Open Season On Open Source? 173
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece looking at the possible future of open source. The article's conclusion is that it might be grim. From the piece: 'Software giant Oracle Corp. has acquired two small open-source companies and is in negotiations to buy at least one more. Many experts believe this is the beginning of a broader trend in which established tech companies scoop up promising open-source startups. While the validation is thrilling it's also unsettling. Many young idealists who set out to create an alternative to the tech Establishment now find themselves becoming part of it.'"
Why is this Unsettling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:3, Insightful)
As I've said before, open source is good, but it doesn't perform miracles.
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:5, Insightful)
However, given that it is almost impossible to kill a free software project, the long-term economic viability of such a strategy is dubious.
Also, it is worth pointing out that such activity might raise anti-competetitive issues.
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
being free and open doesn't always work miracles. when a program goes on life-support after losing its core developers and funding, there is still a very good chance it will die.
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Xfree86 wasn't bought out, but the community decided a fork was needed, and I think this one went pretty well.
If a large or critical package was "bought up", it would likely take about 5 minutes for the developers who didn't get to cash in to create the fork. Probably 95% of the actual developers for the project would join because they weren't the ones to cash in.
If a company that makes a small insignificant program was bought out.....oh yea, that doesn't happen. Only the big programs get this kind of attention.
Disruption isn't really as big a deal as you might think. If Mysql, squirrelmail, php, perl, apache or any other significant program in the open source community was suddenly "bought out", the brief period of time that it was updated more slowly than usual would be meaningless.
They are already stable packages, which is why they are large, which is why other companies would want to buy the company out. There would be more than enough existing developers for "emergency fixes" in the 95% that were left out in the rain and have started the new fork. And yes, the community would rally behind the new effort, as has been shown time and time again.
Again, Xorg is the best example of what happens with a "disruption". ZERO pain to the end user (yum updated just fine), and generally, fresh ideas and a better product in the long run.
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
mysql plays the (imo somewhat dirty trick) of putting thier client access libs under the gpl so anyone who wants to use them in a propietry app has to pay and
suppose those licenses became unavailible? would you still wan't to use mysql knowing it would force any code you based on it to be re
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
Yes, because I'm abstracting my database code so I'm not dependant on any one vendor.
Why would you code any other way?
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
Because when I'm working for a commercial operation, I'm always under strong pressure to get it working on exactly one system as quickly as possible. Management always views abstracting and portability as academic nonsense that's just a waste of time. If they learn that I'm doing it, I'm in trouble for blocking on-time delivery of the product.
Of course, when it turns out that very few customers have s
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:3, Insightful)
I understand how you might not like that, but to me, that is exactly how you make money by giving something away. ie: if a developer wants to release his software for free, no problem. If he wants to close his source then he SHOULD pay, which funds the free mysql for everyone.
Is there risks for the developer? Sure, like with all licenses that are not tru
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
i believe this to be a normal process and somehow don't see the BIG problem some people surely have noticed.
the only drawback is possibly smaller interest from developers of commercial software - but is that an 'evilness' promoting decision then ? anyway, in many cases we hear "there is no trustworthy company by get support from !". if there is such a company (mysqlab/trolltech) to get support for commercial development - t
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
I understand how you might not like that, but to me, that is exactly how you make money by giving something away. ie: if a developer wants to release his software for free, no problem. If he wants to close his source then he SHOULD pay, which funds the free mysql for everyone.
Indeed, and this isn't something new or unusual.
Thus, in the music biz, it's fai
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
What's the alternative? Pay even more for a proprietary database like Oracle, and then be totally screwed if licenses become unavailable, because you don't even have the option of switching to a GPL version? Forgive me if I don't quite see the advantage here...
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
suppose those licenses became unavailible? would you still wan't to use mysql knowing it would force any code you based on it to be released only under the GPL period?
And how exactly does that hurt opensource software?
Open source software is about making something that you need and then publishing it in the hope it is usefull for others. It is NOT abou
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
Which is one of the reasons I now use only postgresql. It's not sneaky about anything.
Perl and postgres goes a long ways to making some great web applications. PHP is nice but it's only working in the same userspace as Perl and with the improvements on Javascript it's likely that we have to many players in the field.
