I'm a Free Software fan, although Richard Stallman can be a nutjob sometimes.

5/15/2009 1:54:57 AM

open source ftw

5/15/2009 6:57:25 AM

free beer

5/15/2009 7:13:59 AM

whichever gets the job done with the least cost (in price or time) on my end

5/15/2009 8:06:06 AM

^

5/15/2009 9:12:14 AM

This is the voice of free software: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ#t=1m46s

5/15/2009 9:18:47 AM

I prefer broad, unspecific questions.

5/15/2009 9:46:16 AM

i like piracy

5/15/2009 10:11:49 AM

FOSS

5/15/2009 11:34:38 AM

Quote :

"i like piracy "

i lolled

5/15/2009 12:05:45 PM

Quote :

"I prefer broad, unspecific questions."

Haha! I apologize. I'm a pseudo-nerd at best and I am quite intimidated by people who spent their whole lives learning this stuff, whereas I am trying to play catch-up.

So here's a better question: Do you support the FLOSS movement in general? If so, do you prefer OSI or FSF? Why?

For those who like full fledged piracy, is it simply the thrill of breaking the law or do you like the challenge of the latest DRM or is it simple ideology?

5/15/2009 5:20:18 PM

open sores is populated mostly by people who cant get jobs in the commercial software world due to either their lack of skill or horrendous social skills (RMS). The poor social skills have the added bonus of causing divisions in the open soruce community that further contribute to the lack of vision and ultimately result in poor development processes.

There are a few well meaning individuals and organizations that do contribute meaningful projects to the community, but they cant do enough to fix the overall problems of fragmentation and competing ideals.

Where there are usable projects, open source software has its place, but the blind followers who user open source for the sake of open source usually do more harm to their cause then good.

In the meantime most businesses are better served by the overall lower TCO of closed source applications. In fact many open source projects would be well served to run on top of windows and integrate with its management tools when possible. For example I love tomcat and eclipse which are both really good open source projects (even tho eclipse was developed originally internally to IBM). They both run really well on windows and tomcat on Windows Server grants you the benefits of portable code (since its java) and the stability and management ease of windows.

For sure you can get the same management with linux, but it takes much much much more effort and puts the TCO over that of windows for all but the largest of organizations.

5/15/2009 6:41:31 PM

Our multi billion dollar software infrastructure which is partly open source and partly closed neither of which run on Windows. The closed source is Oracle/Solaris.

As for just general development Mac and Linux beat Windows hands down. Having grep, sed, perl, ssh, find, and multiple desktops all readily accessible makes things a lot easier. Half of our dev team dropped Windows when they saw what you can do in Linux. Most of everything and more that Mac OS does is also in Linux via Compiz

Firefox, Eclipse, Webkit, Android, Linux, Compiz for Linux are all superior to any in house closed source project I've used.

Google contributes handsomely to lots of different projects as well.

Eclipse also runs much better in Linux.

[Edited on May 16, 2009 at 11:32 AM. Reason : a]

5/16/2009 11:30:21 AM

Quote :

"As for just general development Mac and Linux beat Windows hands down. Having grep, sed, perl, ssh, find, and multiple desktops all readily accessible makes things a lot easier."

Apparently you've never used Intellisense in VS or Windows Powershell. It makes bash+perl it's bitch. If you are trying to argue the merits of *nux, commandline versatility isn't the route to use, because Powershell has more capability and consistency than bash. No idea what you mean by "multiple dekstops all readily accesible", if you mean terminal sessions... Windows got it. If you mean desktop sessions... Windows got it. If you mean network access to other desktops... got it.

Quote :

"Firefox, Eclipse, Webkit, Android, Linux, Compiz for Linux are all superior to any in house closed source project I've used. "

Agree, Disagree, Agree, Disagree, Disagree, Agree. Eclipse is great if you are developing in Java... anything else and it's a pain in the ass. Android is a continual V1 product so far, and has no ecosystem surrounding it to make it worth developing for. Linux is a great mid-tier web services platform... and that's about it.

5/16/2009 2:55:14 PM

I mean out of the box not a bunch of buggy powertools that ms isnt even secure enough with to release to the general public.

My experience with the tools you mentioned was not pleasant and ive done more win development than linux.

5/16/2009 7:25:26 PM

FYI, noen is an MS shill and one of those "if the tool doesn't work for you, you are the problem" types

which is what most open source people are, too....

I love it when someone is so much of a zealot, they refuse to use commercial software. "the movement" will always be limited by it's ideologues and lack of originality, taste, and benevolent dictators. True story: I know an open source weenie who refuses to log into a mac.

open source software that is strongly influenced by a private company that pays the bills is the most successful kind of open source software


[Edited on May 17, 2009 at 2:05 AM. Reason : .]

5/17/2009 1:36:15 AM

my opinion:

to give away the source or not should not be something you think about until after you assess your goals of a project or product.

are you writing it to prove to yourself you can do it? or do it better than it has been done before?

are you writing it because you think it has the potential to make someone's life easier? and do you think they will pay you for it?

are you writing it for the sake of exploring what new things you might discover whilst doing so?

Quote :

"Firefox, Eclipse, Webkit, Android, Linux, Compiz for Linux are all superior to any in house closed source project I've used. "

someone needs to get out more.

5/17/2009 2:27:39 AM

Quote :

"Noen is an MS shill"

We have a winner, folks. Does anyone ever even read Noen's incessant advertising spiel and piracy propaganda anymore?

