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Linux Software

Linux 2.4 Wins 4th Place ... in Vaporware 228

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wired-must-have-been-bored-today dept.
An anonymous reader says: "Linux kernel 2.4 got itself at the 4th position in Wired Vaporware 2000 contest! The top prize goes to ... (check the link out for yrself ;)" I have a hard time calling something Vapor that I've been running on 30 days uptime, but what do I know? I guess a "product" without a release date just isn't something comprehensible.
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Linux 2.4 Wins 4th Place... in Vaporware More

Linux 2.4 Wins 4th Place... in Vaporware

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  • Re: Release Dates - What about hollywood? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Perhaps the software industry could learn something from Hollywood... and maybe that's one of the good things that will come out of media mergers.

    I've been amazed at the accuracy of release dates for movies, usually accompanied by accurate releases of a slew of other products, web sites, games, etc.

    And yes, we know about Episode II many years in advance. It's a complex product using the latest technologies and likely a very unusual distribution system. However, we all also know the exact release date, and I'll bet it will be out that same day.

  • cmdrtaco is a dipwad (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have a hard time calling something Vapor that I've been running on 30 days uptime, but what do I know?

    Case and point.

    I've had a MacOS X devel. preview up for longer than 30 days, but that doesn't mean OS X is out and about. Why don't you take your mad linux bigotry to somewhere it belongs, like slashd- oh, nevermind.

  • Pre == Beta (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I guess the next time Taco bashes MS for delaying a product launch, we should just point him to the beta versions then..
  • MS normally sends you beta CD's for a s/h fee.
  • All those corporations are already supported by their existing product lines and have money to burn on experimenting. There are no viable companies whose business relies solely on open source software.

  • I have been running 2.4.0-test12 with reiserfs for some time now. Who cares about EXT2?

    Existing ext2 users, i.e., The Ignorant Masses Who Use 2.2 Kernels And Would Like To Get A Smooth Upgrade? =)

    I had some ext2 corruption things (recoverable, fortunately), but they said test12 would fix 'em. I think I'll just get 2.2 and wait until they ship "stable" 2.4 - apart of the slight ext2 problems, it seemed to work more or less fine...

  • I have nothing to prove to you. And I trust that it makes no difference even if I tell you that I am in fact not lying. Do you know why ? Because I don't need to. But who am I telling, right ;)

    I have one proof for you, that absolutely guarantees that the uptime posted previously is authentic: What kind of friggin' idiot would be running -test4, on december 28th, if it wasn't for keeping an uptime to brag about ??

    See ? :)

    I'm sure that when you check when -test4 was released, you will see that it is not too far from being 127 days away.
  • Don't get me started on Daikatana.

    Hey, I wish it had been delayed even _longer_.. (actually, I only borrowed it to see how awful it was.. :p )

    Your Working Boy,
  • "...The top prize goes to ... (check the link out for yrself ;)"

    I am glad that I am running junkbuster [junkbuster.com]... there were a crapload (80% of page real estate) of adds on those pages.

    donfede

  • I've always defined vapourware as those things announced PREVIOUS to any actual work being done on them, and so, many of the entries on the list aren't deserving of the title by my definition.

    To address the Linux kernel specifically, it was said to be released in December....

    Oh my god! It's still December!

  • Vaporware is (or at least, was) something that has been promised, but for which absolutely *no* evidence of its existence has surfaced. For example, when a company says "we're developing the WhizBang 2000!" but there are no beta releases or even screenshots. Both MOSX and Linux 2.4 have prerelease versions out. And Windows 2000 had beta releases last year, so it couldn't be called vaporware either. I guess Wired has a different definition of vaporware than everyone else.
  • Someone else's definition of the term vaporware is irrelevant.

    Yes. Of course, the media in general likes to redefine words to their own liking. Yet another reason they can't be trusted--you never know what they're really saying!

  • Definitely. Slightly off topic, I feel the same way about politicians making campaign promises. How can you promise to do something when 1) You don't know what will happen 5 seconds from now, much less 2 years from now; 2) You have to have consensus from other politicians to make decisions?
  • We might as well say Mac OS X is here because betas are available.

    It is. Vaporware is when there is absolutely *nothing* available: no betas, no screenshots, nothing. Only promises. There is plenty of evidence for the existence of 2.4, MOSX, PS2, .NET, etc. Wired just doesn't know what "vaporware" means.

  • .NET is already out there [mcafee.com].
  • Just out of curiosity, do you plan to sing the same tune when Perl 6 comes out? Quite possibly breaking a lot more than 10% of the existing apps? And if you think it won't, well, Larry Wall "... promises that Perl 6 will be "better, stronger, faster" and that there will be a clear, clean migration path from Perl 5 to Perl 6." [perl.org] Hmmm, migration path ... that means that some changes will be involved, yes?

    Just wondering ...
  • Sigh. I was replying to EnderWiggnz's comment that began "there is something definitely WRONG with a company that, when they make a new compiler, they break 10% of their existing apps.".

    Sorry.
  • I agree, I'd just assume wait for my copy of Tribes 2 to be fairly bug free before I get it. My mother in law pre-paid for it, so all I have to do is sit back and play Tribes 1 until 2 arrives.
  • Don't tell my new one that is has been recalled. It's perking along just fine and hasn't been rebooted since I got it (except for OS updates).

    Jason
  • Wired already put forth the rules they used. Someone else's definition of the term vaporware is irrelevant. BTW, BY December indicates before the outset of as far as Wired is concerned. The fact that the strict definition of "by" indicates "before the end of", was never the percieved/expected meaning. If 2.4 was supposed to be ready before the end of December, the words "by New Year's" would have been said.

