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Linux links of the week


Icewalkers is another site dedicated to tracking releases of Linux software. They have added ratings to all the packages - expressed in numbers of penguin feet. What they lack, as do many such sites, is any sort of reasoning or justifications for their ratings. Maybe they'll get there.

The Linux Tip O' The Day is exactly what it sounds like - a new nugget of Linux information each day.

Section Editor: Jon Corbet


November 18, 1999

   

 

Letters to the editor


Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@lwn.net. Preference will be given to letters which are short, to the point, and well written. If you want your email address "anti-spammed" in some way please be sure to let us know. We do not have a policy against anonymous letters, but we will be reluctant to include them.
 
   
To: letters@lwn.net
Subject: Linux' certainty of success
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 15:22:55 +0100
From: Jan Nieuwenhuizen <jcn@cs.leidenuniv.nl>

Hi,

You state:

    Linux does not need the federal courts to assure its success

No, indeed it doesn't.  GNU/Linux is doing quite fine for me, and the
installed base will continue to grow.  But somehow, it seems to me that
you want to say that the Microsoft monopoly and it's malicious
practices, can and will be overthrown if only we continue to produce
good quality code.

I beg to differ.  Although I'm convinced that, once this is bound to
happen, I'm not at all sure when that may be.  By ordinary people,
Microsoft is often perceived as a big brother that helped them to feel
somewhat at easy, using that scary computer thing.  There are people out
there that take Word97 classes, and party when they graduate.  A large
enough number of novice computer users need to see a compelling reason
to turn away from the comfort Microsoft.

Convincing arguments might be availability and cost.  Alarmingly,
the fof states that three support calls eat all OEM's profit.  If you
look at it that way, when will you think we'll see GNU/Linux boxes in
computer stores, as prominently as Windows?  `Hey, where has my A: drive
gone?' Ping, one support call.  Even if GNU/Linux desktops get better
than Windows, by being different alone, they will trigger a higher
support call rate than a Windows box would.

Jan.

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien/      | http://www.lilypond.org/
   
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 11:49:24 -0500
From: Seth Gordon <sgordon@kenan.com>
To: letters@lwn.net
Subject: Linux and the US vs. Microsoft findings of fact

The following anecdote, taken from paragraphs 209 through 216 of the
Findings of Fact, illustrates why the government cannot wait for Linux
to rein Microsoft in.

Starting in 1996, Microsoft forbade its OEMs from running anything
other than the standard Windows boot sequence when a user started a
Windows machine for the first time.  OEMs had been using these
customized boot sequences to give new users tutorials, sign-up
programs, and alternative user interfaces.  The OEMs had a strong
incentive to customize their machines to make them easier to use, both
to differentiate their brands and to prevent expensive
customer-service calls.  (Three customer-support calls can erase the
entire profit that an OEM makes from selling a PC.)  However, these
customizations interfered with Microsoft's strategy for promoting
Microsoft Network and Internet Explorer.

In March of 1997, the R&D manager at Hewlett-Packard sent a complaint
to Microsoft.  Before "the edicts that ... Microsoft issued last
fall", HP had "the lowest return rate of any OEM (even lower than
Apple)".  Since then, customer support calls and returns on
HP-Pavilion PCs had gone up substantially.  "If we had a choice of
another supplier, based on your actions in this area, I assure you
[that you] would not be our supplier of choice."

At that point, HP, IBM, Gateway, and Dell were in no position to tell
Microsoft, "The hell with your license -- we'll just preinstall Linux
on all our PCs."  The most they could do was convince Microsoft to
give them a discount on the royalty they had to pay for Windows.

In the long run, in a perfectly free market, competitors will
undermine any monopoly.  However, as John Maynard Keynes put it: "in
the long run, we are all dead".  Windows 98 (or whatever its successor
is called) will face competition in the indefinite future, but
Microsoft must be held accountable for how it is damaging consumers
*now*.

--
perl -le"for(@w=(q[dm='r 0rJaa,u0cksthe';dc=967150;dz=~s/d/substrdm,\
(di+=dc%2?4:1)%=16,1ordi-2?'no':'Perl h'/e whiledc>>=1;printdz]))\
{s/d/chr(36)/eg;eval;}#In Windows type this all on 1 line w/o '\'s"
== seth gordon == sgordon@kenan.com == standard disclaimer ==
== documentation group, kenan systems corp., cambridge, ma ==


   
From: "Michael J. Hammel" <mjhammel@graphics-muse.org>
Subject: responses to top stories this week
To: lwn@lwn.net (Linux Weekly News)
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 13:41:29 -0700 (MST)

A couple of items in the news caught my eye, so I thought I'd write up a
quick response.

---------------------------------------------------
Re:  Judge Jackson's ruling

You noted that Judge Jackson said:

"In practice, then, the open-source model of applications development
may increase the base of applications that run on non-Microsoft PC
operating systems, but it cannot dissolve the barrier that prevents
such operating systems from challenging Windows. "

You responded:

"The growth curve of Linux shows that competition is indeed
possible. The pace of development on desktop-oriented software - KDE
and GNOME, for example - brings Linux ever closer to Windows in both
ease of use and availability of applications. "

This, however, is not the point Judge Jackson is making.  The barriers
go beyond the ability of Open Source to develop quality software.  In
and of itself, Open Source could not reach beyond those barriers to
produce a competitive product if computer manufacturers did not openly
support it to the same level that they did with Microsoft.  The
barriers introduced by Microsoft were financially based and backed by
their array of products through monopolistic marketing methods.  They
are not simply quality and/or quantity based.

Later you say:

"That critical mass was achieved not via governmental action, but
through the dedication and persistence ... of thousands of free
software developers worldwide."

