My kid hates Linux (ZDNet)

> Um, K3b is an app for CD-burning. It was not
> the first app of it's kind, nor will it be the
> last. Amarok? It wasn't first of it's kind
> either, there were plenty of music-jukeboxes
> before Amarok.

It would seem you've never (really) used either one or you'd know the 
innovativeness.  Calling k3b an app for CD burning is rather like calling 
Photoshop an image editing program, or to use OSX, ITunes a media player.  
Sure it's true, but that rather misses the point, and DEFINITELY misses 
the reason people actually use either app.  Similarly with amarok.  
There's really no comparison in the proprietary world.

Picking k3b first, as I said, the CD burning really isn't the point.  It's 
more (but not just) the way it integrates format conversion,  say ripping 
from DVD (killing the CSS if the support is on the system) to AVI or XViD 
or VCD, creating the new ISO if desired, and burning it, all from the same 
app.  Similarly with audio altho that's not quite so rare any more AFAIK.  
It can rip CDA and directly transcode it to MP3, OggVorbis, WMA, whatever, 
or to lossless FLAC etc, create the ISO and burn it.  Or the 
reverse, converting MP3 or whatever to CDA and burning a standard CD, 
playable in any standard CD player.  In fact, it can do it on the fly 
even, with a decent system.  (Doing high compression high quality video 
recompression on the fly isn't entirely practical yet due to the CPU 
cycles it takes, but in theory it's possible, if you had the machine to do 
it, but audio is definitely less challenging.)  That sort of flexibility 
and "innovativeness" simply isn't likely and hardly even possible in the 
proprietaryware world because the likes of the RIAA/MPAA would have a fit.

Amarok is equally "innovative" and quite comparable to ITunes in that 
regard altho they take somewhat different directions.  Newer versions 
integrate with not just one online store, but multiple stores and multiple 
online media sites such as last.fm.  Play lists can integrate tracks from 
multiple sources, both online and off, with tune scoring and the like 
similar (I guess) to ITunes, pulling covers from Amazon, tune data from 
CDDB if appropriate, lyrics, browsing the artist entries if available on 
wikipedia, etc.  While proprietary apps may do this to some extent, they 
aren't likely to work with the wide variety of otherwise often competing  
sources amarok is now integrating support for, again, because with 
proprietaryware, commercial realities too often get prioritized above user 
convenience.

As these two examples demonstrate, one strength of FLOSS that 
proprietaryware for the most part can't match is user over commercial 
priorities.  As a result, that's where FLOSS innovation tends to be 
strongest comparatively.  Proprietaryware certainly has its strengths as 
well and it's no surprise they score innovations in these areas, but it's 
certainly not the case that FLOSS has no innovative products at all, any 
more than it would be that proprietaryware has no innovative products at 
all.

Duncan