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We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

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Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#131

Post by varjag »

MrTonyD wrote: post #127
ktRolster wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, I was later involved with the team at Oracle that converted Linux from a toy into a functioning kernel. Seriously?

It's easy to forget the early days of Linux. If you go back and read the articles of the time they often pointed out that Linux made a good print server. But that was about all it could do - get lpr-style requests and talk to a printer driver. I did a test port of Oracle to Linux and wrote up a white paper for Larry. Larry was trying to figure out how to get Bill to kill important features in SQLServer. So Larry and…

Curious what other things, aside from GNU and Linux, you fixed in passing on your corporate assignments.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#132

Post by Retric »

batbomb wrote: post #72
Retric wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NCSA httpd also predates Linux. NCSA httpd released version 0.1 was June 1991. http://www.w3.org/Daemon/Features.html Amusingly: http://www.diam.unige.it/informatica/documentazione/httpd_do... "3.5) Why doesn't NCSA HTTPd work on my Linux system? NCSA HTTPd is not crippled. Linux may be crippled. NCSA HTTPd uses a standard BSD4 and SYSV feature known as file descriptor passing. NCSA HTTPd supports both the BSD and SY…

That's CERN httpd release notes for 0.1 @ 1991, not NCSA. NCSA didn't join the web until much later. In fact, SLAC was first to the web in the USA, and Marc had originally approached my boss, who wrote MidasWWW, to see if he'd want to collaborate on the web browser which would become Mosaic.

Doh, missed the edit window. However, it's clear that NCSA was not initially developed on or for Linux.

PS: An interesting side note, the SGML standard committee decided not to include hyperlinks which more or less directly resulted in HMTL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_La... I wonder if that would have pushed the web forward even faster or not as HTML is far less strict, but you could make a less strict render for SGML as well.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#133

Post by zanny »

sievebrain wrote: post #60
zanny wrote: post #2

Meanwhile, Windows is still pretty much the only desktop OS for 99% of people, Nvidia has stolen large-scale compute with a holistically proprietary CUDA, and Google has hijacked the ecosystem and culture with Android and ChromeOS (the former by having vendors use the incredibly destructive model of forking the kernel and stuffing it with binary blobs rendering it stuck to that version on whatever device you have, an…

I think the Linux community has always massively underestimated how destructive the no-stable-API policy has been. The result of not being willing to commit to a driver API has been that Android devices - by far the most massive deployment of Linux kernels ever - are a wasteland of out of date, exploit-ridden kernels that can't be patched because of the monolithic driver model. Windows has a single kernel and all dri…

> Google can't provide shared kernel builds. Everyone has to do it themselves.

Somehow, desktop Linux manages to ship one kernel per architecture (x86, ARM, MIPS, etc) and manages to support almost all hardware out there, and manages to keep their kernel up to date.

Yes, Linux is actively hostile to proprietary third party shipped binary drivers. I'd call that a feature more than a detriment, because we want open drivers, if for no other reason than it prevents panned obsolescence of hardware and lets you keep your computers working even when the original OEMs refuse to. It gives you control over your hardware in a way you cannot get with proprietary drivers.

Though it is worth mentioning DKMS exists, works, and in practice if any Android OEM wanted to they could recompile via DKMS their blob crap every kernel update and ship the kernel + drivers combined as they have been doing for years no problem, just with updated kernels. They don't, and that is absolutely not the fault of Linux itself, its because OEMs don't care and as long as users keep buying their hardware while they continue to violate the GPL and deny users power over their own devices they will get away with it.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#134

Post by hrktb »

stormbrew wrote: post #23
deng wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has no lineage in common with Linux. That's not what he wrote. In its initial release, OS X did depend heavily on free software (Samba, Apache, GNU, etc.), which again thrived because of Linux.

Also most of the early adopters of osx that I knew at the time were actively seeking out a unixy desktop because they worked on software eventually destined for Linux servers and didn't like the available desktop options for Linux. Not to say that was the entire market, but it was a good chunk of it.

Only speaking for myself, but I initally switched to OSX right from FreeBSD because of the similarity . At that point the PHP+MySQL stack was still faster on BSD (mainly because of yahoo I think) and the ports system much easier to use than rpms for instance.

Otherwise I only saw Solaris or commercial types of unix (like what came with IBM servers) in use in companies I directly worked with. I understand that linux was already rising pretty strong, but tried and true Unix/BSD systems were definitely seen as the more 'serious'/professional choices.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#135

Post by dandelion_lover »

franciscop wrote: post #130
dandelion_lover wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is quite a bit different than, for example, the situation with Windows 10. The situation is different; but the direction is the same.

