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Binary drivers are great!
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Gee, you know, I don't think I posted any criteria for what constitutes quality software. But on the other hand, if you don't think the definition of "quality software" is different when the software is running on "a handful(relatively speaking)" of systems, vs. over a hundred million consumer desktops, then I doubt posting a definition would have been of much use.
n0cmonkey, it revolves around the same thing it has always revolved around: the whole Linux culture is infused with this Microsoft-bashing attitude promulgated by people who have never had to support more than a few tens of thousands of users of their software, at most. They criticize the company incessently for not producing flawless code, for being too big, for being too successful, whatever. All I am saying is this: many of the people who hurl this crap around aren't even software engineers, and haven't a clue what it takes to create, distribute, support, and evolve a system like Windows. The ones who are software engineers ought to know better than to slam a company that has managed to do that successfully for 20+ years, because they should have been through it themselves, at least on a much, much smaller scale.
I'm not even particularly a Microsoft fanboy. I always reserved my love for Borland, until they weren't relevant to system development anymore. But this whole attitude offends me. Linux is a great piece of work, but that fact that it can't be talked about without talking about how terrible Microsoft is at the same time, makes the people doing the talking assholes in my book.
Nothinman
Elite Member
You haven't been paying much attention then because the majority of Linux users and developers by far don't care what MS does. They're working on FOSS software because they enjoy it and possibly because someone now pays them for their hobby. The ones making the David and Goliath references are reporters looking to suck you in with a catch heading and the vocal minority. Of course it's impossible to work on software without being compared to something else, so it's inevitable that people will compare Linux to Windows, O😵 to MS Office, pgsql to MS SQL, etc but there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's objective. But that's not usually possible since users of one side rarely know the other side very well.
Nothinman
Elite Member
I can't think of a single developer that is working on Linux in an attempt to topple MS. Some have agendas against closed software in general (gregkh comes to mind although he really only seems concerned with stopping binary drivers in LInux) but most just don't really care what MS is doing since their software don't affect them. I'm sure some/most have a good laugh when MS screws up but IMO it's in the same vein as when I laughed at Michael Jordan for trying to play baseball, it wasn't because I cared about him or baseball but just because it was genuinely funny.
SleepWalkerX
Platinum Member
This reminds me of a quote.
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." - Linus Torvalds
😉
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." - Linus Torvalds
😉
I used to hate Microsoft... But that mostly stopped when I stopped using Microsoft software. So that was pretty nice.
I probably have some residual resentment left, but that's slowly drifting away. Although it crops back up occasionally when I have to fix somebody's Windows install or deal with one of MS's crusty file formats. But that's also getting rarer and rarer, which makes me happy. For instance trying to burn a boot/rescue cdrom from my parent's Windows XP machine so I could fix their other Windows machine got me kinda angry. Very unpleasant.
I probably have some residual resentment left, but that's slowly drifting away. Although it crops back up occasionally when I have to fix somebody's Windows install or deal with one of MS's crusty file formats. But that's also getting rarer and rarer, which makes me happy. For instance trying to burn a boot/rescue cdrom from my parent's Windows XP machine so I could fix their other Windows machine got me kinda angry. Very unpleasant.
Think about this logically..
Now of course I can find fanboys that will spout nonsense about this vs that and all that stuff. It happens.
With linux it happens a lot.. In these forums especially you have these people that all of a sudden 'discover' Linux/FOSS for themselves. They spend a few weeks and learn their way around a new operating system with a bunch of new programs and they like it alot.
Usually they are motivated to learn to use Linux by frustrations caused by Windows and they have heard about Microsoft being busted for abusing it's monopoly status and stuff like that.
So they find something they like. It has a social and political history and it's for personal freedom and such. For most people who end up realy liking Linux and switching it's something that gets you kinda motivated...
So people will flip out for a while sometimes. Go on about how Microsoft is evil and Windows sucks and all this and that and generally get kinda obnoxious. Usually, but not always, they calm down after a while and become much more reasonable.
