Linux Format has an interview with Bruce Perens. Having founded the Open Source Initiative and Linux Standards Base, Perens is a well-known spokesperson for the Free software community, and in this interview he discusses the problems with his UserLinux project, the rise of Ubuntu, and why figureheads are still important in the open source world.
So, is this the year of the Linux desktop?
eek! Don’t say that! I found out the hard way not to mention “year of the linux desktop”. There are many differing views on the subject and briefly what I found out is that the year of the linux desktop was a few years ago for some and when feature X is stable and working it will be year of the linux desktop for others in the future.
Bottom line for your question: It depends. It depends on what your needs are and how to go about meeting them.
When I say “Desktop Linux” I refer to non computer literate users like grampa grandma not Enterprises with a team of support engineers to back up those users.
IMO, expressions that begin with ‘the year of the’ are only used for three reasons:
1) Hype,
2) Sarcasm, and
3) Chinese years (this is the year of the dog)
There is only one “desktop *nix” in my view and it is called OS X.
my goodness someone’s trolling alot today… LinuxIsP** have you changed your nick or something?
dude, we know you like your pretty little OS, fine. we prefer something that allows us the freedom to do what we want with our system, not lock us into the whims of some corporate board. gnu/linux/bsd gives you choice, want pretty and powerful, go with kde, want simple and powerful go gnome, want spartan and powerful, go icewm, fluxbox, etc. don’t want any of that, but still want powerful, go wmii, ion, etc. want to live like it’s still 1985, skip X and use a console. 🙂
meanwhile, if you want all the decisions made for you by someone else, enjoy the idea of having to pay $15 for a piece of piddly shareware to change your mouse pointer, and are frightened by the notion that you can even theme your desktop, go ahead and use your beloved osx.
I’m not a stranger to apple and its wares. I have tiger on my powerbook, (shoot I’m even typing this from an old g3 running os 8.6), and guess what, I’m thinking about slapping a copy of linux on the pbook now.
Some people dont like to waste time configuring thins…
and is it a “waste of time” to have to configure what style, color, mode of dress you wear everyday? what flavour food you eat? what make of car you drive? or would you prefer that all these choices be made for you instead, with no flexibility in terms of changing them…
The first time you do it is learning, the second time it’s still fun because you avoid the newbie mistakes. The 3rd time and on it’s just an unnecessary chore, because you can never reach that perfect desktop. You just pick the prepackaged solution that almost works for you and tweak it “a little”.
Dont try to reinvent the Wheel will ya..
Then they should stay away from computers, because all OSes require some configuration. Yes, even OS X.
The “Linux desktop” already works for many, and it is slowly improving.
The first deployments are, and will be, as mOOzilla says, in “enterprises with a team of support engineers”. Those folks will clean up the problems, so it’s suitable for more users.
But aren’t Windows and MacOS making progress as well, so the free stuff will never catch up? Well, some of that “progress” is in the wrong direction, with the massive requirements for Vista, and with DRM lockdown taking priority over user needs on both platforms.
I have a dual boot machine I got from HP, and once in a rare while I’ll boot up Windows rather than Linux, and the machine eagerly tries to sell me stuff. Popups from HP and at least five other vendors assault me, competing for my attention. It makes it abundantly clear that, when I run a proprietary OS, it is not my machine, not really; it (or rather, its maker) has an agenda.
Some things I liked:
> Indeed, if you go on my website I have a very long paper on the economics
> of open source, and one of the things that you can derive from that is the
> fact that open source works almost worst for a for-profit Linux distribution.
This is going to be interesting. If he has studied this topic carefully then there are going to be a lot of questions answeres in this paper, and probably ideas how to “do it right” when it comes to money-making with F/OSS. I’ll definitely have a look at it…
> As far as Canonical is concerned, one thing that struck me about Mark
> is that he really insists on control. For example, when I considered being
> an employee one of the things standing in the way was the fact that Mark
> doesn’t give his employees stock in his companies.
Actually, when I look at Mandriva, I know very well why Mark wouldn’t give any stocks away. This company is his “child”, together with Ubuntu. Why should he give it away? The good thing is that any employee can fork the project if he doesn’t like the course taken.