Which is actually good, because it allows you to have an escape route in the event that everything you love get's bought out by someone you don't love.
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
young idealists (Score:1)
Re:young idealists (Score:2)
Re:young idealists (Score:2)
If you create something with an objective that is based on ideals rather than profit, then proceed to sell control of that something to an entity that has as its mandate that it MUST be driven entirely by profit motive, it means you've sold out your ideals. You made a statement when you sold. That statement was "I know
Re:work for the man (Score:2)
I have a family to support too, but I never sell out. Selling out is about greed and laziness. I'm not an american, and I don't want that "dream". I'll just keep doing work that furthers my ideals while I'm alive, keep making money doing it, and die my own hero.
Re:young idealists (Score:2)
It doesn't really affect anything as nothing is taken from the community, a large corporation has a group of demonstrably excellent coders, who will produce top quality code for that companies customers and that company will continue to support open source code into the future so tha
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:3, Interesting)
Bull.
Two-three years ago the was a really great open source VoIP platform named VOCAL from a silicon valley startup named Vovida. Then they got bought by Cisco. Guess what. There is absolutely zero activity on the project now. Sure I could fork, but then I'd have to restart the entire development effort.
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
Why is this is not Unsettling (Score:2)
Re:Why is this Unsettling (Score:2)
All "open" means, really, is that users are permitted to read the source. This is valuable, because it allows analysis, giving us more bug reports. But in itself, "open" doesn't mean that you are permitted to fork the code. It doesn't give you any rights to do anything with the code not allowed by your loc
nobody forcing them to sell (Score:4, Insightful)
If they realy care about idealism, they won't sell. I think if M$ offered RMS a billion dollars for the FSF, he would refuse. (Mostly because he is slightly insane, but in a good way
Re:nobody forcing them to sell (Score:2)
Re:nobody forcing them to sell (Score:2)
Re:nobody forcing them to sell (Score:2)
It's unlikely Oracle would shut them down, for the following simple reason: Oracle needs a MS Sql Server killer, and MySql is the logical candidate. They can tweak it, make it as Sql Server-compatible as possible, i.e. compatible stored procedures and isql-like command int
N3P is the future (Score:1, Interesting)
N3P offers a two-year college level training in how to become a successful Project Entrepreneur in Open Source or Project Entrepreneur in Omni Communications. Our students will learn not only the technical possibilities, but also how to exploit new business opportunities, manage profitable ideas, and create flourishing businesses.
Each year, N3P admits 80 students-20 at our classrooms in Stockholm City, 20 through a system of advanced distance learning and 40 at our new classrooms in Malm
So to summarize the situation ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now you're complaining? Millions of poets, the world over, would kill prose for such an opportunity.
Re:So to summarize the situation ..... (Score:2)
I'm not sure I understand this fully. What value, exactly, does the buyer get from a free project?
It can't be the rights to the software, because nothing stops someone from selling an identical fork from the day of the purchase to someone else for
Re:So to summarize the situation ..... (Score:2)
Sure you can. That's what a buyout is. Doesn't mean they'll stick around, but due to the fact that they want a roof over their head and etc., and this is the least effort way to continue to get it, many of them will stick around.
there would have to be some pretty good incentives offered to get people to stay and submit to a corporate mentality.
Who says they don't like a "corporate mentality" just because they happened to have started a project in
Then what's next? (Score:4, Insightful)
Making money from open source (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess is that a lot of the people who talk about making money off of F/OSS don't really believe it in their gut. They really believe that F/OSS is always going to be a volunteer activity, not a business model.
Re:Making money from open source (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, just because BusinessWeek is worried that small FOSS companies being bought by large companies is worrisome does not imply that the FOSS community thinks so. This statement seems to be supported by postings to the article thus far.
Re:Making money from open source (Score:2)
Reality, they produce a tiny little useful thing, that's all there is anymore there simply aren't a lot of one person projects beyond initial ideas in OSS anymore.
Reality 2, while it is possible for big companies with billions to hire the cream of the crop from the OSS community they will quickly find these developers expecting better deals
Re:Making money from open source (Score:2)
>Folks on slashdot are always talking about how it's possible to make money on free/open source software, and that F/OSS is >the wave of the future. Well, if you *really* believe this, why are you shocked that large companies agree with you? Or >that people who start open source projects agree with you?