    Often wrong but never in doubt.
    I am Jack9.
  • I think it's just pissed off journalism and english majors trying to get back at engineers for creating a society that says rowter instead of rooter, that doesn't know the difference between loose and lose because their spell-checker says it's ok.

    People who don't know how to spell or use their/there/the're or too/to in a sentence.
    All that is required here is for them to pretend they don't know what vaporware means.

  • Re:i perfer vapor (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Funny. When MS did the same thing with Win2K (that is delaying it until it works) the Linux community was all over them for not realeasing on the date set forward year(s) before. But, as usual, when the same thing happens to Linux it's a good thing.

  • What about viable open source business. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What about financially viable open source? We have heard it for quite a while but there are still no corporations who can live on developing open source.

    Of cause, some corporations make open source software but they certainly can't make a living out of it.
  • Darn trade organizations...
  • Well, this is mostly correct, but the originally-hyped next-generation OS effort by Apple (right around the time of the PPC conversion) was code-named Copland. About the same time, Microsoft announced its biggest piece of vaporware - it was either Chicago or Cairo... at any event, this was around 1995, after Win95 came out, and was supposedly their next-gen OS (read: Windows_2000_). I don't remember all the features it was supposed to have, but needless to say most of them never materialized in any of MS's OSes.

    Anyway, for reasons known and unknown, Copland eventually got scrapped. The research done as part of Copland did not, and a significant portion of that work found its way into 8, 8.1 and 8.5. Pretty much as you stated, OS 8+ is "almost-Copland." The current OSes have a revamped memory system, a new kernel and a lot of the improvements that were to come with Copland.

    After the failure of Copland, however, Apple realized it needed proven technology to form the core of its system. Where better to look than the brainchildren of two former Apple employees?

    In the end, Steve Jobs sold his technology more effectively than Jean Louis Gassee, and Apple snapped up NeXT. They announced Rhapsody, and even began showing and previewing it. As early as 1997, Apple had Rhapsody demos at MacWorld. In early 1998(if I have my dates correct) Apple released Mac OS X Server, a direct descendant of NeXTSTEP with some Macintosh beautification. (Note, I may be a year off in my estimates, can't remember now) They started to talk about Mac OS X Client, and it was supposed to come out in mid-2000 and be preinstalled on systems in Jan 2001. Well, it sorta did. We got the beta. And for a beta it's a fine system. If there were more driver support and I could get Classic to work correctly, I'd be using it all the time.

    This January? I don't think we'll see preinstalls just yet. So they're late. But judging from the quality of the beta, I think Apple is within months of releasing the system - at the very very latest, at MWNY. (don't quote me on that, just my feeling).

    Are they late? Yes. But given that they've consistently improved the classic Mac OS through this whole time (I crash rarely, and then usually because of IE5's crappy popup window handling), I can't be too angry at them.

    At the same time, I am acutely aware of how many people need that reliable stability and how many need the underpinnings of OS X. I know that it is imperative for Apple toi release OS X soon. I hope they do.

    There's just something wonderful about having a command line and a Mac all rolled up in one!
  • Thanks for correcting me on this. I couldn't remember the exact dates, and thought I might be a year off.
  • Ah yes! NT5 == Windows2000 (don't just believe me, look at what srvrmgr on NT4 reports 2000 as!)

    Yeah, you are correct, 8 itself isn't all that hot. But 8.1 and above have really been good for the Mac OS, even if they haven't been the next-gen OS we've all been waiting for. It's like Apple is saying "We've got something great coming up, but we're going to keep making what we've got today better until it's done."
  • ~> uname -a
    Linux xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 2.4.0-test4 #1 SMP Fri Jul 14 01:56:30 CEST 2000 i686 unknown
    ~> uptime
    7:08pm up 127 days, 4:49, 5 users, load average: 2.08, 2.02, 1.95

    And the 2.08 is not even stuck kernel threads, it's seti@home and mutt ;)
  • And marketing and engineering not working from the same dates doesn't qualify as a problem?

    Maybe it's just me, but I don't like the idea of deceiving people with release dates. Yeah, people who base their lives around marketing release dates deserve what they get - but why does this happen? Why are there two dates in the first place, a true one (which we're not told but are expected to divine) and a false one (which we're told)? There's an industry-wide lie, a naked emperor, where everyone "knows" you never trust release dates - so why make them? The answer is, admittedly exaggerated release dates are made to lie to people, either to placate stockholders or to build advance excitement or in extreme cases, to sucker in potential customers to lure them away from competing products that may be ready a year or two sooner ("Real Soon Now" for years on end). If you have to lie to people to make money off them, isn't something wrong?

    OK, so why not use the engineering dates instead of marketing dates in the first place? Marketing won't stand for it - that's not what they're about, at least not in today's industry where marketing and engineering are two opposing armies. Not like engineers never lie, but engineers have a better idea of what's possible (build a new OS in six minutes? sure!) than marketers.

    You can use the discrepancy between dates to determine how much of a shooting war there is between a company's engineering and marketing wings. Look at Microsoft - they miss deadlines by YEARS and usually lose half the announced feature set (and gain thousands of bugs) along the way - why? It's not like they WANT to make shit products - rather it's that marketing designs their products without asking the engineers what it'll take to incorporate into a codebase that is already bloated and grub-infested from two decades of this.

    I'm not saying that marketing should NEVER influence the design of a product, but that marketing should at least attempt to work with engineering on such matters, determine how feasible things are, refine the feature lists, and perhaps even start building for a few months before deciding on a feasible release date.

    As for Linus wearing both hats - he's fallen into the same industry trap, where it's expected that the first date out of your mouth is pulled out of your ass. Maybe that's thinking we should try to get out of.

