‘Dude, I can, like, totally do that way cheaper with Linux and stuff.’ These were the words of a bearded geek running Linux on his digital watch. As he proceeded to cut and patch alpha code into the Linux kernel running on the production database system, the manager watched on in admiration. Six months later, long after the young hacker decided to move into a commune in the Santa Cruz hills, something broke. Was it really ‘way’ cheaper?”
yes, it was way cheaper to move into a commune.
What * is * your point Thom, trying to beat Eugenia on stirring things up?
What * is * your point Thom, trying to beat Eugenia on stirring things up?
Yes. I posted a link to this article solely to piss you off.
Is this the kind of job one cannot be fired from? Straw, camel’s back, won’t be reading anymore. Not that you’ll care. In fact I can sense a vitriolic reply bubbling away in you already, Thom, about how it’s better to be rid of the likes of me.
>>What * is * your point Thom, trying to beat Eugenia on stirring things up?
>Yes. I posted a link to this article solely to piss you off.
Is this the kind of job one cannot be fired from? Straw, camel’s back, won’t be reading anymore. Not that you’ll care. In fact I can sense a vitriolic reply bubbling away in you already, Thom, about how it’s better to be rid of the likes of me.
Talk about failing to understand sarcasm.
Sarcasm? Hmm, yeah, that’s what it was. And even if it were, is that acceptable? I’m not even the person Thom directed his sarcasm against and I find it unacceptable from the person who is supposedly in charge. This site has gone downhill an amazing amount recently and it wasn’t in a position of moral rectitude to begin with, though at least the problems weren’t with the ‘staff’. There seem to be a lot of us fed up with Thom’s attitude, can’t say I’m surprised people are stopping reading this site with someone like that in charge.
Too bad we can’t mod you up. That comment was funny as hell
I literally LOL’d in my cube, and my neighboring cube had to inquire what I was laughing at.
Well done, Thom! That Anonymous creep deserves to have his delicate little feathers ruffled once in a while. Keep up the good work!
Someothernonymous.
I cry aloud in mirth and merriment.
Nothing comes for Free in life its!! If you use PHP and Mysql for web stuff its like you take addons more which prove to be more costly and non effective, the labour is not chepe either to work with on linux its a point of fact that OS is free its not that you get people who use them and work on them free.
Every thing comes at a price pay today or later its your choice!!
yes, it was way cheaper to move into a commune.
dude, do you know what it costs to live in the Santa Cruz mountains?
“Was it really ‘way’ cheaper?”
I should say that yes. And I’ll tell you a story. 5 years ago I was working on (at the time) an extremely succesful company. They were so succesful that they decided to scrap hard work buy building their own CAD system. No problem at all. Time passes and after 2 years from the begining of development first beta is launched. Users watch in awe how this software works. Everything built with IN HOUSE resources, nothing from outside. dotcom booms and all these guys leave ( in about 4-6 months) , nobody from design, development available. And it remains beta until one year later they scrap it, trash it. Cost? Big, I really don’t know the exact amount. Company went bankrupt.
Moral of the story? Knowledge transfer! You should never forget that! Otherwise it won’t be cheap. With free or commercial. Stupidity and arogance makes no difference, rich or poor.
“The other thing I can not stress enough is that the fraction of the population for which gradual change seems to be all but the only paradigm of history is very large, probably much larger than you would expect. Certainly when I started to observe it, their number turned out to be much larger than I had expected.”
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.h…
Open source is a too large step for most folks. We are getting used to the open source way in incremental steps. As time goes by, things “improve considerably” — meaning that the incremental changes since last checked have made it more worthwhile.
People aren’t deciding to abandon Microsoft and Windows. It just “happens”. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it’s because the time hasn’t come yet.
Most people will be “moved over” to open source tools once their usual tools “suddenly appear” on Linux or something. It’s just a question of time. Even if Microsoft had 100k developers, it wouldn’t be able to compete with the millions that are using open source tools and improving them.