Usually it's so much of a stretch it's funny, I liked Quinn's comment the other day about the corporate brainwashing program he must have been through... but I digress.

--

I like open source and free software and I use FOSS alternatives whenever it doesn't involve a large sacrifice of functionality. If the FOSS alternative is woefully inadequate I'll usually pirate the commercial offering that best suits my needs. If someone else is willing to pay I may not even have to resort to piracy.

Depending on what you're trying to accomplish, there's usually a lot more flexibility available in stacks of FOSS components than most monolithic commercial offerings. FOSS tends to reuse existing work, which has the side effect of establishing de facto standards for interoperability between applications in a field that can be utilized to quickly and easily extend the functionality of the stack of components. Commercial software often makes a point of utilizing proprietary interfaces that are usually technically meritless and merely obfuscated versions of the obvious approach taken by similar open source efforts.

It's kind of a joke for a company to take a suite of software, and then invest more man hours creating various levels of cripple-ware to gouge consumers in various markets based on their ability to pay. The thought of paying for an intentionally crippled software is pretty disgusting to me. Not to mention that it's pretty much a collective biting of the thumb at individual contributors in any field -- you have to make a particular field your life's work to afford the investment in the full version of some professional softwares, acquire the software through an employer, or resort to piracy if you find that the software would facilitate your efforts in that field (however mundane or significant they may be). It's even contrary to the goal of copyright, which is purportedly to foster innovation.

In fact I think copyright and intellectual property in the information age are so impractical it's almost a delusion. There is no cost of duplication. I don't see any reason to believe it's beneficial economically to stifle the innovation of others by denying them access to information or tools. And let's make no mistake about it: copyright denies innovators the ability to use or derive from existing work, while rewarding those no longer innovating for inaction. As the length of copyright decreases the impetus for motivation increases -- probably right on up to no copyright at all. Without copyright one would have to continually innovate to remain competitive in the marketplace. This is why corporations would love to have indefinite copyrights: no R&D and a legally insured revenue stream for eternity. Copyright's so unrealistic that even in enforcement most companies have resorted to putting the burden, most degradingly, on the customer to insure their revenue. Product activation? Ha!

I am sure I will have more to rant about on this particular topic, but I'm going to call it quits for now.

Oh dag, I found this gem, not quits yet:

Quote :

"Linux is a great mid-tier web services platform... and that's about it."

Linux is a kernel. Nothing more. The Unix toolchain and environment typically built upon it, however, is decades older than any glizty Microsoft crap you can find a marketing line for, with refinement and maturity you'd expect of a more developed offering. It's also received considerable use and improvement in academic computing use over the years and as one would expect employs more sophisticated and flexible methodologies throughout its implementation. Even as a kernel, how long ago was it that Microsoft's was cooperatively time shared with no memory segmentation? You really need to get off of that Microcrack, dawg.

[Edited on May 17, 2009 at 4:13 AM. Reason : .]

5/17/2009 3:44:35 AM

^Tiberius, your post is chock full of ignorance and incorrect assumptions. You really are the epitomy of Shaggy's post. He is so dead on correct about the average OSS project, I forwarded his post to some colleagues.

All your post told us is that you are poor, have absolutely no ethical integrity, and will rip off anything that you see fit to use. It is entirely apparent by your attitudes and opinions that you have never experienced working in a REAL, COMMERCIAL software development environment. And I'm not even talking about big business... even the day to day in a small dev shop would show your "views" to be entirely ridiculous.

Quote :

"Commercial software often makes a point of utilizing proprietary interfaces that are usually technically meritless and merely obfuscated versions of the obvious approach taken by similar open source efforts. "

WHAT? Like what? Maybe 10 years ago, but in today's world it's entirely the opposite. Commercial software is incredibly open to COMMERCIAL partners. I can't think of a single major closed-source vendor that DOESN'T publish extremely extensible systems for ISV's. It's the lifeblood of almost every for-profit software offering, especially in the enterprise.

Quote :

"It's kind of a joke for a company to take a suite of software, and then invest more man hours creating various levels of cripple-ware to gouge consumers in various markets based on their ability to pay. The thought of paying for an intentionally crippled software is pretty disgusting to me. Not to mention that it's pretty much a collective biting of the thumb at individual contributors in any field -- you have to make a particular field your life's work to afford the investment in the full version of some professional softwares, acquire the software through an employer, or resort to piracy if you find that the software would facilitate your efforts in that field (however mundane or significant they may be). It's even contrary to the goal of copyright, which is purportedly to foster innovation. "

What in the fuck are you babbling about? None of this makes any sense. My only guess for the cripple-wear you are inferring is Win7's starter edition, which is only sold in east-asia and is packaged that way because of the RAMPANT piracy in those countries. It's been proven as an effective way to let people who cannot afford to pay for the software to be able to have usable system, while keeping businesses from effectively profiting off of pirated applications and platforms.

What professional software do you have to devote your entire life to in order to afford? That's fucking stupid. The very very few applications that have big-ticket pricetags ALL have sales options for startups, educational and trial users as well as financing and payment options to meet the needs of their customers. You are talking about software that is SPECIFICALLY used in for-profit businesses.

Not to mention, nearly every commercial application vendor spends large amounts of money on user education, community outreach, community collaboration et al. My guess is when you sit in your room working on pirated versions of Cadence and pSpice after a long shift at Papa John's, it doesn't leave much time to go to conferences and educational forums.