    Granted maybe I'm not the one to talk, I've got programs that've been in a state of beta for two years. But maybe it's better to simply never HAVE a release date, than to make one up that's gonna be wrong - especially if you know you're a) depending on other people that have pulled their release dates out of their asses, or b) charting unexplored territory where you really don't know HOW long it'll take to do the impossible. Of course that won't fly in the mainstream software industry, but that's because the people who control the money live in what amounts to another world.
  • I mean, things like the bluetooth comment (there is bluetooth stuff; I saw a telephone headset and something else....I forget... at a store) are innaccurate. And, frankly, it's wired. Who cares?
  • The fact of the matter is that if you blow a date, then something went wrong somewhere.


    While this is true, I have yet to see any project in any area (art/cs/marketting/whatever) where something didn't go wrong somewhere. THINGS ALWAYS GO WRONG. There's nothing wrong with blowing dates. Especially when doing development. Implementation is a little different. For example, it should take a known quantity of time to install Linux on a computer. It takes an unkown quantity of time to create Linux. The reason - one is development, the other is implementation. Implementation deals with many more known quantities than development, and is thus subject to delays. This is why MS was so late at delivering NT5. In development, you don't know what the obstacles are. In implementation, you know a lot more of them. Therefore, developers should never be criticized solely for not achieving time frames.

  • Also, so much of it has been backported to the "stable" series, that we could call 2.2.18/19 2.4, and simply say that the current version will be 2.6. It's just a matter of what you want to call it. In fact, we could just leave 2.4 in perpetual test mode, and allow things to be backported to 2.2 whenever they get stable. It would have the same net result.
  • InterVideo has had a Linux DVD player in the works for a little while now (LinDVD, to complement their main product, WinDVD) and is in beta testing at oem's right now. Check out www.intervideo.com [intervideo.com] for more info.

  • I have VisStudio.NET installed on my machine and have been testing it pretty vigorously since I received it. It certainly has things left to complete, but it is much farther along in beta than I think you realize. At only Beta 1, roughly 90% of the applications I've tested under it run without a problem (VC++ -- VB apps are a little more problematic). I won't even get into "what the hell is it good for" because if you cant read for yourself the thousands of docs out there about the new functionality in VS.NET, then you wont be able to read my summary either. How about next time, before you spout off at the mouth, you read up a little and do a little of your own evaluation before jumping in and looking like an ass.

  • "The biggest Vaporware of 2000 has to be the 2.4 kernel," wrote Shawn Wallbridge. "As much as I like Linux, they have been saying 'soon, soon' for a really long time." "Where is it?" asked Niels Hansen.

    Well, did you try looking here [kernel.org]?

    Sheesh.



    ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
  • Then what the FSCK am I running on my iMac at the moment? NeXTSTEP? Rhapsody? WHAT!??!?

    As for linux, hey my departemental samba file server runs fine on vapour. It is currently running in circles around our win2k server, and it's not even breaking a sweat (no, the digital equivalent op poking its nose). Yes, they are both running on the same type of hardware :)

    (yes this is meant in jest, and yes I do run Mac OS X PB on my G3 mac, and no, I don't like microsoft)

    --
    Slashdot didn't accept your submission? hackerheaven.org [hackerheaven.org] will!
  • The first version of War3 was called Warcraft Adventures which was scrapped because the project wasn't viewed in good light late in it's programming.
    Well, Warcraft Adventures really shouldn't be considered Warcraft III. Yes, it was a Warcraft-branded game, and it appeared after Warcraft II, but it was more of a spin-off that had little to do with the RTS games we were all familiar with. But you're right, they scrapped it when it was pretty close to completion. All I can guess is that they realized the game wasn't any good and decided that, in the long run, it would be better off to take the financial hit and preserve their reputation than release a bad game to make a few quick bucks. But I guess we'll never know for sure...

    I'm a little surprised that WarCraft III is considered vaporware, too. The first time I remember hearing about it was at ECTS, which was in September 1999. I think maybe gamers are just getting a little impatient.

  • Is there a patch to make it play discs crippled by CSS? I've been using Oms from the LiVid [linuxvideo.org] people so far. I get reasonable results (PIII-600, TNT2). I would like to compare it to Xine, but the only things I seem to be able to play with Xine out of the box are VideoCDs.
  • True. Don't forget to add Diablo 2 to the list of games that didn't quite live up to their hype (although it was worth a play through, replay value went out the window).

    The only game I've played recently that I thought lived up to its hype was Baldur's Gate 2 [interplay.com]. Now of course I'm playing that while waiting for Masters of Orion 3 [moo3.com] to come out which seems like its going to be great :)
  • As long as 2.4 is not released, it is an achknowledgement from Linus that it isn't quite ready for prime time.
    Although it is available, it is quite like a beta test for users.

    When 2.4 is released this will change, but we will have to put up with someone calling it vapourware.
  • I have a hard time calling something Vapor that I've been running on 30 days up time, but what do I know. I guess a "product" without a release date just isn't something comprehensible.

    Duh. It's vaporware because it's not released yet. If you want 2.4.0-test13-pre3, or even 2.4.0-test13-pre3ac2, you can get it, but you can't get 2.4.0. It does not exist.

    What matters (to Wired) is not that the new kernel has no release date, it's that it was "promised" (originally) for December 1999, then for December 2000, and it's still not here.

  • Yep, that was in response to VisiOn. A Mac-like on the PC... Everyone slobbered all over it. It was running, but still under heavy development. Nobody was at the MS booth, where everything was text mode.

    Bill had some programmers mock something up very quickly for display. "Look at us, we have it, too. We're a bigger company. You'd do well to bet on us... Sign here..."