But the direction are the opposite: 1. Canonical makes no money. 2. They introduce a "bad" feature to try to make money. 3. Users outrage so canonical makes it easy to cancel. 4. Users are still not happy so Canonical turns it off by default. vs 1. Microsoft makes s *loads of money from various sources. 2. They show an annoying popup urging users to upgrade to W10 (to make more money? to reduce support?). 3. They sta…

The difference is that the users of Windows have no choice. Microsoft takes advantage of the situation. Canonical has no such advantage, but they surely would like to, according to this precedent.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#136

Post by nikanj »

MrTonyD wrote: post #127
ktRolster wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, I was later involved with the team at Oracle that converted Linux from a toy into a functioning kernel. Seriously?

It's easy to forget the early days of Linux. If you go back and read the articles of the time they often pointed out that Linux made a good print server. But that was about all it could do - get lpr-style requests and talk to a printer driver. I did a test port of Oracle to Linux and wrote up a white paper for Larry. Larry was trying to figure out how to get Bill to kill important features in SQLServer. So Larry and…

I'm super curious about this. When was this, mid-90s?

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#137

Post by thescriptkiddie »

api wrote: post #5

Free Freedom Since everything in OSS has to be free, there is no economic model. Eventually things with an economic model supersede or embrace/extend open ecosystems because they have the resources to do so. They also have the resources to address user experience, which is the most important thing unless your target audience consists of only hackers. (Even then it still matters.) Good UX is an immense amount of work,…

Redhat et al. have shown us that it is entirely possible to make money off of free software. Google et al. have shown us that free software trumps proprietary, even if there is no money to be made from it. The business model of selling licenses to proprietary software is a relic of a long-gone era at this point. Even Microsoft is giving away Windows 10 for "free".

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#138

Post by api »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #137
api wrote: post #5

Free Freedom Since everything in OSS has to be free, there is no economic model. Eventually things with an economic model supersede or embrace/extend open ecosystems because they have the resources to do so. They also have the resources to address user experience, which is the most important thing unless your target audience consists of only hackers. (Even then it still matters.) Good UX is an immense amount of work,…

Redhat et al. have shown us that it is entirely possible to make money off of free software. Google et al. have shown us that free software trumps proprietary, even if there is no money to be made from it. The business model of selling licenses to proprietary software is a relic of a long-gone era at this point. Even Microsoft is giving away Windows 10 for "free".

It's possible to make money off free software in B2B with services, support, SaaS, proprietary value adds, etc. That's how RedHat and many other enterprise vendors with OSS offerings make money. This only works for selling to corporations. End users don't pay for that kind of thing.

I am not aware of anyone making money in free software in B2C other than through surveillance, ads, or other ways of "monetizing the user." This is how Google, Facebook, and others who produce free software in B2C areas make money.

From a freedom POV, B2C is what matters. I assume that since we're talking about free-as-in-freedom we're interested in getting beyond surveillance as a business model.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#139

Post by MrTonyD »

varjag wrote: post #131
MrTonyD wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to forget the early days of Linux. If you go back and read the articles of the time they often pointed out that Linux made a good print server. But that was about all it could do - get lpr-style requests and talk to a printer driver. I did a test port of Oracle to Linux and wrote up a white paper for Larry. Larry was trying to figure out how to get Bill to kill important features in SQLServer. So Larry and…

Curious what other things, aside from GNU and Linux, you fixed in passing on your corporate assignments.

I'm just a geek who grew up in Silicon Valley. I soldered and wire wrapped chips I picked up from Haltek/Halted and the sales offices of local chip manufacturers, and taught myself programming using switches to enter binary codes (before I bought a broken teletype and fixed it - paper tape was a huge improvement after using switches to program.)

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#140

Post by patates »

MrTonyD wrote: post #127
ktRolster wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, I was later involved with the team at Oracle that converted Linux from a toy into a functioning kernel. Seriously?

It's easy to forget the early days of Linux. If you go back and read the articles of the time they often pointed out that Linux made a good print server. But that was about all it could do - get lpr-style requests and talk to a printer driver. I did a test port of Oracle to Linux and wrote up a white paper for Larry. Larry was trying to figure out how to get Bill to kill important features in SQLServer. So Larry and…

well, it probably saved some lives by telling people that their printer was on fire
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