Google: "Android is the Linux desktop dream come true" (der Standard)

Posted Jul 14, 2011 5:11 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151)
In reply to: Google: "Android is the Linux desktop dream come true" (der Standard) by nhippi
Parent article: Google: "Android is the Linux desktop dream come true" (der Standard)

"From what I see most successful community/commercial kernel developments come from server side. There deployments are planned well in advance and 10 year support is expected."

"At and Android and consumer electronics in general, things don't quite go that way. Getting new shiny products out faster than competitors is CRITICAL and nobody cares about long term support."

Couldn't be farer from my reality. We don't care at all for long term support on our servers, because there's new hardware that needs support anyway and our programmers don't want to wait five years till they can use those new features in the new software versions. Our software would simply not work without those recent PostgreSQL features and developing for Perl 5.8 would be a nightmare.

On the other hand I would so love to get those bugs in my phone fixed. I had no need for a new phone at all if it weren't for those annoyances. But chances of getting them fixed are zero because "once the product is in the market, engineers are already working on the next one."

So my next phone will run 100% free software, because I'm just too fed up with everything else.

This is about money, as usual...

Posted Jul 15, 2011 7:56 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Couldn't be farer from my reality.

First, the question: how much kernel work is going in your organization or sponsored by your organization? If the answer, as I suspect, is "not much", then your experience it not all that relevant to the kernel development, don't you think?

We don't care at all for long term support on our servers, because there's new hardware that needs support anyway and our programmers don't want to wait five years till they can use those new features in the new software versions. Our software would simply not work without those recent PostgreSQL features and developing for Perl 5.8 would be a nightmare.

Well, this is typical situation for small organization (especially startups) - but these don't pay salaries to kernel developers directly or even indirectly (by buying RHEL subscriptions). In my case we are almost ready to switch... drumroll... from Python 2.4 to Python 2.6. We support both (of course), but most new development is with Python 2.6. And this situation is fairly typical for large companies (who can actually sponsor kernel work).

On the other hand I would so love to get those bugs in my phone fixed.

Will you pay for that? How many other people will pay for that? If the answer, as I suspect, is "why should I pay? I already paid for the phone once!" then you've just gotten the reason not to fix bugs in old stuff: there are no money in that.

So my next phone will run 100% free software, because I'm just too fed up with everything else.

Even radio firmware? That I'm yet to see. All the biggest problems I've had with my phones are radio firmware related (phone shows me as connected, but noone can reach me - this kind of things).