    When VisiOn was released, it was a complete flop, because everyone had signed their lived over to MS, and it was due "real soon now." It's worth it to wait, right?

    Windows 1.0 was released 2 years later, and VisiOn was dead. The whole story disgusted me. (PC Computing, BTW, I don't remember the date)

    Unfortunately, this is one story ignored by all the A&E type documentaries out there. Note that it was completely left out of "Pirates of Silicon Valley."
  • Sure is: http://gape.ist.utl.pt/ment00/linuxdvd.html [ist.utl.pt].

    I haven't tried it yet, but people on the Livid User list are using it. I just downloaded it and will try it out.
  • Software projects are among the HARDEST to place an estimate on.>

    Absolutely. It's hard, in fact it's very hard, and personally I'm not all that good at it, but I've had the good fortune to work with people who do it well and I've seen some pretty good results. Just because something's hard doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted or done as well as possible...heck, writing kernel code is hard too. ;-)

    Worse, most companies don't use the successes/failures of past projects to adjust the prediction of new projects.

    Also very true, and very unfortunate. This is only one of several areas in which it seems that companies are slow to learn from their mistakes.

    willing to lay money that they're no where near the 3% of construction projects.

    Right again. I happen to believe that such accuracy is actually achievable, but it requires a strong commitment to adopting, learning, and using the tools. In actuality, too few organizations seem willing to make that commitment.

    That said, I still think that Linux development needs to grow in this direction. For one thing, people are watching. Some of those people are not our friends, and I'd rather fix a chink in the armor than try to hide it. For another thing, good processes have been developed for a reason. Bugfests and slipped schedules and incompatibilities and lack of documentation frustrate nobody as much as they do the developers themselves. In the long run, even the people who hated doing these things will later be glad they did.

  • I'd like to remind all of you who are running various beta releases of 2.4 that it is HIGHLY UNWISE to rely on software which DOESN'T EXIST. I strongly urge you to downgrade to a 2.2.x series kernel. You only believe you're booting successfully. You're only imagining that you see DRI, USB and similar on your desktop. YOU ARE FOOLING YOURSELVES.

    I repeat: 2.2.4 is currently for unicorns, fae and hobgoblins only! Do NOT run mythical software!!!

  • Apple has consistently said that they would release OS X client in January of 2001! Since when did they ever promise earlier?

    It was promised earlier, actually -- take a look at the press release archives. However, it's not nearly as late as some would have you believe. Some people say it's taken them four years (time since the NeXT acquisition), which just isn't true, since Apple shipped most everything that was promised for Rhapsody in the form of Mac OS X Server nearly two years ago. Darwin was unveiled at the same time.

    However, I agree that Mac OS X is not vaporware, as I am typing this from OSX public beta. Vaporware typically means something that doesn't exist, or something that the general public does not have access to.

    - Scott

    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • In early 1998(if I have my dates correct) Apple released Mac OS X Server, a direct descendant of NeXTSTEP with some Macintosh beautification.

    Mac OS X Server shipped on March 16, 1999, same day Darwin was announced.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • Score:4 Insightfull? My ass. This kid knows nothing about software development. Managment techniques and development tools needed for predictablity are just now coming on line. Ergonomic, enviromental, and cultureal conditions that impact software development are not well understood. Despite what hidebound upper managment thinks, software is way different then any other thing that mankind has ever done. I have a new manager. He has never managed software. How do I explain to him that a phone call at the wrong time can set me back half a day. My previous manager, also a non-programer understood the levels of consitration that progmers sometimes need. This is a rare thing. He once waited in my cube for 30 min for me to come up for air. I was so zoned on my work, that I did not notice him, and he just sat, not wanting to break my consentration.
    UML and CRC cards are fairly new and most programers are not yet familure with their use, let alone the managers. Without tools like these, the design phase of a software project is impossible, and with them, just improbable ( we have a long way to go). After 20 years, I have gotten pretty good at predicting my time requirements. Stated_Estiment = My_Estiment * 4.
  • I think the reigning king of vaporware is still Atari. I remember Battlesphere being talked about, but never released for YEARS.

    Looking at atarihq.com, they seem to have more stuff that never made it out of their building than what was sold on shelves.
  • what are you talking about? I have been using my IBM PS2 for almost ten years now.
    Microchannel all the way
  • http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/16/1849231.shtm l [slashdot.org]

    Key point in the article: Linus "says he is trying to roll out the next major Linux release, version 2.4, by this fall." That was written in June of 1999.

    Of course there's no definite promises, but we're definetly over a year past the first timeframe he mentioned..

  • Heh... Every time I hear Windows 2000 I have this little mental voice whispering 'Remember Linux 2.3.48?? For the love of gawd, wait a few months for another patchlevel!'
  • Its a funny story really: Some time in 1992 or something (who can recall) apple said it'd go to PowerPC processors for its macintosh line. But it said that it wouldn't be able to do so until it wrote a good operating system for it. This they said was a very good thing as it would give people such wonders as pre-emptive multitasking (an amiga staple, and an anounced feature for windows 95, or chicago (ciaro? I forget)).

    So people sort of waited. A year on or so, people really wanted these new wonder macs with the RISC processors, so apple went ahead and made them. All marveled as they ran the same old operating system, just a bit slower than a real 68040. Those in the know said that it's to apple's credit that they wrote such an effective emulator that the enitre operating system could run on it, but they were dismayed at the lack of the good stuff a decent risc processor could have offered, like better memory management and such.

    Funny enough, later (1995?) apple released 604 based machines, about the same time Be released its dual 603e machine (BeBox) running a wonderfully capable OS with wonderful hardware features, and no applications. With this new release, apple said in a year, we'll have this new and better OS out... lets call it rapsody. Great!, many people bought 604 machines thinking that soon, they could run rapsody on them.