On work, people use Windows. But at home or at school, they might use Linux or something. It’s just a question of “when” Windows will disappear from the work.
For example, if people want to learn C, are they going to install VS.Net or Linux? How are they going to code the next World of War Craft in .Net? Most games are still written with C and C++. Memory management is an issue for most “modern” languages because no one will want to have 2 GBs of RAM to run a big game.
But life is more than just games, right? Not for millions of people who mostly use the internet to play games.
So, the rambling is just to remember that “incremental changes” are enough to get us from point A to point B.
>Even if Microsoft had 100k developers, it
>wouldn’t be able to compete with the millions
>that are using open source tools and
>improving them.
Good grief, I didn’t think anyone was *that* stupid anymore.
Look, you have users – who aren’t ‘improving them’.
And you have tinkerers – who may certainly be changing them, but who’se efficiency in ‘improving’ them is often close to zero.
And you have professionals who are paid to enhance them full time – and who arguably *are* ‘improving’ them.
But how many such professionals are there? And do they actually have a common project plan?
I don’t care how many million monkeys you have, they can’t write plays.
Commercialisation of open source [and I’d include the largesse of certain wealthy individuals in this] is starting to have benefits, but this ‘lots of hands’ idea was and is just wishful thinking.
How many of its users do you think can actually build Open Office, let alone improve it?
Yes, but starting things over is pretty easy with open source. You think the architecture of a software or game sucks? Write one that doesn’t suck. If it’s good, people will come and help you.
Brilliant programmers sometimes do lots of things alone. When the time has come, other people will come and help with documentation, graphics, web site support, etc etc etc.
Evolution comes from recreating things. Open source is pretty supportive of evolution.
That’s what is meaningful for the discussion. We don’t need “revolutions”, because people don’t even like it. People like evolution. Little improvements are all that they ask. Even you.
The problem with companies is that bureaucracy kills them, just like it kills governments, countries, etc. On the other hand, bureaucracy favors “incremental changes”, which people like.
Never say you won’t go from point A to point B. It’s not your choice or mine or anyone’s, for that matter.
I don’t care how many million monkeys you have, they can’t write plays.
Ah, yes, the monkey analogy. A million monkeys can’t write plays. But how many plays do you watch? Have you ever seen a play? No, because you want TV and Movies from Hollywood. If you take a million monkeys and give them big colorful glowing buttons with diagrams draw on them depicting plot points they can make you a blockbuster with a few hundred million dollars. Just like they can make you a shiny new operating system with the same cash.
But your analogy breaks down when you realize we’re talking about a million humans. One of those could also make an operating system and they might do a better job of it than your democratic monkeys.
As opposed to those what, communist monkeys?
You seem to be missing one small point with your Visual Studio vs. Linux comparison.
VS .net doesn’t force you to use managed code, it’s one option provided by it. Visual C++ still allows non-managed code and the platform sdk and directx sdk’s are still available, as are nvidia and ati’s own sdk’s if you want to work with opengl, and most likely those of other graphics chip companies. This won’t change anytime soon.
Even downloading the free express versions of VS 2005 you can add the sdk’s and write in non-managed code, you are inventing a problem in VS that isn’t there.
You would help a lot of people with a step by step instruction on how to get it to work and how to use it. From my experience, even the best instructions aren’t enough to get people to configure things. That’s why “next > next > install” works. Almost nothing can get wrong with it.
The open source way is to have public forums where people can get other people to help them, maybe ultimately through Instant Messaging — friends help friends; anonymous people help anonymous people.
That’s why “next > next > install” works. Almost nothing can get wrong with it.
I wish.
Ever try to install Norton Antivirus on a computer that has Symantec Corporate Antivirus? Just like all norton products you have to completely remove the previous installation. The uninstall has a password that apparently no one knows or can remember (at least this is the case everytime I deal with the situation) and the only way to get rid of it is to delete hundreds of registry keys. Not fun at all, and definitely more difficult than ./configure, make, make install nevermind “next > next > install”.
