Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

A school teacher of mine, when I was about nine (thirty four years
ago) spoke to my class about "commercialism". He said: In his day,
thousands of Elvis Presley fans bought second hand leather jackets and
some studs and then riveted the studs to the back of their leather
jacket to spell the word: Elvis

Some people were a little more imaginative and did some very cool
things with their leather jackets to show how much they appreciated
Elvis.

However, it wasn't long before leather jackets with studs, spelling
the word "Elvis" were being sold in shops. The trouble was, those
leather jackets all looked the same. Nothing unique about them.

That, my teacher said, was commercialism.

These days, I build my own computers from second hand (and new) parts
purchased from PC salvage yards. I then install Linux on them.

Being able to install three or four different flavors of the latest
Linux distros on my "babies" is part of the fun. Some distros support
more of the hardware I use and so some support less. It's an awesome
feeling getting stuff to work in this way.

These computers work well. My development computer displays on three
flat screens connected to two, second hand graphics cards installed in
the one computer (6800le AGP with dual head and a Riva TNT PCI). It
also has an overclocked AMD XP2200, overclocked to XP2400.

Once Linux becomes encapsulated inside commercially build computers,
will the user still be able to wipe the hard disc and install their
preference of Linux disto and not lose their commercial warranty?

I doubt it.

Linux does not exist to give Sun, Apple or Microsoft a bloody
nose. That's not the point of Linux. Yet, that is what this Dell fuss
is all about. Linux noobs just trying to be rebellious and cool by
supplanting Microsoft on commercially built computers. It's
irrelevant.

If an open source project can not survive without commercial
intervention then it should be allowed to die. In fact it should
simply be left dormant. Then when that project is desired and changes
to it are required, the changes will be made and the project will
become resurrected.