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Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine)
We'll get grief for this but...here's the latest bizarre Dvorak piece in PC Magazine.
"I can tell you this much: Normal people do not like being associated
with fanatics and lunatics. Once Linux gets the image as the OS for the
criminally insane, it's a dead duck. Unless the community gets a handle on
this, grows up, and rebukes the extremists, the trash heap of history is
where this is all headed." The weirdest part is that he is talking
about the response to Maureen O'Gara.
(Log in to post comments)
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 13:18 UTC (Tue) by mk270 (guest, #4485) [Link] Please remember to link to the Google cache of these stories if available, rather than the story itself, as it was only written to generate advertising revenue from hits directed by sites such as yours.
Just a flamebait.. Posted May 17, 2005 13:34 UTC (Tue) by arasila (guest, #20891) [Link] ..and not a particularly clever one. A rather typical example of tabloid journalism designed to draw a predictable reaction by making outrageous claims and giving no argument and/or evidence to back them. The author just hopes to attract an angry reaction from some "fanatics" to underline/prove his point. In the second phase he will portray himself as a martyr who is being "unfairly" attacked by the "zealous Linux Community" for "telling the truth". Nothing is to be won by making a fight with a troll. Please just to ignore him.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 14:05 UTC (Tue) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] > Oh, brother. In the olden days, O'Gara would have been given a medal> for generating readership.
It's clear from this comment that the audience for the article is not computer users but other writers and publishers. I have no idea why this is in a computer magazine or web site. Move along nothing to see here.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 14:16 UTC (Tue) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] On the other hand, before he bashes Linux zealots, he does say:
First let's get a few things straight. All of O'Gara's assertions are
And, if you think that large parts of the world don't see Linux as associated with a bunch of fanatics, you're blind. There is a significant segment of the community that reacts to ANY criticism with screams of "FUD!" and behavior that looks a lot like paranoia. The current affair apparently [because, though widely reported, I have no direct knowledge, so I'm only saying "apparently"] goes beyond that to criminal behavior (threats and DOS attacks).
The OSS people I know seem to be grown-up software professionals who generally behave as such. I assume that the bizarre, pathological overreactors are a small, peripheral minority. But the reputation of
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 15:06 UTC (Tue) by donwaugaman (subscriber, #4214) [Link] I figured that the "we'll get grief for this" statement was more in anticipation of the relatively sane and non-fanatic membership of lwn groaning about yet another column by a known media troll like Dvorak.
I haven't read the guy seriously since he claimed that IBM was soon to be done in by a small hardware mod to the AT that got it running at 486 speeds, only later to find out that the only thing the mod changed was the Norton Utilities system speed calculation - the computer itself ran no faster.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 15:59 UTC (Tue) by thoffman (subscriber, #3063) [Link] My favorite Dvorak prediction was one from the late 80s, when he said that laser printers and fax machines could never be combined into an all-in-one unit because they used fundamentally different printing technologies.
He actually wrote it. I wish I had ripped out that article and saved it. He had a little bit of techno-babble explanation, but really it sounded like he overhead something on a trade show floor and just wrote it up...
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 18, 2005 12:49 UTC (Wed) by AAP (guest, #721) [Link] IIRC, Dvorak also predicted the death of the Wintel platform in favor of OS/2 running on the PowerPC. He's lost any credibility he ever had.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 15:52 UTC (Tue) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] I've said it before, I'll say it again. The lunatic fringe of the OSS movement is a problem. Anyone who launches DOS's or makes threats is doing nothing but harm. Do not feed the trolls, do not torture the trolls. Do not be a troll.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 16:20 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] >> I've said it before, I'll say it again. The lunatic fringe of the OSS movement is a problem.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, there is no "community". I am not held responsible for someone else's criminal behavior because I run the same operating system that they do, or run the same open source browser. Do you drive a car? Then I ask why it is you and your other car-driving fanatics are letting your community be taken over by drunk drivers and SUV nuts.
By the way, IBM just endorsed Firefox internally, I guess that is another 100k or so "nuts" to help us with our previously agreed upon DOS plans! You better let them know what their responsibilities are with regards to our schemes, as they are now part of them by definition.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 16:24 UTC (Tue) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] It is a harsh and depressing reality that public perception is all that matters.
