The New Linux Economy

[Travis 'Bailo' Bickel]

Lately, I have been having a bear of a time trying to acquire a Linux driver
for my S3/ProSavage chipset -- but that quest is now almost at an end as I
have located a noble band of people who are pushing the envelop with S3 and
Savage chipset drivers!

Though my quest might sound like food for trolls to mock Linux -- hear me
out. I think I have discovered part of the message of the new Linux
economy. Many of us have criticized the Microsoft Monolith. The one size
fits all Model T approach. What we criticize even more is how that model
no longer works. Even with a restricted homogeneous architecture, there
are still magnificent flaws in security, useability, functionality, pace of
change, meeting customer demand and so on...

What my quest told me is that even when a project seems obscure or even
impossible -- the new Linux economy is so diverse, that there are people
working on even the most detailed problems. My driver knowledge took me
to the motherboard manufacturer, the chipset vendor, the OEM chipset
integrator, user groups, OSS dev groups, mailing lists, newsgroups and so
on. But each part of this web of knowledge and software added a little bit
to the puzzle. What is more, as specific as my request was, there was
information, and, for others with similar, specific requests, there were
people meeting the need as well.

Here's the thing. The price of hardware has dropped tremendously. I am a
beneficiary of that as my new Athlon 2400 for under $300 is a dream
machine! Ok, so with DVD drive and some extras -- I sprung for a nice
logitech mouse, keyboard and gamepad, and went for the old fashioned 17
CRT, it's still under $600. Of course, using Suse, my OS, applications
and so on are free. Ok. So you know what. With all those bargains, if
someone said to me: yeah, you can have a 3D driver for your Suse machine,
but it'll cost ya...um...say $50. Say even $75. You know what? I would
easily pay that group the money. In fact, I would *want* to pay them the
money and hope that others would as well.

Inside of /licensing/ monolithic, broken and stiff Micrsoft code that was
writen for 386 machines from a decade ago, and lining the stomachs and
pockets of Steve Balmer, Bill Gates and his egregious so-called
*foundation*, I would rather the money go to the people in the software
community who are actually /adding value/.

 

[John Timney \(Microsoft MVP\)]

Interesting to hear you would pay for something that the majority of people
think should be free. Thats actually quite refreshing to hear!

I like Linux (so no flame wars required), I dont however like the
misunderstood cost model that creates this expectation that as an operating
system it is free - its a misconception often found when discussing Open
Source. It isn't free as you have found, although in physical bucks it may
not have cost you anything for the operating system - support has cost you
quite a bit. Perhaps if you did have to pay for your driver you would have
found it a lot faster and had a lot less digging to do. I wonder how much
time and effort it has actually cost you if you calculate yourself an hourly
rate in finding the driver you needed, and how much time the guys working on
this single driver have given to solving this one problem.

The diversity of Linux is as you suggest one of its greatest strengths, but
the idea that you would pay for a driver to the Linux community - but not to
MS is to me a little odd, although at least you "would" pay for someones
work which in itself is a credit. Sun and IBM, both advocates of Open
Source and pushing the Linux boat out do not give away the products for
free, would you therefore be prepared to pay one of these large companies
instead......or would these be excluded too as they are also very big
companies purely out to sell you something? Dont take this as a criticism
of your findings - its not meant to be, I'm just wondering if you considered
a wider picture in your findings.

My biggest gripe here would be why the manufactureres if your S3/ProSavage
chipset board didn't have a Linux driver in the first place. Pity the open
source community is indirectly doing the work for this company and not
getting paid for it, its the S3 manufacturer who is creaming it in here- the
good will of the open source community will save them a lot of money and
hike their profits.