    But that was delayed. Then scraped as OS 8 came out. mind you, os 8 has more native PPC code in it than ever before, such that 8.1 was all PPC and 8.6 was only for PPCs (they dropped the 68040). But still there was no grand OS.

    Be OS was rumoured to become part of apple such that it could be used as the foundation for they're next operating system. But then it came to pass that next would actually provide thier next operating system. In a promissed period of 6 months no less.

    Okay, there were some developer releases in 6 months of openStep on both intel and PPC, but... that didn't really help any mac users. Then there came os 9, sans pre-emptive multi-tasking. And then eventually the beta for OS X.

    In the mean time the PPC machines are selling better than ever, and the old system no longer seems so crippling, mainly cause its not really all that old anymore, just crufty.

    -Daniel

    What wierd people

  • Semantics. I just resent the assertion that 2.4 is overdue when 2.4 testx has been available for so long. I have been running test9 since it came out and test7 before that. test4 gave me some trouble (wouldn't compile on either of two boxes) but was quickly updated.

    I don't even really care when 2.4 final release is available since I experience no problems (zip, zero, zilch) with test9. I will probably give test12 a whirl sometime when I get bored, but I have no real reason to.

  • Yes I agree. I would also add that, in my opinion, these sort of articles calculate a product's "vaporwareness" as a function of how late they are AND how much they are expected. So even when you can say that OSX or kernel 2.4 are not THAT late, they are hugely expected by a lot of people. That's why, aside from the usual delays in its development, games always appear on these sort of lists, because thousands of fans ara anxiously waiting for Black&White and Warcraft III. That's why OSX entry on Wired's list is accompanied by comments from several people stating hoy badly they need the software.

  • Articles lie this can be good if companies realize that they are blowing important dates and that there is something nternally wrong. A reference was made to the turnover of developers on Duke Nukem. Hopefully, Epic will try to resolve this.

    The fact ofthe matter is that if you blow a date, then something went wrong somewhere. It may have even been with the estimation process. Companies must learn that blown dates and vapourware are indicitive of internal problems that must be resolved.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I'm not sure whether or not this article is even worthy of discussion. Really: who cares what Wired prints? Even CT himself categorized it as "Wired-Must-Have-Been-Bored Department."

    Granted, it is kind of difficult to know if the tag line, "...hard time calling something Vapor..." is one of distain or a plaintive statement of fact. However, the observation has to be made: so bloody what if Wired calls it vaporware. It's not even relevant to real life. Nor does it affect anyone on the planet if it's published as such. So why get into a snit?

  • That is why you can download the betas?

    No more vapourous than a dev kernel, thanks.

    Jeremy

  • Agreed. If companies are in a rush they will surely get these jabs:
    "Netscape 6 might have been a crushing disappointment ("What a piece of shit," wrote Peter Agnes), but it was delivered. "
    Not that Netscape rushed out to get the latest crappy browser on our desktops...

  • The fact of the matter is that if you blow a date, then something went wrong somewhere.

    This is true only if the date given to the world and the date used internally are the same date. There's no reason at all that they should be, though -- remember, release dates are provided by the marketing department. Even Linus, when he says "hopefully early December," is wearing his marketing hat, and not his developers hat.

    There's nothing at all wrong with this behaviour, unless you think there's something "wrong" with marketing. Telling the world you're going to release Super-Itanium-Linux.NET v 3.0 on October 1, 2000, while simultaneously planning to actually release on October 1, 2005 is not a bad thing. People who base their lives around the release dates provided by marketing deserve the burning they get.

    For an example of people confusing marketing with reality, I laughed when people here on Slashdot bitched and whined when RedHat released v7.0 without waiting for a stable gcc v3.0, stable Linux v2.4.0, stable KDE 2.0, or stable XFree86 v4.0. Christ people, get a clue -- RedHat had no way of knowing when or if those things are actually going to come out. It's OK if you're boneheaded enough to believe the hype on the release dates, but RedHat would be a very, very different company if they were dumb enough to do that.
  • if [Linus] doesn't want to be held responsible for his predictions, then all he needs to do is stop making them.

    Linus's "predictions" are not announcements or press releases or marketing messages. They are his personal opinions, usually expressed on the development mailing list to other programmers (and occasionally in interviews to reporters). It's your fault if you take them for anything else (just like it's your fault if you expect him to make coding decisions based on anything other than what he finds pleasing).

  • That's why Compaq, Dell, IBM, HP, SGI, Intel and Oracle are all interested in Linux, because they're not corporations and would like to be someday.
  • SuSE makes a profit apparently, although they are a private company, not a corporation. IBM have set aside a billion dollars for Linux-based projects - nice experiment. Or are you saying that companies should be instantly profitable. How much profit did Microsoft make in their first few years? Have Amazon made one yet? It's a poor comparison - Linux companies have only been around for 5 years at the most, competing against a monopoly that has been around for 25.
  • You're absolutely right. IBM are giving away a billion dollars out of the goodness of their hearts. I reiterate the post above. How many corporations make huge profits in their first few years of life, especially when competing against an entrenched monopoly? You're going to look pretty stupid when RedHat and VA post their first profits next year. BTW SuSE already do, although they're a private company, not a corporation.
  • If there's ANYTHING that should be called vaporware, my vote is BitBoyz. Do they even have pictures of engineering samples yet?
  • OK, lets get serious here. The latest American mass murder should prove beyond a doubt that America needs to Ban All Guns, for the safety of her children.

    If we can simply pass enough laws to make guns illegal, and also sue the gun manufacturers out of business, we can solve all of this insane gun-related violence.

