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Free is too expensive (Economist)Free is too expensive (Economist)Posted Apr 1, 2012 3:28 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921)In reply to: Free is too expensive (Economist) by Cyberax Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)
True, but you can see that Wayland went quite a different way, because they cared about the existing community.
From their FAQ: http://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html#heading_toc_j_2
> Wayland is not really duplicating much work. Where possible,
Since Wayland was designed as an open project, they considered needs of others as well. Android was designed for its own sake only, so you see the result - totally incompatible graphical stack, which doesn't share any success and effort with the rest of Linux.
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Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 6:20 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Where was no KMS and only beginnings of TTM (not GEM) when Android was being developed.
And it has taken about 4 years to kick the Linux graphics stack into shape.
Besides, UI library is only a small part of Android.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 7:16 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
It might be small, but it's one of the key reasons which sets it totally apart. I.e. hardware manufacturers produce GPU drivers for Android, and that's it. Since it's not compatible - it's useless for regular ("conventional") Linux and prevents ports from using this hardware, until drivers appear (may be never). I.e. in practice it causes distraction for HW manufactures, and excuse not to produce X (or Wayland) drivers, since they are already too busy with Android.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 8:09 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Android was designed for its own sake only, so you see the result - totally incompatible graphical stack Correction: Android was developed for app developers, not for “it's own sake only”. They used Linux as HAL and explicitly excluded all the userspace components (except few which they used to save development cost). And there is real danger that the story will repeat itself on desktop if people leave it to Google.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 8:30 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
What I mean by "for its sake only" that it didn't consider the broad community, only its own interests. And this resulted in a totally isolated, self contained system, which barely shares any success with the rest of the Linux world. It's in total contradiction with the values of the open source.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 9:41 UTC (Sun) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
I've started to think that if linux is ever going to gain traction in the desktop, it is going to happen through somebody like Google, because it requires a bunch of things that the community is not capable of delivering. I'll list a few things that I think are important:
- retailers that sell your devices (laptops?) with software preinstalled. Every hardware thing you ship and officially support must work without a hitch.
- credible application market. You are never going to get off the ground unless you allow for proprietary software, which takes in form of independent software vendors writing code on the platform. Proprietary software is critical for the symbiosis of end-user and developer interest on the platform.
- commitment to a stable ABI that works (= never break applications that worked on any previous version). The nice thing about a laptop/PC using x86 is that there's usually a whole lot of system resources and techniques that can be spent on this, so backwards compatibility could actually be fairly easy. The key to success is this principle: new version can not be deployed if it breaks old code.
As far as I can tell, the community has tremendous trouble with all of the above. First requires capital and credible story for a linux device as product, including a way to earn revenue from the thing eventually; second requires giving up on software freedom ideals for the sake of capturing user and (proprietary) developer interest; and third requires developer professionalism that tends to come only with a paycheck, because it's frustrating and thankless soul-sucking work.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 17:23 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
No, it's going to result in money driven system. And you should know where it leads.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 18:00 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] To a world where normal people have usable system and geeks have their toys? Oh, you mean that it killed bunch of losers? Nope, I don't mourn them. They had their chance and squandered it. All in all it'll be good outcome although I'm not sure Google will be able to pull it on desktop.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 18:07 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
No, to a world where direction is defined by money, and interests of a small group which controls it, rather than by the interest of people who use it.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 20:36 UTC (Sun) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
In that case we are facing an unwinnable education problem. It seems fairly evident to me that something far above 90 % of people just don't care about software in this sort of way. They are just dumb users, they have been educated to want shiny things and they want their games and social networking shits and cool applications people are buzzing about. Their own attitudes make them just a resource to be harvested, but they also have money and they are willing to spend it if you just give them something they want for a price they are willing to pay.
Think about it: with money, you can hire developers, while at the same time you grow your own market share, which makes hardware vendors pay attention to you. At some point they are starting to do work for your behalf, because you are important enough to matter. Imagine this: a new GPU chip arrives and instead of spending a few years of pestering the vendor for specifications to write a driver with, the vendor contributes a driver on the same day the thing hits market. Everything becomes easier with market share, but without it, there's a risk of being squeezed out of the game entirely.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 21:46 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
True, there is a need to interest common users as well as manufacturers. That's undeniable. I believe that KDE is doing something of that sort with Plasma Active efforts and the upcoming Vivaldi tablet. But again, KDE is a non profit, and directions are defined by the community. Making such things "for profit" right away introduces a potential risk.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 2, 2012 8:32 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] But again, KDE is a non profit, and directions are defined by the community. I think you don't understand what “non profit” means. It looks like you perceive “non profit” as “someone altruistic who's fighting for the better future” and who's, obviously, “is not driven by money”. Nothing can be further from truth! Here is an example of non-profit organisation. It precedes KDE, GNOME and Mozilla and deals with commercial interests all the time. Nonprofit just means that participants are not planning to ever withdraw profits. They are supposed to be used to further pursue the goal of given non-profit. In a lot of cases these goals are better served when non-profit cooperates with some other for-profit entities - and when you do that you must think about market, about 90% of people just don't care about software in this sort of way, etc.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 2, 2012 16:33 UTC (Mon) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]
By "non profit" in this case I don't mean the formal definition, but the fact that the direction of the project is not dictated by interests to gain money (which will inevitably result in conflict with public interest), but by community interests. If it sounds more altruistic than most commercial companies - then it is. Mozilla and KDE are good examples of this. Of course these project need to sustain themselves, and need income. I was talking about what defines the direction of their development.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 5, 2012 13:34 UTC (Thu) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
It's lovely to not care solely about money, but it's awful to be antagonist about money. Even if it were true that money will corrupt even the best intentions eventually, until that happens you fight the good fight. It could take quite long time.
To use an analogy: Bioware used to make great games for over a decade, founded by people who were evidently very passionate about gaming, until EA bought them and apparently destroyed the company and its values from inside. No matter: I think that the world is still better for Bioware's existence, even if it never again made another good game.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 5, 2012 9:51 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Regarding ABI: On my Android phone a lot of applications actually had to provide updates to work with ICS.
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