You are apparently assuming that the set of "those who agree that companies buying up FOSS companies is worrisome" overlaps largely with the set of "those who think that FOSS can be profitibile." I t
Unsettling to who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not So Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
"We are moving aggressively into open source," said Chief Executive Lawrence J. Ellison at a Feb. 8 investor conference. "We are not going to fight this trend."
Re:Not So Bad (Score:2)
Re:Not So Bad (Score:2)
I know this is highly unlikely, but I fear it may be possible on some small projects if they don't take steps to protect their code. Probably irrelevant to the industry as a whole either way. There's enough forked and protected code and supporters of F/OSS to keep things moving. Any sm
Re:Not So Bad (Score:2)
Except that with open-source, you can always create another company to support the same product. Distributions work this way, single applications would too if there's enough interest and a big enough marke
Re:Not So Bad (Score:2)
You can go buy your marketing service if you want it.
I'll grant that there are services that are provided by OSS companies but not by OSS volunteers that are useful, but I'm also somewhat stuck on the fact that I've done quite well without those services, and can't help suspecting that others might as well.
I'd say that packaging and marketing are n
Which is why the GPL is the key. (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not like they can take the code and make it private. It just doesn't work that way. So where's the problem? By paying open source developers for their work these companies are simply reinforcing and feeding the power of open source.
Re:Which is why the GPL is the key. (Score:2, Informative)
But what if for example Sun stops releasing OpenOffice under LGPL? Something like 70% of the OpenOffice team are Sun employees. And although OpenOffice is not such a mess as the MSDOC fo
Well they would say that, wouldn't they (Score:4, Interesting)
As for Mr Ellison, he can't have it both ways. In the interview on which this article is based, he first paid homage to open source which these days is about as controversial as calling for fresh air and clean drinking water. He then affected to find Mysql to be so small as to be beneath his radar but curiously knew all about it. That Ellison should find a company a tiny percentage of Oracle's size such a thorn says more about his tender ego than anything else. There's absolutely no guarantee that Oracle's "aggressive" buying spree will do it any good. The moment they think they've plucked out one thorn, another will appear in its place.
Self-delusion (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Self-delusion (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Self-delusion (Score:2)
Companies which are resorting to this tactic are in a c
"part of it"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Software is becoming a commodity. The business is heading in the direction of services. Once Oracle has reached market saturation - everyone who is going to use Oracle, is - the only way they can grow is by selling people their knowledge on how best to use Oracle. And the fact that Oracle is dipping its toes in the sea of open source only goes to show that at some point, the commodity itself will retail at its actual cost of (re-)production: the cost of the bandwidth for downloading it.
/or so sayeth the idealist
Oracle users (Score:2)
Hold on a minute here... (Score:5, Interesting)
How about an alternative view
This is what we wanted right? (Score:2)
Grim? More like great. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Write open-source software
2) Sell out to The Man
3) Profit!!
Of course, for most of them Step 2 ain't going to work out and Step 3 will be a mirage in the distance, but open source still benefits from Step 1.
Stereotype much? (Score:5, Insightful)
For decades, the only people who cared about open source were the geeks who stayed up for all hours swilling Jolt Cola and writing code.
I'm sure he means that in a good way. Suits can't stand open source. It makes no sense to them that innovation is driven by creativity and passion, not hierarchy and the bottom line.
Re:Stereotype much? (Score:3, Interesting)
So what? (Score:2)
Re:So what? (Score:2)
Look how long it took Mozilla to find it's feet after being opened. Same sort of problems exist for a fork, particularly if all the key developers are employed and restricted by employment contracts from making any more public contributions.
Most of the candidates for an open-source buy out are those that have kept close tabs on the source code for the project, keeping it untainted by community contributions
Hu? (Score:2)
How this is supposed to be grim for OSS is beyond me.
Open Source could kill offshoring (Score:3, Interesting)
Theoretically speaking, that is.
If Firefox continues to improve in quality, it will become so superior to the likes of Opera and MSIE that it'll be the biggest and nearly only game in town. At some point, who wants to buy a browser when they can get the free and super secure Firefox version for, potentially, every platform? At some point MicroSoft falls so far behind with MSIE that they cannot afford to continue hiring programmers here or abroad to update it, and they may sell off or close down the MSIE line.