Quote :

"In fact I think copyright and intellectual property in the information age are so impractical it's almost a delusion. There is no cost of duplication. I don't see any reason to believe it's beneficial economically to stifle the innovation of others by denying them access to information or tools. It's so hard to enforce that most companies have resorted to putting the burden, most degradingly, on the customer to insure their revenue. Product activation? Ha! "

I've already had this talk with you. Which you apparently chose to ignore (as you seem to do with all rational thought). DUPLICATION IS NOT THE ONLY COST OF A PRODUCT. Software's main cost is THE PEOPLE WHO DEVELOP IT.

And no one "deny's access to information or tools" for qualified, legitimate groups. Again, nearly ever major software vendor has open community organizations to specifically foster development and extension.

Product Activation? You mean the feature that is not mandatory for installation or use on any Microsoft product? You get 30 days to try out anything you want without any restriction. Then you have the option to pay for it, or to uninstall it. How much more fair can you get?

Quote :

"I mean out of the box not a bunch of buggy powertools that ms isnt even secure enough with to release to the general public. My experience with the tools you mentioned was not pleasant and ive done more win development than linux. "

Powershell ships with Windows. Client and Server. But really, keep talking COMPLETELY out of your ass.

Quote :

"FYI, noen is an MS shill and one of those "if the tool doesn't work for you, you are the problem" types We have a winner, folks. blahblahblah, I liked Quinn's comment the other day about the corporate brainwashing program he must have been through... but I digress. "

Man you guys are so brilliant and insightful. I've been developing with PHP for better than 9 years. Wrote the first fully OSS platform application in NC government history. I'm terribly sorry for being successful.

skokiaan: I am a user experience designer. My ENTIRE job is to make our platform and tools better for our users. Your "statement" is laughably ignorant. I'm not a shill for anyone, if you think so, FEEL FREE to show us my post history where I favor Microsoft or any other company without basis. You won't be able to, because I don't.

I have no problems with anyone on this site on a personal level. But you guys are seriously deluded in how quickly you dismiss people because of someone makes a half-joking comment.

5/17/2009 4:22:44 AM

Quote :

"Linux is a kernel. Nothing more. The Unix toolchain and environment typically built upon it, however, is decades older than any glizty Microsoft crap you can find a marketing line for, with refinement and maturity you'd expect of a more developed offering. It's also received considerable use and improvement in academic computing use over the years and as one would expect employs more sophisticated and flexible methodologies throughout its implementation. Even as a kernel, how long ago was it that Microsoft's was cooperatively time shared with no memory segmentation? You really need to get off of that Microcrack, dawg."

Where did I say Linux was bad?

I've been an active user for a long time. I'm running a LAMP config as we speak. My point is, as both Shaggy and skoniaan have made, is that the argument of "XXXX platform rules, everything else sucks" is fucking ignorant and stupid.

refinement and maturity? sophisticated and flexible methodologies? Seriously dude, get off your soap box. The linux source tree is controlled by ONE MAN, with ultimate power over all innovation and functionality. For all that refinement and sophistication, it still can't manage to deliver a single consumer-ready solution. You would think that such a flexible and mature model, they would have figured out a way to give the average consumer an acceptable experience.

Arguing technical merits is all fine and dandy (and hell, the reason I love OSX so much is because of its BSD underpinnings), but technical merit doesn't make money.

5/17/2009 4:29:59 AM

Quote :

"What in the fuck are you babbling about? None of this makes any sense. My only guess for the cripple-wear you are inferring is Win7's starter edition, which is only sold in east-asia and is packaged that way because of the RAMPANT piracy in those countries. It's been proven as an effective way to let people who cannot afford to pay for the software to be able to have usable system, while keeping businesses from effectively profiting off of pirated applications and platforms."

Well that's a fine example, but this wasn't really directed at you, or Microsoft. In fact only the first few lines and the last paragraph were directed at Microsoft and your comments. I'm not going to even bother pointing out the "trim levels" of various softwares across practically every major software distributor's inventory. You damn well know what I'm referring to.

Quote :

"My point is, as both Shaggy and skoniaan have made, is that the argument of "XXXX platform rules, everything else sucks" is fucking ignorant and stupid."

How can you trumpet your "Microsoft's platform rules, everything else sucks" bullshit in practically every fucking thread and then post this with a straight face? Doublethink ftw.

Quote :

"The linux source tree is controlled by ONE MAN, with ultimate power over all innovation and functionality."

Hey dumbass it's GPL -- you can fork it at any time and do whatever the fuck you want with it, as long as you agree to do the same as he's done, which is to make the source freely available to anyone.

Quote :

"For all that refinement and sophistication, it still can't manage to deliver a single consumer-ready solution."

And Microsoft's offerings are? Different compromises have been made for different reasons. Unix desktop environments may be unfriendly on the surface, but I haven't heard of many people having their bank account cleaned out, credit ruined, house and car repossessed due to security issues in a Unix desktop environment either. One with some historical perspective might say it's because Unix desktop environments were developed originally for large multi-user environments with potentially malicious local users, while Microsoft's products were developed originally to minimize time to market on pocket calculators grafted with CRT displays.

Quote :

"Technical merit doesn't make money."

Is this an internal Microsoft dictum?