--
Regards

John Timney
Microsoft Regional Director
Microsoft MVP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------
<blatant plug>
Professional .NET for Java Developers with C#- ISBN: 1-861007-91-4
Professional Windows Forms - ISBN: 1861005547
Professional JSP 2nd Edition - ISBN: 1861004958
Professional JSP - ISBN:
1861003625
Beginning JSP Web Development - ISBN: 1861002092
</blatant plug>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------

--
Regards

John Timney
Microsoft Regional Director
Microsoft MVP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------
<blatant plug>
Professional .NET for Java Developers with C#- ISBN: 1-861007-91-4
Professional Windows Forms - ISBN: 1861005547
Professional JSP 2nd Edition - ISBN: 1861004958
Professional JSP - ISBN:
1861003625
Beginning JSP Web Development - ISBN: 1861002092
</blatant plug>

 

[Billy O'Connor]

Regards

John Timney
Microsoft Regional Director
Microsoft MVP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------
<blatant plug>
Professional .NET for Java Developers with C#- ISBN: 1-861007-91-4
Professional Windows Forms - ISBN: 1861005547
Professional JSP 2nd Edition - ISBN: 1861004958
Professional JSP - ISBN:
1861003625
Beginning JSP Web Development - ISBN: 1861002092
</blatant plug>

John,
Please try to do something about your signature, it's 4 times the size
of acceptable usenet standards, and your OE quoting is badly broken.

 

[John]

Sorry Billy, I'll correct it when I get a few minutes.

 

[ToddT]

well put. i'm looking forward to his rebuttal.

 

[chrisv]

Sorry Billy, I'll correct it when I get a few minutes.

Correct your top posting, while you're at it, you moron.

 

[John]

Thank you for your constructive contribution to this interesting thread.

Regards

John Timney
Microsoft Regional Director
Microsoft MVP

 

[chrisv]

(top posting corrected)

Thank you for your constructive contribution to this interesting thread.

Regards

John Timney
Microsoft Regional Director
Microsoft MVP

Well, perhaps I was too hasty. If you do indeed work for M$, maybe
you're just expected to use their crappy software, and to top post,
despite the fact it makes you look like an idiot.

Heck, maybe Billy G himself is a top poster. That would explain a
lot...

 

[Jim Richardson]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Interesting to hear you would pay for something that the majority of
people think should be free. Thats actually quite refreshing to hear!

Speaking for myself, I have spent quite a tidy sum personaly, on Linux
distros, and software I use with Linux. More in fact, than I have spent
on Microsoft equivilents. But then, I am happy to pay for software that
works.

I like Linux (so no flame wars required), I dont however like the
misunderstood cost model that creates this expectation that as an
operating system it is free - its a misconception often found when
discussing Open Source. It isn't free as you have found, although in
physical bucks it may not have cost you anything for the operating
system - support has cost you quite a bit. Perhaps if you did have to
pay for your driver you would have found it a lot faster and had a lot
less digging to do. I wonder how much time and effort it has actually
cost you if you calculate yourself an hourly rate in finding the
driver you needed, and how much time the guys working on this single
driver have given to solving this one problem.

as is so often the case, you are making the common mistake of focusing
on the gratis part of "free" rather than the libre. It's a common one
among Microsoft users, (not that they are the only ones)

When OSS is gratis, it is as a side effect of libre. Nothing more,
nothing less.

To claim that "nothing is free because you have to do (whatever) to use
it" is foolish. But ok, I'll play that game.

For me, the cost of using Microsoft software, is too high, not just in
purchase price (which ranges from negligible to OMFG!) but in the effort
I have to go to, to get it to actually do what I want.

I make no claims to "like" Microsoft software, Excel was ok, Word is...
usable, FSVO, and Outlook/Outlook Express? (shudder). None of them are
worth their initial purchase cost to me, let alone the cost in
productivity drop. (Please don't mention OWA, I just ate)

My (personal) Linux support costs have been limited to a couple of boxed
SuSE sets, and some time perusing newsgroups or google. Funny thing
though, I have to peruse newsgroups and google to keep what little
Microsoft software I occasionaly use, alive and (mostly) functioning
also. It's a wash between the two. Which is kind of funny, considering
how much more I use Linux and it's apps, than MS-Windows, and it's apps.

