Linux-Advocacy Digest #742, Volume #26 Mon, 29 May 00 10:13:05 EDT
Contents:
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? ("Daniel Johnson")
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? ("Daniel Johnson")
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? ("Daniel Johnson")
Re: The Linux Fortress (Roberto Alsina)
Re: The Linux Fortress (sandrews)
Re: linuxcare failure - more proof of how OSS fails (Nathaniel Jay Lee)
Re: The Linux Fortress (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: democracy? (Vilmos Soti)
Re: Linux Losers (Nathaniel Jay Lee)
Re: The Linux Fortress (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: any screen capture package? (mlw)
Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux (Nix)
Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux (Nix)
Re: Saddest anti-Linux site on the web? (The Ghost In The Machine)
Re: Drestin Black, more proof of the success of OSS (mlw)
Re: how to enter a bug report against linux? ("Peter T. Breuer")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 13:14:45 GMT
"ZnU" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <KaaY4.2705$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
> > > >Manufacturing technology has improved; computer components are
> > > >cheaper.
> > >
> > > Surprise! No monopolies there, lots of good competition.
> >
> > It's not immediately obvious that there's a relationship to be found
> > there. I've noticed an widespread assumption that competition
> > between a lot of small vendors is better than that between a few
> > big ones, or between one big one and many small ones.
> >
> > I'm not sure I see why.
>
> Say you have two companies that make web browsers (OSes or office
> software or whatever), with the market split 50/50. Each will do
> everything in its power to destroy the other, including introducing
> incompatibilities with the other browser. Web developers will hate it,
> but they'll put up with it. Can't cut your audience in half, after all.
> So both browsers will be supported, and they'll drift away from
> eachother more and more.
This seems an oversimplification; I don't think they'll drift apart-
there are strong pressures for compatability.
And of course, this is specifically about web browsers; these
conclusions do not obviously translate to other products.
> You have the same issue with one company with 50% of the market and
> another five with 10%. The big guy will intentionally create
> incompatibles to kill the little guys and block new entries into the
> market.
Well, that's exactly the same situation as before, except *now* the
Big Company has an easier time getting its way.
This is not transparently bad; one can argue that progress is a good
thing, and that improvements to the protocols should be encouraged-
even if it is inconvinient for the little guys to keep up.
It is often claimed that The Big Browser Company will introduct
*gratuitous* changes that do *not* represent improvements but
are mere incompatibilities. This is not a viable strategy, which is
probably why we don't see it happening. If the changes are just
useless, they will go unused- why cut yourself off from *any* browser
if there is no benefit to be gained thereby? If the changes are just
incompatibilities, then users won't use that browser, because it won't
read existing web pages.
For the Big Browser Company's strategy to work, they must
*improve* the 'standards'.
> But what if you have 10 companies with even market share? If one of them
> introduces some sort of incompatibility, nobody will care but the users
> of that product. They'll just switch to another product. It's now in the
> interest of every company in the race to maintain compatibility. Because
> everything is standards-based, this also allows additional competition
> to enter the market at any time.
This would seem to make it very difficult for improvements to gain
acceptace; a browser could support some new feature, but no-one
would use that feature in a web page if only 10% of the users could
see it.
If there is a standards *body* that can vote changes, then improvements
are possible, but still rather difficult- any company that would find it
difficult to support a given improvement would wish to block it.
IMHO we are better off with at least *some* big pushy companies that
are willing and able to 'extend' standards.
> The point is if no single company holds a significant fraction of a
> given market, it means that companies must ensure interoperability,
> which means users are free to choose whatever product they want.
It would seem to me that users are free to do that even the products
are *not* completely identical to one another.
And it seems to me that having a choice between 57 browsers, all
of which are exactly the same in every important respect, is a pretty
useless sort of choice.
Of course, that argument applies mostly to browsers, where features
are generally only useful if web pages support them. But still.
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 13:14:46 GMT
"ZnU" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <J8gY4.9130$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
> > Why?