But think about it.. Linus and other Linux developers, the hackers that work on Gnome or KDE and people who contribute time to FSF (free software foundation); Do you REALY think that they are motivated soley out of hatred for Microsoft? That 'TEH MICRO$OFT SUCKS!!' is driving people to spend considerable time and effort to write software just to give away?
That's not motivation to do anything but sit around and bitch and moan. That and everybody is individuals.. You can't just lump everything and everybody together.
For instance some big characters are people like Richard Stallman. RMS basicly beleives that propriatory software at it's nature is evil. When you sell or give a program away the source code itself IS part of that program and it is a social evil to take away people's ability to share and improve. He will call Microsoft evil and such, but if they went 'Free Software' tomorrow I'd bet he would be willing to give Balmer a beeJ.
Or Linus Torvalds, who did his stuff for fun in college. His attitude is that he is going to put Microsoft out of business without even trying, not that he cares much about it.
Or there is even people like Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman. Miquel (I beleive) helped found Gnome, he also started Mono. Both of them together started Ximian, which was later bought out in one of Novell's early Linux aquisitions. Nat Friedman actually worked a Microsoft for a while and Miguel applied to work there on one occasion, but both now are fairly major 'open source' figures. Produce code, usability studies and the like. They are competitive against Microsoft, but I don't think that they hate Microsoft.
Most developers are like that. Each have their own motivations. I am sure that some have some real hatred or resentment towards Microsoft, but I realy realy think that they are a small minority. There is a lot of competativeness though for some people and others think that Windows just kinda sucks in general, but that's not hatred.
Now of course I can find fanboys that will spout nonsense about this vs that and all that stuff. It happens.
With linux it happens a lot.. In these forums especially you have these people that all of a sudden 'discover' Linux/FOSS for themselves. They spend a few weeks and learn their way around a new operating system with a bunch of new programs and they like it alot.
Usually they are motivated to learn to use Linux by frustrations caused by Windows and they have heard about Microsoft being busted for abusing it's monopoly status and stuff like that.
So they find something they like. It has a social and political history and it's for personal freedom and such. For most people who end up realy liking Linux and switching it's something that gets you kinda motivated...
So people will flip out for a while sometimes. Go on about how Microsoft is evil and Windows sucks and all this and that and generally get kinda obnoxious. Usually, but not always, they calm down after a while and become much more reasonable.
But think about it.. Linus and other Linux developers, the hackers that work on Gnome or KDE and people who contribute time to FSF (free software foundation); Do you REALY think that they are motivated soley out of hatred for Microsoft? That 'TEH MICRO$OFT SUCKS!!' is driving people to spend considerable time and effort to write software just to give away?
That's not motivation to do anything but sit around and bitch and moan. That and everybody is individuals.. You can't just lump everything and everybody together.
For instance some big characters are people like Richard Stallman. RMS basicly beleives that propriatory software at it's nature is evil. When you sell or give a program away the source code itself IS part of that program and it is a social evil to take away people's ability to share and improve. He will call Microsoft evil and such, but if they went 'Free Software' tomorrow I'd bet he would be willing to give Balmer a beeJ.
Or Linus Torvalds, who did his stuff for fun in college. His attitude is that he is going to put Microsoft out of business without even trying, not that he cares much about it.
Or there is even people like Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman. Miquel (I beleive) helped found Gnome, he also started Mono. Both of them together started Ximian, which was later bought out in one of Novell's early Linux aquisitions. Nat Friedman actually worked a Microsoft for a while and Miguel applied to work there on one occasion, but both now are fairly major 'open source' figures. Produce code, usability studies and the like. They are competitive against Microsoft, but I don't think that they hate Microsoft.
Most developers are like that. Each have their own motivations. I am sure that some have some real hatred or resentment towards Microsoft, but I realy realy think that they are a small minority. There is a lot of competativeness though for some people and others think that Windows just kinda sucks in general, but that's not hatred.
