Submitted by Earlier this month, Psystar suspended all sales of its hardware products, honouring the court’s decision which favoured Apple. This week, Psystar has also temporarily halted sales of Rebel EFI while the former clone maker confirms the tool’s legality with the court. Psystar also announced it will continue hardware sales in the coming days – with Linux rather than Mac OS X.
Psystar made all the announcements in a notice on their website. The company notes that the court order has no effect on warranties, so existing customers shouldn’t feel worried. “Warranties on hardware will continue to be honored as long the customer has a valid warranty,” the company says, “Rebel EFI support for existing customers, as always, will remain exclusively available through email and the built-in ticket interface.”
The company also states they disagree with the court’s decision, which obviously shouldn’t come as a surprise. They say they do not and have not ever condoned software pricacy, and that their actions are not “hardcore copyright [infringements]”. “It’s your software, you should be able to use it where you want to,” they argue, “If you purchase an off-the-shelf copy of OS X Snow Leopard, its your right to use that software. A publisher cannot forbid you from reading a book in the bathroom or listening to a music disc while riding your bicycle. There should be no difference in the software realm, no matter how much money Apple or anyone else throws at it.”
It’s obviously hard to disagree with this notion, but it’s also obvious that Psystar has not done a very good job of fighting for our rights as consumers. On top of that, there is still this pesky but very important issue of where Psystar got the code for Rebel EFI from – the company claims it has been developed in-house, but Netkas and others in the OSx86 community believe the code has been stolen from them.
The company is not planning on throwing in the towel, though. If the court agrees that Rebel EFI does not fall under the injunction, Psystar will continue selling it, and expand it to include support for specific computers, such as the Dell 9 Mini and HP Mini.
On the hardware front, the company plans to resume selling computers, but now with Linux instead of Mac OS X. “In the coming days, we will again be offering complete systems but at discounted prices as they will be bundled with your choice of Linux operating system,” the company writes, “In addition to using only first quality components, our hardware specifically chosen such that it is known to be compatible with OS X (via Apples own drivers or open source offerings online).”
It seems that Psystar is busy doing what it probably should have done in the first place: sell computers completely compatible with Mac OS X, but without Mac OS X actually installed. While it’s sad that software makers can apparently dictate whatever they want in their EULAs, this is at least better than nothing.
Lasty, I think we can also finally put to rest those ridiculous claims put forth by people like Groklaw’s PJ regarding Psystar being a Microsoft-sponsored attack on the GPL, an extension of the SCO case. It seems rather odd that a company funded by Microsoft to attack the GPL (as PJ claims) would sell machines with Linux pre-installed. Then again – some people will find an explanation for anything to keep their black helicopter theories afloat.
Let’s count days untill GPL thugs start suing them?
Why are they “thugs”? They are usually pretty pleasant about GPL violations, letting most go with out penalty after releasing the source. If only all thugs were so nice.
Why is it such a problem to ask one thing? Share your source code.
How about the long list of things Apple try and stop you doing or limit your capacity with their devices and software?
Yeah, I don’t understand these people myself. Everybody must abide by proprietary licenses and it’s no big deal, but they got all offended when they have to abide by the GPL.
They moan about a supposed sense of entitlement, yet they feel entitled to take code that wasn’t created by them and do the only thing they’re forbidden to do; close it.
A lot of people don’t abide by proprietary licenses. Most of the time, they don’t get caught. Which goes to show that freedom is what the people want, though they “get” it illegally that way. The GPL makes it possible to have that freedom legally, provided you abide by its one requirement, which I discuss below.
Usually it’s not that they want to close the other’s code, but rather they want to close their own code, while using portions of (even small portions, as long as their “non-trivial” or whatever the legal term is for something over the copyrightable threshold) th other’s and so reaping the benefit without contributing anything (or in the case of the GPL, everything, at least insofar as the program in which you included the code is concerned) back as the GPL requires, or they want to make customized versions of the software but then want to propriet away such customized versions. The GPL is designed this way, because its backers believe in software freedom, and by doing it this way it is made to generates more freedom. Some even go further, with the ultimate goal of abolition of most “intellectual property” restrictions and favor the death of the idea of intellectual/intangible works as a sort of “property” that can be “owned” like how I can own trinkets.
