Category: Software

Well, now. This is interesting: A study of corporate Linux adoption polling 1,275 IT professionals says: Linux desktop roll out is easier than expected for properly targeted end-user groups Those with experience are much more likely to regard non-technical users as primary targets for Linux. The message here is that in practice, Linux is easier… Continue reading News from the Linux-adoption front

I enjoy a game called “Commands and Colors: Ancients”, which I’ve blogged about here before. It’s a simulation of tactical ancient warfare that uses special dice to resolve battles. In any given battle you can consider each six-sided die to have faces labeled with the symbols Miss, Miss, Hit, Sword, Helmet, Flag. To improve my… Continue reading Engage the balonium generator, Scotty!

In a recent O’Reilly interview, Richard Stallman utters an anathema against software-as-a-service arrangements, calling them “non-free” and saying “you must not use it!” It would be easy to parody RMS’s style of uttering grave moralistic sonorities as though he were the Pope speaking ex-cathedra, but I’m going to resist the temptation because I think in… Continue reading RMS issues ukase against Software as a Service – and I agree it’s an iffy idea

Is open-source development a more efficient system of software production than the closed-source system? I think the answer is probably “yes”, and that it follows the GNU GPL is probably doing us more harm than good.

A friend directed me to a comment thread over at the Volokh Conspiracy, a blog I occasionally read and considerably respect. The response I ended up writing is substantial enough that I think it’s worth posting here.

I grew up on Internet RFCs, so technical standards issued under licenses that forbid free redistribution offend me. Every such document, whether intentionally or not, is a device for hindering open-source software projects and privileging closed-source developers with big budgets and lawyers to hand. They offend me even more when (as, for example, when the… Continue reading Freeing technical standards

In email to a third party, copied to me, Linux activist and long-time friend Rick Moen comments on the acronym FLOSS (usually explanded “Free, Libré, and Open Source”. I continue to find it difficult to take seriously anyone who adopts an excruciatingly bad, haplessly obscure acronym associated with dental hygiene aids. We learned in the… Continue reading Please forget to FLOSS

I’ve been doing some research on the issues in Microsoft’s lawsuit against Tom-Tom. Here’s what I’ve found about the patents are at issue in the case:

OK, it’s now definite. Windows 7 is gonna suck, and suck hard. The plausible suspicion all along has been that it’s the Vista codebase with a superficial paint job. Now it appears there are holes in the paint; the public Windows 7 beta describes itself as Vista.

From “200 Laptops Break a Business Model” in the pages of the New York Times: So who’s up, who’s down and who’s out this time around? Microsoft’s valuable Windows franchise appears vulnerable after two decades of dominance. Revenue for the company’s Windows operating system fell for the first time in history in the last quarter… Continue reading The sound of empire falling, episode 2

There was a novice who learned much at the Master’s feet, but felt something to be missing. After meditating on his doubts for some time, he found the courage to approach Master Foo about his problem. “Master Foo,” he asked “why do Unix users not employ antivirus programs? And defragmentors? And malware cleaners?” Master Foo… Continue reading Master Foo and the Nervous Novice

In Open Source: The Model Is Broken, Stuart Cohen complains that the business model based on selling support and services around open-source software is “not meeting the expectations of investors”. In related news, the sky is failing to meet my expectations by not raining tasty soup.

I predicted years ago that what would eventually do Microsoft in was white-box PC makers defecting because they needed to claw back profit margin as the Windows license became the largest single item in their bills of material. And here’s the confirmation I’ve been awaiting: Microsoft Missing Netbook Growth as Linux Wins Sales. The boring… Continue reading The sound of empire falling

One of the advantages of having helped found the open-source movement that I cherish most is that nobody can criticize me when I criticize it. I’m a gadfly by nature, disgusted by cant even (actually, especially!) when it’s my own insights being reflected back at me as dogma. Anyone who actually does that is likely… Continue reading Linux-Hater’s Blog, considered

Every once in a while I hear it alleged that “open source” is just a marketing device for a practice that would be just as well off without it. This is seriously wrong, but it’s a confusion I’m partly to blame for because I have emphasized the marketing utility of the term in the past.

There’s an argument commonly heard these days that open-source software is all very well for infrastructure or commodity software where the requirements are well-established, but that it can’t really innovate. I laugh when I hear this, because I remember when the common wisdom was exactly the opposite — that we hackers were great for exploratory,… Continue reading Open Source — Can It Innovate?

I’ve spent a lot of time writing arguments for why open-source software is a good idea and everyone should do it. On the evidence, I’m pretty good at this. I achieved that goodness through a strategy of making rational, technical, utility-maximization arguments in which I explicitly disclaimed having any normative or moralizing agenda. While I’m… Continue reading Why I Hate Proprietary Software

A commenter on my post pre-announcing Why C++ Is Not Our Favorite Programming Language asked “esr, from the perspective of a graybeard, which chapters did you consider good and which chapters did you consider bad?” (Technical note: I do not in fact have a beard, and if I did it would not be gray.) Good… Continue reading The Unix Hater’s Handbook, Reconsidered