Now if Open Office improves similarly, MS Office could be endangered. Why buy MS Office if you can get an equal ROI for free with Open Office?
Perhaps Linux gets tons of hyper consumer grade (as in, your grandma could use it without breaking a sweat) facelifts, while holding onto its power user underpinnings. Easily done, actually. If all programs are written as procedures in shared object libraries, you could make both command line and graphical user front ends to call them, and a really crazy coder would give the user a 'command line equivalent' submenu option for the GUI version so the wanna-be power user could see how the command line version would have done the work. That would result in perfect scaleability. At some point, Linux catches up with Windows in Suzi Office Worker appeal, and its privacy, anti DRM, etc. advantages, drives Windows into irrelevancy. What's left of driver support problems are resolved, and whammo, MicroSoft finds itself losing sales at a catastrophic level.
Offshore and domestic coders of *any* app could theoretically be, despite their cheapness, be put out of work by a wetware beowulf cluster of hobbyist coders and volunteer testers tired of paying for any software, period, and who are hell bent upon matching the functionality of current for-pay software.
There are a number of factors holding back open source, though, not the least of which is Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, aka pro-Commercial Software Propaganda.
But if these barriers fall, open source could theoretically force many, many offshore and domestic software manufacturing companies to compete against FREE and BETTER software. This is very bad GNUs for their bottom line.
At that point the market weighs far more heavily toward providing services instead of selling software, and then a lot of that involves face to face work.
The math says that offshore outsourcing stands to lose a heaping mountain of money as Open Source moves further into maturity. Of course, domestic IT has already suffered; out of work domestic coders have great potential to inflict spiteful vengeance by producing a GPL'd product that provides the same functionality as the software being written by the people who took their jobs, and then convincing companies to go with the free product instead.
LOL, even if this post gets modded down, the cat is now officially out of the bag.
FOSS isn't related to off-shoring (Score:2)
I think you were getting to this with the statement:
"At that point the market weighs far more heavily toward providing services instead of selling software, and then a lot of that involves face to face work."
But, no one in the FOSS world will develop custom webpages, database systems, etc
What is "open source" anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
Open Office isn't really an Open Source project, it's a commercial product that was open-sourced after it was Gatesed to death.
Mozilla/Firefox is an odd beast. Mosaic out as semi-open-source and benefitted from the same kind of feedback as real open source products. The relationship between Netscape and Mosaic and whether "Netscape Mosaic" shared more than a name with Mosaic aside, Netscape's prod
Re:How would driver support problems become resolv (Score:2)
The same way that IBM and other companies have signed onto Linux and ATI & Nvidia make *cough* drivers *wheeze* for Linux *choke*.
Make a name for yourself... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that, this is experience. It's a way to make a name for yourself, perfect your skills, and give back to the community. That doesn't mean these people are against closed source, but they feel that their product will get more exposure if it's open and freely available.
Most developers aren't in the "it has to be OSS" mentaility, but rather in the "this project could be bigger if more people contributed", and of course that project is their baby- their time, their effort.
Again not to say that this is all of the cases, but without direct benefits, there's always something- be it credit, fame, or experience.
Now some bigger projects doing it is what this article is speaking of, but the general statement on open source is bogus! Open source simply says "this could be of value to someone else, and admitedly, they could probably reproduce it anyway by starting from scratch".
-M
Re:Make a name for yourself... (Score:2)
I've used some OSS code, and made changes and offered those changes back. Even though technically, I didn't have to give those changes back, I did, and for two reasons...
1. Because it's the right thing to do.
2. Because if other people are using my changes, it means that bugs might get spotted. It also means that any revisions to the base code also include my changes, so I don't have to reapply them.
As well as community reasons, there are plenty of good commercial reasons for u
The most interesting part of this is..... (Score:2)
Haven't those attacking yet realized the essence of why it Open Source Software got a name and a community persistant it developing it?
Its simply "CONSUMER CHOICE" of those consumers that have the talent to create and share their own choice. Motivated by perhaps those who don't or refeuse to provide an acceptable choice to those consumers.