Edited 2009-12-31 21:30 UTC
The only products they seem to be selling at the moment is a tee shirt and “donations”. What kind of screwed up company is this?
A charity; by which I mean “we need your charity”.
A “screwed by Appl” company.
…I bet they’re going to make a million bucks with their new business plan. =P
Every customer can decide if she/he wants to buy something from any company; why shouldn’t software maker been able to decide if the want someone to license their software or not! they do this buy the Eula!!!
If you want to buy a Software, go and buy the Source code from the Software maker – you can’t buy Software by buying a CD. the same way we don’t buy music nor movies. what about “exploitation rights“?
Not sure what is your point.
Software is probably one of the few things that can be both copyrighted and patented. In addition to these extensive protections, some of the big software companies want to be able to freely dictate to the end user draconian terms of sale that contradict consumer protection law.
Copyright and patent law have been working well for a long time up until recently. Copyrighting books, music, art, etc. had been straightforward for decades. Why should copyright rules for software suddenly be any different?
As it has been for decades with books, music, art and even with early software, one must recognize the possibility of ownership of a copy independent from ownership of the copyright.
So, if we are to follow the precedent and spirit of consumer protection law and of copyright law from decades past, one buys the copy — not the EULA.
Not sure what you mean, but Apple charges money for every copy of OSX sold.
All I hear about this company is their attempts to clone Macs and generally cause trouble. What is their deal? What, exactly, is their end goal, businesswise? The Wikipedia article is shy on anything other than the same Apple vs. Psystar schlock I’ve been seeing on OSNews and Slashdot.
Well, I’m no expert but I believe the goal of most businesses is to turn a proffit from their work.
Trouble with Psystar is that they’re idiots, straight and simple as that. They have no idea what they’re doing as far as a business goes, and they’ve so screwed their reputation by appearing as shady as they did in the Apple case. I’m not going to go into what I think of the case, but suffice it to say that the way Psystar made themselves look they’d have been hard pressed to win anything.
Speaking of money though, what happened to that big financial reserve they were drawing on to finance their legal case with Apple? What’s with this whole donations thing now? Mysterious backer suddenly pull out, Psystar?
While it’s sad that software makers can apparently dictate whatever they want in their EULAs, this is at least better than nothing.
Yes it is so very sad that a group of cheapskates can’t use the government to force a private company to change their software usage contract that 99% of Apple customers have no problem with.
Complain all you want but you know that if Pystar had won then Apple would have had increased support costs from Joe Blow lying about having a clone and asking Apple to help him through installing a printer.
The government shouldn’t be in the business of forcing private companies to create products that meet the whims of a whiney minority.
Buy a mac mini already and find something else to complain about. Oh my god you have to spend $600 to run OSX. Boo freaking hoo.
Really, the conflict does not involve the general issue that manufacturers can dictate whatever terms they want in an EULA, nor does it involve anyone trying to “use the government” to change EULA terms. The essence of the conflict is that the terms in some EULAs contradict the basic principles of consumer protection laws.
And let us not forget that this recent Apple-Psystar ruling had nothing to do with the OSX EULA. The ruling was a result of distorting the interpretation of a recent, questionable copyright amendment — the DMCA.
As someone recently commented on “Linux Today”:
“The DMCA only applies to circumventing copy protection, not circumventing installation protection (and installation is specifically covered as an exception to copyright protection according to U.S. copyright law…).”
“The so-called ‘DRM’ in Apple’s operating system isn’t to prevent copying of the software [which is what copyright is supposed to protect], but to prevent installation on a non-Apple machine [which has nothing to do with copyright].”
I don’t know that, and neither do you. Any reasonable person would expect that Apple would reserve the right to refuse service to customers not buying their hardware.
