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Linux under Fire

Open Season on Open Source?

Solaris Threat FreeBSD threat Fragmentation Infighting Low quality

Developers are not guaranteed success
just because they adopt an open-source strategy
against competitors who have not
Linus Torvalds

  1. Learn real computer science...

  2. Keep your sights on what you want...

  3. Chase the dream, not the competition...

  4. Be a part of the community...

  5. Read lots of code...

  6. Code for communication, not cleverness..."

Advogato's:Advice for young
free software developers

Open Source is not about Linux -- it's Unix Renaissance and "A rising tide lifts all boats" . 

Open Solaris now represents the most viable threat to Linux in commercial market. Red Hat and VA Linux should probably be worried. Honeymoon is over. Now they really need to struggle to preserve astronomic valuations.

Opening Solaris despite differences in licenses have deprived Linux from two strategic advantages: zero cost and availability of source code. What is left is hype and tremendous momentum. Will it be enough? I don't know.

Solaris is a single brand with better shell (ksh93), better file system and better stability and scalability. It's more slow on Intel servers and that gives Linux some advantages. also Solaris is traditionally associated with Sparc architecture and is not that popular on Intel.

Linux fundamentalists might pretend that this does not matter and that there is no God other than Linus Torvalds and Eric Raymond is the prophet, but for commercial adopters it does matter.

IMHO opening Solaris diminish attractiveness of Linux as a low cost OS for businesses because it actually provide for commercial players most valuable advantages of Linux kernel without its disadvantages.

The most important is that there is no need to choose between Red Hat, Mandrake, Corel, Suse, TurboLinux etc. with associated with each distribution unique problems. There one true Solaris. There is also no GNU-related restrictions that commercial companies generally hate, etc.

Only FreeBSD still have more attractive license for commercial customers. But Solaris is well known OS for which in many cases solid infrastructure already exists.

We should not underestimate the effect of opening Solaris.

Solaris Threat

[Jan 27, 2000] CNET.com - News - Enterprise Computing - Sun slashes Solaris prices, opens code in marketing move

Sun Microsystems will move its Solaris operating system two steps in the direction of Linux, cutting its price and making it easier to scrutinize the software's blueprints, the company will announce tomorrow.

The expected moves, designed to increase Solaris' appeal, are the Palo Alto, Calif., company's latest efforts to keep Linux and Microsoft from making inroads on Sun's strong position in the Internet market.

Solaris 7 costs about $695 for commercial use, but the upcoming Solaris 8 will be free--except for a $75 fee to cover the cost of several bundled software applications, according to Sun vice president of Solaris Anil Gadre. In addition, users will be able to modify the innards of Solaris without permission from Sun, though there will be restrictions on commercial products using such modified software.

Sun derives most of its revenue from hardware, but even cut-rate Solaris will make Sun money through sales of services, Gadre said. Telephone-based technical support for desktop use will cost $199 a year, and $449 for use on a low-end server, he said. The model of selling services for free software has been pioneered by the Linux and open-source movements, which let anyone see and modify the original programming instructions.

Linux, which is available for free with fewer restrictions than Solaris, is encroaching on the low end of Sun's dominion, while Microsoft's new Windows 2000 is expected to become a more serious competitor than its predecessor, Windows NT. When NT first emerged, it was recognized as less capable than the brawny Unix OS, but good enough for many common tasks and considerably cheaper. However, Microsoft hasn't been as successful as Sun in associating its name with the booming business of powering corporate adoption of the Internet, analysts say.

The changes in Solaris distribution are designed to appeal to "server appliance" companies, which build special-purpose servers that don't have the all-around abilities of the type of servers typically sold by Sun. Most server appliances are based on Intel hardware, though some aren't, such as Network Appliance's high-speed machines with the Compaq Alpha chip. In addition, Linux is a common operating system for server appliances.

