[svlug] Fedora or Ubuntu for novis

[Chris Miller]

Alan DuBoff wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Sep 2008, Don Marti wrote:
> 
>> Sure.  The early Linux scene could have had a lot
>> worse than the Windows 3.1 market to contend with.
> 
> True, but Win 3.11 came out sometime around '88/'89 timeframe, 
> it was the first version of Windows to have network drivers 
> included in the OS. Linux was several years later, and Linux was 
> not even a contender until '97/'98, IMO, after many folks had 
> migrated to NT. Remember, NT stood for "New Technology" which 
> Cutler was hired for. Linux was more of an alternative for NT in 
> the early days, since it was a server for the most part, and 
> setting up the desktop was still quite cumbersome.

Up until two years ago Linux on the desktop was cumbersome unless you
had a machine that was more or less hand-picked for Linux compatibility.

>> MSFT only lost its mojo when it started smoking
>> whatever makes you think DRM is a good idea, gave
>> up on users and decided to empower the IT Department
>> and the Media Cartel instead.
> 
>> A lot of the companies that now sell Linux are much more evil.
> 
> This is true, IMO, also. When we say companies, those are the 
> same corps I was referring to, where they try to take possesion 
> of the sources for their own good.

You're missing the point of Open-Source.  It's not about controlling the
source and who gets to use it - it's about /not/ controlling the source
and who gets to use it.

>> The main problem with getting companies to make code Free is 
>> _not_ managers acting in the interests of their shareholders 
>> or in their own interest. The main problem is just inertia. 
>> If the policy at a company has been "never release source 
>> code" you have to do something to make it happen the first 
>> time, and you can't justify putting in the time to do it 
>> unless you can say that you have to.
> 
> I agree with you. In fact, as an example, Sun did encourage LSI 
> to release a driver under open source recently, it was the first 
> time for LSI to do that. It is my hopes they will continue and 
> release more open source. It is difficult for companies to do 
> this, it is like pulling teeth in some cases. Oddly, it is 
> sometimes not so much that they don't want to release the 
> source, in many cases they can't because they have used 
> proprietarty 3rd party libraries and/or other code that prevent 
> them from doing so...(i.e., dev libs, configurators, other UI 
> components, etc...).

The best one is that Adobe is getting requests from special effects
studios for a Linux port of Photoshop.  Apparently it's cheaper to run
Linux than it is OS X or Windows.

> To make it worse, most large companies have legal staff to 
> obfuscate things with their own view of what they believe to be 
> right/wrong.

Lawyers aren't going away.  I wouldn't suggest even starting that
struggle, it will only end badly.

>> And I want a pony.  If you're big enough to make lots of 
>> devices cheaply, you're big enough to be an attractive lawsuit 
>> target.
> 
> True, but look how embedded linux is tossing the industry on 
> it's ear! This is the one area that has the most potential to 

Even embedded Unix.  iPhone is using the same Darwin that OS X uses.
And that attracted a swarm of software.  It's not that hard to port OS X
apps to Linux through GNUStep!

> attract many, many vendors. The carrot of licensing is a big 
> issue, and there is a lot of $$$s at stake for closed 
> solutions...some of them scrambling to come up with open source 
> and/or linux specific solutions, they realize they can't avoid 
> it. But it's still not clear if their intentions are good.

Will they ever be?  They want to make money.  That will never change.
How can you give them a sufficiently monetized business model using an
Open-Source platform?

You can't really exclude their right to conduct business the way they
want to.  You can make it more lucrative to do it the Open-Source way,
though.

>> Google will change a license if a high-profile blogger
>> mentions it.
> 
> Seems like an unusual way to determine licensing, and I'm sure 
> that was not Google's intention for it to work like that. But I 
> have to wonder why they alienated the MPL recently, Mozilla was 
> one of the most instrumental pieces of software for most all 
> open source systems. This is why I mentioned my concerns with 
> Google. They have done some great stuff for the open source 
> community, no question, but they also have the power to 
> influence some things that happen, alienating MPL is an example. 
> They also alienate other licenses.
> 
> I'm anxious to see how they can help the community have an 
> service provider that we can connect our Androids up with, and 

First we need a phone...

> what they might have to do and/or sacrifice to allow that. Most 
> of the cell phone companies are not so warm to the idea of 
> allowing you access to the data. I see involvement in LiMO from 
> companies like Motorola and Nokia to name a couple. Sometimes it 
> seems to me that these companies are just running in fear, and 
> it's not clear what their real intention is in being involved in 
> Linux, other than they don't want to miss out. That is a start, 
> but do they really want to develop open source?

They want to sell contracts.  If open-source becomes a better means to
that end, then they will come in relatively quickly.  Until you can find
a way to demonstrate that Andriod is a better way to make their phones
more attractive to customers, then they will not budge.