>one of the things that you can derive from that is the fact that open source works almost worst for a for-profit Linux distribution.
I was going to say to this line that I respectfully hope time shows Mr. Perens disproven.
Smitty,
Have a look at this article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2857 .
In a nutshell, I will assume the author is correct for the sake of the arguement, the software industry is on the brink of a wave of consolidation. The ‘best’ corporate solution is the one that provides every solution from A to Z. Because of this, every corporate player is scrambling to augment their enterprise offering. In this wave of consolidation, the active players are Oracle, HP, Sun, IBM, etc. The inactive participants are Red Hat and Suse (Novell). Notice any characteristics that differentiate the two categories? Obviously, the for-profit companies are the active participants, while the Open Source companies are the inactive participants.
GNU/Linux is in midst of a transformation; from the economic goal of a company (Ubuntu, SuSE, and pre-JBOSS Red Hat) to the vehicle of delivery for middleware and sundry other corporate solutions. Post-consolidation means buying from IBM and only IBM for a ‘complete solution’ (of which, a certified GNU/Linux desktop is just one small piece). For-profit GNU/Linux distributions, per Mr. Perens, will cease to exist; they will become some division of a larger corporation. Also drawing from the same Perens’ article from which you quoted, the former for-profit GNU/Linux distribution will now be a faceless member of the ‘non-differentiating software’.
I, for one, hope that the author is wrong (I don’t have enough exosure/experience in this field to make that call). If even if true, there are thankfully other desktop solutions for the home/non-corporate user. Despite their many flaws, GNU/Linx distributions like Slacware, Debian, and Gentoo will never be corporate slaves (for better and for worse).
“Actually, when I look at Mandriva”
Mandriva is a company , you should have said when you look at Gaël Duval , but then again you would be making a mistake , So here is GNU/Linux History class 101 :
Gaël Duval :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga%C3%ABl_Duval
– DESS in computer science
Gaël Duval gave the management control of Mandriva to Jacques Le Marois and shared part of it with Frederic Bastok who are both incompetent.
Mark Shuttleworth :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth
– Business Science degree in Finance
– Business Science degree Information Systems
– South African entrepreneur
– Astronaut
– founder of Thawte, which specialised in digital certificates and Internet security.
– He sold Thawte in December 1999 to VeriSign earning R3,5-billion.
THE ABOVE TIDBIT SHOW THAT HE KNOW HOw TO DO A SUCCESFULL IPO AND IS QULAIFIED TO RUN ONE unlike Gaël Duval.
– founder of HBD Venture Capital
– business incubator
– founder of Canonical Ltd. ( GNU/Linux company )
– Founder and maker of Ubunutu
– Founder of the Ubuntu fondation
ETC … … … … … … … …
In GNU/Linux you dont have employee you have partners.
There is a story , which I dont know if its true but Mark Shutleworth tried to approach Mandriva and contribute financially ( Mandriva is/was a good African participant ) but there whas no answer on Mandriva part probably due to Le Marois not doing its job as usual.
On the Subject of Bruce Perens : he need to fix the OSI mess he started and get rid of the traitor license and the license that are not even Open Source but OSI certified.
Open Source is when you have the source code accessible.
Moulinneuf, I can only advise you that you will get around with people better if you are less arrogant and accept your opinion as something that is possibly wrong or based on false premises, instead of just flaming around. This is especially true in real life, where getting around with people will actually give you an advantage in several senses, and less on this forum where we do little more than argue about interesting topics. Calling somebody a moron, even if you know that he/she is completely wrong with his/her thinking, will neither convince him/her nor give you any social advantage – quite the contrary – except with other people who think the same way.
Now to your arguments:
> Mandriva is a company , you should have said when you look at Gaël Duval
To please you, I should have said “look at Mandriva and Gaël Duval”. Actually I just forgot his name and was too lazy to look it up. Strangely, even though I forgot to mention him, you knew instantly whom I was talking about…
> THE ABOVE TIDBIT SHOW THAT HE KNOW HOw TO DO A
> SUCCESFULL IPO AND IS QULAIFIED TO RUN ONE unlike
> Gaël Duval.
Qualification alone doesn’t ensure a leading position. Just look at various competent/incompetent politicians for example, and look who of them hold which position. It would be a mistake for Mark if he didn’t consider this.