How does Psystar installing OSX on their machines force Apple to create products that meet anyone else’s whim?
I don’t know to whom is referred by the phrase “whiney minority,” but I am glad that organizations such as the EFF are fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent our consumer protection rights from being eroded by greedy software/electronics manufacturers.
God forbid. I wouldn’t buy that crappy hardware nor OSX in a zillion years.
I just don’t want our rights taken away.
Edited 2009-12-30 09:10 UTC
Consumer protection laws don’t exist to ensure that consumers can break a contract if the product doesn’t meet their needs. If you don’t agree with the EULA then don’t buy the product. Again 99% of Apple customers have no problem with it.
Wow you are naive. And how exactly is Apple supposed to check to make sure the hardware is legitimate? Run a remote scan? That in itself represents an increased support cost. What about people that claim their internet isn’t working? Such a system would be cracked anyways.
You’re forcing Apple to support a product beyond their intent. That amounts to forcing them to expand a product’s functionality against their will simply because the limitation they impose is contractual.
Why is Apple being greedy and not the people who want to buy Apple’s product without agreeing to their terms? Again 99% of the people that buy OSX have no problem with the EULA so when you speak of ‘consumer rights’ you really mean ‘what a tiny minority would like to do’.
Apple is only second to Asus in hardware quality.
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/03/26/rescuecom_report/
Like Stallman you seem to think that declaring rights in your mind makes them sacrosanct. It’s just an entitlement mentality.
Too bad Linux sucks so much on the desktop that companies like Psystar are willing to risk their own existence to sell the leading alternative to Windows. That’s the harsh reality in all this.
Of course.
However, a big part of the reason consumer protection laws exist is to prevent manufacturers from trying to force unfair (and illegal) terms of post sale use.
First of all, the language of a lot of EULAs are not accessible at the point of purchase.
Secondly, if you are a manufacturer and you don’t want the product to be used in a way that is fair and correct, don’t release your product for public sale.
Merely making declarations of conditions in your EULA doesn’t make the conditions fair nor valid.
Resorting to a personal attack? Very well…
Funny how you can dream up all kinds of misguided and fantastic notions that favor Apple, but, when it comes to practical solutions in the real world, you suddenly have no imagination.
There are many ways to verify whether or not a user owns Apple hardware. The most common method is with a hardware registration database, which Apple probably already uses. A lot of manufacturers (not just software/electronic makers) successfully use this method. It is fairly easy to determine when multiple parties are trying to share a single registration.
Also, the staff at the Apple store might get a clue when someone walks up to the “Genius” bar with their E-machines box.
What are you smoking?
A product’s functionality and the provisions of an EULA are two completely different things. Likewise, a product’s functionality and the support offered by the manufacturer are two completely different things.
Please try harder to make some sense with your arguments.
Again, no one is forcing Apple to support anything.
Apple and other software/hardware manufacturers (and various content publishers/distributors) would like to distort copyright laws and abuse patent law for their monetary interests. The only ones who deny this assertion are the companies themselves and, in Apple’s case, their rabid supporters and shills.
It seems that, inherent in democracy, there is a constant battle between wealthy interests and the rights of the individual. Recently, these wealthy interests have somewhat succeeded.
Now, you think that the people who want to buy OSX and install it on the machine of their choice are being greedy? Please explain how.
You have a propensity for missing the point and for jumping to erroneous conclusions.
Just because Mac fanboys accept the terms of the OSX EULA, that doesn’t mean that the provisions are valid nor fair.
Keep in mind that, if Steve Jobs presented poop-in-a-box at one of his keynote addresses, legions of Apple fans would stand in line to buy it.
By the way, the main reason for the establishment of basic individual rights (such as the U.S. “Bill Of Rights”) is to protect the minority from getting trampled by the fickle, ignorant majority.
LOL! You’re an idiot!