"I think we have not been as aggressive in chasing these people. We probably should have been doing things like this earlier with these people," Gadre acknowledged.

But Sun hardware and software should be more popular now, and the standards for server appliances are rising. "Better late than never. This is very early in the game," he said.

"By liberalizing the license fee, we believe we're going to get access to a lot of appliance makers," he added.

Server appliance companies need to be able to look at an operating system's source code, Gadre said, something that now will be easier. Moreover, server appliance makers "see the value in the ability to have a stable set of code drops that come their way, and that someone continues to further the state of the art...rather than having to do it themselves," Gadre said.

Solaris 8, in beta testing now and due to ship at the end of February, contains several new features, including the ability to fix operating system problems without shutting the computer down and underpinnings that eventually will allow "clusters" of as many as eight Sun servers to work together, increasing performance and taking over in case one fails.

Microsoft is aiming to catch up to Sun in running heavy-duty servers. Sun's approach--very powerful centralized servers--is less flexible than Microsoft's, said Chris Ray, Windows 2000 product manager.

"Sun's approach is to focus on large, single-system solutions with multiple processors, but these systems are very expensive, not as flexible, and set customers up for single points of failure," Ray said.

Microsoft's approach toward running on big systems is two-pronged, a combination of multiprocessor systems and sharing work among a cluster of servers, he said. The new Windows 2000 Advanced Server edition works on eight-processor systems, the Datacenter edition due in a few months will support 32 processors, and Microsoft load-balancing software can divvy up jobs among as many as 32 of either type of machine, Ray said.

Included in the $75 bundle will be several e-commerce software packages from the Sun-Netscape Alliance, Gadre said. Also bundled will be the free Sendmail email software and Apache Web server software, as well as a copy of Oracle 8i database that may be used only for research and development purposes.

[Jan 27, 2000]  ZDNet News Sun fights Linux, WinNT with 'free Solaris'

Sun President Ed Zander told financial analysts last week that Sun will never adopt Linux as its operating system but will instead "put every ounce of R&D we have into Solaris."

"It amazes me to watch IBM and all those other companies chase Linux the way they did Windows NT five years ago," Zander said.

Sun has been working for over a year to offer Solaris under the Sun Community Source License but was stymied by the fact that it didn't own all the intellectual property inside Solaris. SCSL is a quasi open-source license that requires developers to return bug fixes to Sun, maintain compatibility and pay fees to Sun when they ship binaries based on Sun source code.

It is unclear how Sun has resolved its intellectual property issues. But that isn't stopping the company from working to get on the good side of the open-source community. Sun is sponsoring ApacheCon 2000, the first official conference of the Apache Software Foundation upcoming in March, and is helping with the Apache Foundation's Jakarta and Java Apache projects.

[Jan 27, 2000]  Linux Today Linux Today Feature IBM on 'Open Source' Solaris Get Real!

... There seems to be a fairly broad consensus that Sun is attempting to head off erosion of its server market share, from Windows 2000 at the high end and from Linux on the low end (CNET 1/00, ZDNet 1/00). Opinion as to the impact on Linux is divided, with Bruce Perens believing, "This will be a tremendous shot in the arm for Linux", and IBM calling it "an effort to distract the Linux community" (both quotes from Red Herring 1/00).

IBM is a Sun competitor that's going after Sun's market--high end, low end, and middle--with its RS6000 product line (Linux Today 9/99) and recently expanded support for Linux across its entire server product line (CNET 1/00, PC Week 1/00, Red Herring 1/00). We asked Miles Barel, IBM's program director for Unix marketing, to comment on the Sun's new licensing and pricing strategy for Solaris 8.

Sun's agenda is anything but open
As many others have noted since Sun's announcement (see Related stories below), Barel thinks Sun's Solaris 8 program is anything but open. "My guess is that if you order it [the source code], you won't get the whole system--you wouldn't be able to compile your own working operating system", said Barel.