> In GNU/Linux you dont have employee you have partners.
Before we continue the discussion in this direction – have you ever run a company of more than 20 people who all were “partners”?
> On the Subject of Bruce Perens : he need to fix the
> OSI mess he started and get rid of the traitor
> license and the license that are not even Open Source
> but OSI certified.
I know that this will sound weird at first, but Bruce Perens didn’t start open source. Stallman did. Mr Stallman started Free Software and did not consider that people would get it wrong and focus on the openness of source code instead of the “four fundamental freedoms” that he actually proposed. Even though I don’t agree with him, I’d call him a visionary for coming up with the concept of free software and a genius for the mechanics of the GPL, but as many geniuses he only thought about his subject and did not consider the effect on people, and that they would get it wrong and start equal-sounding, but different movements which actually attract the majority of people (and especially companies).
Bruce Perens is only the “executive” part of this. He cannot clean up the Open Source mess because he doesn’t really control it. His first intended step, cleaning up the huge amount of different OSS licenses, is anything but a success. He asks people to choose one of a few licenses, but he doesn’t control the movement. Even removing the OSI certification of non-OSS licenses is problematic.
Finally, the fact that you consider non-copyleft licenses “traitor licenses”, such as you said many times about the BSD license, just shows that you don’t follow the OSS movement. Fine, but then you have little ground to tell Perens what he “should” do.
I disagree , calling you a moron when your acting like one is accurate , stop acting like one and I wont call you as such.
“To please … talking about… ”
No , my problem come from the fact that your blaming something ( IPO ) , someone ( Duval ) and a company ( Mandriva ) when the problem is other individuals ( Mandriva Management ) who created the bad experiance and problem.
“Qualification alone … didn’t consider this. ”
I stand by my position that if Mr Shuttleworth decide to do one it will be a sucessfull one as he as done many who where in the past.
“Before we … were “partners”? ”
Yes , the difference is one cannot open up as your competition tommorow , you better not ever piss them off.
“I know that … of people (and especially companies).”
You need to get a class in computer history Open Source whas there from the start , it just got closed and after that proprietary because of the traitor licenses , Stallman just returned it to its normal origins and created the free software mouvement to protect it from that point on and Perens with ESR used the term Open Source as a marketing tool to differentiate from free software.
The problem is that Open Source as a real significance that is well above any marketing ploy. Diminishing its respectability by letting any license be certified means that it as no value as everyone is Open Source certified.
“Bruce Perens is … is problematic. ”
No there is no real barrier to do it , there is just a lack of political interest to do a real clean up , there is a lot of so called Open Source license that are not and that would only mean less visibility for the group without them being associated with it.
“the fact that … “should” do.”
Copyleft is a free software Quality only , hence your wrong , traitor license for the Open Source movement are those you cant get access to modify or see the source code once you acquired them , and even more those that allow the ability to close access to that same source code to the derivative people made from those Open Source. No the thief dont have a choice , they just choose to do something illegal and the majority let it pass as they think its the norm and legal.
If you whant to call something your own and own it fully and legally make it fully from scratch. Dont close it and use Open Source code because then its really thievery that as yet to be charged and prosecuted because there is absolutely nothing that say you have the permission to do so and that give you legally the rights to do so.
You can eat shit or an apple , personnaly I only eat apple and you whont get me to call shit an Apple because its made in the same form or painted red. For me its the same thing with Open Source , its is or its not there is no grey area on that subject at all. I whas actually sorry I did left that Title when I finally submited , but after reading your reply I know I whas right. I aint telling Perens what he should do he figured it out on its own , after being done to him what he believed could not happen in Open Source.
now I will stfu because I said what I had to say to you.
> I disagree , calling you a moron when your acting like one is accurate , stop
> acting like one and I wont call you as such.
You can call me what you want. I merely gave you a hint that if you call people “morons” in real life, you are going to suffer social disadvantages from it. If you don’t believe this, go try it.
> No , my problem come from the fact that your blaming something ( IPO ) ,
> someone ( Duval ) and a company ( Mandriva ) when the problem is other
> individuals ( Mandriva Management ) who created the bad experiance and problem.