You put your faith in a report that is obviously misleading. Even an Apple fanboy blasts your report as being completely ridiculous: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/03/26/ridiculous-rescuecom-stati…
The repair company who made the report gave their numbers for Apple repairs, but they were not even an authorized Apple repair center!
Even if they were an Apple repair center, there still is a huge problem with their numbers.
What do you suppose is the ratio of the number Mactards who take their broken Macbooks into the Apple store compared to number of those who bring their crapbooks to Rescuecom (or to an authorized service center)? Pretty high, I’d wager. Apple certainly would never reveal the true numbers.
The ratio is much lower for the numbers of Toshiba owners who take their laptops to the local “Toshiba store” compared to the number of those who send in their Satellites to Rescuecom. Do you know why? — there’s no such thing as a local Toshiba store!
So, even though the Rescuecom numbers are most certainly skewed well in favor of Apple (despite the fanboy rant linked above), Asus still beat Apple!
In addition, for every glowing report on Apple reliability, there is also a report that puts Apple’s reliability far behind other manufacturers. Here’s one: http://theappleblog.com/2009/11/17/apple-ranks-a-lackluster-fourth-…
Here’s another (an article trying to reconcile the fact that Apple laptops came in dead last in a reliability survey by Consumer Reports): http://blogs.computerworld.com/apple_reliability_more_better_than_w…
One more thing: the internal components of Macs are identical to or inferior to what anyone can install into any PC. So, the hardware reliability of PCs has to be the same or better than that of Macs!
I don’t know why you refer to Stallman, and I didn’t declare the rights to which you refer — they are already written into law, thankfully!
Not sure why you brought up Linux, but, since you did, I have to say that I’d sooner use Linux than the Fisher Price interface that is OSX!
The reality is that you are ignorant and that you should probably do some research and use your brain, before you start typing in Internet forums.
Edited 2009-12-31 07:49 UTC
What I believe is that Apple doesn’t want to stop single users from installing OS X on their PC.
Else why they don’t touch dozens of sites which explain how to do it?
How do you know he doesn’t know it, if you don’t know it?
Apple customers never have any problems with their company. They are very loyal and would be till death even if Steve Jobs shot at their directly on their face. Still they’ll sing in Apple’s praise. 99% or 100% doesn’t matter.
“……. but it’s also obvious that Psystar has not done a very good job of fighting for our rights as consumers.”
Thom, you forgot to mention that your personal, caped crusaders have now moved into the T-shirt business.
A little tricky adding your spin to that one.. eh?
Best of luck with Psystar’s Linux venture.
Public interest in Linux systems is low outside our geek realm and their corporate image is forever taunted by litigation failure. Then again Psystar had a niche market anyway by catering to the hackintosh crowd.
“…Although Rebel EFI may be temporarily unavailable for purchase on the Psystar online store, those who purchase a t-shirt or donate over twenty dollars will receive one free copy of Rebel EFI once the court has ruled in our favor on this issue…”
They seem pretty confident that they will be able to keep selling Rebel EFI. I don’t see how the court will let them continue to sell it, but hey I’ve been wrong before.
Bad management and silly decisions destroyed PsyStar. What they should have done instead is sell the hardware as it is but with some type of Linux instead of Mac OS X and then state that the PC is compatible with Mac OS X. I don’t think Apple would have been able to do anything about it as PsyStar would not have been doing anything that violates Apple’s rules. To top it off, they would have released Rebel EFI’s source code and they would have gotten a lot of respect.
Got to love this one.
Groklaw was okay to read during the SCO, but this is a bitchslap they deserve after turning into a casual FSF bipolar disorder paranoid GPL lobby. Now they are in the business of spreading FUD instead of analyzing it.
Edited 2009-12-30 07:42 UTC
The problem was that what Psystar did was clearly a breach of copyright. They took a copy of OSX, modified it (they first installed it on a Mini, then modded that install, then used that install to generate their master install media), then installed it, then sold that copy along with a retail copy of OSX. In some cases they forgot to include OSX.
