Linux drove me to get a Mac

[Jamon Camisso]

Kamran Khan wrote:
> Well the Open Source Community lives in one Universe the rest of the 
> world lives in another.

Last time I checked, half the websites on the web use apache, and I'm 
sure almost every email you send passes through a mailserver running 
Linux somewhere along the line. Quite an intrusion of one universe into 
another.

   Asking companies to completely open source
> their software and platforms is ridiculous.  There is a lot of 
> information to be gleaned from open source and open specs, some of it 
> trade secrets, some of it just plain hard work to figure out, some of it 
> work figure out and some of it trivial.

Tell that to Sun, you might be interested in a very innovative 
filesystem they invented called ZFS.

   Having said that, would you go
> to a Chef and ask him to give you his best recipes for free?  Some of 
> his recipe will be secret, some will be plain hard workto figure out, 
> some just work to figure out and some just trivial.  Put it all together 
> and you have a dish that people from miles around will come to and pay 
> handsomely for.

I'd ask, no harm in trying. I know of a few people who are happy to go 
to the Linuxcaffe for the open source hot chocolate rather than buy the 
same ingredients and make it themselves. Part of what's great about FOSS 
is that you can find that original author and draw upon their expertise 
if you need it.

   The Open Source Community is advocating a business
> model that the rest of world doesn't follow and would outright reject.  

Tell that to Redhat. Tell that to the legions of web developers who 
design websites with open source frameworks and who contribute their 
work back to the community only to find someone else who hires them for 
their expertise despite their having released a module or theme for 
others to use freely.

> The problem started when people starting politicizing, of all things, 
> computer technology.  Stallman et al have brought a philosophy that 
> belongs on a hippie commune into the realm of computer technology.

What is the problem with being exactly? We're political creatures. 
Moreover, technology, in whatever form, cannot exist without some agent 
to make it useful, be it an individual or society. Are you claiming that 
technology is or should be value neutral? If so, why should that be the 
case?

> people expect to paid for their work and technology companies are no 
> different.  They have shareholders, they have employees and they have 
> multi-national interests that dictate they turn a profit.

Again, tell that to Redhat. Tell that to the people on this list who 
work for technology companies programming open source software who get 
paid for it.

> once you pay for it but do you actually expect to get the engineering 
> diagrams, technical specifications and manufacturing techniques as 
> well?

No one that I know of sells a car like that, sounds like a good 
opportunity. On a smaller scale, tell that to the OpenMoko people, or to 
the makers of the Arduino. Again, the example of web content management 
systems comes to mind. You get the whole package, and you can even hire 
the original developer if you want more and don't want to do it yourself.

   The bottom line is cloud computing and virtualization technology
> have pretty much made this entire discussion pointless.  Microsoft isn't 
> going away anytime soon and neither is Linux.  With cloud computing 
> and virtualization technology everyone gets to play and looks like 
> Microsoft well get to play a lot.  As for Apple. their future looks grey 
> but for now it is the best desktop platform going.

No need to be dismissive, you raise some interesting questions and 
objections. Also, "the cloud" isn't a panacea, desktops, servers, and 
mobile devices will have their current roles for a while yet. That and 
many businesses have to have end to end control over their information 
and infrastructure, that's something that the cloud cannot provide.

I agree, virtualization is great. I can check websites and code that I 
build on Linux in IE and make sure that the same python code or css I 
wrote on Linux works with python and IE, Safari, Firefox on Windows and 
OSX. I don't see any reason to exclude those platforms, so I don't see 
why there's any reason to dismiss Linux either.

> As for my assumptions.  Yes I assume that people view computers as 
> tools.  It is a tool to get something done.  If you look at operating 
> systems strictly from that assumption, which most people do, clearly you 
> must make significant sacrifices to run Linux.

And the same goes for other operating systems, as others have pointed 
out. I would like to know what "significant" sacrifice I've made in 
using Linux that is such a problem. Clearly, seems a bit presumptuous.

   Ultimately you are
> running an operating system that is largely licensed under the GPL but   
> most people can not even understand how the code works and for the few 
> that can they can not improve Linux on the desktop since it becomes 
> exceedingly difficult to reverse engineer the multitude of hardware 
> available for the x86 platform.

Tell that to Michel Xhaard who wrote drivers for over 235 webcams on his 
own: http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/05/lone_programmer.html

   Knowing that, clearly you are a slave
> to an operating system for scoio-political reasons and nothing else. 

At least knowing that Linux involves some king of socio-political aspect 
is more than I can say for other operating systems. That awareness can 
help avoid going down the road of technological determinism (something I 
hinted at earlier when discussing the political aspects of FOSS).

Moreover, for those of us who work with open source professionally, 
there's an economic incentive to continue working with it. At the end of 
the day it pays the bills too. Can't I be free to make that choice or am 
I making a sacrifice there too?

> You may pay a premium for PC hardware from Apple but even in the higher 
> prices there are tangible benefits like a visually appealing piece of 
> hardware,

Debatable. To me 72dpi fonts look like crap on any screen. To others, 
they're fine.

  decent resale value and in person technical support(both
> hardware and software) for 1-3 years across the globe.

You pay for that, just like you can pay for support from Redhat, Novell, 
Canonical.

> choice of supported hardware and software is greatly increased.

Show us some verifiable statistics to back up that claim.

> Naturally if you argue that I only do such and such, this is not what 
> the vast majority of people do with the tool and secondly if this is 
> true perhaps you really don't need this kind of tool and could probably 
> do fine with a SE Smart Phone.

I'd like to know more about this vast majority and what they do. Shades 
of determinism again. Gate's comment about 640k of memory comes to mind. 
  It isn't about need. It is about making novel uses of technology. A 
professor of mine once noted that "Invention is the mother of 
necessity," and I think that glib phrase is especially relevant here. 
People do really interesting things with technology that its designers 
didn't have in mind. FOSS is a great way to build technology that helps 
that kind of innovation happen. Again, I'll mention the Arduino as a 
perfect example of a combined hardware and software tool that can be 
used and built upon by anyone.

> My original post was merely a related comment on the person switching to 
> Vista.  Considering this LUG functions at least sometimes as a Linux 
> advocacy group I thought my posting may have been of interest to the 
> community.

Seems like there have been a fair number of reasonable responses 
indicating interest.

> Anyways, I'm off to the Apple Store to look at gadgets.

Don't spend too much :)

Jamon
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