    Because, as we all know, we will be much safer if we all are unarmed. Criminals are too stupid to make their own weapons or find black markets to buy them.

    You simply can't make society safer by allowing law abiding citizens to be vigilantes. Our police force is amply able to handle the few gun related crimes that might occur once all guns become illegal. If your house is being robbed or otherwise under attack, calling 911 and reasoning with your attacker is always better than defending yourself with a gun. The police will respond immediately and save you.

    Once again, this madness would have not occured if guns were illegal. The Slashdot population should be smart enough to recognize that you solve problems by concentrating on the specific technology, not the human nature, behind the problem. We should teach this fact to the rest of the world.

    I watch the sea.
    I saw it on TV.

  • Here, here. I hate to jump on the "Linux rules OK" bandwagon, but the article missed a fundamental point: Linux 2.4 is out. It just hasn't been judged as officially stable yet. I'm far from Linux-elite, and I've been using test12 for more than a week now with no problems (other than a single, correctible instance of pppd wierdness that might have been indirectly caused by the kernel.)

    Let's hear it for slow releases. I'd be very happy if KDE was as paranoid as Linus about issuing a "stable" release, and as willing to ignore the cries and complaints of them as do not help with the coding.

  • 1: Mac OS X: Last year's winner of the Vaporware Awards was Microsoft for Windows 2000, the oft-delayed update to Windows. This year, the crown passes to Apple, for Mac OS X, the oft-delayed update to the Mac OS.

    This is ridiculous! Apple has consistently said that they would release OS X client in January of 2001! Since when did they ever promise earlier?

  • Hey, Daikatana isn't vaporware.

    We just wish it was
  • As was said:
    Actually, when Mark Ursino coined the phrase it meant products that existed only in their press releases. At the time a lot of companies would do the press release and possibly a mock up and show that to the press and at trade shows to get orders. They'd then take the money from those orders to pay for tha actual development while putting out announcements about the final version being delayed. So any product that is even in development isn't truly vaporware.
    I seem to remeber a story from long ago and far away that the infamous BG actually did a demo once at a trade show that was completely vaporware. It purported to be a demo of the newest soon to be released version on an OS. (maybe it was on film?)

    Except that it was not a working demo. It was a cleverly written presentation consisting mostly of animated graphics, etc. so that it looked exactly like a real PC OS running. But it wasn't. It was an animation. And BG played the part completely, making believe he was actually running a program, etc. all according to his script.

    This froze the market of course, because every one was waiting for the stuff that was going to come out "Real Soon Now"(tm).

    Of course, this may be one of those Urban Legends that go around the net every so often. But I wonder about it sometimes.

  • ahh, this is useful. But this is not the only time bill has done this.

    In this regard, these make interesting reads:

    • Calderas' legal brief [drdos.com] against MS PreAnnouncement claims
    • The early history [memex.org] of vaporware, as discussed in a computer history mailing list archive from 1996
    Someone ought to do a full list of all of the dirty deeds of Bill G, just so that it doesn't get forgotten. y'know, things like IE3.O for Unix.
  • What about Halo? I've been waiting for Halo since I saw it 2 years ago (that seems so long ago!) at MacWorld Expo. Even their website (halo.bungie.com [bungie.com]) hasn't had any new screenshots added in months (years it seems). There's been the purchase by Microsoft, and I can accept that as a delay in site updates. But they didn't update it for months before their acquisition by Microsoft.

    I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Halo is one of the most anticipated games of all time... and here it is 2 years later and nothing!
  • Evan here has a good point, If consumers demanded stable finished products, not buggy code that would later require fast internet connections for 40 meg patch downloads (or pay money for a CD with the patches on it), A lot more programs would be delayed months if not years. This seems to be a classic case of market demand pushing an inferior product. Personally I'm still waiting for SP3 for Win2k to be released, lord knows there have been enough security fixes, and critical updates to warrant it.
  • How about the Intel P4, does marketing an item then having to recall all of them because they dont work, count as vaporware? For months after release I couldnt buy one....so I got an Athlon and computed happily ever after
  • Damn, I screwed up the link.

    You can find Xine here [sourceforge.net].

  • "One list of 2.4 issues is available here [sourceforge.net], for the curious."

    Please note, that list was: "Last modified: [tytso:20001112.1433EST]" (test11pre3) which is out of date, big time.
    For a list of changes since then, check the Changelog-test11 [kernel.org] for test11, Changelog-test12 [kernel.org] for test12 and Changelog-test13 [kernel.org] for test13


    Linux - Vaporware as it's finest ;-)
  • 1. You can BUY SuSE at BestBuy with a pre-release of 2.4. With all due respect: I, who don't even like Linux that much, know it is reasonable to beleive 2.4 (final) is going to be out in the next couple of weeks

    2. You can BUY MacOS X Public Beta from Apple. It is well known that Apple is going to announce in just 2 weeks a final ship date for OS X. Futhermore, it is very widely beleived that it will ship in Feb.

    3. They quote The Register. I like the Register, I think they are a good source of humor, but for crying out loud, it like quoting The Onion. No credibility.

  • puns of wired "checking their sources" aside, this story must have been submitted a month ago and is only seeing press now. I'm sure if this story gets printed (on paper) we'll see a Whited-Out Section where Daikatana was.


    "Me Ted"

  • DVD player for Linux? (Score:3)

    by Enry ( 630 ) <enry@@@wayga...net> on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @08:46AM (#539909) Journal
    What happened to the RIAA-approved DVD player that was supposed to be shipping?