This conduct is going to be breach of copyright almost anyplace in the world, and done on any software. You are making and selling derivative works, and that is nowhere permitted.
The interesting question is whether if things had been done differently, the judgment would have been the same. This comes down to the question: is it, in the US, copyright breach to make whatever modifications to OSX are essential to using it on a machine of one’s choice?
The copyright law authorizes one to both make what are called ‘adaptations’ to software one owns a copy of, and to authorize others to do it for one, when those adaptations or copies are essential to use with a machine.
So far we do not seem to have had a judgment on that question – or if we have, I have not found it by reading the recent rulings. What seems to have been ruled in the Pystar case is that if you break copyright law, you can be sued. Well, yes. But is it still possible to install OSX on a non-Apple sourced machine without breaching copyright?
This seems to remain an open question. I think the answer is probably yes, but we need to see a suit against someone who has simply bought a retail copy of OSX, then installed it on non-Apple hardware. If this is legal, then doing it as a business service is also legal. But you would have to do it right – you’d have to make sure the customer was the owner at the time of the act, and you’d have to be installing from his owned copy on hardware that he owned, because it is breach of copyright, having lawfully done the mods, to transfer them.
Every time an article about Psystar vs. Apple comes up here, I wonder, “What is the big appeal of OS X?” Obviously they are now using Linux, so why didn’t they do that to begin with? I’m not being snide either, just wondering aloud why in the world they would go to all this trouble with an OS that causes such a ruckus when another one is freely available. Heck, what’s wrong with FreeBSD, which OS X is based upon, right?
Anyways, this does at least prove that Apple doesn’t only base their profits on hardware. Obviously they have a lot to lose here.
The big appeal of OS X is that it’s Unix, with the security and stability benefits of that platform, but easy to use and maintain, and with commercial applications such as Photoshop available that aren’t available (yet? 🙂 ) for Linux. In other words, it combines some of the benefits of Windows with some of the benefits of Linux, and it doesn’t hurt that it is pretty either. 🙂
This is the sales pitch, but the reality is very different. It is not particularly easy to use, and it lacks both the security and the stability of the real thing. Speaking as one who is asked to help the luckless owners from time to time.
And its DRM encrusted.
Whatever it is, Unix it is not. Yes, it does have some of the utilities. That don’t make it Unix.
I don’t know why they modded you up, maybe the people who did aren’t familiar with OS X.
OS X is easier for *most people* to use than Linux, because, among other reasons, although it has a functional Unix command line, you can use the system without ever needing to go to the command line. For most people, this is much easier than memorizing arcane Unix commands.
As for whether it is Unix, OS X is Unix(tm) certified ever since Leopard, which is more than what one can say for Linux. You can run nearly any Unix application on it, even ones that rely on the “X Windows Disaster”, as the Unix Haters Handbook puts it. 😉
Linux is more secure, we agree about that. OS X’s memory protection and randomization and the like is weaker than Linux, and even than Vista; though unlike Vista and all Windows it isn’t nearly as crufty and poorly designed under the hood as Windows so you don’t have security problems that arise from that aspect…
I’ve complained however more than once about OS X’s security. It is probably the least secure modern Unix in common usage, though I suppose it’s more secure than BSD was in the bad old days of sendmail(1) buffer overflows and executable stacks. 🙂
As for “DRM encrustation”, it has DRM for iTunes’s music store, which Apple has phased out, it isn’t like Windows that implements such things as protected video channels to close the analog hole and other such monstrosities. The iTunes DRM is truly a dead horse, even Apple doesn’t use it anymore, so why are you whining about it being in there for backwards compatibility? It scarcely affects the entire operating system, like it does in Vista, for example. Maybe if you’ve run Linux before with Real Player, as people did in the bad old days, you’ve run a similarly DRM-encrusted environment. 😉
I can use my Fedora laptop without using the command line, and I can admin the CentOS and RHEL servers at work without using the command line. The server applications are a different story.
