.
I use a lot of closed stuff on linux (Score:2)
It takes months to years from when a bug report is submitted to when a patch or new release fixes the problem.
The most annoying one was a bug that needed one extra byte in a header of information being sent to a printer. Without it no maps could be plotted at all, and no PDF output in that application either (plus clients wanted everything on paper back then). Seven months from when the problem was reported, including what byte to add, to when the patch was rel
I hate Windows as much as the next guy, (Score:2)
except for the astroturfers who will be posting followup comments to this and probably modding me down to troll status, but even I keep a machine running Windows to do CAD because the Linux CAD programs are pretty bad.
I look forward to the day I can escape Windows completely.
Why? (Score:2)
Why ditch what I like for something that will require a lot of work to get to the same place, or that may never get there due to different goals or philosophy?
Windows won't be open source (Score:3)
Just think about it. Does microsoft want a windows version, where things like the win10 installer can be removed easily?
They want to make money with their app store, to copy the apple business model. This needs a tight coupling of app store and operation system, because currently the system works fine with non-appstore programs.
Google can afford an open source android, as most people install the play store as very first thing on their custom rom. Because without appstore you're pretty much fucked when you want to run commercial apps (you may buy and install them, but their drm requires google or amazon appstore).
Microsoft cannot, as all programs already bring their own drm and their own updater programs. An appstore is convenient for programmers, but not required to achieve the things, which an appstore provides. And people are used to find software without store, on mobile platforms most people do not consider other sources, not even installing something as f-droid or the amazon store (which even has a daily offer of one paid app for free).
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If you want to start smoking, you should smoke a pipe. You'll look like a distinguished gentlemen and it smells a hell of a lot better.
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The Open Source folks are generally about it being a better development model. On a long enough timeline Open Source software will outperform proprietary software. It will become the best tool for the job.
Free Software advocates are more like what you describe. RMS has said on many occasions his goal is not technical superiority, but freedom (as he defines it). He screams bloody murder that proprietary software is morally and ethically wrong, but he's not really concerned if that retards its adoption.
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While I am not disputing the superiority of the dev model, the Linux kernel be a prime example, past that the time line you speak of has proven to be longer than fast paced industry is willing to slow themselves down for. Granted, if such models had been adapted to commercial software, we would likely not
Re:Dogma Alert! (Score:4, Insightful)
To be more accurate, you remember OSS software folks being combative, and the reason you remember that is because closed-source software people have fought us every step of the way. We don't have a choice but to be combative, because it's the only way to hold our ground.
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Most "closed-source software people" don't even know you are there. Of those that do, the vast majority don't care.
The reason you guys are scrappy, is because you feel like a tiny minority.
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If the open source community were about something other than advocating open source, it would need to renamed.
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"This thinking has set the Open Source world back for too long."
That's exactly why I can't have a corporate laptop running Ubuntu working for one of the biggest banks in the world on an internal OpenStack deployment, which I report about using LibreOffice.
Oh, wait!
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the more you use closed source applications on open source environments, the more will be made available.
Why would I, hypothetical FOSS advocate, want more closed-source applications?
Games.
Segregation of games and production (Score:2)
If games cannot be made free software, some people would prefer to keep the development and production environments and the games environment completely segregated. The former environments would run all free software, while the games environment would be a PlayStation 4 console.
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If games cannot be made free software, some people would prefer to keep the development and production environments and the games environment completely segregated. The former environments would run all free software, while the games environment would be a PlayStation 4 console.
That's the Tivo model. Sell the software so it only runs on hardware that you sell.
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Wikipedia's article about Plan 9 [wikipedia.org] claims that Alcatel-Lucent (formerly Bell Labs) has released the Plan 9 operating system under GPLv2 and Lucent Public License. Both are free software licenses, though FSF believes that the LPL's choice of law clause is problematic.
SuperTuxKart (Score:2)
Once you get a taste of libre software, there is simply no going back to the proprietary crap. Period. End of discussion.
To what extent do end users who have tried both SuperTuxKart and Mario Kart 8 prefer the former?
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Yet there abound examples ancient and contemporary of people voluntarily giving up some of their freedoms or allowing others to exercise extra power in order to solve a problem or gain some momentary advantage. Please explain how this can be so.
Also, you never seem to have heard of something called a "constitutional monarchy"...?
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the remaining use cases for proprietrary software are becoming increasingly scarce.
Is the video game industry's $81 billion per year [wikipedia.org] "scarce"?