Why?--the third-party code in Solaris that Sun has licensed but does not own. Sun may have gotten around this by negotiating agreements with the owners of those pieces of code, and that may be what has shaped the licensing terms that led Sun to avoid the use of the term 'open' in their big announcement (Red Herring 1/00)--the $75 'media charge' and the requirements that (a) changes made in the source must maintain compatibility with the 'standard' Solaris version and (b) can only be redistributed via an agreement with Sun that 'may involve royalties' (SRO 1/00).

In Barel's view, "open source is about the industry driving the development of industry standards". Elaborating on 'the industry', Barel indicated that he was using the term much the way that open source people use the term 'the open source community', or 'the Linux community', in the broadest sense: In addition to the open source developers, he's including users, commercial vendors, and anyone else who wants to actively participate.

What Sun is doing is more like riding on the popularity of the open source concept in order to promote what essentially remains its own proprietary, tightly controlled standard. Barel stressed that the Solaris source code is 'free', neither in the sense of 'free beer' nor in the sense of 'free code'.

IBM considered open sourcing AIX
Barel said that IBM had given serious consideration to the idea of open sourcing its proprietary Unix code, AIX. "IBM looked at all the trade-offs involved in making AIX code available and concluded that it would just confuse the market." Barel believes this is exactly what will happen as a result of Sun's opening up Solaris. He even goes so far as suspecting that this may be precisely Sun's objective, in hopes of slowing the growth of Linux at Sun's expense. The 'Lintel value proposition'--the combination of the license-free Linux OS with relatively cheap Intel PCs--is generally considered to be as much of a threat to Sun's low-end hardware market as it is to Microsoft's OS sales.

Instead IBM chose to give AIX code to Linux
IBM concluded that a far better strategy than open sourcing AIX would be to contribute key parts of the AIX code to the Linux development team (PC Week 1/00, VNUnet 1/00). Which parts? "We'll work with the Linux kernel development team to determine exactly which parts they can really use," said Barel. IBM will leave it to the Linux kernel team to make the announcements about which parts of IBM's offer they decide to accept and their timeframe for implementation. "We don't want to raise false expectations" by giving out more details now.

Where will IBM draw the line?
Assuming that IBM were offering the Linux kernel team anything they wanted from the AIX code (which isn't exactly what anyone at IBM has said)--wouldn't that let Linux leapfrog ahead to parity with AIX? Not in Barel's opinion. "The maturity of an operating system [like AIX] takes many years to develop." The Linux team wants to continue to develop Linux, not turn it into 'open AIX'. By allowing the Linux team to borrow pieces of AIX code that they can easily integrate into Linux, and by supporting the Trillian project to port Linux to Intel's 64-bit chips, IBM can promote the development of a more robust Linux that they can support on their server line. Linux development will be greatly accelerated, but meanwhile AIX development will continue as well.

Sun, Linux, and IBM
Barel observes that "Sun has consistently said over the past few years that they're only interested in one thing, and that's Solaris on Sparc." According to Barel, IBM long ago learned that 'one size fits all' doesn't work, and sees that as even more true today. To IBM, 'e-business' is a huge collection of components running on different platforms. IBM's big strength, the major value that it offers its customers in the internet age, is their skills at "putting all the pieces together and making it work".

IBM is firmly committed to Linux as a cornerstone of their internet and e-business strategy, reiterated Barel. "We believe that Linux is the future of the internet. The internet has been based on open technology. Linux is one of the core technologies that will drive the future evolution of the 'net." From IBM's perspective, "It's in everyone's interest to promote Linux."

