| |||||||||||||
The monoculture of meritocracyThe monoculture of meritocracyPosted Nov 14, 2012 10:05 UTC (Wed) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640)In reply to: The monoculture of meritocracy by ortalo Parent article: Crowding out OpenBSD
IMHO, the Linux monoculture prevents sometimes from adressing specific problem areas (at least it slows down things enough to miss the target). Linux is not yet totally ubiquitous - the most recent example is the Android "port" (which involved a lot of domain specific hacks).I don't see how Linux monoculture prevented anything. Quite the opposite, Google was able to leverage Linux when creating Android. If anything, Android proves Linux is not a monoculture.
(Log in to post comments)
The monoculture of meritocracy Posted Nov 14, 2012 14:42 UTC (Wed) by ortalo (subscriber, #4654) [Link]
I was speaking of Android modifications only to illustrate the fact that there are no totally ubiquitous OS (or kernel in that case). Alternatives *may* have been a better base.
A BSD was not even considered for projects like Openmoko [1]. They are still not considered for the FreedomBox project even though they share obvious concerns with one of them.
Of course I cannot guess what would have occured for these projects if a BSD had been given a try and if these projects would have been more successful.
[1] However, it seems to me that the BSDs should have been interesting candidates for a smartphone (full networked OS in a single source tree, focus on maintainability, etc.).
The monoculture of meritocracy Posted Nov 15, 2012 16:59 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
The issue of which platform to use is mostly concerned with what most of the potential contributors are likely to know and which platform is covered best by most of the available documentation and shared knowledge, so if it's easier to find people who know how to write a Linux driver for some hardware, then a project will choose Linux first and foremost. That hasn't stopped other operating systems being ported to such devices, though:
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Category:Distributions
And it's perfectly possible that other platforms can take advantage of the work done by Linux developers to get driver support for hardware even if they refuse to port the actual drivers. I'm aware of at least one "from scratch" operating system project for the Ben NanoNote that has presumably been able to take advantage of the fully documented hardware and Free Software drivers already written for Linux, so it's not as if the Linux community is denying others opportunities. In fact, it's very much the opposite of that.
The monoculture of meritocracy Posted Nov 16, 2012 8:35 UTC (Fri) by ortalo (subscriber, #4654) [Link]
I totally agree with the importance of knowledge you outline.
However, I also think alternative OS do not take so much advantage of Linux work (or cooperation) as they suffer from the fact of being considered second class or second hand implementation (and not the full solution, i.e. "maybe better than Linux").
BSD for a smartphone OS Posted Nov 16, 2012 10:11 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Actually, isn't the OS for at least one of the Danger products based on BSD? According to the Wikipedia entry for the Danger Hiptop/Sidekick, they supposedly use NetBSD. Of course, vendors don't have to do anything more than reproduce licensing information for such permissively licensed software, and maybe only in obscure places even then, and so the awareness of a technology in the industry never reaches a point where everyone wants to try it out.
Some people praise permissive licensing and may refer to software licensed in such a way as their "secret weapon" or "competitive advantage", but if they're not willing to share their changes, any wider growth of such technologies is likely to lag behind things like Linux where there is a requirement to share and a resulting culture that does so extensively.
|
|||||||||||||