Using Symantec/Norton as your example is pretty misleading, as they are legends at poor install/uninstall methodology. Hence why they write massive articles on hacking out their apps manually, and even provide hacked ‘uninstaller’ tools for when their regular uninstallers don’t make the grade (http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108…).
I know it’s OT, but why on earth would you be removing SAV Corp to install NAV Home, anyways? And if they are using SAV corp, why aren’t the passwords centrally managed (which is the whole point of spending all thaqt money on SAV). Not apologizing for Symantec here – they, like all AV companies, are laughably inadequate and bad. There are none that get above a D+ in my book.
Anyhoo back on topic – Symantec aside, most windows MSI installations really are just next next and work perfectly fine. And the beauty of MSI (pay attention here customizing FOSS fannies) is the MST transform you can use to make that install do whatever you like. Try it sometime.
That’s why “next > next > install” works. Almost nothing can get wrong with it.
“Next > Next > Install” works because…it gives you the illusion of control. If you expect the defaults to always do the right thing, why ask any questions at all?
Under most package managers, the only questions you will get when installing or upgrading 1, 5, or 50 programs is ‘There’s a package or two that you don’t have that you need for the installation. Do you want to have it installed also?’. Upgrading or installing 1 program is as simple as for 500.
“Next > Next > Install” is woefully inadequate for this and offers no extra value. That’s why Microsoft is even moving away from it and offers packages under Windows…even if in a limited way so far. Expect installers to vanish within 5 years for any new program deployments.
‘Dude, I can, like, totally do that way cheaper with Windows and stuff.’ These were the words of sell rep without actual computer knowledge. As he proceeded deploy Windows servers, the manager watched on in admiration. Six months later, long after the Microsoft discontinued this version of OS, and refused to patch it, something broke. Was it really ‘way’ cheaper?”
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. 🙂
Don’t get me wrong the Linux, or Apple, zealots are just as bad. But this article is nothing but parroting standard msft anti-linux, TCO FUD.
I have worked in IT for 25 years. What works best depends on your situation. Sometime Linux really is the best choice. Linux has dramatically lowered TCO is several organizations. Other times, linux isn’t the best choice. Still other times, you may be better off using MVS. Again, it’s all situational.
One last thing, the characterization of all Linux admins as ignorant bearded hippies, is idiotic. That characterizatin immediately set the tone for the entire , heavily biased, article. I can assure you that engineers at IBM, Oracle, Novell, and other linux supporting corporations, do not fit that characterizatin at all.
This isn’t ‘msft FUD’, it is an extract from a book on OpenLDAP (Deploying OpenLDAP). I would recommend anyone who hasn’t read the extract yet, to read it. After reading it I am considering buying his book.
Its been a long time since I’ve read such a negative article. The author is clearly used to working in environs where they have a bottomless supply of $$ and high school level IT personell. The false assumptions he makes are just too numerous to catalogue.. all open source people want to implement software differently, people dont want to maintain their servers, we want supported software.. CHEESE andn RICE man… there are just too many fudisms in her to even make a coherent blurb. IT sounds like bloody GOP talkin points, except they are taken from the MS playbook..
In the UNIVAC/Sperry/Unisys OS2200 mainframe world, there has always been an underground market of sorts where various useful utilities have been passed around from site to site (legally) in source form.
Some of these utilities are simply better versions of commonly available tools such as text editors or shells (e.g., UEDIT, FSED, or CSHELL), providing features which programmers like and which the payware products out there often lack, and some of these utilities provide functions that simply don’t exist in the OS2200 world otherwise (DOWN, DIFF, TOCED, etc.).
Do such tools make sense? Of course. They provide an alternative to existing tools, they are inexpensive to implement, and they meet a need.
Not only that, but folks like me are able to implement our own changes and fixes on our own timetables, which makes them a lot more convenient than their commercial counterparts.