I understand where you are coming from BTW.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 18:24 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] " I've said it before, I'll say it again, there is no "community". I am not held responsible for someone else's criminal behavior because I run the same operating system that they do, or run the same open source browser. "
Oh! there is certainly a community, but like in any other community the whole is not responsable for the misdeeds of individuals or parts of it...
Even nations have to care and live with their convicted parts... walls and penaltys IMO should only be justifiable as a precaution against bigger evils, and as a mean of re-education, not as revenge for blood thirsty emotions or delighted hiperselfish cruel egos!
Do not pay evil with evil... bla, bla ,bla...
But that is exactly what the very large majority of walls and penaltys do, when is largely known that criminal suffer too often other crimes inside the walls of protection, and when there is inside those walls that the Universitys of crime run... so so much for the re-education!... and WORST! because victims never encounter or very rarely encounter close enough compensation! In modern Western World, justice is replaced with vengence!
People treath faulty members as garbish and with cruelty, but most of those suffer from the same sickness, selfishness and cruelty that as droved the faulty ones, only they have it in a small scale or never encontered in their lives extreme tensions that drive them to do the worst.
All this to say that Evangelism, and lets say Zealotry is part of the community allright, but is only a minor problem for the world. And the responsability of the whole if its to keep danger at bay, it is much more to keep the possibilitys of compreension and education at its top, and not build walls and invent revengefull penaltys. The time of let me be in my confort zone happy with fun of my ways and my code, have unfortunately long gone and there must be a positive attitude towards the inflamated emotions that the whole movement has generated.
This is not a big deal compared with the outstanding security, operational(bugs), and user abuse faults, of the dominant IT paradigma, and the outstanding torrent of lies that it generates to keep that dominium.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 19:36 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] >> Oh! there is certainly a community, but like in any other community the whole is not responsable for the misdeeds of individuals or parts of it...Even nations have to care and live with their convicted parts...
How do you equate nation states, for which the preconditions for "membership" are known and well understood with clear obligations and rights, and some inferred (by who?) "community", for which I neither speak for no allow others to speak on my behalf? More non-sqeuiters.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 20:19 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] " How do you equate nation states, for which the preconditions for "membership" are known and well understood with clear obligations and rights, and some inferred (by who?) "community", "
Because nations were born out of communitys and those out of families... the beauty of it is that the Linux/OSS community has probabily more people *feeling proximity*(couldn't find a better expression), than many independent countrys, styll it dosent need much those obligations, rights and dutys, because it's based on the freedoom of information and not in the strict formalism of law. Law is still importante but information is clearly the next big paradigma has stated often, by many, many times before.
The information society, is Linux/OSS brand mark, and is "creeping" to ear opinions about denying participation to parts or keep information inside closed circles, when is clear, at least to me, that in *essence*, *all* misdeeds are derived from ignorance, even bloody crimes.
Perhaps Linux/OSS community is not quit ready or willing an information society.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 18, 2005 0:46 UTC (Wed) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link] The problem with your analogy is that Nation States have laws and means to enforce those laws. The FLOSS "community" is certainly a community but their is no need for a visa or green card. There is no way to "kick someone out" or otherwise enforce laws.
If Syscon has a problem with being DOS'd, then they should go after the culprits. There are plenty of laws in place, within the American Nation State to prosocute them. Whats that? They can't be bothered and would rather just accuse the "FLOSS" community of not "controlling" it's members?
Please please please do not fall for this decptive trick that the enemies of FOSS relentlessly trumpet. Do not accuse of the FLOSS community of having a lunatic fringe. Lunatics exist everywhere, just look at the people accusing FLOSS of having them!
Kind Regards
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 18, 2005 7:47 UTC (Wed) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] One big problem with nation states is that members HAVE NO CHOICE as to whether they want to belong or not.
Personally, I'm pissed off with all this talk about "rights", and all the obligations the politicos place on us ... well ... as they say, it's easy to spend someone else's money (or the opposite - if I VOTE for a local government that says they'll spend my money like water, why should a central government then tell my local bunch that they're not allowed to carry out the mandate I gave them?).
Rights come AFTER duties, not INSTEAD of, as it seems most people (certainly the vociferous crew) seem to think.