> >
> > Certainly the history of this industry suggests that this is *not* the
> > case; typically the succesful competitors are *not* those that
> > make a snap-in replacement, but those with something new
> > and *different*. It is *only* then that there is a positive reason to
> > people to switch to the new kid on the block. Without that,
> > building a better mousetrap doesn't seem to work awfully
> > well.
>
> You might want reconsider that position after taking a look at the
> cloning of the IBM PC, MS Office vs. WordPerfect, and the success of AMD.
Well you've got two hardware examples: cloning the PC and cloning
the 80x86 processor. Both show the downside of highly fragmented
markets- it is extremely difficult to push anything like an innovation
through. How many years did we put up with ISA? Why didn't
we switch to RISC CPUs?
Now, it is true that companies like Compaq and AMD that just wanted
to build a better mousetrap did not perish, but they did not
triumph either; their markets settled down to a long-term
fragmentation. Indeed, this seems very common in the
computer hardware industry, for some reason.
Some people favor such a market, but there are serious
downsides to it, as I have just outlined.
Word was no snap-in replacement for WordPerfect; you needed
to switch to Windows or the Mac to use it. But if you were going
to switch to Windows, suddenly it made sense to have a
Windows word processor which could use all those cool Windows
features. And that, for a crucial period right after Win3 came out,
ruled WordPerfect right out.
(There *was* a DOS Word, actually, but it was not real sucessful;
there wasn't a good reason to switch to it.)
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 13:14:46 GMT
"Leslie Mikesell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8gskcf$1gqd$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <J8gY4.9130$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Daniel Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
> >Why?
> >
> >Certainly the history of this industry suggests that this is *not* the
> >case; typically the succesful competitors are *not* those that
> >make a snap-in replacement, but those with something new
> >and *different*. It is *only* then that there is a positive reason to
> >people to switch to the new kid on the block. Without that,
> >building a better mousetrap doesn't seem to work awfully
> >well.
>
> I was speaking from a consumers point of view. The companies interested
> in taking the consumers money for as little as possible in return
> have a different perspective, and yes they do often succeed at
> this by building something intentionally incompatible with everything
> else in order to lock you and everyone you share files with into using
> their product.
:D
Okay, *from a consumers point of view*, why is it better to have
many small companies rather than a few big ones, or one big one
and many small ones?
> >While MS could have put their efforts into incremental improvements
> >to DOS, such improvements could not have solved the *real* problems
> >DOS had. Windows did solve them, eventually. DR-DOS, forgive me for
> >saying so, never would have- it wasn't ambitious enough. It was just a
> >marginally better DOS.
>
> There is only so much you can do and remain backwards compatible with
> the horrible limits built into MSDOS, but adding memory management,
> multitasking, disk compression and fixing the 32 Meg partition limit
> was a good start. The less said about MSDOS 4.0 the better, but
> MSDOS 5.0 demonstrated that MS was capable of doing the same - they
> just weren't interested until forced by competition.
MS *was* interested in fixing the problems, just not with the inadequate
band aids Digital Research was using. MS's answer was Windows,
and it is a *far* better answer than DR-DOS.
It *is* true that DR-DOS pushed MS into improving their MS-DOS
product. It's far from obvious that this is the best thing that could
happen! One can argue that it is better not to waste time impoving
the incorrigable DOS, but rather replacing it.
The good news, of course, is that Microsoft didn't get bogged down
in 'DOS wars'; they didn't waste time as they might have, fine
tuning DOS until they had the best, most kick-ass CP/M clone
ever made, which still couldn't print worth a damn.
------------------------------
From: Roberto Alsina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Linux Fortress
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 13:06:49 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Pete Goodwin) wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Pete Goodwin) wrote in
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> On the subject of Samba configuration, here's another thought along
the
> lines of 'ease of use' and the way KDE lags behind Windows.
>
> How do you configure a share with Samba. You edit the smb.conf file.
Or get Ksamba or GnoSamba:
http://freshmeat.net/search.php3?query=ksamba
Or use SWAT, that comes included with SAMBA, and is a web-based admin
interface, which for network servers is pretty nice (since it lets you
have headless servers).