  • Re:architecture and long release cycles (Score:3)

    by scrytch ( 9198 ) <chuck@myrealbox.com> on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @09:08AM (#539910)
    > Can we solve this problem?

    Yes. Lend your support for a different opensource OS, such as Fluke or EROS. Get it running under VMWare and the rest of the hardware support picture can be done at a more leisurely pace. Linux isn't the only game in town.

    --

  • Not so vapourware (Score:3)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @09:30AM (#539911) Journal
    They may have a point here. But not enough to consider the 4th place.

    Yes, Linus stated a lot of "soon, soon, soon..." and that's bad. I think that timelines should be more strictly stated and the process of kernel delivery made more simple and strightforward. Because many people are already working with 2.4 since the first "test" releases. Here 2.4 is widely used since test6 and that is a few monthes ago. A lot of people on the community are already using "test" tarballs for quite long.

    Yes, many users don't feel the "benefits" of 2.4. But sorry people that's what Linux is all about - construction sets. I perfectly understand that some may not have the preparation to make a kernel upgrade or play with it. Unfortunately the difference between Windows and Linux is exactly on this. You build the system according to your needs and don't wait for the train to arrive to your station. You build the train and get off the station ;) . The problem here is that we are starting to have a community segment that is not capable to achieve this, by their own means...

    Anyway, Linus is wrong by saying a lot of "soons". But even if he shot 2.4 in December, it would take 3-4 monthes to see it on the distros. And nearly half year to see it widespreading. So I would still put 2.4 in this vapourware list. Just to blame the way this kernel is being promised. But surely not in 4th place. Somewhere between 8th or 9th, maybe.

  • agreed but the point is (Score:3)

    by kaisyain ( 15013 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @08:55AM (#539912)
    They shouldn't be mentioning release dates when they really have no idea what the hell they're talking about. When was 2.4 originally supposed to come out? Like a year ago? What happened to that date? And now there's something from Linus saying early December, hopefully. Hell, it's almost early January. Since they obviously have no clue what they're talking about why even mention a release date in the first place?

    Why not just say "It'll be done when it's done" and leave it at that rather than pulling dates out of thin air that obviously mean nothing?

  • up and running? (Score:3)

    by kaisyain ( 15013 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @08:38AM (#539913)
    Yeah, I guess if you count prerelease test kernels.

  • and .NET (Score:3)

    by EnderWiggnz ( 39214 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @08:39AM (#539914)
    .NET only got an "honourable mention"...

    infinitely more vaporous than most of the top 10, including OSX, which has been in beta for a while...

    of course, .NET will be out there, RSN
    tagline

  • What about Team Fortress 2? (Score:3)

    by citizenc ( 60589 ) <caryNO@SPAMglidedesign.ca> on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @09:40AM (#539915) Journal
    Please. TF2 is the biggest piece of vapourware to be .. erm, conceived? They've been working on this game for YEARS!

    Don't get me started on Daikatana.

    ------------
    CitizenC

  • Linus said December (Score:3)

    by FattMattP ( 86246 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @08:40AM (#539916) Homepage
    Linus said 2.4 would be out in December. But December isn't over yet...

  • My vote goes to... (Score:3)

    by sherpajohn ( 113531 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @09:11AM (#539917) Homepage
    god and Santa Claus. I have been praying for peace on earth and putting it at the top of christmas list for about 37 years, and once again, I look under the tree, up in the heavens, and on the nightly news, and I see no sign of it. *sigh*

    Going on means going far
    Going far means returning

  • Re:and .NET (Score:3)

    by Chester K ( 145560 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @08:56AM (#539918) Homepage
    NET only got an "honourable mention"...
    infinitely more vaporous than most of the top 10, including OSX, which has been in beta for a while...

    .NET is in beta. I have it on my machine. If Linux 2.4 doesn't deserve to be called vaporware, and OSX doesn't deserve to be called vaporware, then .NET doesn't deserve to be called vaporware either. Being made by Microsoft doesn't suddenly make it a candidate.

  • Prefer something that works the first time (Score:3)

    by RuneB ( 170521 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @08:49AM (#539919)
    Personally, I would rather have a kernel that works rather than one that causes data corruption. For those that are watching linux-kernel, they have still been working on tracking down the innd corruption bugs. I think it is good that the important bugs are being fixed instead of rushing a release (Red Hat 7.0 anyone?) I would hardly call this vaporware.

    One list of 2.4 issues is available here [sourceforge.net], for the curious.

  • architecture and long release cycles (Score:3)

    by q000921 ( 235076 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @09:02AM (#539920)
    I think the long release times are in part due to the architecture of the Linux kernel. Unlike user mode programs, where add-ons are very easy to distribute separately, for the kernel, many kinds of features seem to require extensive discussion, coordination, and planning before they can added, and they really only get used widely if they are part of a kernel distribution.

    The architecture of the current Linux kernel served it well over the first few years of its existence: it allowed a lot of features and reasonable performance to be implemented quickly. But it may not serve as well in the current environment.

    Can we solve this problem? Maybe one of the open source microkernels, or maybe the use of some other programming language for the kernel that couples different parts of the kernel less tightly and isolates the kernel from problems in individual modules would help. Or maybe it will be possible to move there incrementally, without starting from scratch.

  • What about... (Score:4)

    by Dirk Pitt ( 90561 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @08:47AM (#539921) Homepage
    that Echelon software everyone keeps talking about? Geeze, it's been in the news [cnn.com] for a year, and it's still not at Best Buy...

    ;-)

  • Re:Vaporware? Not likely (Score:4)

    by TheAncientHacker ( 222131 ) <TheAncientHacker&hotmail,com> on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @09:20AM (#539922)
    Actually, when Mark Ursino coined the phrase it meant products that existed only in their press releases. At the time a lot of companies would do the press release and possibly a mock up and show that to the press and at trade shows to get orders. They'd then take the money from those orders to pay for tha actual development while putting out announcements about the final version being delayed. So any product that is even in development isn't truly vaporware.