Quote :

"Software's main cost is THE PEOPLE WHO DEVELOP IT. "

Sure there's a cost associated with development. Many people feel that the open source model of "I need X software to do Y, I will pay you to add that functionality" is less stifling to future innovation. You might even go so far as to say that the responsible thing to do would be to release the source of a product whose sales have paid for its cost of development. id Software does this with their game engines and impressively promptly as well. One could also argue that it'd be responsible to release the source for a product that still has utility in the marketplace when the cost of maintenance exceeds the vendors willingness to invest. Fine examples of profit-driven irresponsibility and abuse of copyright might be: EOL of every Microsoft Windows OS, whereupon customers still finding utility in the dated platform were told to get fucked and engage in the next revenue cycle, or enjoy the <60 seconds of functionality before the malware raping their boxes would receive when given a routable IP address.

[Edited on May 17, 2009 at 5:10 AM. Reason : .]

5/17/2009 4:52:03 AM

Quote :

"Where did I say Linux was bad?"

You suggested a kernel which has found utilization in everything from embedded platforms such as refridgerators, cell phones, and industrial machinery to supercomputing clusters, high availability clustered database servers, and web clusters was suitable only as a mid-tier web services platform. I'm not really sure what you mean by "mid-tier" -- I might just die if you mean to place IIS in a higher tier. But perhaps you've forgotten Apache Tomcat and mean to imply that Java web services are a higher tier? In any case, this is a complete mischaracterization. I would like to point to the MS market share in high performance computing (the highest tier of computing, surely) as an example, which is approximately none whatsoever. I strongly suspect it'll remain at a steady zero even after the MS release of their most ironically named OS yet.

[Edited on May 17, 2009 at 5:51 AM. Reason : .]

5/17/2009 5:33:05 AM

^I'm not talking about the kernel, im talking about the development environment OS (in reference to Nael's post). I never made any mention of Linux outside that space.

You are the one PROJECTING your own opinions onto me. I've never said linux wasn't an amazing embedded systems kernel or architecture. Google has done a pretty damn good job showing the versatility and commercial application of the linux kernel to a variety of products and services.

I don't have anything for or against IIS, I've never had a reason to leave Apache. But I can show you as much data as you want to see that will backup IIS' capability to handle ridiculous scale. Different people have different needs. Apache has always met mine, but I can certainly think of many circumstances where it would make more financial sense to use IIS.

I don't know nearly enough to comment on the HPC space, other than saying I don't doubt for a minute that Microsoft doesn't have much play there. HPC is probably the newest company initiative, at least in Server&Tools, and there's certainly serious investment going into that space.

Also, you have to realize that, as an employee, there is a lot of information that I simply cannot talk about. It will have to suffice to say that I am not a shill, nor do I drink the company Koolaid. People who have worked with me professionally know that I tell it like I see it, good or bad.

5/17/2009 7:10:43 AM

If I want to sit down with minimal effort and write a shell script to start and stop servers on 100s of different boxes and email that output to a dev list while creating a playlist to listen to while it's running, I assume it's really easy to do that in one command on Windows.

I will say C# is superior from a language standpoint and Visual Studio is clearly better than Eclipse. You should have attacked that, but instead you keep talking about all this functionality Windows has but noone ever uses. I meant multiple virtual desktops, which I had setup in windows but it sucked RAM awful bad and when I'm debugging a local JBoss and BEA server with Eclipse running, you can imagine how well that works.

[Edited on May 17, 2009 at 11:06 AM. Reason : a]

5/17/2009 11:05:39 AM

Quote :

"If I want to sit down with minimal effort and write a shell script to start and stop servers on 100s of different boxes and email that output to a dev list while creating a playlist to listen to while it's running, I assume it's really easy to do that in one command on Windows. "

Service control or any other management functions are done through RPC on windows. Anything you can do in windows locally, you can do via RPC on a remote machine. Basic things, like service control or taskmanagement all have built in command line or gui tools in windows. For anything that doesn't have a tool, you can use vbscript to manage it. There really is nothing that comes close to the management power of vbscript and wmi in linux.

In linux your remote control is limited to individual applications, remote-run bash scripts, or 3rd party RPC tools. All of which differ from distro to distro.

In your example you have to write all the different tools to manage the different applications and services, push them out to every server, make sure they all work, and then you can control them remotely.

To do that with windows is way easier. Plus, if you write an application for windows you can use all the underlying management features.

To be honest the only people who bitch about not being able to do what they want on windows really have no idea what they're talking about. When I think cripple ware I think linux or OSX. The features im used to in windows aren't there without me writing my own tools.

5/17/2009 1:04:02 PM

While this thread is a tad off topic, I kinda like it.

5/17/2009 3:17:13 PM

Quote :

"Anything you can do in windows locally, you can do via RPC on a remote machine. Basic things, like service control or taskmanagement all have built in command line or gui tools in windows. ... There really is nothing that comes close to the management power of vbscript and wmi in linux. ... In linux your remote control is limited to individual applications, remote-run bash scripts, or 3rd party RPC tools. All of which differ from distro to distro."

I'm sorry, but to seriously imply that Windows is a better platform for scripting and remote management indicates breathtaking ignorance. Network transparency and tool interoperability are core to the philosophy and arguably the raison d'être of Unix systems. You don't need proprietary, closed source interfaces that purport to export large swaths of the functionality of the environment (WMI), because the entire functionality of the operating environment is exposed via command binaries and documented system calls, allowing pretty much any interpreted or compiled language ever written to be used for management. All environment setup is performed by scripts. The source for the command binaries are available to repurpose or modify as needed, as is the source backing all system calls. There are also GUI widgets for service and process management -- though I fail to see how this relates to remote management.

Quote :

"To be honest the only people who bitch about not being able to do what they want on windows really have no idea what they're talking about. When I think cripple ware I think linux or OSX."

Ha ha ha hello irony.