> How do you configure a share with Windows. Here's one way - right
click on
> the directory, select Sharing... and pick the settings you want. This
way
> is much more intuitive. Is KDE's kfm going to offer functionality like
> this, or is the KDE desktop going to remain in the depths of the past
and
> still rely on config files?
Pay me $100, and you will have that in a week.
It's just two tiny python scripts and a kdelnk file, really.
Something like this:
A script called addsmbshare, which asks for the password and adds the
share to smb.conf (which would have to be writable by some group,
so this is a VERY low security setting)
A script called delsmbshare, which does the opposite.
Those are really low tech text processing tasks.
Associate both with the inode/directory mime type on KDE, so they appear
on the RMB menu.
Done.
Not much than a couple hours work.
The bad side, is that this allows (just like in windows) any user to
mess the sharing settings, maybe disrupting another user's, or for that
matter, opening the whole computer! but for a single user system in
a private non-connected net it's not that nasty.
It will never make it into the regular KDE distribution, though.
--
Roberto Alsina (KDE developer, MFCH)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 09:17:26 -0400
From: sandrews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Linux Fortress
Pete Goodwin wrote:
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (sandrews) wrote in
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> >Pete Goodwin wrote:
> >>
> >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (sandrews) wrote in
> >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >>
> >> >So the point is?
> >> >
> >> >Let me guess, you hav`nt passed remedial reading????
> >> >Or are you one that can`t follow directions??
> >> >Or your just too damn lazy?
> >>
> >> No actually I haven't passed my psi exams for guessing what the
> >> designers were talking about. "Remedial PSI" I suppose you'd call it.
> >>
> >> As for following directions, I followed the Diagnosis text file and
> >> came unstuck. It made no mention of the encrypted nature of passwords.
> >>
> >> So, what was your point? Just to demonstrate how much superior you are
> >> by using insults? Is that the best you Linux guys can do!
> >
> >I just get tired of all the holyier than thou Win Lusers comming in the
> >linux news group spouting their bullshit as if ms is the only thing that
> >exists. I detect it in you as well as my bullshit meter is off the
> >scale as I have read most of your posts here.
>
> Your bullshit meter is faulty then. Your insults demonstrate how much you
> do not wish to hear what I might say.
>
> >Linux is easy, you just need to follow the HOWTO`s man pages and do a
> >little work.
>
> If only that were true. Linux, like UNIX, or OpenVMS, takes a while to
> figure out. A little reading becomes hours of studying manuals and reading
> HOWTO's. If it were done by a well designed GUI, then it would need hardly
> any reading at all.
>
> To give you an example - my AHA1520 SCSI card. The documentation claims it
> should be auto detected. For some reason it never was. Long ago, I had read
> the source code for the driver and descovered there the magic string
> "aha152x=0x340,11,7" and this worked, but no amount of reading ever
> produced this important string. The Linux documentation is broken, big
> time. Documents refer to other documents that aren't there - for instance
> Samba.conf refers to four that for some reason aren't on my system.
Beans, the samba docs are there. I have run mandrake, rh, tl, corel and
caldera linux distros and the samba doc`s where always there.
------------------------------
From: Nathaniel Jay Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: linuxcare failure - more proof of how OSS fails
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 08:21:26 -0500
Boris wrote:
>
> > Redhatd, VALinux all were totally over-hyped. And people forget one
> > base thing, a firm just can survive while making profits. Amazon is
> > learning that the hard way too. And to the big shake out of hyped e-
> > whatever firms have begun. And that is really good news.
> Who uses that crap anyway (I mean Linux)? I've never seen any business using linux.
>
> Boris
I'm in charge of the computer systems in a wood working company
(Showplace Wood Products, Inc. of Harrisburg, South Dakota) and we use
all Linux, desktops and servers. While you haven't "seen" our business,
you have now heard of it.