And is the character of those attacking Open Sou
Re: (Score:2)
before vs. after (Score:2)
You don't just find yourself part of a tech establishment. It's a decision. You're not tied to the OSS project such that you have no choice to be scooped up (unless an agreement is signed). You can always quit too. Rather, I think it's hard not to become part of a money-making machine with a steady paycheque if you've been working on a successful open-source project for a while. I ca
Businessweek never gets it (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't buy opensource. Once it is out there, it is out there. If it is true opensource the code doesn't even belong to a single entity that can be bought. If you contribute some code no matter how small to a opensource project even though you do it under the GPL it still belongs to you. In fact that is what the GPL is pretty much about. You just give everyone else the right to use it (within certain limits) as they wish.
Yes you can hire the developers away from a project in the hope of killing it but why would this be a worry to opensource alone? EVERY project, commercial, political, social can be killed by its enemies by luring the people involved away. It can be very upsetting, just ask Ballmer.
It is nothing new. In fact several opensource people even started working for the beast. The gentoo guy for one. Except he left again pretty quickly.
And that I think is the reason opensource in fact has less to worry about then commercial projects about being bled of its developers. It is a huge difference to work on your own time for a volunteer project and to have to work for your salery on markettings whims.
Most of the bigger opensource projects are done for free by people who wouldn't have any trouble at all doing the same thing for money. In fact most do. There is one thing business week doesn't get about developers. They love it!
A developer will happily work all week coding to support himself to code in weekend as well. People like that can be tempted with money but not for long. When someone is willing to work for free they obviously think that a salery is only there to pay the bills.
But of course, it makes a nice headline because a handfull of companies with opensource projects are being attempted to be bought up (mysql refused didn't it?). Opensource is about as death as socialism. Just check you paycheck how much of your salery goes to social security.
Re:Businessweek never gets it (Score:2)
Sure you can - the MPAA and RIAA members make billions selling the same thing over and over, even though "it is out there" after the first sale.
Re:Businessweek never gets it (Score:2)
Some projects are easy to rewrite from scratch. Some aren't.
How long would it take to rewrite gcc or KHTML?
The problem with software... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet that's just what commerical software is all about. Bottling speech and selling it in crates. And there isn't anything wrong with that. That's what commerce is all about. Yet, things eventually become commodities and you lose that limited monopoly after a while. Just as light-bulbs are made by many companies now and some people would pause before buying a lamp that required a special light bulb.
Interestingly people buy lamps that require special bulbs... some times even bulbs that are patented and only made by one company. Some of these lamps provide brighter full-spectrum light, some provide a more pleasant shade of light. And other people find having a violet tinge in their light simply not worthy of the extra expense... and they buy lamps that take standard light bulbs.
I firmly believe that this will happen with software. And if you read the article you can garner the same points. Oracle buying OSS startups or Microsoft hiring off Distribution maintainers only causes a delay in the development of the inevitable. That delay is not without its profit margin. And the act of slowing the adoption of the OSS mind-set in the general public may be a necessary evil to allow humanity to adjust to this new powerful force on the face of the planet.
OpenSource empowers outsourcing in India and China as much as it empowers rural US and small European Universities. In time the natural market forces will shift finding a new balance in the world. Wages in India and China will equalize with those in the US. However, the rate of this shift can be controlled... I'm not sure if it is better to slow down or speed up this shift... but I know that those who are successful in today's world have an incentive to keep the world the same. Oracle and Microsoft for example did well in a world of bottled genies and they want that key to their success to stay the same. It is only natural.
OpenSource on the Internet means that someone who couldn't afford to do a thing before can now do that thing (see Nagios from the article) and leverage the talent of all the other people in the world who could not climb over that initial barrier to entry. OpenSource on the Internet means that the Software playing field is flatter. If you can get an OSS person to help you and you can afford their salary... you can do nearly the same thing as the really big companies. If the rest of your business runs well, technology need not be the biggest of your concerns.
Companies like Microsoft and Oracle have built their very lives on technology being a big concern. And all that cash they have means that they can sway the direction of technology onto paths that benefit themselves. Eventually, however, just as relationships with the light bulb maker doesn't drive the central concerns of most businesses today, neither will software in a hundred years.