5/17/2009 6:00:21 PM

Quote :

"If I want to sit down with minimal effort and write a shell script to start and stop servers on 100s of different boxes and email that output to a dev list while creating a playlist to listen to while it's running, I assume it's really easy to do that in one command on Windows. "

In one command, what value metric is that? But specifically to your question of server management + status, yes that is easy as pie. You could do it all with a cmdlet, or you could just use System Center

Quote :

"but instead you keep talking about all this functionality Windows has but noone ever uses. I meant multiple virtual desktops, which I had setup in windows but it sucked RAM awful bad and when I'm debugging a local JBoss and BEA server with Eclipse running, you can imagine how well that works. "

The illusion here is "noone ever uses". Which I admit is frustrating. Microsoft's enterprise products are notorious for being "closed communities". There is a huge amount of usage for the functionality I am talking about. The difference is, unlike most FOSS, you don't get exposed to that via google. This is slowly changing, but unfortunately a lof of Mindshare in MS products is in the partner programs, seminars, books and conferences. None of which are free :/ (This is probably my #1 reason for still choosing FOSS platforms over several MS offerings, even as an employee)

Quote :

"Network transparency and tool interoperability are core to the philosophy and arguably the raison d'être of Unix systems. You don't need proprietary, closed source interfaces that purport to export large swaths of the functionality of the environment (WMI), because the entire functionality of the operating environment is exposed via command binaries and documented system calls, allowing pretty much any interpreted or compiled language ever written to be used for management. All environment setup is performed by scripts. The source for the command binaries are available to repurpose or modify as needed, as is the source backing all system calls. "

This is the snake eating it's tail. All of that "repurpose or modify as needed" capability results in systems that are astandard, distributions that do not play nicely with each other, and tribal knowledge of code that is lost quickly and impossible to rehydrate. It's not better or worse, it's just different. Being ultimately configurable comes with a cost.

Windows provides a homogeneous, long life-cycle, knowledge backed ecosystem. It's not necessary to need ultimate configurability or total transparency when you get uniformity. Business cares about TCO and revenue generation. That's it. If open source drives those, then open-source it is. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

Quote :

"because the entire functionality of the operating environment is exposed via command binaries and documented system calls,"

This is the only laughable part to me (the rest of your post makes a lot of sense, and I agree with). *nix has horribly inconsistent, spotty, and in many places non-existant documentation. The downside to FOSS is that knowledge is lost quickly and expensive to replicate. If you come across a not-so-well-documented feature on a linux system, you are either at the mercy of the community or the amount of cash you can invest into figuring out how to get it working, or what changes need to be make to get it to work.

With Windows (as a business customer), you know that if you hit a roadblock, you have 50,000 engineers at your disposal to get the answer, and it's very probable that the "guy who wrote it" will still be around to give domain specific answers. The answer may very well be along the lines of "it's not currently supported", but at least you can get an answer quickly and definitively.

5/17/2009 10:38:18 PM

5/18/2009 12:24:24 AM

Quote :

"In one command, what value metric is that? But specifically to your question of server management + status, yes that is easy as pie. You could do it all with a cmdlet, or you could just use System Center "

It's the I sit the fuck down and have at my finger tips 90% of Fortune 1000 company routers and don't have to click through obscure windows to do it metric. Bash is standard these days and you don't need a cmdlet which breaks the model of how shells have worked for 30 years. How well do they manage Solaris boxes? I imagine if that even does work how horrendous it would be going into and out of Windows environments. There is always cygwin.

Quote :

" With Windows (as a business customer), you know that if you hit a roadblock, you have 50,000 engineers at your disposal to get the answer, and it's very probable that the "guy who wrote it" will still be around to give domain specific answers. The answer may very well be along the lines of "it's not currently supported", but at least you can get an answer quickly and definitively. "

I can imagine that answer would work really well for me. I am having a problem I can't figure out, sales guy has a $10,000,000/year sale depending on that feature and we have to upgrade our entire stack to support it...

5/18/2009 8:22:52 AM

Quote :

"With Windows (as a business customer), you know that if you hit a roadblock, you have 50,000 engineers at your disposal to get the answer, and it's very probable that the "guy who wrote it" will still be around to give domain specific answers. The answer may very well be along the lines of "it's not currently supported", but at least you can get an answer quickly and definitively."

In my experience working with business customers of both commercially supported Linuxes and Microsoft products if it's not a new buzz-feature or piece of hardware being released for the next cycle, "it's not currently supported". Essentially, if there isn't a partner or alliance pushing strongly for support of their product or standard it's often not going to be considered worthy of expenditure, and will receive pretty much no attention. If it's an older product no longer being actively marketed, enthusiasm for it's inclusion or maintenance will be lacking. This can also affect capabilities which are highly desirable to the customer but may threaten artificial market segmentations of any of the partner vendors involved, or the OS vendor itself. Naturally in these cases the threatened vendors will strongly suggest against inclusion of support for amusingly fabricated reasons. It's sort of like the Monkey's Paw Homer finds at the bazaar, you can make your wishes, but they're going to respond to them in the most evil, self-serving, cost-effective ways possible. Being that only a minority of users are even going to be in a position to be told promptly to sod off or discover this amusing interplay of anticompetitive intrigue, I am not sure how relevant it is to the discussion.

Quote :

"*nix has horribly inconsistent, spotty, and in many places non-existant documentation. The downside to FOSS is that knowledge is lost quickly and expensive to replicate. If you come across a not-so-well-documented feature on a linux system, you are either at the mercy of the community or the amount of cash you can invest into figuring out how to get it working, or what changes need to be make to get it to work."