Nathaniel Jay Lee
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: The Linux Fortress
Date: 29 May 2000 13:23:55 GMT
On Mon, 29 May 2000 07:31:40 GMT, Pete Goodwin wrote:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi) wrote in
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>I understand most of this line. -ql is a typical cryptic command which I
>would guess is 'query' 'list'. If only it was:
>
>rpm /query /list samba | grep ENCRYPT
>
>I might start to like the cli. Or does
>
>rpm --query --list samba | grep ENCRYPT
>
>work?
Yes, it does. Hey, you're starting to get the hang of it (-;
>I rarely read documentation on Windows. Funny that, isn't it.
Well that's because they simply don't supply documentation. The encryption
stuff was due to a change in Windows. Where was the Windows documentation
explaining the changes, and describing the required registry tweak ?
--
Donovan
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: democracy?
From: Vilmos Soti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 13:26:36 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> If you want to see corruption at work go and work in Thailand.
Heh, once I read in the newspaper (US) that the Thai Secretary of
Education (or Culture, or something like this) said that corruption is
part of the national heritage and encouraged people to practice this.
Otherwise I also experienced they are very nice people.
Vilmos
------------------------------
From: Nathaniel Jay Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux Losers
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 08:28:20 -0500
The Truth wrote:
>
> You people are a bunch of losers.
>
> Each day millions of people use Microsoft product and are glad to do
> so. They send e-mails to their friends and lovers with happy messages
> and delightful attachments.
>
> You Linux losers preach that all this should be stopped because one of
> your low life counterparts writes a stupid virus. I'm sure these
> individuals do this from within the solitude of their lives driven
> only by spite. Much akin to the sad individuals who advocate Linux.
>
> Only pathetic computer geeks use Linux. Ugly stupid people who are
> shunned by society use Linux.
>
> Trendy happy people who laugh with their friends at popular
> restaurants use Microsoft products.
I could almost put up with this crap until this line. If you really
think being trendy and happy all the time is the way life is lived by a
secure person, you are an idiot. Sorry, but following the trends is
just a stupid way to live your life.
>
> Sad, poxy-faced perpetually virgin males use Linux.
Perpetual virgin. My wife would love to hear that about me. Oh wait,
wife=not-virgin. I guess that's another mis-step.
>
> These are the facts. And you sad embittered individuals know this.
I don't feel too bitter. In fact, I'm quite satisfied with my life.
I'm not always 100% happy with everything, but I think anyone that is
honest with themselves will admit to occassionally having problems with
something.
>
> The only way you pathetic people can gain any self-esteem is to force
> yourselves to use a system that most people who have better ways to
> spend their time regard as an esoteric oddity.
Hey, I don't have to force myself to use Linux. Unfortunately for some
tasks I still have to force myself to use Windows (actually I am being
forced to use Windows in some situations).
>
> Crawl back into you isolated holes and stop bothering those of us who
> are happy to have lives that don't revolve around building kernels and
> waiting for patches.
I don't see anyone bothering you but yourself. You don't want to be
bothered with it, yet you hang out in COLA. I'm guessing that you are
the one who is to blame for being bothered by Linux. You are "forcing"
yourself to read in this group. Why? Do you enjoy the "torture"?
Nathaniel Jay Lee
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: The Linux Fortress
Date: 29 May 2000 13:31:09 GMT
On Mon, 29 May 2000 07:40:05 GMT, Pete Goodwin wrote:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi) wrote in
>There was only one I could see that was part of Linuxconf. Did you know you
>have to make sure Gnome libraries are installed before you can use
>linuxconf BTW?
Yep.
>would have been better. The cobfigurator looked to me to offer every
>feature you could set in the script - but not what I was after - setup
>Samba to run with Windows 95 and some simple shares.
If that's all you need to do, just use the default setting ( with the
obvious changes, ie different host name, etc ) and either
set up encrypted passwords ( as in "ENCRYPTION.TXT" ) or tweak the
Windows registry to accept unencrypted passwords.
>>BTW I think you can also use a KDE tool for the samba service. You
>>certainly can configure the file manager as a samba browser.
>
>Any idea which one?
Yep. Konquerer ( ie the default one ). But I'm using the 2.0 beta. I'm not
sure if the older version has this.