How many people want to be American but can't? (Count me out of the list!) We're the 10-12th state of Europe and I want to be a full-fledged European, but the politicos seem to want us to be "The 53rd State" :-(
And I find it amusing that it seems to be Americans who go on most about "Community" - living in a society that values money and freedom (exactly the scenario that DESTROYS community). Somewhere, somebody did a study and came up with the conclusion that "In real life you can have community, wealth and freedom - pick any two from the list, but you can't have all three".
Cheers,
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 23:26 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] I've said it before, I'll say it again, there is no "community".Yes, there is. There's a vaguely-bordered developer community, blurring into the community of testers, documenters, and so on, all of whom have tighter ties to their own projects than they have to the community as a whole; that blurs into the larger environment of users, some of whom consider themselves to be part of a community as well. Some of those communities include trolls. Even the developer community does, but those trolls are generally quieter and more classically crackpottish than the more strident trolls in the user spheres; and the distinction between a troll and an eccentric gets very hard to distinguish in places. There are certainly some prominent developers who are... unusual characters, but there's nothing wrong with that. Note that I've almost never heard the 'we must do this in order to bash Microsoft' or 'this sucks because feature X is missing but I won't write it' tropes from anyone in the developer community, even the eccentrics and trolls. It's just not why we write software. (What kind of a motivation for an act of creation is hatred or desire for vengeance anyway? I don't want to see the resulting software, that's for sure!)
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 18, 2005 0:02 UTC (Wed) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] I'm as paranoid as the next gut ~;-) perhaps a bit more so, so along those lines, do we have any proof that the over reaction set are not some new model astroturfers put out by the Free Software opposition, whoever "THEY" may be?
all the best,
drew
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 18, 2005 10:12 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Of course we do not have proof of anything. We don't have proof that the threats, insults, DOS, and general trolling is real; it might be just the product of some feverish imaginations, or just a lie to show Free Software in a bad light. That is why we should just ignore these stupid attacks.Remember when Larry McVoy accused the "open source community" of not dealing with "rotten apples"? They had supposedly performed evil and illegal cracking acts against his product; yet in the end it was an innocent telnet session to a remote server. Let's just forget about it until there is concrete proof.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 14:55 UTC (Tue) by jallman (guest, #19285) [Link] Dvorak may be controversial at times but he usually has a valid point to make and he makes a very good one toward the end of the article:
"Now these lunatics are issuing death threats?"
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 18:49 UTC (Tue) by rehdon (guest, #29998) [Link] I'm not going to read the article and feed the troll (LWN crew: please link to the Google cache page!), but that doesn't strike me as a particularly "valid" point anyway: every "community", even such a loose one as Linux', has a few nutters trying to do their worst, so what? What about the sanity of the other 99% who just were offended by MOG's unethical trolling? Remember that he would have published it even after admitting that it is full of "nutty" statements, just because it would collect page hits. It seems to me that this guy and MOG share the same (un)ethical ground.
Once again: do not feed the trolls!!! just ignore them.
Ciao
Rehdon
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 18, 2005 10:46 UTC (Wed) by MathFox (guest, #6104) [Link] If Microsoft is funding this astroturf campaign, it comes from the Open Source community: Microsoft distributes gcc! (Services for Unix)Too many software companies have become reliant on Open Source: gcc is the compiler of choice for PowerPC, Safari is based on KHTML, Sun bundles a Gnome desktop with Solaris... All of those companies will have to help us defend the right to make FOSS, for their own sake.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 15:01 UTC (Tue) by ttrafford (guest, #15383) [Link] "Unless the community gets a handle on this..."
Erm, how? How do you censure anonymous junior high kids who get kicks from fake death threats (I hope they're fake, anyway) and DOS attacks?
It's not like we can boot them out of the village and make them fend for themselves.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 15:55 UTC (Tue) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] I'm a long way from convinced that we are dealing with Jr High kids. Oh, they might be part of the problem but I tend to suspect the bulk of it is late teen and early 20 something males with too many hormones and not enough maturity/perspective/restraint.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 16:21 UTC (Tue) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link] tend to suspect the bulk of it is late teen and early 20 something males with too many hormones and not enough maturity/perspective/restraintITYM "not enough maturity/perspective/restraint/attention from women"
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 18:53 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] Well i'm over 40... and i belive you've solve it. Lets create an Open Source Female Re-education Facility(OSFRF)... one that lets Open Source female users keep constant knowledge of the *computacional* needs of the general population of male Open Source users, specialy the more young, active and hormone verbose ones...