On the contrary, with open source softwares you can usually with some research find the very thread on the relevant kernel or application dev mailer archive that discusses the implementation, which combined with the entire commented source revision history available from the repository, is more than enough documentation to decipher the behavior of a given command or system call. Archives often go back to the late 80s and early 90s, giving tremendous historical perspective if one so desires it. On the other hand, it's frequently the case that (and I suppose in support of the "poor documentation" angle, depending on how little or much value one places on the more absolute documentation that source can provide) the best documentation is the source itself. Features or applications in rapid development may have documentation that lags behind implementation by several versions. Tragic, I suppose, but there seem to be fewer technical writers contributing to open source than developers, and those that do often seem to write books for pay instead of contributing their documentation directly to the relevant projects. Perhaps it's worth considering adding a "derived documentation" clause into open source licenses requiring that all documentation created with the intent of describing functionality of the project's compiled source be made as freely available as the source itself

--

To digress a bit, I am personally more interested in finding a realistic economic treatment of information than finding a workable compromise of reality and principle to gaurantee inflated profits for monopolous software and media conglomerates. It seems pretty obvious that the real value of accumulated information is quite low, and due to the ease of duplication and/or reverse engineering, that value is localized in time very near to the point of creation. It's hard to deny that software and media conglomerates try to extract much more revenue from their intellectual property holdings than merely developer time. Further they rarely contribute the intellectual property that has been "paid for" back to the public domain in spite of drawing heavily from that base of knowledge, forcing an inevitable and unnecessary duplication of effort.

The open source model of paying strictly for developer time to make a modification seems the closest to accepting the reality of intellectual property. Just as Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus would seem senseless to claim as property being intrinsic truths -- can you imagine the effect on modern science and engineering it would have had if Isaac Newton attempted to copyright for 90 years (or is it 110 years now?) and patent his Calculus work to stamp out derivative works? -- intellecutal property often describes intrinsic solutions within a problem domain that seem comical to consider as property.

Even in piracy circles one observes that the value to ones reputation of a "0-day" release is great, while a duplicated release is often punishable. I think it further highlights the essential and inescapable reality of intellectual property: the value ceases to be when novelty ceases to be, and that novelty is rather short-lived with information-age rates of cultural diffusion. Law has done very little to change this, other than to criminalize or find liable a significant portion of otherwise law-abiding, non-violent citizens.

[Edited on May 18, 2009 at 8:31 AM. Reason : .]

5/18/2009 8:28:44 AM

Quote :

" In my experience working with business customers of both commercially supported Linuxes and Microsoft products if it's not a new buzz-feature or piece of hardware being released for the next cycle, "it's not currently supported". Essentially, if there isn't a partner or alliance pushing strongly for support of their product or standard it's often not going to be considered worthy of expenditure, and will receive pretty much no attention. If it's an older product no longer being actively marketed, enthusiasm for it's inclusion or maintenance will be lacking. This can also affect capabilities which are highly desirable to the customer but may threaten artificial market segmentations of any of the partner vendors involved, or the OS vendor itself. Naturally in these cases the threatened vendors will strongly suggest against inclusion of support for amusingly fabricated reasons. It's sort of like the Monkey's Paw Homer finds at the bazaar, you can make your wishes, but they're going to respond to them in the most evil, self-serving, cost-effective ways possible. Being that only a minority of users are even going to be in a position to be told promptly to sod off or discover this amusing interplay of anticompetitive intrigue, I am not sure how relevant it is to the discussion. "

The only time I've had vendors not support my configuration is when I was running Centos instead of red hat. Is it because evil microsoft paid them to support red hat instead of centos? No. Its because even though centos is the same thing, they dont know that for sure. And they dont want to spend the time or money to figure out if or what is different in order to give me support.

Quote :

"On the contrary, with open source softwares you can usually with some research find the very thread on the relevant kernel or application dev mailer archive that discusses the implementation, which combined with the entire commented source revision history available from the repository, is more than enough documentation to decipher the behavior of a given command or system call."

lol. What fucking bizzaro world do you live in? In the real world source is not proper documentation.

5/18/2009 9:13:29 AM

Quote :

"I'm sorry, but to seriously imply that Windows is a better platform for scripting and remote management indicates breathtaking ignorance. Network transparency and tool interoperability are core to the philosophy and arguably the raison d'être of Unix systems. You don't need proprietary, closed source interfaces that purport to export large swaths of the functionality of the environment (WMI), because the entire functionality of the operating environment is exposed via command binaries and documented system calls, allowing pretty much any interpreted or compiled language ever written to be used for management. All environment setup is performed by scripts. The source for the command binaries are available to repurpose or modify as needed, as is the source backing all system calls. There are also GUI widgets for service and process management -- though I fail to see how this relates to remote management. "

No you dont NEED WMI because you can write shell scripts the same way you do bash in windows. Its just that WMI is VASTLY superior to shell scripts that are going to differ from distro to distro and from application to application.

In windows theres one central way to manage services. Do you have to use it? No, but you'd be retarded not to.

In linux the service management system depends on your distro. The init script differs based on application. The location of lock or pid files differs based on script and/or distro.

Tell me how that is anywhere close to a better system?

5/18/2009 9:18:07 AM

ITT we use lots and lots and lots of buzz words.

5/18/2009 9:39:17 AM

Speaking of open source, are there any good spice simulators that are $freeware?