--
Donovan
------------------------------
From: mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: any screen capture package?
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 09:32:11 -0400
paokai chang wrote:
>
> Is there anybody tell me : where to find a "screen capture" package
> for KDE 1.1 (except Ksnapshot)
Must it be KDE?
Gimp works.
--
Mohawk Software
Windows 9x, Windows NT, UNIX, Linux. Applications, drivers, support.
Visit http://www.mohawksoft.com
Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline
sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
------------------------------
From: Nix <$}xinix{[email protected]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux
Date: 29 May 2000 11:41:38 +0100
Craig Kelley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> For all the faults in dpkg and rpm; they are light-years ahead of
> autoconf
They do completely different jobs. autoconf is a software portability
enhancement tool, not a software packager!
--
`People's needs are not `finance'. You can't eat a bank.' --- Alan Rosenthal
------------------------------
From: Nix <$}xinix{[email protected]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux
Date: 29 May 2000 11:47:46 +0100
David Steuber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I should probably really look at GTK+/GTK--, but I've got this idea in
> my mind that a GUI toolkit should be based on C++ from the outset
> rather than using C++ wrappers, however good they may be, around a C
> toolkit. I could be wrong in this opinion. Maybe a C toolkit is the
> best way to go. But we already have Xlib... Yes, it is not a
> 'toolkit'. But it is what is ultimately being wrapped.
Gtk--'s wrappers are *very* good, IMHO better than Qt's; not least
because it does what MOC does the *right* way, in real C++ (with the
libsigc++ library).
--
`People's needs are not `finance'. You can't eat a bank.' --- Alan Rosenthal
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Saddest anti-Linux site on the web?
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 13:36:02 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote on 28 May 2000 18:04:10 -0400
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>Dr. Strangelove <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spewed this unto the Network:
>>Just take a look at this site, it is clearly the saddest anti-Linux
>>site on the web, made by a 14 year old spotty geek:
>
>>http://www.startnet-uk.com
>
>...and, it appears to be running Linux.
bash$ telnet www.startnet-uk.com www
Trying 209.207.222.71...
Connected to www.startnet-uk.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Server: Zeus/3.3
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 13:24:53 GMT
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Connection closed by foreign host.
bash$
"Zeus" refers to Zeus Technology. That's all I know about it.
[.sigsnip]
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
------------------------------
From: mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Drestin Black, more proof of the success of OSS
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 09:39:29 -0400
abraxas wrote:
>
> Salvador Peralta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Our favorite M$ troll uses OSS every time that he posts to Usenet.
>
> > Trying 207.126.101.30...
> > Connected to www.supernews.com.
> > Escape character is '^]'.
> > HEAD / HTTP/1.0
>
> > HTTP/1.1 200 OK
> > Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 01:35:14 GMT
> > Server: Apache/1.3.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.5.0 OpenSSL/0.9.4
> > Last-Modified: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 05:38:40 GMT
> > ETag: "5a08c-d56-38e439e0"
> > Accept-Ranges: bytes
> > Content-Length: 3414
> > Connection: close
> > Content-Type: text/html
>
> > SuperNews, aka Remarq is an open source shop and has been since its
> > inception in 1995. NT simply can't handle the type of volume they deal
> > with.
>
> YES IT CAN YES IT CAN!!!
>
> Ok, maybe it cant, but AS SOON AS SUPERNEWS CONVERTS TO W2K SUPER-SERVER-
> EDITION IT WILL BE ABLE TO! I HAVE A BETA COPY OF IT IN MY HAND RIGHT NOW!
> IT EXISTS! ITS GOING TO WHIP UNIX COMPLETELY! WHO NEEDS APACHE WHEN YOU
> HAVE IIS! IIS IS SUPERIOR! IT LOADS BETTER! ITS THE BEST! YOU DONT
> KNOW WHAT YOURE TALKING ABOUT! HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF UN-NAMED ONLINE
> BOOKSTORES HAVE BEEN USING DATACENTER FOR 15 YEARS AND NEVER HAD A PROBLEM
> WITH IT!
