Discussion on:

Proprietary Linux software: A big dilemma for many Linux users

VMware Server 2's failure to install on Debian 5 was the very reason I switched to Debian 6 and the newer Virtualbox version it included.

If Virtualbox Commmunity Edition can be kept running happy through my Debian upgrades then VMware should be able to do so; even if it means working closer with kernel developers on the vmware kernel modules.

I'm just happy that Virtualbox makes bridged networking as a simple option in the VM guest config. I can live without the "start at host bootup" checkbox but my use of VMs relies on being able to bridge them in as separate logical nodes on the network.

If the word choice had been used instead of dilemma, I would be OK with it all. While personally I prefer open source, I will defend a developers right to specify his/her conditions of release/use. It is all about freedom people.

There is more to cost than purchasing software. Where FLOSS is a strongly competitive solution, the choice is obvious.

On the other hand, for $250 / user you can buy QuickBooks, enter data very efficiently, and send a backup file to your accountant, who can restore it into his QuickBooks. You don't need to save much of your own time to justify $250 plus the cost of Windows, and you don't even want to think about what your accountant would charge to port data from what you send him compared to a minute to restore your QuickBooks backup file.

I'm not worried about Intuit going out of business, but plenty of Open Source projects have forked or simply lost the developer(s)' interest. Mambo, anyone? Regardless of source availability, none of my clients can read it, and none would be willing to pay me to maintain an abandoned Open Source project.

As for document formats becoming unreadable, I have no worry about an .xls or .xlsx file being read well into the future. What can you do with a GNU Oleo spreadsheet file?

And the original posting mentioned free but non-open source Hamachi and video drivers. Open Source is nice, but free and works well but closed source is no different to my clients.

It was a Mob of M$ Executives who brought into Corel and at a AGM moved a Motion to stop Developing for the Nix Code Base.

The rest of the Shareholders thinking that M$ must know what they are talking about agreed and went along for the ride killing off something that could have developed into something quite interesting.

Who ever said that M$ doesn't know how to feather it's own nest doesn't know what they are talking about.

Col

if you are at all interested in installing Ubuntu or whatever other distribution or OS you might like to try.

First hint - don't try to install from Windows with a regular OS install CD. You have to boot from the CD. You can't install Windows that way, either, if there is no uprade path between versions.

That's my preference. For the activist feel-good angle then stick with the libre code only default repositories. For the rest, make it easy to opt-in to the non-libre repositories. PLF for Mandriva, Metaverse for Canonical, Non-free for Debian; users retain the choice of remaining free-source only without limiting those who just want their nvidia and broadcom to work.

Why does anyone do anything they are not directly drawing a paycheque for doing? Some people volunteer to teach little legue.

Companies come together and contribute to FOSS projects where the company benefits. Microsoft contributed code to the kernel for VirtualPC compatibility (think it was the server virtualization app actually). Several big companies contribute to the kernel because it benefits there hardware business; HP, IBM, Dell. The kernel being a little scewed towards server use (eg. scheduler) reflects the benefits the server retailers gain by contributing.

Businesses who sell FOSS developed code may be using a community based R&D version from which they include the best ideas into the production targeted retail version. Red Hat does this with Fedora -> Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The first is the community version; the melting pot of new ideas. The second is the stable version meant for production server rooms. You get the same at the application level; a free version and a more enabled or closer supported retail version. Splunk has a freely available version (4 nodes or 500 MB of logs per day) but once you go over that limit your into paying enterprise pricing. Virtualbox; free for personal use with a more enabled retail version for professional use.

In terms of the individual, motivations differ. For some, writing code may simply be recreation; enjoyment outside work hours. I spend all day playing admin at work only to come home and spend my free time at home in front of my own machines. Maybe one is modifying an existing program to fit a new need; eg. modifying a program that counts beans so it shows separate counts by colour in addition to the total.

In economic terms, it is not a retail economy; a developers value is not measured by how much money they can produce. It is an information economy; a developers value is measured by what skill they demonstrate in their coding. It is a meritocracy; one is measured based on what they do; write shoddy code and your economic value drops with "oh, yeah, that guy's code is a mess."

A good source is Eric S Raymond's essays including Cathedral and the Bazaar and a few other discussions of FOSS social structure and potential business models. The Magic Cauldron is probably where you want to start though.

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/
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The Magic Cauldron
This paper analyzes the economics of open-source software. It includes some explosion of common myths about software production economics, a game-theoretical account of why open-source cooperation is stable, and a taxonomy of open-source business models.
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I haven't paid for a film or music in .. well.. last time I bought a film it was on VHS tape.. and the last music I paid for came on a large black round thing that you had to scrape a sharp point across..
I won't pay the cartel to rent something from them.. ever!!

who use Closed Source Software on their Main Production Servers for their End Users and I really do not see an issue with this.

After all Open Source means that it's Open not Free and the software in question is some very specialized software that is highly developed and there is nothing else capable of doing the same job in the same time frame.

The OS and everything else in these cases is a Tool to do a job nothing more and nothing less. OS are just that not a religion.

Col

Granted, these are hypothetical questions, but bear with me.

If proprietary software is required for you to do your job, do you then tell the vendor "No, you can't play in our playground."?

If that vendor is the only source for that (or equivalent) software, do you then tell the vendor "No, you can't play in our playground."?

If the lack of that software will shut down your employer because the OEM wrote the assembly line management software to run under Linux, do you then tell the vendor "No, you can't play in our playground."?

An OS is a tool. It makes it possible for us to run applications that create, store, and retrieve data, control manufacturing machines, and perform other essential work. You choose the OS that meets your needs, regardless of the philosophy behind that OS.To act any other way in a business environment leads to inefficiency, excess cost, and, eventually, business failure.