Seriuosly, if it has anything to do with Open Source, what else, positive action, can be done?
There is no "community" Posted May 17, 2005 16:14 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] Your response is in error because it takes as granted that such a "community" exists. If so, when do we meet? I seem to have missed the gatherings. Or is it less formal, whereby we just assume that all Linux users vote the same, wear the same shirts, and enjoy the same foods? Or is it even less pronounced than that...whereby I am simply held accountable for anything negative someone else might do based on the premise that we both run a certain OS on our computers...because you know I define myself purely by the operating system I run.
There is no "community" Posted May 17, 2005 17:54 UTC (Tue) by ttrafford (guest, #15383) [Link] Nah, that's more of a second step argument. Someone who goes to question "kick them out of the village" will end up asking themselves if it's really a community anyway.
There is no "community" Posted May 17, 2005 19:07 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] " Your response is in error because it takes as granted that such a "community" exists "
heimm?!!. An Open Source community i know that exists, but perhaps there is also one, who knows? , of Windows users (can't resist saying payed by a Ma$ter perhaps?, why not?) dedicated to send dead treaths and promoting DOS attacks against hipped Anti-Open Source institutions and or individuals, just for the fun of it ?
Any way, what it has to do with the real Open Source community, it's needs, and its cryes for different approches and different opinions ?
There is no "community" Posted May 18, 2005 0:36 UTC (Wed) by darthmdh (guest, #8032) [Link] This is actually a good point. I'm trying to think of a single fanatic I have ever come across who was not also a Microsoft "customer" (I'll quote that since the piracy rate of Windows is extremely high and M$ turn a blind eye to it because its part of their snare to entrap people into their illegal monopoly)
And lets face it, what high school or University student would turn down cold hard cash or goods for doing something as unbelievably simple as behaving like an idiot? It comes naturally to many of them anyway, and now someone wants to reward them for it?
If nothing else, it makes for a lovely conspiracy theory ;-)
A legitimate expectation Posted May 17, 2005 15:06 UTC (Tue) by heinlein (guest, #1029) [Link] John C. Dvorak wrote,
Obviously, there's a grain of truth in here. I think it means that the open-source world should expect Windows users and apologists to decry the extremists who publish those Microsoft-funded "studies" that appear with stunning regularity.
A legitimate expectation Posted May 18, 2005 14:01 UTC (Wed) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463) [Link] >John C. Dvorak wrote,>> Unless the community gets a handle on this, grows up, and rebukes the >> extremists, the trash heap of history is where this is all headed. > > Obviously, there's a grain of truth in here. I think it means that the > open-source world should expect Windows users and apologists to decry > the extremists who publish those Microsoft-funded "studies" that appear > with stunning regularity.
+1 Insightful.
So in turn, we should expect that the Microsoft-using-crowd gets a handle on extremists like Microsofts own marketroids, astroturfers and trolls like Dvorak, right? ;)
A legitimate expectation Posted May 19, 2005 10:33 UTC (Thu) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] For some entertainment, see PJ's parody on Groklaw. It's based on real stuff, and draws the same conclusions as Dvorak did, just about Windows users, not Linux users..
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 15:07 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] I can tell you this much: Normal people do not like being associated with fanatics and lunatics.Speaking from his own experience, probably.
Niven's Law Posted May 17, 2005 15:37 UTC (Tue) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link] Unfortunately, Niven's Law applies. Actually SF author Larry Niven has a whole unordered collection of laws, the one I have in mind is: "There is no cause so noble that it will not attract fuggheads."
In other words, there's at least one {idiot, fanatic, zealot, hot-head} in every crowd.
Niven's Law Posted May 17, 2005 19:27 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] " In other words, there's at least one {idiot, fanatic, zealot, hot-head} in every crowd. "
Can't help it because i've always had an extreme difficulty with those pseudo-laws, deriving from the 'la palisse' style, to the completely inconclusive, to the plain BS.