In the real world, it’s often the good guys who get punished. The fact *who* created the problem is less relevant to those who suffer from it than *how* they could prevent the problem. As unfair as Mr Duval was treated, he has probably learnt a lesson about the fairness of certain people.
What would you suggest to him instead, to whine about how he was treated and that it wasn’t his fault? If you act like a loser, don’t wonder if you are treated like one. I would very much appreciate it if he shows strength now (haven’t followed his course).
> I stand by my position that if Mr Shuttleworth decide to do one it will be
> a sucessfull one as he as done many who where in the past.
I don’t argue this, since I know too little about him. But it looks as if he is very successful at the moment, looking at how he established Ubuntu as a well-known distro from out of nowhere. I simply don’t think he would have any advantage from sharing leadership with others. However, he would face the risk of losing leadership altogether if he does, even if it is a minor risk.
> Yes , the difference is one cannot open up as your
> competition tommorow , you better not ever piss them
> off.
Could you tell a bit about that company – what did it do, how many partners were at the top (or even at all?), how did this kind of leader ship work…? Anyway, in F/OSS, anybody could in theory be your competition tomorrow, so not pissing them off is a good idea in general (just as in real life). However, the additional danger in your case is that some of these “partners” throw you off the top and take over the whole company. How did your company protect against this?
> You need to get a class in computer history Open Source whas there from the start […]
The convention to provide source code was there from the start, NOT the open source movement as a means to identify and distinguish from proprietary software and to provide additional value that others don’t.
> Diminishing its respectability by letting any license be certified means that it
> as no value as everyone is Open Source certified.
Well, the identifyable name “Open Source” would be there anyway, because people need an icon to recognize the open-source-like efforts. However, without a *protected* “Open Source” brand, everybody would call their software “Open Source” when they feel like that. This would continue to the point that nobody has a clue anymore and most would judge the open-ness of software by better marketing, just as they do with the quality of software. Microsoft, for example, would happily call their dubious source-sharing license “Open Source”. Would that be better than the current situation?
> No there is no real barrier to do it , there is just a lack of political
> interest to do a real clean up , there is a lot of so called Open Source license
> that are not and that would only mean less visibility for the group without
> them being associated with it.
I don’t think you understood my point: Bruce Perens does not control these projects. He can (I hope he can, and if so then he should) un-certify those licenses which are not open-source licenses. But about the proliferation of hundreds of different valid OSS licenses, he can’t do anything forcibly. The authors of those projects are free to choose whatever license they want, and they do not follow Perens and his cause. He can (and probably will) try to convince the authors of the advantages of fewer licenses, and the advantages of using a court-proven license. However, this is not “his mess” that he tries to clean up, but rather a voluntary project – he did not initiate it in any way – just as Stallman wrote free Unix tools although proprietary software was not his mess to clean up.
> Copyleft is a free software Quality only […]
Sorry, but I could not find any argument that would imply an obligation for Perens to remove the OSS mark from the BSD license. Perens leads the OSS movement, not the free software movement, and does not qualify copyleft as a vital thing.
Secondly, as you might easily find out, the BSDL is a *free* software license too in Stallman’s definition. He dislikes it because it is a non-copyleft license, but sees no problem in using BSD-licensed software, and has even agreed in one case (OGG) that using the BSDL rather than the (L)GPL for tactical reasons was the right choice.
Thirdly, your introductory phrase is plain wrong. Copyleft is not special to free software. It is a legal tool to create a propagating license, and not connected to free software in any other way than that it works well in that area.
Hypervisor technology will allow all platforms to co-exist on the same hardware. Isnt that wonderful? we still have some problems getting them to talk together via standards but when that improves then who cares what platform one uses, its the applications / services that matter no? Im so tempted to just get my grandad an Apple but most software is on Windows, that age old problem of app support. Then we have the problem of bundling for the grandad desktop. Each ISP has their own package to install, each OEM has their own package to isntall by 6 months to a year their desktops are littered with JUNK which is even more confusing.
This is the problem we need to solve, not my OS is better then yours.
Guess what platform it is held on? Windows, there goes the idea of buying grandma an Apple Mac when she wants to go on those free community courses for new computer users to word processing etc.