BTW: AIX had the 'new' Solaris features 2-3 years ago
While we were talking about the Linux aspects of the Solaris 8 announcement, Barel was quick to point out that most of the new features appearing in Solaris 8 had been added to AIX two or three years ago--for example:


Related stories--Sun's Solaris 8 strategy:
IT-Analysis.com: Sun To Move Solaris Closer to Linux Model (Jan 28, 2000)
osOpinion: Is Sun Missing The Point? (Jan 28, 2000)
Red Herring: Solaris is "free," but not open (Jan 27, 2000)
SRO: Free Solaris?, There's got to be a catch. And there is. (Jan 27, 2000)
Linux Journal: Solaris Free-for-All (Jan 27, 2000)
InternetWeek: Sun To Offer Solaris, Source Code Free (Jan 26, 2000)
CNET News.com: Sun slashes Solaris prices, opens code in marketing move (Jan 26, 2000)
CNET News.com: Sun's revised Solaris defends against Linux, Windows 2000 (Jan 24, 2000)
ZDNet: Sun fights Linux, WinNT with 'free Solaris' (Jan 25, 2000)

Related stories--IBM supporting Linux, challenging Sun: 
VNU NET: IBM making good progress on open source plan (Jan 26, 2000)
CNET News.com: IBM exec touts Linux as key to Net evolution (Jan 26, 2000)
Red Herring: IBM wants to kick Sun butt (Jan 25, 2000)
SRO: IBM Steals Sun's Java Thunder (Jan 24, 2000)
ComputerWorld: IBM has big plans for Linux (Jan 12, 2000)
CNET News.com: IBM boosts Linux on servers (Jan 10, 2000)
PC Week: IBM plans major expansion of Linux efforts (Jan 10, 2000)
IBM Leverages Linux in Sun Challenge (Sep 14, 1999)

FreeBSD Threat

FreeBSD and Open BSD are more mature and more stable OS then Linux. Although the quality of Linux improved now Linux has no principal advantage over BSD that it has at the beginning -- both run of the same hardware (at the beginning Linux was able to run of 386sx without co-processor and with just 4M of memory -- standard de-facto those days, while FreeBSD required 486 or at least 386 with co-processor).

[Dec 1, 1999] ZDNet Enterprise Linux Opinion That ol' devil is still at it... By Evan Leibovitch, Linux

In most contexts, I recall the phrase "A rising tide lifts all boats" as an explanation of the trickle-down theory of economics popularized during the Reagan years. Now I find myself applying this term, quite justifiably, to Linux.

For Linux, quite clearly, is blazing a path through which a number of non-Linux software projects are finding new vigor. To be sure, Linux has brought Unix operating system philosophies to a far greater audience than Unix itself ever did. While on one hand SCO must certainly see Linux as competition -- especially at the low end -- SCO must be pleased with the fact that Linux has managed to make Unix(-ish) systems on Intel hardware acceptable to the business computing world. For the longest time SCO was caught in the middle between what some in the media portrayed as a RISC/Unix versus Intel/Windows battle. Now that Linux has bridged that gap, SCO is happy to come along for the ride.

But the projects that have benefitted the most from Linux's popularity, if somewhat jealously, are unquestionably the outgrowths of the Unix BSD project. BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution, and has a history that goes back to some of the earliest days of Unix. BSD started in 1977 as a series of modifications that made the "pure" Unix systems of the day more usable. It's not hard to make the case that the Berkeley code was the first real Unix(-ish) freeware, predating the creation of the GNU Project by many years.

Sharing the Linux spotlight

While BSD has been around for almost the entire lifespan of Unix, Linux has seemingly come from out of nowhere to steal the free software spotlight. But BSD and its many users have certainly not gone away. In fact, at the recent Linux Business Expo, BSD's most popular release, FreeBSD, had a prominent place on the show floor. It was doing a brisk business in CDs and doll-sized versions of BSD's Daemon mascot.

FreeBSD co-founder Jordan Hubbard has, for as long as I've known, taken a very reasonable and pragmatic approach to the relationship between BSD and Linux. "Our goals are more in common than they are different," he said. "Fighting between BSD and Linux is sort of like Oxfam and CARE fighting over who's going to feed the poor."