Not at all, and I don't disagree with most of what you said. I'm also not speaking of Linux in particular, but the open source "movement" in general. Hell Scott McNealy of Sun used to refer to Microsoft in biblical terms. Look where their stock is now. Maybe he should have spent more time figuring out his customer base. Plenty of the leaders of the "anti MS" movement overlap with the "open source movement." The desire to supplant Microsoft, the feeling that they are a ruthless monopoly that has ill-served customers, online ranting about how terribly insecure their stuff is, is all a core feature of the open source community. It is also extensively documented all over the web in forums, blog posts, articles, whatever. It's silly to maintain that this feeling isn't woven throughout the fabric of the Linux and open-source worlds.
By contrast, you don't see much, if any, similar sentiments reverberating out of Microsoft, or Windows developers.
I like to think this is because they are too busy working.
Most "serious" Linux users I know of(that is to say, people who work with it, as opposed to install Gentoo for the l337 factor) just don't care about Windows.
Me, I think Windows is a fine platform for stuff like gaming, my parents everyday needs, etc, I just don't particularly like working with it myself, but as long as I don't have to do just that, it doesn't bother me, and I don't run around flaming windows users.
There are certainly many Linux users who behave like complete retards, but that's hardly exclusive to Linux users.
Just look at any random thread about Macs, the Windows users generally don't take many minutes before storming into to it, bashing Apple for crappy hardware, crappy software, having a lunatic for a CEO(that part I can kinda agree on actually, but he's rather funny), etc etc.
Or the Apple users in the old G4 vs Athlon/P-iii/P4 wars of old.
Heck, you can find plenty of VMS fans that will love to bash UNIX all day.
As for the developers themselves, like Nothinman said, I don't see them running around screaming about MS being evil and Gates being the Antichrist, it's mostly users doing that, and as previously stated, those kinds of users exist in all camps.
Nothinman
Elite Member
Two joke sites, 2 comments on a ZDnet site, one referring to Microsoft-Watch.com as Linux-Watch.com's evil twin, a digg article and one eWeek article on the front page. Not exactly gold you dug up there.
One blog, more ZDNet, a NetworkWorld article with a quote from a guy saying he doesn't want to hate microsoft and an MSDN blog that I can't get any context from because the server's too busy. Again, nothing.
Sun isn't exactly a good FOSS player. Sure recently they've open sourced a bunch of stuff which is nice, but it was pretty much an act of desperation.
You have heard of the vocal minority, right? It's silly to maintain that the few people posting those articles, blogs, etc are representative of the whole FOSS community.
I like to think this is because they are too busy patching and rebooting servers. =)
If anything I'd say it's because they're impartial. They use the software because it's what was given to them and/or they don't know how to use anything else. There's no Windows User Group meetings, people just aren't that into it and that's probably at least partially because they're not a part of the development like FOSS users/developers. Don't you think you'd be more excited about a piece of software if you were actually involved in it's development?
Hah, the point of both links was the 5 million and 8 million hits, respectively, but I was just joking.
Well, fine, but in that sense everyone posting on the Internet is the vocal minority. And I suspect that the percentage of vocal minority Internet posters in the set of all programmers is pretty damn high relative to, say, the set of everyone else. Look, if you want to keep arguing that there is no or little anti-MS sentiment among the open source community, be my guest. It's a little like arguing that the animal rights movement doesn't really resent fur-wearers, but hey, they're your bits.
No, just rebooting. We're usually too scared to patch them.
Nothinman
Elite Member
Well if I search for microsoft likes little boys I get 22,500,000 so obviously MS is into child pornography. =)
Not at all. Most FOSS developers are writing software because they enjoy it and because they want to have the source code to the software that they use. Fur wearers are killing what the animal rights people are fight for, MS isn't (or at least isn't doing a good job) of killing what FOSS developers are working for.
And they're the universe's bits, I'm just borrowing them. =) Or if you really want to attribute them to someone, they'r Anandtech's since they're on their hard disks.
Sounds like a winning article for a OSnews.com news peice or a Zdnet.com editorial. Unfortunately it's not one of the types of things that would make it to a 'Microsoft: Get the facts campaign' advert, otherwise you'd probably make some money on this groundbreaking study.
Maybe if you look for 'Linus likes little boys'? Then you could write a article about how free software is linked to communism and underground pornography rings. That's almost like money in the bank.
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