- From a business perspective, it isn't even close, count in the cost of
"licence manangement" and all you can see from using Microsoft software
instead of an OSS equivilent, is a sea of red ink.

In the few instances where there is currently no Linux/OSS equivilent,
I'd consider using a Microsoft solution, but those are few and far
between for me, and getting fewer. Fortunately.

The diversity of Linux is as you suggest one of its greatest
strengths, but the idea that you would pay for a driver to the Linux
community - but not to MS is to me a little odd, although at least you
"would" pay for someones work which in itself is a credit. Sun and
IBM, both advocates of Open Source and pushing the Linux boat out do
not give away the products for free, would you therefore be prepared
to pay one of these large companies instead......or would these be
excluded too as they are also very big companies purely out to sell
you something? Dont take this as a criticism of your findings - its
not meant to be, I'm just wondering if you considered a wider picture
in your findings.

Be advised that the "person" you are replying to, is simple a troll,
hence your cross post here, in Comp.os.linux.advocacy.

If you want to believe that most, or all of the users of OSS/Linux are
like Bailo, be my guest, perhaps you also believe that all southerners
are named billy-bob.


IBM happily sends me a DVD or CDs full of the whole websphere suite.
Why? because they hope I will use it, and recommend it to others. Funny
thing is, last I checked, websphere used Apache for it's httpd/s dæmon.
Apache, if you may recall, is the single most popular webserver on the
planet, dwarfing all other entrants, combined. IBM manages to charge a
pretty penny for websphere deployments, despite relying on a significant
amount of OSS.

Even Microsoft itself relies on OSS software, although it doesn't like
to talk much about it. Akamai, a service which Microsoft uses to help
ensure site availability of the various microsoft.com sites, runs on
Linux, with apache. The could easily have run *BSD of course. But it's
unlikely that they could maintain a decent margin, if they were paying
licence fees to Microsoft for each machine.

My biggest gripe here would be why the manufactureres if your
S3/ProSavage chipset board didn't have a Linux driver in the first
place. Pity the open source community is indirectly doing the work
for this company and not getting paid for it, its the S3 manufacturer
who is creaming it in here- the good will of the open source community
will save them a lot of money and hike their profits.

Agreed, they are making a big mistake. But I for one don't care if they
write a closed source driver, I would be more satisfied with them
releasing the info needed to write an OSS driver.

I can't afford to rely for support, on a company that might go under, or
drop the product.

I am happy to pay for quality, I am not happy to pay for schlock. Most
software (closed or open source) is schlock. But the schlock in the OSS
world, tends to either improve, (rapidly) or die, and get ignored.


Followups set to cola

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[John]

Chris,

I don't work for Microsoft, none of the MVP's do, but I do use a lot of MS
software as it usually suits the purpose for which I use it and its
typically conventient....still OE isn't the best newsreader, and its
signature editor sucks big time.

Just out of interest, what do you mean by top poster?

Regards

John

 

[ToddT]

still waiting. he must be carefully constructing his rebuttal.

 

[Tom B.]

Correct your top posting, while you're at it, you moron.

Note to John and readers of microsoft.public.dotnet.general: we're not
all so hasty with the insults.

I guess it could be something to do with the fact that a large number
of trolls post here (in comp.os.linux.advocacy).

 

[Peter =?ISO-8859-15?Q?K=F6hlmann?=]

Chris,

I don't work for Microsoft, none of the MVP's do, but I do use a lot of MS
software as it usually suits the purpose for which I use it and its
typically conventient....still OE isn't the best newsreader, and its
signature editor sucks big time.

Just out of interest, what do you mean by top poster?

Regards

John

Exactly what you are doing, posting on top of the preceding message.
In general only inconsiderate imbeciles using MS garbage software top-post

 

[John]

Speaking for myself, I have spent quite a tidy sum personaly, on Linux

distros, and software I use with Linux. More in fact, than I have spent
on Microsoft equivilents. But then, I am happy to pay for software that
works.