Indeed, Hubbard said, his primary goal is that BSD code be used. He doesn't care where or how, just that people find it useful -- even if it's embedded within someone else's (possibly proprietary) code. The BSD license is not only older than the GNU Public License, it's also simpler. The BSD license requires that users:

After that, everything is fair game. There is no GPL-type requirement that any changes you make to BSD-covered code be made publicly available in source form. You're free to do whatever you want with BSD-licensed code, including making proprietary changes. BSD fans accurately point out that, in this sense, BSD code is freer because it comes with fewer restrictions than the GPL.

Fears of exploitation

This kind of thing, of course, is the stuff that holy wars are made of -- and there are certainly sparks of ill will in some parts of the Linux and BSD worlds. Many BSD folk have an allergic reaction to the impositions of the GPL, while GNU supporters believe that BSD's scheme offers an invitation to proprietary exploitation that ultimately inhibits the growth and popularity of free software.

It's an unwinnable debate, and both sides have valid points. Unfortunately, the debate is often fueled by an underlying resentment of Linux in some BSD circles that contains more than a hint of jealousy at times. Fragments of the debate-turned-argument surface in the strangest places, most recently within a Slashdot discussion of the new Slackware release.

I have myself heard from BSD people who still think of Linux as a toy, and of its developers as amateurish hackers (in contrast to BSD's serious Unix-bred developers, they seem to suggest). Even moderates such as Hubbard believe that Linux is merely a well-hyped first step that gets people into understanding the value of free software. Once there, such converts will naturally migrate to BSD when they want to do serious work -- or so the belief goes.

It's for this reason that the BSD world is full of comparisons with Linux. The best known is a chart that's now being distributed as FreeBSD marketing material. Hubbard himself wrote an excellent piece on the topic for Performance Computing magazine, October 1998 issue. In the print version, the magazine publicized Hubbard's article using a tasteless cartoon of the Linux penguin impaled on the BSD Daemon's trident...

Battle for market share

...I see it differently. Linus Torvalds, more than the BSD folk or the GNU folk or anyone else, succeeded personally in inviting and encouraging a community effort as nobody had done before. It's this sense of widespread community participation, in large part reflecting Torvalds' own skills at herding cats, that has moved Linux past BSD (and past the GNU Hurd project) in any perceived battle for the attention of the mainstream computing public.

...What I do know is that FreeBSD is rock-solid in powering high-volume Web servers or mail servers -- but Linux is also proving its mettle in such situations. BSD fans are quick to point out that FreeBSD powers Yahoo, Walnut Creek (also known as cdrom.com) and similar workhorse sites. I have certainly heard -- from people whose opinions I trust -- more than my share of glowing reports about FreeBSD's abilities to handle heavy Web traffic. But if someone is already using Linux and is happy with it, I'm still uncertain why they would want to switch, or need to switch. Given the nature of free software, if BSD's networking code is really that superior, it may find its way into Linux anyway -- just like Hubbard wants.

[Jan  7, 1999]The return of BSD - SunWorld - January 1999

I's been a long while, but finally people are coming to accept Solaris, the System V-based operating system that replaced SunOS 4. Still, six years is a long time, and it would have taken much longer if Sun had continued to maintain SunOS 4. Why such loyalty? They are, after all, both versions of Unix.

The last thing I want to do here is revive the SunOS vs. Solaris debate, but I will draw attention to the biggest single difference between SunOS 4 and SunOS 5, the operating system component of today's Solaris: SunOS 4 is based on 4.2 BSD, the version of Unix developed at the University of California at Berkeley and the first operating system with support for TCP/IP. By contrast, SunOS 5 (commonly called Solaris, though that's not quite accurate) is based on AT&T's Unix System V.4. BSD is different enough from System V that six years after the "death" of SunOS 4, it still has a large number of supporters. It's just a pity it doesn't run on modern hardware.