I only use the command line because I like it, and this goes for Windows and OS X, when I used it, as well.
OS X comes with itunes which is what most college students use these days.
Yes it has DRM that prevents you from taking a movie rental and emailing it to your friends. Oh my god what bastards. They make people pay 3-5 dollars for a rental. Not allowing me to share it with a million people is a violation of rights that I have declared for myself.
Anyways OS X has many benefits over Linux including better:
Flash playback
Font rendering
Commmercial software support
Ipod/Iphone support
Graphics stack
Most people would rather have itunes than a ‘drm free’ system which to them just means itunes-free. Linux would probably have better commercial software support if it wasn’t a group of warring distros that can only seem to agree that their software distribution systems should be a pain in the ass for commercial developers.
Edited 2009-12-31 05:48 UTC
Plus better drivers (Graphics Cards, sound, printers), all sort of “credible” software, extreme ease of use, no show-stopper bugs…
I couldn’t agree more.
No, the objection is not that one is a college student and wanting to mail movies to friends. Interesting to know that OSX makes that difficult, though.
The objection is stuff like, the lockin of the iTunes database, the original attempt to lock the bought tunes, the locking of purchases to iTunes, which in turn extends to the app store for iPhone, the locking of the software to hardware bought from Apple…
The company is DRM encrusted, and the encrustation shows on everything it touches, so where OSX touches any of its pet manias, its encrusted too, the big one being the insistence on selling full retail copies while telling buyers what they may and may not run them on.
OS X doesn’t “make that difficult”, iTunes does. There’s a difference, you know, this isn’t Windows where the media player, the web browser, and everything else is impossible to remove from the OS. If you have a religious objection to iTunes still selling movies, like Netflix and others do, that are DRM locked, don’t buy them. It can play non-DRM MP4 and other files too. Or if you insist, run Songbird on OS X, like on Linux, which doesn’t offer features you don’t like.
Third party programs such as DoubleTwist can and do read the iTunes database, which is an open documented XML format. The database allows better performance and features not present in MP3 tags. If you have a religious objection to XML database formats too, I can’t help you with that one, even Linux uses those.
In 2003, one year after the iPod, and the same year as the introduction of the iTunes Music Store, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to the music industry to sell music files without DRM in the iTunes music store. It took a while before they took him up on his offer. The only reason why films are still offered with DRM in the iTunes store is because the movie industry won’t sell them any other way, and rather than reduce the capabilities to *buy* media (you do buy things instead of steal sometimes, don’t you?) they offer it, for the time being, the way the movie industry insists.
Yeah, the iPhone is kind of a closed ecosystem. I like the WebOS and Android’s system better, an app store and the ability to install apps outside of the app store.
OS X with iTunes is as “DRM encrusted” as Linux with Real Player. The only difference is that nobody has been writing commercial apps for Linux because the platform’s too fragmented, and this is a loss for many important niches of computer use.
Considering the public stance against DRM of the CEO of Apple, dating to the first year of the iTunes Music store, I suspect that your wrath would be better directed at the movie industry, which offers their wares with DRM on *all* operating systems. Heck, even Linux plays DVDs, which now have a cracked DRM, and Real Player, who’s market is moribund. I’m sure if there were a movie selling solution for Linux, besides downloading freebies with bittorrent which you can do on OS X too, it too would have DRM.
Oh, maybe you’re obliquely refering to the fact that OS X has easily defeat-able EFI machine detection algorithms that are supposed to keep you from running it on hardware other than Apple machines. It doesn’t use DRM to do that, OS X is not copy protected in any way, so that’s not “DRM-encrustation” either.
