cold war is over

You are right. People care about stuff that works and is save, for a fair price.

The development method with which proprietary software is being build, makes software unreliable and unsafe. I won't repeat the incredible number of (security) bugs in Flash and Windows here, we all know that.

So something has got to change, because clearly the "software industry model" is not capable of producing software that works and is save.

You talk about open source == socialism. I don't see open source that way. I actually see a free market and lot's of money, but only if the mind set changes a bit.

I see a future where you have software contractors, like in the building world. They get paid by the hour to produce a software product (build a building) for a customer.

An (software) architect makes a building plan and decides what blocks and bricks (think modular software libraries) he needs. A lot of the stuff will be ready to use of the shelf open source but some might not. Think about your convenient user interface. So together with the contractor they get these parts from other companies that produce them to the specification of the contractor and architect. These companies get paid by the hour (or a lump sum) to produce the open source software bricks.

Because everybody is paid by the hour to produce open source software, the price of the lines of code or software blocks goes down and the architect and contractor focus on what really counts namely the specific customers wishes. The software companies are finally released from complaining customers, because they only care about making particular software blocks to specification of architects and contractors. The rest is already open source.

No more help desk calls that stuff is not working and stressed programmers because the market is growing faster than they can code.

Everybody get's rich, well some more than others. Simple coders are paid the least, but they have an easy job and will have the ambition to become architects which earn more. And the role is more fun, since there you can interact with customers and be creative how to build what they want the cheapest way. Contractors are the guys that just manage the software production for a customer and are paid to how fast and efficient they can deliver.

That's what I'm already doing and customers love it. So I can only hope for you that you leave that cold war think alone and start to make some money.

The future is bright, the future is open.

Schmocialism

Would it be possible to have a debate about FOSS without resorting to tired analogies between software development and political systems? Is MySQL the T34 of databases? Is Windows the F15 of operating systems? Really, please stop.

@joeuro

"BUT, we know that vastly superior capitalist electronics won the cold war "

WTF are you talking about? No-one "won" the cold war.

...besides which, I didn't see any capitalist electronics cheering when the Berlin Wall came down, I didn't see capitalist electronics driving tanks into Romania to liberate the population either!

The PEOPLE decided they had enough of living under dictatorship.

Socialism

The list of military hardware would seem to imply that socialism == USSR.

The USSR was - IMHO - foremost a totalitarian system where power was in the hands of the select few. I seem to recall the definition of socialism being a system of government where the means of production are in public control. Taken at face value, wouldn't this mean that every democratic country is - in fact - socialist as in such countries power is - in fact - in the hands of the public ?

*sigh*

Good work, mate, and good luck to all the kids at your school that leave with little or no experience of the OS that 95% of the entire planet uses.

You just keep on promoting your own agenda.

No it's not socialism

As an unrepentant capitalist, reactionary, and free-market Tea Party enthusiast, I have to tell you FOSS is NOT socialism. The government is NOT running it, it is NOT attempting to take wealth from the productive classes and give it away, it is NOT restricting your freedom.

A better analogy for the current debate is to think of the closed source system as Mercantilism and the FOSS movement as free trade Adam Smith-inspired capitalism, though it is not precise.

Title? Do you mean if I am a Sultan of Swing?

"...it manifests itself in excellent RADAR, ELINT and general intelligence capabilites that can acquire and shoot down a Mig29 before it..." -

It's OK with the title "Socialism" in the title, I hope, I would only add that Mig29 and Su37 were created partially to protect the An224s from RADAR, ELINT and general intelligence, joeuro, by the means of RADAR, ELINT and general intelligence.

And generally, looks like scientific and military circles are something internationally self-centered, not? Like they know something valuable for clan enrichment/in-reachment, when all known by the majority of others is when Spring comes.

@ bitmonki

"In fact, the market for open source software is the only truly free market I have ever seen"

Definitely the closest, yes. And isn't it ironic that FOSS is exactly the one that gets labeled as "socialist", "communist", and stuff like that? Quite telling of what type of "free market" the capitalists really want...

TROLL!

I can think of no other explanation for the complete crock of shit you posted other than that you are a troll.

I am typing this from a Linux desktop. Just because you don't know how to use it doesn't make Linux rubbish - it just makes you stupid.

Apple ads

It seems the Apple marketing team are out in force tonight...

The nature of free software

The nature of free software is that it simply doesn't require a corporate patron for it's continued existence. It doesn't matter what they conspciously consuming naysayers say. Linux will stick around as long as anyone is interested in using it or supporting it. World domination simply isn't neccessary.

Really?!