While SunOS 4 doesn't run on modern hardware, other BSD versions do. What's more, they're free. Recent publicity for Linux has tended to obscure the fact that other free operating systems are available. As far back as 1991, before the Linux effort got underway, people at Berkeley were working to release a free version of 4.3 BSD on the Intel platform. In addition, Berkeley Software Design Inc. (BSDI) was working on a commercial version. These efforts were significantly hampered when Unix System Laboratories (USL) filed a lawsuit against BSDI, alleging abuse of AT&T source code.

Historically, each project was founded after differences of opinion about what constituted a good operating system. Since the software is free, any group of people can decide to custom build their own operating system. If it doesn't work, they can just stop building. In fact, all current BSD varieties, including BSDI, stem from Bill Jolitz's 386 BSD project, which faded into oblivion in 1994.

On the face of it, this doesn't seem to be a good approach: why not bite the bullet and compromise? In practice, the system shows remarkable self-regulating tendencies: 386 BSD is the only project that has closed up shop, and its descendents are all doing well and actively cross-pollinating. The fact that each version has a different kernel means survival of the fittest applies to kernel code as well, whereas in Linux it applies only to user code. For example, the fledgling FreeBSD SPARC port didn't start from scratch: it started from the NetBSD implementation and immediately raised the question, What can we do better? This process automatically raises the standard necessary for success. As a result, many such attempts fail, but the ones that don't create world-class code.

 

Low Quality

**** Thompson

Computer: In a sense, Linux is following in this tradition. Any thoughts on this phenomenon?

Thompson: I view Linux as something that's not Microsoft—a backlash against Microsoft, no more and no less. I don't think it will be very successful in the long run. I've looked at the source and there are pieces that are good and pieces that are not. A whole bunch of random people have contributed to this source, and the quality varies drastically.

My experience and some of my friends' experience is that Linux is quite unreliable. Microsoft is really unreliable but Linux is worse. In a non-PC environment, it just won't hold up. If you're using it on a single box, that's one thing. But if you want to use Linux in firewalls, gateways, embedded systems, and so on, it has a long way to go.

 

[June 21, 1999] Linux's '60s technology, open-sores ideology won't beat W2K, but what will by Bob Metcalfe  -- he suggests that Linux role will be limited to forcing Microsoft to produce a decent OS, although his understanding of  socialism is very primitive for the inventor of the Ethernet. There was also a followup Enough of the OSnic slurs, let's count Linux versus W2K users were he stated that "Now I have a third reason that Linux will not beat W2K, which is the obsessively anti-Windows, toxically anti- Microsoft, sometimes anti-capitalism, often anti-American, and always antisocial flaming that passes for discourse around the Open Source Initiative."

... having just sat through a ceremony honoring open-source software guru Richard Stallman, I predicted that Linux would fizzle against Windows like all previous Unixes have. The audience, which I'd expected to run me out of town on a rail, fell suddenly silent. 

Taken aback, I stopped, looked around, and asked, "What?" 

A few long seconds passed before a single, sad voice answered, "We are in mourning." 

That sad voice was not Nicholas Petreley's, whose column hangs above mine. Petreley disagrees about the fate of Linux and his beloved Open Source Movement. He is editorial director of LinuxWorld. He's written that Windows will be Linux roadkill. He won't quietly mourn this column. 

Why do I think Linux won't kill Windows? Two reasons. The Open Source Movement's ideology is utopian balderdash. And Linux is 30-year-old technology. 

The Open Source Movement reminds me of communism. Richard Stallman's Marx rants about the evils of the profit motive and multinational corporations. Linus Torvalds' Lenin laughs about world domination. 

Disagreeing even on how to pronounce Linux -- "leenucks," says Torvalds -- they flip the collective finger at Bill Gates, the software Romanoff whom they'd like to trap in a basement somewhere. Eric Raymond breaks with Stallman, like Trotsky waiting for The People's ice pick. A Soviet Linux lies ahead, with successive five-year plans every three. 

