Letters to the editor

scalable != big

There's been a lot of confusion lately due to people adopting the word
"scalable" as a fancy way to say "big."  When you design something so
it works in a huge configuration, you sell it with the buzzword
"scalability."

The misnomer peaks in a recent letter in LWN that talks about the
tradeoff between scalability and ability to work in a small
configuration.

There's no tradeoff.  If Solaris works great in a 64 processor system,
but isn't practical with 3 processors, it isn't scalable.  It's just
big.  Scalable means it works as well big as it does small.

So lets not talk about sacrificing performance on small Linux systems
for scalability.  Let's talk about sacrificing performance on small
systems for performance on large systems.  I.e. let's talk about
making sure Linux is scalable.

-- 
Bryan Henderson                                    Phone 408-621-2000
San Jose, California

Comments (1 posted)

Free Blender

To the readers of LWN.net:

One thing that I've been wishing the Free Software world has had for some
time is a full-featured 3d modelling/rendering/animation package.  (Well, we
sort of have rendering in the form of POV-Ray, which isn't really free
software but is close.)

Now there's a chance at getting a very good one: Blender.  The thing is, to
make Blender free, it won't be free.  The Blender Foundation needs to raise
$100k (euros) in order to liberate the Blender sources.  They are now
accepting donations and memberships (for $50) to the Blender Foundation to
help finance this.

If you're at all interested in 3d on Linux, you should go to
www.blender3d.com and take a look around.  And, ask yourself if having such
a program as Free Software is worth $50 to you.  Consider that proprietary
programs of similar quality cost more than that anyway.  (Indeed, compare,
for instance, how much money you paid when you bought Quake 3 for Linux-- or
for Windows for that matter, if you keep that around "for games" or for
other purposes.)  And, then, help buy the world a free Blender.

Binaries of the current version of Blender are available for at least Linux,
FreeBSD, IRIX, and Solaris (as well as for another, very popular, lesser
operating system).  Of course, once the Blender Foundation raises the money,
the source code will be available; for now, only binaries are.

-Rob
rknop@pobox.com

Comments (6 posted)

Non-free software doesn't help the cause

Howdy LWN,

The weekly edition for 28-Jul-2002 says:
> As long as those [proprietary] vendors comply with the licenses of the
> free software they are using, they are only helping the Linux cause by
> porting their products.

If by this you mean "they are helping GNU/Linux become more popular",
this is not the cause of free software.  The cause of free software is
to promote freedom for users and developers of software; the offering of
a non-free product is not helpful to that cause.

> It will be a long time before free packages rival the variety of
> proprietary software out there. Where are the free business plan
> writers, training systems, contact managers, math tutors, foreign
> language instructors, genealogy assistants, home designers, tax
> preparers, high-end games, etc.?

It will be an even longer time before we see free software that performs
these tasks, if we accept and use non-free programs with the same
functionality.  The more widely used such non-free tools become, the
less impetus there will be for free replacements to be written and the
harder it will be to get people to try them.

Accepting and offering non-free software simply sends a confused
message, and makes the task of discussing freedom that much harder for
everyone.

> Until we have filled in those gaps, we should be friendlier to
> software vendors who make Linux systems more attractive to more
> people. That means standards compliance, stable interfaces, and an end
> to outright hostility toward software vendors.

Any hostility toward software vendors is misplaced; it is the offerings
of these vendors that are the issue.  The offering of a program on terms
that require the surrender of essential freedoms is itself an act
hostile to the user's freedom, even if the vendor doesn't see it that
way.  Many people react strongly to threats to their freedom; software
vendors accustomed to doing business on such terms may well regard such
reactions as "hostile", but this is a result of the conditions they
attach to their offerings.

If an offer of a non-free program is made, this advances the cause of
free software not at all, and those who value their freedom will not
regard the non-free program as an option.  If people go beyond that to
"outright hostility", that is outside the philosophy of free software
and becomes something more personal.

"No thanks" is not hostility, it is the freedom of choice in action.  

-- 
 \           "We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives |
  `\          teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve years |
_o__)        telling them to sit down and shut up."  -- Phyllis Diller |
http://bignose.squidly.org/ 9CFE12B0 791A4267 887F520C B7AC2E51 BD41714B

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