Open source isn’t limited to Linux. Linux is just one example of such software, not the entire universe…
“Look at it like blackmail or extortion. You walk into a company, “save” them hundreds of thousands of dollars on software, get them locked into your infrastructure, and then demand a huge raise just to keep it going because no one else can. By the time they’ve moved their operations towards your infrastructure, they can’t easily go back. Ironically, the same came be said for commercial software—even those based on open standards. That one extra little feature that Microsoft has in their implementation of a product over the free software version will lock your company into using Microsoft products for all eternity.”
This is the basic problem. The article isn’t arguing against say, installing Red Hat. But what the author is saying is that the idea that employees will use the opensourceness to improve & extend the software is not any different that buying from a traditional vendor, and likely more expensive in the long run.
In reality, the companies that can truely take advantage are of custom open source are:
a) Very large corps who have a buisiness case for doing so (IBM for example)
b) Startups that will use open source for the base of a proprietary platform (ex: google uses modified linux inhouse)
For your average corp that needs to push documuments and data around an office, custom open source makes no sense. These sorts of buisness need cost certainty. To look at it another way, they could probably “save money” by custom building their desktop computer for their employees, but yet they would rather buy “inferior” machine from a big vendor. Why? Big vendors have leasing programs, so the cost is the same every month and is spread out over time (which helps with cash flow). If a machine dies, a new one is shipped, yet the bill at the end of the month is the same.
These open source boosters that think OS is the solution for EVERYTHING need to get their head out of the clouds and face reality.
What? Do you want open source or not? Does that matter? I would assume that almost no one likes monopolies. Maybe you country might like it, as the monopoly belongs to it or to one of its commercial partners. But most countries and people in the world can’t share the benefits of having a monopoly that belongs to somebody else.
Open source is not just about open source (free, Free, and stuff), it’s about creating some competition and alternative against a monopoly, which if left alone wouldn’t mind taking over the whole world for the next two centuries, ala Rome.
But no empire resists the test of the time.
You didn’t understand a word of my post.
I didn’t understand a word of yours.
Obviously we speak different languages.
I have to support a POS some bearded geek left for me. Something he cobbled together that everyone is dependent on now GRRRR! Good article something every Linux zealot that thinks linux can cure cancer should read and memorize.
Here is an analogy:
AIDS doesn’t have a cure, also, but we need to keep trying.
Some tasks are just gigantic, but we need to start from somewhere.
It’s just weird to live in a world where most people don’t want changes, but it’s inevitable — both, to live in a world full with people who don’t want drastic changes; and the changes happen all the time.
I tihnk the problem is that technical decisions are often taken by people who generally have no clue.
(1) be able to use the latest buzzwords in marketing (one company I worked for went to a 16-bit data acquisition system from 12-bit because everyone else in the market was moving that way. Underneath, the software simply chopped off the 4 LSBs. Result, no real change, but marketing can now advertise 16-bit amps)
(2) bean counters who look at costs while ignoring practicality. Where I currently work, we went from vxWorks to Linux (to save money and be able to market that we use Linux). The problem is that there are no Linux distributions or compilers for the target processor we are using, so we have to compile and support them internally (saving paying for support). Of course, it also gives us much grief since we’ve assumed all support for the OS and development tools ourselves.
I think far too many people choose to selectively look at benefits and costs, rather than realizing that every situation is different and needs to be objectively evaluated.
One factor that tends to be ignored or grossly distorted is the cost of support – which I think is the most important (unless you are a real He-Man and want to do it all by yourself … and likely go out of business).
Like all things, a proper cost / benefit analysis needs to be done.
rr
I see a couple people writing this off as FUD… I think these people have missed the point.
The point is, I believe, there is a right way and a wrong way to implement free software in your environment.
From TFA:
Sendmail and Apache moved away from the unorganized efforts seen by the free software community when it was smaller and less significant. This gave them credibility and made some of their software a viable replacement for commercial products.