Well, there probably wouldn’t be OS X, or Apple, if they allowed clones again like they did in the 90s, so I can’t really fault them for having a business model that is oriented towards selling hardware rather than software. Of course, I run OS X on a Hackintosh, but I actually paid for my retail disks and had a Mac (which broke) before this machine. 🙂 OS X’s iTunes DRM doesn’t get in the way of running any program I want on it, or even running it contrary to the EULA, which is not protected with DRM. You also notice that Apple hasn’t been sending C&D letters to anyone using OS X other than people who try to profit from it like PsyStar, even OSNews has freely run articles about it without a peep from Apple, unlike stuff having to do with their marketing. I have no sympathy for PsyStar, as they took open source software (drivers and EFI emulation, etc.) and distributed it without offering the source as their own. Besides, their hardware was shoddy.
Edited 2009-12-31 21:04 UTC
To Psystar: Here is a thought: theme your new linux machines with Mac4Lin plus Cairo-dock! If Apple sues you again, this time you drag along many open source developers, it’ll be fun, aye?
I don’t see much point in Microsoft attacking OSS.
Operating systems? Linux committed suicide in many ways and Microsoft won with Windows 7, end of story.
OpenOffice? Yes, that might be a problem, but most people don’t need much more than a word processor anyway.
Firefox? Yes, that caused IE to lose market share, but it was unavoidable (think for instance the EU wanting competition).
If the story was only desktops then you’d be right (at least for now).
However, whats got Ballmer throwing chairs and making threats, e.g. accusing Linux of violating MS patents, is the continuing advance of Linux and the *BSD OSes on the Internet as servers. Thats what MS would like to monopolize next, but alas, there’s now a fat-n-happy little penguin and a cute little red-deviled daemon standing in their way.
I feel sorry for Ballmer’s office furniture…
You do realise that Windows Server is actually doing very well? It is one of the divisions within Microsoft making a lot of money, and Server releases have received lots of praise.
doing well != monopoly
Now just imagine how much money they’d be making, and how much they would be charging for it, if they owned 95% of the server market…
Thom, I never said anything about whether they were doing well or making money. In fact, given that their only real competition right now in the server arena is against FOSS software (Linux/BSD,Apache), whether or not they’re making a profit is irrelevant.
In web servers, Apache leads them 2-to-1 (Netcraft), and IDC, for server OSes, says they don’t even have a majority of the market (43%).
That means they don’t have a monopoly, and thats what they really wanted: a monopoly position that would allow them to control the server market the way they control the desktop market.
Linux has not committed suicide. Windows 7 is a nice OS, but it’s not a Linux killer. It’s just new and shiny at the moment.
I personally use Linux on the desktop, OpenOffice as my office app, and firefox as my main browser.
Lastly, if Linux and Apple hadn’t gained market share do you think Windows 7 would exist as a good OS? If it had not been for Firefox do you think IE would be past version 6 yet or that it would adhere to any common web standards? As for OpenOffice I know of at least a few companies who used it to get really good deals on MS Office.
I am not against OpenOffice or Firefox. In fact I wrote that they are a concern to Microsoft.
Let’s make the following clear: I am not a Microsoft shill (as my nick should suggest) and I do not believe that Linux and OS X can be compared in any way. What keeps OS X from gaining a much larger market share is that you can’t (normally) buy it and install on any PC (even if countless thousands of people in fact do).
I didn’t say that Windows 7 is a Linux killer, but I said that Linux committed suicide. At the time of Mandrake 9.xx, SUSE 8.xx and Libranet I believed that Linux had a glorious future on the desktop.
Here we are, almost 8 years later and the Linux community has done all sort of mistakes, especially bad when they missed the opportunity to gain a much larger market share thanks to the huge Vista fiasco.
It is now much more fashionable than in the past to try Linux (or should I say Ubuntu?), but at least 90% of people who try go back to Windows or OS X in no time.
In the past people who tried Linux were much more motivated, and the percentage of those going back to Windows was much smaller.
but I said that Linux committed suicide. At the time of Mandrake 9.xx, SUSE 8.xx and Libranet I believed that Linux had a glorious future on the desktop.
Here we are, almost 8 years later and the Linux community has done all sort of mistakes, especially bad when they missed the opportunity to gain a much larger market share thanks to the huge Vista fiasco.