I use Linux (Fedora) as a desktop machine and it is absolutely fine. My friends use various ones as desktop machines as well, from Ubuntu to Mint, and they also find it fine. Some family members are happy using Ubuntu for their emails, video, web and instant messaging.

I have tried OS-X, didn't like it. Too flashy, too sluggish. It just didn't feel right. And there is not enough software for it, and what there is doesn't run too well. Plus the hardware is expensive and limited.

So sorry gay boy. You and the rest of the 'oh but it's pretty' brigade are wrong. Stop shovelling your crap down peoples throats. OS-X isn't the holy grail you make it out to be.

RE: Fail

I'm a Mac user and I strongly disagree with you. Linux is here to stay.

It's a useable operating system and (like OSX) seems based upon common sense and efficiency (unlike certain other OSs which still haven't got rid of horrors like "the registry")

Re 20 thumbs down

Why? It's been long since I read such a fine piss of irony!

Interesting

But sorry, religious arguments have very little traction out here in the real world. Have a nice time in Steve-land* but don't expect the rest of us to grease up and bend over.

*Or 4chan, or wherever it is that you've learned conversation skills.

Oh yeah?

OS X ~4%

Linux ~8-20%

Re : What the fuck?

It does explain in the linked article that 11000 are added, 5500 removed and 2200 altered and that core kernel code is only ~5%. Most of the new code is for drivers/processors.

It goes quite a long way to explain how each new release works on more and more hardware to the point where installing a modern distribution is now trivial on desktops, at least

Simple:

Drivers.

Monkeys

Not just contributing to the Linux kernel, the monkeys are everywhere typing furiously with their typewriters.

Javascript is taking the role that once were of the servers. A browser is a (X)HTML renderer plus JS interpreter. Today a website (and I'm talking about all Google's services) needs JS to process some shite and create the element with some content. Then the browser renders the page. What's the matter with processing on the server and serving the content already processed? And see a JS code made by some monkey. Hell, it is as inefficient as it can be! Seems someone got the code and run into a deoptimisator!

And going back to the realms of real computing, nowadays nobody knows how a computer works, only a few know a bit of low-level languages (Assembly and C -- note, not C++ (I know C is not that low-level, but you get the point)) and computer architecture to know how to optimise the code.

Beer, cos today is Monday and my university classes are some hours apart.

GPL developers

simply don't want their work to be taken by some corporate entity who simply repackages it and then sells it as a proprietary product. They are simply saying "I am contributing this work to the community and if you make changes to it I expect you to contribute them back*."

I'm not sure why you find this idea so difficult to understand.

* Only if you redistribute your modified binaries.

RE: I honestly don't get the point of FOSS.

I couldn't tell you the name of the author of more than handful of pieces of OSS that I own. They definately don't do it for fame - otherwise applications would be littered with the developers name & photograph on every screen!

Because before GPL

People WERE "giving" their code to the community, and others were including it in their own products, patenting it, and then taking the rest of the community to court for "infringing" on their patent. See FAT.

And the point of FOSS is:

To prevent anyone from taking whatever source code I put on the Public Domain, making a commercial product using my public domain source and releasing it as theirs, also closing the source of their version down in the process.

Making an obscene profit from a work they never paid to use, and negating the improvements (if any) to the rest of the public.

Well this is one point, there are many more, but you need to read the GPLv2/GPLv3 licenses.

It's not about giving the work away

Contributing to GPLed or other open sourced licensed software is not about giving your work away, it's about allowing others to benefit from your work whilst trying to ensure that any further modifications made are also available for others to benefit from as well.

Public Domain does not stop others from taking my hard work, modifying it slightly and monetarily gaining from it without me or others also gaining anything. It has nothing to do with me wanting to be selfless, it's about sharing with those who are also willing to share.

FOSS

@Sean Timarco Baggaley

As with Closed-source, FOSS comes in many flavours, and projects range from one-man hobby projects to huge _commercial_ projects like MySQL and Mozilla - neither of those two would have a chance if it the majority of the code came from amateurs, however gifted - nothing to do with publicity, just about paying the bills. To my mind, it is the ability to run a large organisation that matters most, not the source of the money. I also think that the question of "too many licences" is a red-herring. It is largely a response to the different funding models in use, and also to the threat of software-patents in different legal jurisdictions. The number of different FOSS licences is nothing compared to the number of different commercial licences, which no-one bothers to read - for the vast majority of consumers, the particular flavour of licence is going to be pretty immaterial too.

Re: I honestly don't get the point of FOSS.

People like you never do.

Consider it more along 'share and share alike', or is that too human for you?

0 out of 10, must try harder