o-----------ooO--(- Important Message -)--Ooo------------o | | | SAVE BANDWITH, SPACE, TIME & MONEY, REPLY WITH PRUDENCE.| | | o----=[ Penguin @ My - Linux ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ]=----o Assalamualaikum, Dapat ni daripada ML ComputerGUYS. 3-4 Nov 1999 Buat bacaan semua. Apa tindakan kita untuk terus pastikan Linux terus diterima di U dan Kolej. Wassalam. : ) ----- Original Message ----- From: Mister Goblin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, November 05, 1999 12:51 PM Subject: Killing Off Linux [Part 1] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Killing Off Linux: It's All Academic by Bryan Pfaffenberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 14-Sep-1999 Cash-strapped universities are striking deals that could shut down UNIX and Linux servers in academia--and the consequences aren't healthy for the Open Source movement. Want to murder a tree? You can hack away at the branches and leaves, but you probably won't do much damage. It's much easier to simply take out your Bowie knife and cut a ring all the way around the tree's base--just deep enough to cut off the flow of sap. Most of it's concentrated near the surface, just beneath the bark. No sap? Dead tree. Now, don't go out and start slaughtering our tall leafy friends. I'm making a point here. If Microsoft's plans for colleges and universities pan out, the tree-death scenario is precisely what's going to happen to UNIX-like operating systems in general (and Linux in particular). Here's the argument in a nutshell. As you'll see, UNIX's long reign in the halls of academia nourishes the Open Source phenomenon. But cash-strapped college and university computing administrators are cutting deals with Microsoft--and not surprisingly, the Redmondians are pressuring schools to move their servers to NT. The likely result? UNIX (and Linux) could well become an endangered species on campus. Such a development could cut off the nourishment that's helping to keep the Open Source movement alive. Computers in Academia: Insufficient Funds Here's the situation. In the U.S. and abroad, governments just aren't providing the money colleges and universities need to meet sharply increased demands for computing services. At California State University (CSU), for example, administrators are looking at enrollment increases on the order of up to 10,000 additional students per year, all of whom will need software and fast network support. But all too often, there's no additional dinero from the state legislature. So campus computing administrators are turning to vendors for help. They're getting it. For example, Indiana University (IU) recently announced a $6 million deal that enables the university to freely distribute Windows software to all students and faculty. But vendor aid comes with a price tag. For example, Microsoft is pressuring colleges and universities to move their servers to Windows NT--100 percent NT. You've heard the arguments before. Life is so much simpler, Microsoft tells us, when you get rid of all that Novell and UNIX junk and standardize on one well-supported system. And you get the best performance when everyone's running Microsoft stuff. To be sure, Microsoft spokespeople add, the company understands that freedom of choice is important to university people, so Microsoft isn't pressuring campuses to standardize on Microsoft clients; IU still supports Macs and UNIX workstations, for instance. On the server side, though, it's a different matter. As campus computing administrators attest, there's much stronger pressure to move to an all-NT infrastructure. There is some resistance. More than a few college administrators are wary of getting a pig in a poke. Just last year, for example, Microsoft alarmed campus computing administrators by moving to a new licensing model, in which institutions would be charged on a per-head basis, rather than an estimate of how many people would be using the software at a given time. In an NT-dominated environment, would the company start hiking fees to unreasonable levels? But the need for vendor assistance may override such concerns. As California State University (CSU) chancellor Charles Reed keeps saying, if you're nervous about vendor funding for campus computing infrastructures, there's only one remedy: "Get used to it." Business as Usual? Hold on a minute. Is it such a horrible thing for vendors to ask for something in return? Companies such as Microsoft are in business to make money, after all, and it's both understandable and legitimate that they should seek some sort of return for their largesse. Everyone knows that vendors who support higher education are looking for exposure; students who use a given company's products are likely to demand them in the workplace years later. Apple once played this game just as aggressively. If vendors provide great products and everyone wants them, what's wrong with that? Well, there's such a thing as going too far. Colleges and universities are special and somewhat fragile institutions. They're devoted to traditions that may seem quaint in today's rough-and-tumble marketplace, traditions such as pursuing the discovery of knowledge for its own sake rather than for personal or corporate enrichment, and openly sharing one's discoveries as a contribution to humanity's future. And Microsoft isn't just any vendor. According to the company's critics (among them, the U.S. Department of Justice), Gates and gang just don't know when to quit when it comes to putting competitors out of business. Is Microsoft using the higher education market to knock out yet another competitor? For Microsoft, it's just business as usual; the firm generally pressures clients to go to an all-NT environment, citing numerous advantages. But this strategy, pursued within academia, could have devastating consequences for UNIX and Linux. And it's not merely that future programmers will be cutting their teeth on NT rather than UNIX. A declining UNIX and Linux presence in colleges and universities could ultimately spell the end of the culture that nourishes open-source software. Universities and UNIX Computer systems aren't just so much hardware and software, to be evaluated in terms of efficiency and reliability. They foster the growth of some very interesting, surprisingly intense subcultures. (If you're skeptical, just ask an Amiga owner why the Amiga's travails are a parable of sorts for the tragic history of modern computing.) As Swedish anthropologist Ulf Hannerz stresses, culture grows in complex societies wherever like-minded people interact intensely. For UNIX culture, universities have long provided this setting. UNIX got its start at Bell Labs, of course, but court-imposed regulations prevented AT&T from marketing the new operating system. So UNIX originators Thompson and Ritchie made UNIX available to university computing departments. Soon, university students and faculty started making their own contributions to UNIX code. Taking the lead in UNIX development were computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. Distributed to other campuses and AT&T on magnetic tapes, the Berkeley version of UNIX came to be own as the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was at Berkeley that a most propitious union took place: BSD UNIX was the first to incorporate TCP/IP, a combination that created the technical foundation for the Internet's explosive growth. What kind of culture grew up around UNIX in universities? Just ask anyone who participated. BSD UNIX and TCP/IP represented the most dramatic early achievements of what we now recognize to be open-source software development. BSD proved that open-source development can produce great software. The Internet's development demonstrated the positive results that occur when a technical community agrees on clear, non-proprietary standards and protocols. Most of all, you learn what can be done when a community of brilliant people decides to try to push computing to the next level, just for the sheer intellectual joy of it. [ Continued on Part 2 ] ------- End of forwarded message ------- - Disclaimer : http://users.my-linux.org/disclaimer.html