5/18/2009 9:51:57 AM

depends...



or



?

5/18/2009 10:11:59 AM

Quote :

"It's the I sit the fuck down and have at my finger tips 90% of Fortune 1000 company routers and don't have to click through obscure windows to do it metric. Bash is standard these days and you don't need a cmdlet which breaks the model of how shells have worked for 30 years."

You are talking about routers. You said servers in your previous post. Microsoft obviously has no market there (hence why we Partner with Nortel and Cisco). You guys are talking apples and oranges here. It's silly to taunt the features of a platform against a non-existant competitor.

Quote :

"In my experience working with business customers of both commercially supported Linuxes and Microsoft products if it's not a new buzz-feature or piece of hardware being released for the next cycle, "it's not currently supported". Essentially, if there isn't a partner or alliance pushing strongly for support of their product or standard it's often not going to be considered worthy of expenditure, and will receive pretty much no attention. If it's an older product no longer being actively marketed, enthusiasm for it's inclusion or maintenance will be lacking. This can also affect capabilities which are highly desirable to the customer but may threaten artificial market segmentations of any of the partner vendors involved, or the OS vendor itself."

The first part is not true. I skim thousands of customer emails every week that are followed by answers, workarounds, and alternative solutions. Just looking at the msdn and technet forums you will see much the same thing. It's not perfect, but it's light years better than the black hole of support in FOSS. Incidentally this is EXACTLY why Red Hat (and others) exist, because they provide consistent and quality support for the enterprise.

As for the second part, Microsoft works extremely closely and transparently with it's partners. If we are planning on implementing functionality that a partner currently provides, it's not uncommon to look at purchasing the partner, or at the least giving them transparency into our plans as it may affect their business.

Quote :

"It seems pretty obvious that the real value of accumulated information is quite low, and due to the ease of duplication and/or reverse engineering, that value is localized in time very near to the point of creation."

Quote :

"It's hard to deny that software and media conglomerates try to extract much more revenue from their intellectual property holdings than merely developer time. Further they rarely contribute the intellectual property that has been "paid for" back to the public domain in spite of drawing heavily from that base of knowledge, forcing an inevitable and unnecessary duplication of effort."

You are stereotyping IP, which is a massive and incorrect generalization.

Google is an IP company, who has shown the real value of accumulated information. It's that accumulation that makes them valuable. Nearly all of their tools are free to consumers and are well documented. Yet they "extract" much more revenue from their IP than merely developer time.

Microsoft is an IP company. They have authored and released dozens FREE development API's, language, tooling, compilers, and support. .NET is entirely free, platform independent and supports 19 languages. Almost all of it is available in source to registered developers (free).

Both companies (and many many others) continually acquire smaller companies who've built valuable technology on their platforms. If this isn't "paying it back" I don't know what is.

Quote :

"The open source model of paying strictly for developer time to make a modification seems the closest to accepting the reality of intellectual property. Just as Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus would seem senseless to claim as property being intrinsic truths -- can you imagine the effect on modern science and engineering it would have had if Isaac Newton attempted to copyright for 90 years (or is it 110 years now?) and patent his Calculus work to stamp out derivative works? -- intellecutal property often describes intrinsic solutions within a problem domain that seem comical to consider as property. "

You can't copyright implementations. He could have PATENTED his Calculus work. And it only stamps out derivatives assuming he A) wouldn't license it's use, and B) only commercial interests would care about Calculus. You forget that educational fair use exists to prevent the situation you are proposing.

Without IP there would no innovation. Go look at China if you want to see a great example. The reason IP exists is because the cost of research and development must be subsidized by the products that fund that development. If you only paid people for their time in development, then ALL SCIENCE would become a commoditized. Not just software, IP is fundamental to the proliferation and success of this country. If you put IP in the same bucket as any other manual labor (which is exactly what you are proposing), innovation will slow to a standstill, because it's worth no one's time to do anything new, because they will have no reward.

The thing you continually ignore Tiberius, is that IP gives people careers and rewards for their brainpower. Much in the same way that sports give people careers and rewards for their work ethic and physical talent. Without IP, there is no incentive to innovate or learn. It's all well and fine in a university, but if you can't pay rent or put food on the table for your family, all the Open-Source software in the world won't help you.

5/18/2009 4:04:29 PM

Quote :

"You can't copyright implementations. He could have PATENTED his Calculus work. And it only stamps out derivatives assuming he A) wouldn't license it's use, and B) only commercial interests would care about Calculus. You forget that educational fair use exists to prevent the situation you are proposing."

I was implying more that the bulk of Calculus consists of algorithms and functions, similar to a software product. Whether or not his methods or writings regarding Calculus would have been subject to patent or copyright is probably a point better left to law scholars. Is it "educational fair use" for a student of music to study modern music? Is it "educational fair use" for a Computer Science student to study modern operating systems? No, and no. In fact, the lion's share of copyright enforcement action of late has been actively targetting students. Educational fair use is a fucking joke, and recently MPAA representatives were caught suggesting with a straight face that educational fair use of a DVD might be for a teacher to record it with a fucking VHS camcorder before presenting it to a classroom.

Quote :

"Google is an IP company, who has shown the real value of accumulated information. It's that accumulation that makes them valuable. Nearly all of their tools are free to consumers and are well documented. Yet they "extract" much more revenue from their IP than merely developer time."

They extract value from that IP at fractions of a cent at a time, yes? One might say they acknowledge the reality of its miniscule value rather than flopping around impotently, begging for legislation to create artificial value.