In one hundred years what will matter is that this was a time of innovation that generated technology that changed the course of history. Just as pop. culture is confused about how much Edison really did to invent the light bulb and electrical grid they will also very likely decide that Bill Gates was the inventor of the Personal Computer and the Internet. With a little luck they will find it silly that we used to buy software in boxes. With even more luck they will find it a silly idea to pay for software at all and instead will have established a concept of "commissioning software" to be created by those talented in the "craft" an
Re:The problem with software... (Score:2, Insightful)
Often, there are ideas out there, which for various reasons just don't work. For instance, Martin Luther's ideas for the reformation were probably explored by people before. But, with the invention of the printing press, and being able to communicate to the masses, it could come to fruition.
Richard Stallman has been talking about free software for how long? So why did i
Oracle-think (Score:2)
- A handful of developers who know what they're doing. They, like everyone else, have a price.
- A number of smaller developers who tinker with tiny bits of the code, but produce nothing meaningful.
- The majority who just use it.
Of course closed source companies can't buy up all the OSS developers around a project, but they can definitely slow it down until new ones find their feet and continue the free development. It's that gap that allo
So what? (Score:2)
There's a saying: "You can go from being a liberal to a conservative in 30 years wi
Open Source will stay as long as there are (Score:2)
software companies wanting to break into a difficult market, or
closed source suppliers abusing their customers
Re:Open Source will stay as long as there are (Score:2)
Re:Open Source will stay as long as there are (Score:2)
That's Why... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's Why... (Score:2)
Being able to buy out an open source project has to do with DEVELOPMENT MODELS rather than licenses. With a distributed development model, the project can't be bought out - only some of the developers can be. With a centralized development model (like the MySQL model), you can be bought out.
XFree86 was a BSD license; FreeBSD was a BSD license; they/we still couldn't
Re:That's Why... (Score:2)
You've also made assumptions about what my assumptions are: I know perfectly well that in most projects most of the development is done by volunteers, mostly for a combination of fun a
Well, they got one thing right! (Score:2)
Well they got that part right, though essentially nothing else. Of course it is tumultous laughter . I have no doubt that I was just one among a vast and far reaching multitude of people that could be considered to be part of the Open Source Community that was ROTFL after hearing that Larry Ellison and others have the folks at Business Week (and presumably current and potential stockholders) convinced that buying an Open Sourc
Open Source != Free (Score:2)
Just remember that Open Source != Free.
Re:My experience with Linux (Score:2)
People do charge money for "tested" Linux distros, but only because they think people will pay for it. There are plenty of "tested and stable" Free distros, like Debian GNU/Linux [debian.org]. If you don't know Linux, though, it's cheaper to pay RedHat to support it than to have an in-house Linux guru.
It may l
Re:My experience with Linux (Score:2)
It could be of course that you are a troll...
Re:My experience with Linux (Score:5, Informative)
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joe
Re:My experience with Linux (Score:2, Informative)
If you want an easy to use, polished Linux Distrobution that *Just Works out of the box* with a thriving community I recommend that you try Ubuntu Linux (http://www.ubuntu.com/ [ubuntu.com])
Re:My experience with Linux (Score:2)
Fedora, on the other hand, is an excellent distribution as long as you are aware of and comfortable with what you are getting.
Re:My experience with Linux (Score:2)
You dont mod something troll because you disagree with it. That being said, parent post, try CentOS - read their site for details of why.
There is nothing in RedHat or the other "unfree" linuxes that would signify bait and switch - simply a more conservative approach to the same software with value added - like support. The difference is that some distributions are concerned with cutting edge technology while others are focused on stability. Perhaps you need a newer feature or driver for specific hardware,
Re:My experience with Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The open source fad will die (Score:1, Flamebait)
This is not MS kiddie stuff you are used to.
Real programmers don't care what OS and what computer system they work for.
Computers are computers...
Re:The open source fad will die (Score:1)
Re:The open source fad will die (Score:2)
Re:The open source fad will die (Score:2)
And a prize to the first one who can tell me the octal code for a NOP from memory. No fair Googling.
Re:The open source fad will die (Score:2, Flamebait)
So after having a miserable experience with one distribution - on top of objecting morally to the whole idea of FOSS to begin with - you actually had the tenacity to try out five more distributions. Well, I for one am impressed with your tenacity (if not your honesty). But with your ability to learn and figure out simple things, not so much.
I'm an excellent software engineer
I'll bet