>
You are joking, right? "Hundreds of Millions" web servers? Using Data
Center for 15 years? So are you asserting that NT was around, in ANY
form, 15 years ago? Or, for that matter, there are over 100 million
online book stores?
IIS is a joke. It is a quaint little web server, yes, but in no way
should it be confused with something usable.
--
Mohawk Software
Windows 9x, Windows NT, UNIX, Linux. Applications, drivers, support.
Visit http://www.mohawksoft.com
Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline
sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
------------------------------
From: "Peter T. Breuer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: how to enter a bug report against linux?
Date: 29 May 2000 13:38:23 GMT
In comp.os.linux.misc Mark Wilden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: "Peter T. Breuer" wrote:
:> To a large extent, linux does not have those constraints acting on it
:> [like having a customer base to satisfy! -MW]
:> Consider that coders are not paid in money, but in kudos, for one thing.
:> Yes, their activities may make them money too, but in the first instance
:> the monetary cost of their effort is zero
: I don't think this is quite accurate. No activity ever has a zero
: monetary cost, because of its opportunity cost. In a typical
Well, I presume you're talking about lost opportunities for financial
gain. Yeah, sure, sleeping hurts my pockets a lot! In the end the
profit/loss accounting is not purely financial, however. For example, I
prefer to design my own code at my own pace rather than to have to
do it for money because someone tells me they want it. My loss or my
gain? For the kernel contributors, the kudos counts a lot.
: organisation, there will be lost monetary cost if two coders both fix
: the same bug. In an OS organisation, there may be the cost that one of
: those coders quits because he feels the opportunity cost is too high to
: waste time duplicating effort.
That turns out not to be the case. When it's happened, there's always
been someone else ready to step up, and I don't believe any person
losses have been for that reason. What's more, it's normal for someone
smart enough to realize that there's a coding opportunity also to be
smart enough to ask around to see if anyone's working on it (or to keep
mum if there isn't :-).
Besides, this is the normal "scientific" problem. When someone starts
investigating something they don't know for sure if someone else is
doing the same or not. It's usually the supervisor who guides them
through the morass of opportunities, but the supervisor doesn't know
all either. One takes a risk, and one takes care to keep ones eyes
open. That's all. Besides, duplication of effort is not normally
harmful. When the two parties find out about each other they either
compete or cooperate. There are several journalling efforts for linux
underway right now, for example, and they exchange info.
: Mind you, I have no idea whether that sort of thing actually happens
: with Linux. It could be that the mailing list approach is sufficient to
: prevent it. I'm just commenting on the 'zero cost' remark.
:> In particular, I'd recommend you to think about the following: Linux
:> _is_ a success
: The obvious answer to your comment is, yes, Linux is a success. But that
: doesn't mean it couldn't be even more successful. You certainly couldn't
: say that the Linux development model couldn't be improved, since any
: development model can be improved.
: The question is whether more formal bug-tracking would improve it--not
: whether Linux is a success, and hence needs no improvements.
No, that's not the question. It's not even relevant. You are missing
a point here and making one for your opponents: if you don't even
know how to measure if linux is a success or not, how can you possibly
suggest that something will "Improve" it? By what criteria? How can
you advocate a process change without knowing what you are trying to
achieve? Even in the best of _organisations_ (and linux is more
of a community than an organisation), that would get you fired.
My point here is, I repeat, that linux is a success measured in terms
of social impact, numbers of deployed systems, and economic influence.
If you say that it would be better off with a formal bug tracking
system instead of the kernel list and archives, plus maintainers
buglists, then you had better first explain why it is a success without
it. Because according to your theory, a formal bug tracking system is
important to success, and that seems not to be the case here.
I contend that the reasons for that are socio-economic. _My_ theory
says that anything that makes the actual kernel sources and development
(and possibly development processes) more open and accessible to
everybody will help linux occupy more niches. I also estimate that
restricting inputs to a bug tracking system will restrict the degree
of n-n communication that now exists, and therefore slow up
development. It might help stability, but not development. And
development is what fills the available niches, not stability.
Peter
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