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Free is too expensive (Economist)Free is too expensive (Economist)Posted Apr 1, 2012 16:55 UTC (Sun) by Del- (guest, #72641)In reply to: Free is too expensive (Economist) by khim Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)
"Have you ever actually used any appstore?"
Yes, of course. I have even made an Android app just for fun, and had to use necessitas to get a decent development environment. I am very happy to have most of my time focussed on linux applications, android and ios developers have my sympathy.
"App store reliably solves dependencies problem - by refusing to support them at all. This approach is tested and it does scale"
No, it doesn't. It will create the same disaster we have on the proprietary desktops.
"Somehow it scales pretty well on Web: all these Google Maps APIs, Facebook APIs and so on are supported by developers without distribution-appointed police officers and so far Web works."
No, web doesn't work. You cannot trust these api's. Facebook is already quite busy figuring out how to disable them to have people come over to their web-site instead. Google has changed api's on gmail and on google calendar for no good reason before. IMAP is the only sane way to talk to gmail, and google contacts are not available through any sane api yet. Moreover, you have probably seen the concerns over the internet being tested only on three engines. Html is no silver bullet, it may prove to look more like a thorny road.
"I don't care about any back-bones."
Then I suggest you go and troll elsewhere. The GPL is about building on each others work. If you don't care about that, and want to throw it away, I suggest you stop wasting your time here and go play on windows. Deploying programs on linux is not that difficult, I deploy a number of them across multiple distributions, and it hardly costs me any time. It is not a big issue. Those who want to do it manages. Your link to gstreamer only shows me that it finally is set to mature with version 1.0, hardly bad news for sound on linux.
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Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 17:33 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] No, it doesn't. It will create the same disaster we have on the proprietary desktops. What disaster? If you mean “the system where you can play games, easily watch latest videos and do my work”, then yes, I do want such “disaster”. No, web doesn't work. I think is the point after which the discussion becomes pointless. If you think that web does not work and linux distributions do then you deserve what you are getting.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 18:19 UTC (Sun) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]
"What disaster?"
The disaster is that practically all software categories end up with one dominating vendor, also known as monopoly. Notably, games still have numerous vendors, but they enforce the monopoly on the desktop. Have a look at win7, it contains practically nothing, and costs more than a $100 in the cheapest stripped down version. It is a tragedy (or disaster if you like).
"I think is the point after which the discussion becomes pointless."
That is up to you, I simply informed you that some of your prime examples have proved messy environments for programmers and users. Changing API's and web-developers who only cater to a subset of browsers. Thanks to the open model you seem to detest the web has improved tremendously over the last years, but it has at least as long to go as the linux desktop before it can be considered a stable environment. You are not alone though. Everything on the web seems to be the new mantra, it will fail as badly as similar foolishness before it.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 1, 2012 21:34 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Windows 7 allows to run other programs. And users are more than happy to pay for this.
I've actually tried to migrate a couple of mid-range (50-100 users) organizations to Linux. We've tried pilot projects with just a few users. Invariably, it turned out that some small but critical app they are using since 90-s can't work in Wine. Then they try do arithmetic:
Large companies might decide to go on with the migration. Small companies usually just continue with Windows.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 2, 2012 7:43 UTC (Mon) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]
You really do open up new topics as we go along here. Migrating company desktops to linux is indeed challenging. Mostly because of lock-in. Sure, there are applications, some places more than other places. In HPC related industry you frequently have the opposite, applications, yes even proprietary ones, are often only available on linux. Guess what, proprietary 3D viewers are abundant on linux.
Start a new thread and I can join you in this discussion. For this thread we have already expanded the capabilities of LWN.
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