I'm speechless!!... isn't there an atmosphere of paranoia about a story of payed stooges, or what else?... is this all of any real concern to the Open Source ?... why are people crying to close shells, when most of computer user out there dont have really noticed of Open Source?
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 15:44 UTC (Tue) by huffd (guest, #10382) [Link] Same ole Dvorak, I was reading him over 15 years ago in PC magazine when he practically justified any atrocity committed by the wintel conglomerate. Whether it was bombing software patches to prevent software from running or rigging speed tests. As long as it sold for M$ or titel.I remember sitting in the dentist office many years ago reading some of his diatribe, pondering his baseless facts and bald faced lies, when the dentist called it was a relief.
Dvorak has to stir it up, nothing else is happening in PC-land Posted May 17, 2005 16:10 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] Can you blame him? Dvorak is still stuck in PC-land (having succesfully missed writing anything remotely interesting about the web, network services, etc), and PC-land has become a deadzone for news. Longhorn? Someday. AMD vs Intel? Dvorak doesn't know enough about hardware to say anything meaningful about this.
So he pulls you in with naive infantile muckracking, hoping you'll get pulled into his "Crossfire" style journalism. It worked! You are keeping him relevant by linking to him, but he's been irrelevant since about 1998, so let him go.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 16:13 UTC (Tue) by tres (guest, #352) [Link] We Americans have the Ku Klux Klan; most of us are not proud of it; most of us abhor their message and tactics; most of us have learned to ignore them and not give them the attention that they crave. Those of us in the Linux community that consider ourselves normal users advocating the freedoms that GNU/Linux provides have chosen to ignore the fanatics like O'Gara and Dvorak and get our news from news sites that are level headed and as fair as possible: like Linux Weekly News. Thanks, Jon, for your measured responses and truly informative articles.
I made it through the first paragraph Posted May 17, 2005 16:14 UTC (Tue) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link] In the first paragraph he basically says that PJ is bitterly hates MoG. To me it's funny how reasonable and unhating PJ was about everything.
I remember one of her first articles correcting MoG. PJ said that everyone makes mistakes and the MoG had broken a lot of SCO news stories and was a good reporter. I posted that MoG was a freak. MoG knows she's making stuff up and she didn't care so long as it is hurtful. I predicted that she wouldn't retract her story or appologize.
I think most of her readership hate MoG more than PJ does Posted May 18, 2005 1:17 UTC (Wed) by leonbrooks (guest, #1494) [Link] It's not just or even mainly an our-side-their-side thing, either. MoG is a careless, destructive, self-centred loser and it takes a special kind of mercenary viewpoint to miss that - one evidently possessed by LW's owner.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 16:44 UTC (Tue) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link] The content on LWN is normally of high quality. I would prefer if it was kept that way, by not linking to articles like this. All they wants is the exposure of getting linked to. The article is itself is completely uninteresting.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 16:48 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] I knew I'd get some grief for it...:)It is important to know what is being said to the wider world about our community; perceptions are important. Much FUD can be ignored, but it would be a mistake to pretend that it does not exist. So I feel that we should, occasionally, point one of these articles out. I'll try not to do it again for a little while, I promise.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 19:45 UTC (Tue) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link] Good explanation!
But since it needs to be explained, should this sort of story occasionally include a note on "why it's important"?
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 19:49 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] " I'll try not to do it again for a little while, I promise. "
Why?... You've said perceptions are important, and people trust the editor to keep the noise down, so why only let the true come over in little bits and very long time from very long time.
And IMO the article presented here, besides the title, is all noise, a 'fait divers', still it is generating an almost appeal to keep more general opinions, not code related, completly out off this site radar, as those that do development prefer to stay closed inside fort knox and never see the light of day!... why?
What sort of articles LWN should print Posted May 17, 2005 23:57 UTC (Tue) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link] So I feel that we should, occasionally, point one of these articles out. Yes, indeedy. If for no other reason than to forewarn us against the time when a friend/colleague/random human asks us about this sort of thing. I was blithely unaware of any of MoG's writings until LWN pointed them out. It's well worth my time to know this sort of trash is going on. Even though it is trash. So, if the occasion warrants, don't make it too long a while between them. And thanks.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 18, 2005 4:21 UTC (Wed) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link] These would get on my nerves if they were linked to once a day, however this is not the case at all.