  • Half Right about 2.4 (Score:4)

    by oconnorcjo ( 242077 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @10:04AM (#539923) Journal
    1) Vaporware USED to mean that it does not exist except as a pipe dream and Linux 2.4 is WAY beyond just a pipe dream... it really _will_ come out soon (and how many times has that been said!).
    2) But if you are using their definition of vaporware as just software that was expected out by now, then the 2.4 kernel does earn a spot.

    It is easy to second guess the actions of great men (Linus Torvalds and company) but far harder to be worthy of their respect. And yet I critisize anyway :)...

    When Linus Torvalds blessed the beginning of the 2.3 developement cycle, he said he wanted MUCH SHORTER developement cycles with "9 months being about right". Nine months came and went and he started saying he expected to see it done by xx/xx/xxxx date while in the mean time, he kept accepting neat new features/rewrites to the kernel causing more delays.

    Now if Linus had not talked publicly about "shorter developement cycles" and "hope to get it out before ... January... spring... summer... fall... december", then people would not be so hyped/disappointed.
    If Linus had just said something to the press like this:

    "I really don't know when to expect the next kernel out. We are perfectionist and when a new kernel is released, we want to be proud to have our names attached to it... We think that the 2.2 kernel is a very good kernel and we hope that for those few who could really use the new features in 2.3, that we can provide them as soon as we know how."

    With variations of a response like that, people would never be able to claim 2.4 is late. Now on the mailing list, Linus's speaches about getting 2.3 ready ASAP, was/is resonable and any reporter who writes about stuff from the kernel mailing list should be lynched.

    BTW: From reading LKML, I think the kernel developers have done an exceptional job with the 2.4 kernel and it is really something to look forward to.

  • These articles are bad (Score:5)

    by Evan927 ( 15553 ) <evan@@@canonical...org> on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @08:45AM (#539924) Homepage Journal
    I don't see this said anywhere else, so I'll throw my $0.02 in. It seems to me that articles like this make companies think that they should ship ASAP, instead of when the product is done. No, 2.4 isn't out yet. That's because it isn't done. And given that it's only 1 month after the PROJECTED release date, that's not too bad.

    And Apple's OSX - they aren't done either. Tribes 2 is full of bugs, and it isn't done. I hope companies don't listen/read these. I'm happy to wait for a finished product. Release it when it's done, not when it's due.

  • It's the announcement in the first place. If you say a year in advance "It'll be out in December", then it's your own damn fault if you miss it. If you don't want people to yell at you and call you vapor for not living up to what you said, shut up about it. No matter how many godpoints Linus has, if he doesn't want to be held responsible for his predictions, then all he needs to do is stop making them.

    Duane

  • Re:These articles are bad (Score:5)

    by Salamander ( 33735 ) <jeff AT pl DOT atyp DOT us> on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @10:36AM (#539926) Homepage Journal

    While it is indeed unreasonable to expect that products will ship exactly on announced dates, and that pressuring people to do so might result in the release of still-buggy code, I think there's room for more discipline than is in fact being exhibited by the Linux kernel gurus. Scheduling software projects is not totally a black art. People experienced in a particular kind of programming can often come up with remarkably good estimates of how long things will take, how much extra time to allow for bugs that fall out during testing, etc. Nobody's perfect, but it is entirely possible to come up with a date whose percentage probability of being met is in the high nineties.

    Why doesn't this happen in Linux? Two reasons: optimism and lack of discipline. There's no significant penalty for missing a date in open source, so there's no incentive to be pessimistic. When people aren't afraid of the consequences for a date being wrong, they'll usually give you a "best guess" - 51% confidence - date. People who hold themselves to a higher standard of diligence might give you a 90% number, but the project as a whole invariably ends up delayed by the people who couldn't be bothered coming up with a solid number when the project started.

    Lack of discipline bites us in several ways:

    • There's no project plan to speak of. Features and patches get added even in the latest stages of development - something that should make any professionally-minded developer cringe. Nobody knows until it ships what Linux 2.x is actually going to be.
    • There's practically no design phase to speak of, so people just plain don't know what they're getting into when they start a release, so of course they don't know how long it will take.
    • There's no specific review process, rarely any serious unit tests, and never any regression tests. There's no decent bug-tracking system. Even well into a project, it's impossible to guess where we stand on the "bug curve".

    All of this adds up to create an extremely unpredictable development environment. It's only because of hard work and raw talent that Linux kernel release dates aren't ten times more of a joke than Microsoft's have ever been. With talent and work and just a tiny bit of engineering discipline, we could do a hell of a lot better than we're doing wrt release dates.

  • Vaporware? Not likely (Score:5)

    by Platinum Dragon ( 34829 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @08:47AM (#539927) Journal
    Vaporware used to imply software that only existed in press releases and screenshots. No one outside of the company had seen actual running copies of the software in question.

    By that standard, Linux 2.4.x and Mac OS X are certainly not vaporware. Even .NET could be considered non-vapor, if you consider Visual Studio.NET and the Whistler betas to be released products.

    I mean, it's not like the 2.4 test kernels are hidden from the world, only mentioned in glowy press releases and described as the Second Coming of MS.

    Wired: Will Troll For Hits

  • Discount (Score:5)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 ) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Wednesday December 27, 2000 @08:51AM (#539928) Homepage Journal
    I heard that Linus said he is going to give a 5% discount for each day that 2.4 misses the December release date by.

    Oh, wait . . .

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