For my personal use, I prefer free or open source software simply because I'm a cheap SOB: if FOSS can meet my needs, I will use it over proprietary software. But if I can't do it except with proprietary software, I will buy the proprietary solution.

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Curiously no one mentions that Ubuntu or RedHat actually charge for tech support.So technically yes the OS is free but the support is not.So whats the difference between them and Microsoft?
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Retail products and service offered are two separate things; neither requiring the presence of the other. The concern is not who derives profit from services rendered. It's a consideration of motivations and results when the software is the product versus when the software is sponsored work that enables the product. Close source wants it's inner workings to be trade secret; only a select few can ever see the source and fix it and only at the behest of accounting and management unless marketing has to calm public outcry. Where possible, one must minimize expenses; the goal is quantity over quality, good enough to meet the marketing launch date - long as it's not buggy enough to have too many returns after sale. Even with closed source companies that have the best intentions and highest QA screening, one must wait for them to research a bug then develop the patch within time and budget constants. Because it's close source, researchers can only provide results of binary analysis for discovery reports and developers can not provide accurate patch suggestions with bug reports or fix their own until an official update becomes available.

But, the reason no one is digging on Red Hat and Canonical for selling support services is because such services are seporate from producing the distributions. It's about the strategies, motivations and affects that differ between the development models.

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Not all that much.I can buy software made for windows and im up and running for as long as it takes to install the software.Linux ,having this running battle with MS, ive got to install third party software just to get the software i really want to use, running.Why bother?
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"Why bother" was the exact strategy used when bundling IE into Windows; customers will get Windows by default with the computer and it'll have IE by default so they won't bother looking at our competition's products. It's a remarkably effective anti-competitive strategy when one holds a market monopoly.

Being pre-installed on the majority of retail shelf computers is a heck of a benefit when your goal is moving units. One can't deny that at all. It's been a heck of a struggle for retail distributions trying to get shelf space and big vendor deals. In the old days, MS contracts actually required OEMs like Dell only install Microsoft OS on there consumer computers; offer the customer choice and loose your MS contract. These days, I think MS just yanks the deep discount which keeps all but a few of the bigger names and smaller independents in line. When offered in equal shelf space, a major distribution's store returns are about equal to Windows returns. Naturally, a crap distribution delivers a higher return rate.

In terms of benefits, it may simply be to rejuvenate older hardware instead of reinstalling an outdated and now unsupported Windows version.

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Most folks dont have the time to be configuring an OS every time they buy new software.Thats the kicker as to why Linux hasnt become as popular.So unless most of the world become hackers(not happening btw) ,then plug and play will be more popular.
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Unix type OS tend to be much more plug and play where hardware support is available. I can yank a drive, drop it in another machine and boot the OS without it having a fit because the chipset, processor and ram suddenly changed. Focusing on Linux based distributions specifically, Mint and other's provide very complete hardware support; more so than the Ubuntu/Kubuntu distributions. If the distribution has support for the hardware; it just works. When something doesn't just work, it's normally thanks to the hardware vendor; my own fault from buying hardware from a crappy vendor.

So, it's very mobile; when I get a new machine, I could just the hard drive in and resolve any outstanding hardware issues. I could instead just make a backup, drive image software isn't to hard for average users to figure out, then restore it to the larger new hard drive and resolve any outstanding hardware issues. I could just grab my install script and have the reinstall done in about two hours; bare metal to all software installed and updated with user data restored.

Given your mention of Ubuntu; the liveCD installs in about twenty minutes in the background while your using it if you so choose. I don't expect huge problems for a user, having used the liveCD to install on the current computer, then having to spend twenty minutes installing on a new computer when they get it three or more years later. Maybe they buy from one of the more service oriented retail outlets who offers a choice of preinstalled and Linux ready machines with a liveCD install service.

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Ive heard great things about Linux servers and many indeed do you use them.Thats a good thing in the marketplace.Not everyone owns a business though.Just a thought.
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Depends on one's need. General needs are covered by any major OS family these days; documents, email, browsing, multimedia. Specialty needs will still dictate what OS one may choose from. If you want to run a specific game, you need what OS or console it runs on. AutoCAD; Windows for that too. Adobe CS; Windows or osX. OpenSSH; BSDs, Linux Distros or osX. I personally have some Windows games and specific application titles that keep a bootable Windows partition around. If not for the games needing full direct hardware access, I'd probably only have a VM running required applications. (well, in addition to what special purpose installs I have license for.)

Stability, security, easy software management and availability of titles in the software library are not really business-only benefits either. If the user required functions are covered then whatever OS works.

a number of government agencies. The last time I went through the GPL it was best summarised as - This code is free to use how you like, and if you use this code in anything then the code you make must be made available free to others.

Now issuing a call is NOT the same as using the code in your code, nor is taking the data feedback from the call. It can get a bit messy of you don't make the calls right etc. But sending data off to the OS with a request to process is NOT the same as using the OS code within yours to process.

Sure using the existing code inside yours makes it easier to write something, but it doesn't HAVE to be that way.

With any luck one of the License gurus here at TR will wade in on this soon. You can always direct an enquiry to the relevant powers that be about the GPL and ask where they draw the line for you to be able to sell your own app as against it being under the GPL.

edit to add - I often have to think about the GPL in regards to some images that have been made available under the GPL and CCC. If I take Joe Blog's image, cut it, paste another in, and put text on it it's a derived image. But if I take his image and use that as inspiration to create something similar it's not a derived image. In short, to be a derived image I MUST use something of the original in what I end up with. Now to apply that to the GPL OS:

If I write a program where by I incorporate the full print command function code in my program then I'm using part of the code and it's a derived image. But if I write my code so I out put the command 'Print this data' along with a data stream, then I'm NOT using their code in my program and it's not a derived image. - Well, that's my understanding of it.