…
What can you do about all of this, if anything? Don’t be the bearded geek I mentioned at the beginning of the article and put in some extra effort to make sure that what you deploy is supportable. Baby steps. You won’t win anyone over right away but when you deploy a free replacement for software, document the process, live by standards, and make sure that the life cycle of your project involves a significant amount of quality assurance, integration and interoperability testing. Put in the extra time to see what sorts of processes exist within your company and what will make everyone comfortable. Take the extra effort required to follow these procedures. Not only will you earn respect, you might learn something, come up with a bug, and let management view your free software deployment in a better light. Don’t just “do it” and expect everything to work magically with your 3am software install.
etc.
Plus:
“Bibliography
Jackiewicz, Tom “Deploying OpenLDAP”, Apress:2004”
I don’t think the author of a book named “Deploying OpenLDAP” who gives advice on how to implement customized free software in your environment should be classified as an MS Shill.
If you took all the time that OS News readers spend (collectively) reading articles about crap like this, and all the time we spend replying to it and pointing out that it’s crap…. well.. I don’t know but I think it would add up to a lot of time.
Linux is a reasonable solution for some, not for others. If ANYBODY came to me with a “like, dude, you should like totally…” attitude and was going to be following it up with anything other than a suggestion that I should supersize my MacMuffen meal, I would not be likely to listen to him. Linux was not the problem in this case.
But sometimes Linux isn’t suited to a particular job, or whatever yadda yedda. It’s like a stuck record here. How many more articles about Linux being ready, not being ready, being used but being crap, not being secure like windows, being more secure than windows, being easier to use than MacOS being a pain to install, being easy to install, being a buggy piece of muck written by slobs, a solid piece of genius written by “millions” of very smart people, and on and on and on….
I can’t believe I’ve just used this much of my time replying to this, and you people have all used your time reading my reply….
Why do we need to discuss any of this trivial and over discussed issues anymore? Haven’t we talked to death. This has all the feeling of a soccer forum where fans from different teams are trying to convince other fans that their team is in fact better than the other and the other is citing statistics to try and counter the argument… at the end it achieves nothing. Nobody is going to support another team based on it, it’s just a lot of talk where fans from both sides will get a big pissed off and simply reinforces their own dogma to themselves since they are the only ones listening to their own opinions.
I know this is an OS news site, hence the name, and I come here to read and get OS news. And on that score the site delivers. But is this sort of opinion based article really news?
Fall behind on a project and lose your bongus because of a bug in software from a vendor?
Hmmm…sounds like something the police should know about if this is what you get at work!
Please, people, read the article. It is actually pro open-source, it simply says that it’s not necessarily a good idea to customize solutions for companies if there’s no commercial support behind it.
Why do you think companies like RedHat and others focus on service now? Because without the “comfort blanket” of corporate accountability, many companies will not feel comfortable using open-source.
Pro-MS posters who cite this article as supporting their position are as mistaken as pro-Linux ones who attack it. Please RTFA before posting.
…if you intended to blame open source.
In fact, the fault lay with the manager who allowed the bearded geek to hack a production system. Why? Because he’s the one who’s responsible. Sure, the bearded geek is also responsible, but not in the same way since he’s obviously not accountable in this allegory. Thus, he factors right out of the equation. As a metaphorical “term of the equation,” the manager should never have introduced him in the first place.
This is not specifically the “fault” of Open Source. The stereotypical bearded geek existed long before the modern open source movement and the same kind of irresponsible misapplication of technology was and is entirely possible in the absence of open source. In fact, although managers have long succumbed to their blandishments, it turns out that many managers have skipped the bearded geek and misapplied the technology themselves.
Of course, it’s in the nature of things that the manager, theoretically accountable, never-the-less blames the bearded geek or the technology, such as Open Source, for the failure and gets away with it.