Critical mass may have been reached solely by the volunteer efforts,
but you'll find those who would argue that the critical mass became
possible when business saw that the DOJ's case might be the impetus to
allow them more freedom to choose alternatives to Microsoft.  It can
be argued that Microsoft backed down slightly over the past two years
in order to give the appearance of a more competitive market.  They
failed, and Linux is benefiting from that.

To say that Open Source stands where it does without the cooperation
of both business and government is inappropriate.  Its a symbiotic
relationship.  One that has helped to make Open Source what it is
today.

---------------------------------------------------
Re: Red Hat and Oracle distribution with Motif

You said:

"Interestingly, the release also mentions the integration of Motif 2.1.  
Integrating Motif is a step backward for Red Hat ... "

How so?  Motif has been around for years.  Many companies have invested
large amounts of man-hours and dollars on applications based on it.  Red
Hat is responding to their needs by providing a Linux solution which can
limit the amount of effort and cost it would take to migrate to a new OS.

Red Hat is a business.  It has obligations as such, both to customers and
its employees and stockholders.  Adding Motif is far from a step backward.
After all, Motif is just a set of libraries, a few binaries and headers
files.  Anyone wishing to redistribute this Red Hat version can remove
those pieces.  

Or do you expect Red Hat to do all the work for all the other
distributions?

You then said:

"A distribution containing Motif is no longer the 100% free
distribution that Red Hat has been bragging about for the last couple
of years."

You assume that this distribution would be their only distributable
product.  But you don't back that assumption up with any research.
Just because *this* distribution won't be 100% free doesn't mean they
don't plan on providing some version that is.

You finished with:

"Bringing in Motif also calls into question Red Hat's committment to
GNOME, which was supposed to be the Linux desktop package."

Say what?  Supporting Motif (and CDE, for that matter) doesn't mean
they're dropping GNOME.  GNOME hasn't been adopted in every corner of
the earth yet.  Do you expect Red Hat to simply ignore customers
because they don't or won't run GNOME?  THEY'RE A BUSINESS!

I applaud them.  They've found a way to differentiate themselves in the
corporate customer environment without violating any licensing issues.
Theres nothing wrong with that.
-- 
Michael J. Hammel           |   I once heard the voice of God. It said 
The Graphics Muse           |   'Vrrrmmmm.'  Unless it was just a lawnmower. 
mjhammel@graphics-muse.org  |         Deep Thoughts, Jack Handey
http://www.graphics-muse.com 
   
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 12:07:15 +0100
From: Vreught <J.P.M.deVreught@si.hhs.nl>
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: http://lwn.net/ Microsoft is a monopoly

[HOLD]

Hi,

I like to react on your editorial on "Microsoft is a monopoly". Although I
don't really like the characterization of Linux in the findings of facts,
I don't believe the judge is far from the truth. Yes, I also would like
to disagree (I've been using Linux since 0.99pl13 and I dislike M$),
but is the jugde that wrong?

OK, he is wrong about the volunteers & open source, but the end conclusion

   "In practice, then, the open-source model of applications development
   may increase the base of applications that run on non-Microsoft PC
   operating systems, but it cannot dissolve the barrier that prevents
   such operating systems from challenging Windows."

looks to me right on the dot. When you go to a PC shop, it is hard to buy
a machine without any Windoze stuff (although with a bit of shopping around
it can be done). If you want to buy a modem, you must be very careful not to
end up with a Winmodem. Buying a laptop without Windoze is nearly impossible.

Drivers for cards, written by the OEM, seldomly include support for Linux
by default. At best, the OEM allows the Linux driver on one of its support
pages with the explicit warning that it is totally not supported by them.

Luckily there are some OEMs that do write drivers for Linux and they have
made a bunch of loyal followers which will stick by there cards. Remember
the Diamond refusal to open up their specs, that really hurted them a couple
of years ago because in those days the people who were running Linux often
had large influence within companies & universities when machines were
bought. At my university Diamond cards were totally banned.

So in some cases we, the Linux community at large, could make a difference.
However, that was hardware. If you look at the desktop (the situation on
the server market looks good for us), we have a long way to go. With the
number of PCs that are sold, it is hard to see we can make a difference
at all. Face it: the number of Linux desktops is peanuts and will be for
a long time.

I don't like it, but it is the reality.
-- 
Hans de Vreught
   
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 10:21:12 -0500
From: Baoqiu Cui <cbaoqiu@cs.sunysb.edu>
To: esr@thyrsus.com
Subject: Re: Communist China adopts Linux?  Not so, apparently...

Dear Mr. Raymond,

This morning I read your message about ``Communist China adopts Linux?
Not so, apparently...'' (http://lwn.net/daily/esr-china.html) from LWN.
I have to say I am a little disappointed from what you said.

As a hacker and one of the leaders of the Open Source (I personally
prefer Free Software) movement, you are respected by me and by many
people.  I agree with most of your opinions and think you are making
great contributions to the open source community.  But I just do not
understand why you are so sensitive on relating open-source with
communism, and say something about the China government in your message
politically.

To me, free software has nothing to do with any *political* theory, no
matter it is capitalism or communism or whatever-ism.  As a leader of
the Open Source movement, you should feel happy if China adopts Linux.
Not only because you will have a much bigger user base, but also because
you will have much more contributors.

As far as I know, Linux is getting more and more popular in China.  More
and more people in universities, industry, and governments are starting
to like it, use it, and make contribution to it.  RMS just had a visit
to China recently, and he might have a better opinion.

So I hope politics is not involved when we talk about Free Software (or
Open Source).  Let's welcome more people and more countries to the Free
Software community.

Best Regards,

Baoqiu Cui
-- a Free Software believer

P.S.  I am cc'-ing this mail to lwn@lwn.net and RMS, and I am happy to
      be advised if I am wrong at some point.
 

 

 
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