OK, communism is too harsh on Linux. Lenin too harsh on Torvalds. 

How about the Back-to-the-Earth Movement? How about Linux as organic software grown in utopia by spiritualists? 

If North America actually went back to the earth, close to 250 million people would die of starvation before you could say agribusiness. When they bring organic fruit to market, you pay extra for small apples with open sores -- the Open Sores Movement. 

Stallman and Torvalds would have us return to the time when software was so new that one person working alone could change the world over the weekend. But modern software, like feeding 6 billion people, is more complicated than that. 

Stallman's EMACS was brilliant in the 1970s, but today we demand more, specifically Microsoft Word, which can't be written over a weekend, no matter how much Coke you drink. Multinational corporations are themselves technology invented to get big things done, things that sustain us in the complicated modern world.

Unix and the Internet turn 30 this summer. Both are senile, according to journalist Peter Salus, who like me is old enough, but not too old, to remember. The Open Sores Movement asks us to ignore three decades of innovation. It's just a notch above Luddism. At least they're not bombing Redmond. Not yet anyway. 

The hard part of being down on Linux and the Open Sores Movement is worrying about that menace hanging over us at year's end. No, not Y2K, but Linux's nemesis, W2K, Windows 2000, the operating system formerly known as Windows NT 5.0. 

W2K is software also from the distant past -- VAX/VMS for Windows. But it will overpower Linux. NT, now approaching 23x6 availability, is already overpowering Linux. NT and NetWare constitute 60 percent of server software shipments. All Unixes make up 17 percent, and Linux is a small fraction of that. When W2K gets here, goodbye Linux. 

From slashdot comments:

This is definitly not a joke. Microsoft will eventually prevail. This is why.

They have enough financial resources to buy Linux (though noone really ownes it, they will buy the customers). They will not be able to buy everyone. The people that know what an operating system is really supposed to be will never accept Windows as a true operating system.

As people get to be more educated, Microsoft will be scared enough to make it's smartest decision ever - produce a quality operating system. At this time, the majority of the Linux users will go back to Windows 2040. But until then, Linux will survive. (I actually think that it will survive even longer through some of the die-hards. I have seen web sites that prove that there are still people wanting to go back to some of the old computers of the 80's - non PC compatable and 8 bit. If These have survived this long, Linux will definitly survive longer)

Another interesting comment

Re:Linux is rather like communism!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 21, @10:35AM EDT (#229)
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but the concept of the GNU GPL is very close to communism. The central theme of communism is community ownership of property/the means of production, and the aim of the GPL is to force community ownership of software and the means to create it (the source code).

Microsoft-style software distribution is a perfect example of capitalism, in that the software sources are owned by the capitalists (the owners of the software companies), while binaries are distributed for a fee to consumers (users), and the workers (developers, testers, managers, etc.) are paid wages/salaries for producing the software.
Completely bass ackwards (Score:1)
by ch-chuck on Monday June 21, @01:37PM EDT (#385)
(User Info)
That's really funny - choice is *exactely* we want in the face of encroaching M$ market monopolies, the very antithesis of capitalism; M$ does everything in their deep pocket/marketing power to take away consumer choice and make themselves the default standard ("Windows everywhere!") The last thing I'd want personally is to have Linux (or ANYthing) enjoy the 'preloaded os default' that Win9x has among uninformed appliance computer buyers.

*I* enjoy many choices, and would love to share the wonderful experience with others who aren't computer professionals (and as a pro I'm *REALLY* resenting more and more the M$ consumers perpetual ly trying to get 'free' advice on how to deal with the problems they keep having).

M$ hatred is informed by direct personal experience with their lousy, overhyped, liability disclaimered, closed source, vendor locked in, perpetually upgrading whether you want it or not, so-called products! Good for M$, bad for consumers, period.

Chuck

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Created June 1, 1998; Last modified: February 28, 2008