We had someone visit the office within the last month quote Dvorak as an authority so regardless of the quality of his material, it's existence certainly is relevent to me in a business setting.
I appreciate seeing these sort of things from time to time even though I don't necessarily appreciate the content provided!
Perceptions are important.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 18, 2005 13:48 UTC (Wed) by jamesm (guest, #2273) [Link] If people are interested in reading about this crap they can go to slashdot, surely.
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 16:51 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] Oh c'mon this is only a "fait divers"... SCO is a dead beat, period.
The best thing to do, IMO, is not to pay attention... it's irrelevant.
It's true that IBM has influence, perhaps too much if you ask me, and its true that Microsoft will never stop until they are clearly defeated.
So the worst that can happen is the community to close itself behind shells. I belive most of the worst problems rise exactly from the lack of communication, politic and policy strategy between the interestes of big commercial entitys and the needs of common Open Source evangelism that trend to be more vocal, and more everyday everywhere computacional focused.
Why in hell would the everyday everywhere masses, still prefer an inferior product, sworm above neck with security and bug problems, and discard the superior open source alternatives as fanatism derived ??... Anyone that has actualy contacted common users on the field, i belive have a pretty good idea of the feeling!
The clash, of which the community has no solution yet, is between the somehow justifiable inflaction of value of hardware, software and services of the big Unix/Linux commercial entitys, against a world educated in Microsoft way that has destroyed all services value, a computer is an appliance as a toaster, and that has gained a *immense boum* capable of destroying that way most of the value of specialized hardware offerings, valuing only the software that comes from itself, no matter how inferior it might be.
In my experiance perhaps more than 90% of incidents is derived from software caused problems, malware and others included, but still there are a multitude of local shops serving from the domestic trough the SOHO, and many times trough the SMB to the Corporation, that are willing to replace a perfectly good hardware equipment, perfectly fit for the operation intended, by a new one, hiding the reasons of failure and living Microsoft untouched!!!
The conclusion of the fact that big commercial entetys, now clearly in control(or influencing the most) of the most importante Open Source projects as the Linux kernel and the OpenOffice, dont speak against that, is because of commercial interestes, because they dream of replacing Microsoft and maintain the shield, and because they traditionaly only valued more software if it contributes to the hiperinflation of value of their differentiated hardware offerings.(SUN bited the dust and is offering now Solaris as Open Source and selling "White Box" with AMD inside). But the control *freacking* desire, is so big that they live other major commercial players in the cold; http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=A4FAA652-C...
So, thought Dvorack title conclusions are based on a stupid "fait divers", he intuited right, Open Source in the actual state of affairs is slowly digging its grave, because its centered around a strategy that has proved to have failed before, at has proved to not keep Microsoft at bay. I belive that is clear that i'm not bashing, whinning or hopping to influence much if anything... its only time that is getting short to emmend occasional something, because this things for the good, the bad and the catastrofic, steer worst than the Titanic.
Marques
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 18:59 UTC (Tue) by dokhebi (guest, #14023) [Link] So I guess it's OK to do what ever you want as long as you are "grown up." But who defines what "grown up" means?
Just my $0.02 worth.
Iam minded of Pirates of Penzance... Posted May 18, 2005 1:20 UTC (Wed) by leonbrooks (guest, #1494) [Link] ...where the Major General jumps up and down with hands stiffly by sides and eyes tight shut, exclaiming. "I. Am. Not. Being. Childish!"
Linux Community Implodes (PC Magazine) Posted May 17, 2005 20:27 UTC (Tue) by steve_goa (guest, #27461) [Link] You know that this story does not make news. It is anattempt to get a peep out of the "fanatics" - who are after all immature adolescents or adults who are still hanging on to their immature adolescence - who would take the chance to voice their opinions on every little insignificant thing. All they do is generate further noise on the wire, as if the internet was not already filled with mindless ms.* newsgroup posts and their incompetent 'ms fanatic' posters, bah, the so-called brain deficient MVPs.
In the end, Linux is used where it matters most, that
Thank you,
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