Edited 2005-12-09 18:00
Yet another example of why it’s so dangerous that people on both sides of the Open Source argument assume that Linux is intended as a magic bullet. I know I too have been guilty of accepting those terms when arguing with someone…
Sun and other large vendors have teams of highly trained engineers ready to parachute into your company at a moment’s notice. All are trained consistently, all read from the same handbook, and all can come in and give you 2080 hours of work in a weekend just to get you up and running.
I have seen this in action.
Systems placed the call and Sun had their people on the next flight out.
Downtime on our most critical server was under 24 hours.
—
I didn’t perceive this article as being anti OSS at all. I read it as “know what you’re getting into.”
Where I work, down in Systems, there’s an amazing variety of machines and OSes. Mac OS9, Linux, IIS, XP Pro, and Solaris.
Right now, our mission critical stuff runs on Sun/Solaris and the reason for that is documentation and support.
It’s annoying when one of the Linux servers goes down (but that’s gotten less now that Systems has hammered the bugs out of the one that I interact with most) but if one of the mission critical machines goes down, it means that technical services can’t do their jobs and that public service department’s ability to help our patrons is severely crippled.
When a phone support solution did not work, Sun had a person to us as fast as physically possible. (Turned out a piece of harware developed an intermittent glitch … on the day we happened to do a software upgrade. The glitch was the sort of problem it really did take an expert to diagnose and track down. [Which also explains why it wasn’t diagnosed/fixed in house.] )
Linux based solutions to our needs have never been rulled out, but we’ll want/need the same level of Vendor support on anything mission critical.
The problem here is a manager who allowed a single employee to tweak his network without ensuring that the knowledge to support the tweak would remain in the organization after, inevitably, the employee left. The same thing would happen if someone did a little hocus-pocus with any software, and then moved on.
Yes, they do have the source code, so they can pay someone to ponder it. But, ponderng source code almost always is simply a cost. Ideally, you’d have no more reason to hire coders than you’d have to hire people to keep the elevators working.
I agree it’s cheaper to run a business on Linux servers. It’s not the young hacker fault if the company is being run by apathy people that they can’t learn linux inorder to run the servers, linux is not that hard to learn. That proves it Windows are making sysadmins minds soft like jello. With so many worms,virus,trojans,etc infecting windows and costing companies alot of money just because they are lazy to learn linux. I say who in there right mind builds a company any company with a ill os like windows? jello brain sysadmins. there goes the security!
Dude, I can, like, totally do that way cheaper with Windows and stuff.’ These were the words of a bearded geek (TheDancingApe) running Windows on his digital watch. As he proceeded to cut and patch alpha code into the kernel running on the production database system, the manager watched on in admiration. Six months later, long after the young idiot decided to move into a commune in Beverly Hills, something broke. Was it really ‘way’ cheaper?”
Big deal, he didn’t leave it broken, by then you would more likely have bought a case of ripple, handed it out down at the local bus station and already rounded up a new sysadmin.
yup, being free and open source can give you at least one advantage: cheap or zero acquisition cost, which can be quite big a discount!
however, starting a business must also look at:
1. quality of support
2. maintenance cost
3. cost and availability of software-specific skills
4. etc.
to say that free and open source will gain more profit for a business or at the contrary it is more costly is like commenting on a 1000-page book after reading the first page.
yes, varying and “contradicting” business experiences exist here and there with the use of FOSS, but when one looks deeper it there is much more involved than a software, though it can oftentimes be of significant contribution.
so, the answer to everything?
study! know the software, the skills around you, the cost-benefit of each decision, and stop telling people that it is a loss or benefit to use open source, especiallly if you don’t know the business and environment they are into.
it’s a case-to-case basis, and the article just presented one case, though it seems to assume that it’s lesson must be for everyone.
how unlearned…
I got Mandriva installed and I gonna run a mail and webserver for my company,I can’t believe it, they work out of the box!!
I a newbie in linux but I’m learning every day !!