How about giving some examples? What have they done that has been such a big mistake. Seems to be getting more and more usable as the years go by to me.
It is now much more fashionable than in the past to try Linux (or should I say Ubuntu?), but at least 90% of people who try go back to Windows or OS X in no time.
90% is a big claim. Care to back that up? What specifically is causing them to go back.
Actually I would say that Ubuntu today is a much better choice than Mandrake was in the early 2000’s. I used to hate the fact that you couldn’t just edit the config files. They had a warning on the top that they would be overwritten if you tried to do that.
I would never use a distribution that forced me to use their custom gui tools. I wanted to know how to use Linux, not Mandrake specifically.
What I believe hurts Linux the most is lack of applications people want to use. While the pool grows it’s still fairly small. It’s also nice to see some of the open source alternatives becoming more mainstream.
One of the things I’ve always thought would be important to Linux’s growth on the desktop is getting those good applications to work across platforms. In that area I’m seeing progress.
I think what’s happened with Linux is people had far to many expectations of it overtaking Microsoft. The truth is that what Linux has accomplished is waking up the 800-pound gorilla. Now the fight is on. I’m not gonna say Linux is winning or in the end it will dominate. I think as time goes on though we will see Linux on more and more desktops.
As for Vista. Linux didn’t fail to take advantage of Microsoft’s gaff. Linux distro’s failed to take advantage of the gaff. So that we are in agreement with.
And my final thought. I’ve installed Linux on several computers for people who just wanted to surf the web and check e-mail. These were older people and for some this was the first time they ever used a computer. Other than one person they are all still happily using Linux (Ubuntu). One of them has even starting playing around with Linux on another computer and learning about it.
While it’s only my opinion I think the Linux user base is growing, but it hasn’t reached the tipping point. I don’t see that happening for awhile though.
Probably it is growing in absolute numbers but not in percentage (of desktop users).
As to the future, who can tell? But we have seen this trend (Linux not gaining more market share) for a long time now.
Edited 2009-12-31 16:18 UTC
What applications does Linux lack?
Photoshop (don’t tell me GIMP is a good substitute) is just one example of a commercial niche application that isn’t available on Linux. Games are another example, though OS X is a little lacking in that department too (though several big titles are available.)
I certainly won’t tell you that GIMP is a good substitute for Photoshop, because GIMP is better than Photoshop.
It is so much easier to use. I can’t tell you how many times I have been able to to accomplish things in GIMP, that my professional photographer friends couldn’t do in Photoshop. Recently, a friend of mine (who is a pro with probably eight years Photoshop experience) could not figure out how to separately extract the images in an animated gif, so he emailed it to me. I had never done it before, but, using GIMP, I was emailing him the separate images within ten minutes of when I received the gif.
Furthermore, the GIMP is open source, so I can fork it off into new editor if I desire, such as Cinepaint. Cinepaint has had 32-bit color depth for many years and 48-bit color depth is a possibility in its future. Photoshop hasn’t had 32-bit color depth until recently.
The open source nature of GIMP and Cinepaint is the main reason why the major film studios and major animation houses use Cinepaint, not Photoshop. Not only is the development a lot faster (having 32-bit color depth years before Photoshop) but they can (and do) accelerate the app’s development if they need a feature.
Post production techniques are constantly developing at a rapid pace, and every minute of the average theatrical feature film costs about one million dollars to make. With that kind of money involved in every detail and with competitors writing their own image manipulation code, do you think that the studios are going to settle for the stock features of off-the-shelf Photoshop? They need an image editor that they can develop in-house to their advantage. This advantage is why Cinepaint is so much more attractive to the studios than Photoshop.
Furthermore, I can use the latest version of GIMP/Cinepaint compiled for 64-bit. Try that on a Mac with Photoshop!
In addition, there are several other image editors that can be used natively in Linux.
You are probably correct that Windows probably has more big game titles than Linux and Mac, but I am uninformed in that regard, because I don’t play games.
What else?…