Quote :

"The thing you continually ignore Tiberius, is that IP gives people careers and rewards for their brainpower. Much in the same way that sports give people careers and rewards for their work ethic and physical talent. Without IP, there is no incentive to innovate or learn. It's all well and fine in a university, but if you can't pay rent or put food on the table for your family, all the Open-Source software in the world won't help you."

Athletes must perform consistently to make a career out of sports. Actors, musicians, authors, inventors, other purveryors of intellectual property may perform as infrequently as a single time to make a "career" out of intellectual property. It's incomparable to any other market, because it's entirely artificial.

[Edited on May 18, 2009 at 8:54 PM. Reason : .]

5/18/2009 8:51:08 PM

Quote :

"... Whether or not his methods or writings regarding Calculus would have been subject to patent or copyright is probably a point better left to law scholars."

You don't need to be a law scholar to distinguish between copyright and patent. Since you obviously never do ANY due diligence, here it is for you in plain english:

"A copyright protects the form of expression rather than the subject matter of the writing." [link]http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/whatis.htm ">Linky

A patent is on a reproducable method of implementation, which is what ALL software is, and what ALL mathematical algorithms are (yes, including Calculus).

Quote :

" Is it "educational fair use" for a student of music to study modern music? ... Computer Science student to study modern operating systems? No, and no. ..blahblah random babble. "

Actually yes and yes. NCSU (and every other major university) has virtually complete libraries of Music available for student studies. Nearly all industry specific software and platforms are available to students. https://connect.microsoft.com/directory/ to be a part of a free, worldwide community (and get all the latest software to develop for it).

You are trying to blur the lines between PERSONAL use, and EDUCATIONAL use. These are VERY distinct. Illegally downloading MP3's from a P2P application is not the same as checking out a CD or DAP from an educational institution. Illegally downloading is not the same as going to the computer lab and using it, or buying a student license.

Quote :

"They extract value from that IP at fractions of a cent at a time, yes? One might say they acknowledge the reality of its miniscule value rather than flopping around impotently, begging for legislation to create artificial value."

I don't know of anyone doing the latter. Sony/BMG has finally admitted defeat in the DRM battle. Microsoft has never had invasive DRM, most of the major networks have finally begun to embrace digital FREE distribution through the likes of Hulu, Joost and their own sites. Apple opened the door for their Music content, eBooks and audioBooks are slowly becoming open standardized (keep in mind they are the youngest commercial product of the group).

The last holdout is the MPAA, and I have a feeling they are about to fall hard in court, over exactly the stupid shit you were talking about (filming a dvd with a camcorder).

But that all beside the point. The point is, the DEGREE to which a company can profit from it's own IP is bound by the market, not by their own greed. It's pretty damn simple economics. The cost of ANY product is bound by the willingness of the market. Success of software in services is just as tied to cost as it is to value.

Quote :

"Athletes must perform consistently to make a career out of sports. Actors, musicians, authors, inventors, other purveryors of intellectual property may perform as infrequently as a single time to make a "career" out of intellectual property. It's incomparable to any other market, because it's entirely artificial."

Again, you are completely wrong. Very few (VERY FEW) actors, musicians, authors, or inventors ever generate enough VALUABLE IP to stop working. And the majority work their ENTIRE LIVES to gain the skill and education necessary to generate profitable IP, in the same way an Athlete conditions his or her body. IP ensures that they, as a whole, can SURVIVE on the limited value they do generate. IP is just like any other asset, with the SOLE exclusion of it's cost to reproduce. It still costs to physically package (DVD, tape, book, machine), to distribute (digitally or physically), to support, to sell, to market et al.

If you think the stuff is overpriced, then don't buy it and don't use it. Music and Movies cost what they do because PEOPLE WILL PAY IT. When they stop paying it, prices drop (as they have on music and movies in the last year, by a significant amount).

If it costs too much, it's obviously not a critical need, or you would seek cheaper (possibly less functional) alternative. Your attempts to rationalize piracy don't hold water today. Ten years ago, I would have been in agreement with you on a lot of these points, but the industry has come a long way since then (and still admittedly has a long way to go). No one is entitled to everything. Free knowledge is not a right. If it were, the world would collapse.

[Edited on May 18, 2009 at 9:47 PM. Reason : .]

5/18/2009 9:35:23 PM

Quote :

"You are talking about routers. You said servers in your previous post. Microsoft obviously has no market there (hence why we Partner with Nortel and Cisco). You guys are talking apples and oranges here. It's silly to taunt the features of a platform against a non-existant competitor."

I was actually talking about routers, *nix machines interchangeably because lots of them use a combination of SSH, Telnet or SNMP and some whack job Cisco ones use web services, point being that you can connect to them easily with shell scripts because the interface is common enough.

I don't even know why I'm arguing--I'm not even our sys admin. He loves some Linux though. Eclipse does run way better for me in Linux and the build I work on is about 5 times faster than the Windows machines. I also like being able to generate source and refactor methods in the whole build on the command line even though my IDE does it.

5/19/2009 12:23:01 AM

^most of the devs I know live on the commandline, linux or not. And if you are using Eclipse, it's ungodly faster in linux, but that's all thanks to Sun's stupid ass licensing of the JVM. You want to talk about stifling innovation, there's a great one. Sun shot the Java community in the foot when Microsoft discontinued their JVM.

5/19/2009 3:20:59 AM

Quote :

"taunt"

tout

[/grammarnazi]

5/19/2009 7:38:31 AM