Me too ........... although I must admit I personally buy very little
software as I rarely find its worth the money - regardless of where it comes
from.

as is so often the case, you are making the common mistake of focusing
on the gratis part of "free" rather than the libre. It's a common one
among Microsoft users, (not that they are the only ones)

touche ....

When OSS is gratis, it is as a side effect of libre. Nothing more,
nothing less.

To claim that "nothing is free because you have to do (whatever) to use
it" is foolish. But ok, I'll play that game.

For me, the cost of using Microsoft software, is too high, not just in
purchase price (which ranges from negligible to OMFG!) but in the effort
I have to go to, to get it to actually do what I want.

Now you see I'm entirely the opposite end of the tree, as my support costs
are almost nil for my MS kit, it would take me longer to support the linux
box I have, and thus cost me more in support time and setup cost. The boxes
I have rearely get taken down. But I'm more familiar with the MS kit I
have than the Linux kit I have.

I make no claims to "like" Microsoft software, Excel was ok, Word is...
usable, FSVO, and Outlook/Outlook Express? (shudder). None of them are
worth their initial purchase cost to me, let alone the cost in
productivity drop. (Please don't mention OWA, I just ate)

I do like Open Office and I've even recommended it as a replacement for MS
office, now that I can see as being a string contender for replacing my
installation of Word etc. Until my office installation breaks though it'll
sit where it is.......

My (personal) Linux support costs have been limited to a couple of boxed
SuSE sets, and some time perusing newsgroups or google. Funny thing
though, I have to peruse newsgroups and google to keep what little
Microsoft software I occasionaly use, alive and (mostly) functioning
also. It's a wash between the two. Which is kind of funny, considering
how much more I use Linux and it's apps, than MS-Windows, and it's apps.

- From a business perspective, it isn't even close, count in the cost of
"licence manangement" and all you can see from using Microsoft software
instead of an OSS equivilent, is a sea of red ink.

In the few instances where there is currently no Linux/OSS equivilent,
I'd consider using a Microsoft solution, but those are few and far
between for me, and getting fewer. Fortunately.



Be advised that the "person" you are replying to, is simple a troll,
hence your cross post here, in Comp.os.linux.advocacy.

If you want to believe that most, or all of the users of OSS/Linux are
like Bailo, be my guest, perhaps you also believe that all southerners
are named billy-bob.

I had noticed him being flamed on occasion, but I did think his initial
thread was interesting. As you can see from my reply to it, I felt it
needed elaborating on in its thinking but an interesting potential
discussion all the same. I dont expect "all" southerners are really named
Billy Bob - might be a few though?

IBM happily sends me a DVD or CDs full of the whole websphere suite.
Why? because they hope I will use it, and recommend it to others. Funny
thing is, last I checked, websphere used Apache for it's httpd/s dæmon.
Apache, if you may recall, is the single most popular webserver on the
planet, dwarfing all other entrants, combined. IBM manages to charge a
pretty penny for websphere deployments, despite relying on a significant
amount of OSS.

Yup.....they are in the business of selling consultancy and tin. They will
happily sell you Microsoft consultancy and HP tin if it would make them a
profit I would expect.

Even Microsoft itself relies on OSS software, although it doesn't like
to talk much about it. Akamai, a service which Microsoft uses to help
ensure site availability of the various microsoft.com sites, runs on
Linux, with apache. The could easily have run *BSD of course. But it's
unlikely that they could maintain a decent margin, if they were paying
licence fees to Microsoft for each machine.

Yep- they keep that one as hidden as they can dont they......

Agreed, they are making a big mistake. But I for one don't care if they
write a closed source driver, I would be more satisfied with them
releasing the info needed to write an OSS driver.

I can't afford to rely for support, on a company that might go under, or
drop the product.

I am happy to pay for quality, I am not happy to pay for schlock. Most
software (closed or open source) is schlock. But the schlock in the OSS
world, tends to either improve, (rapidly) or die, and get ignored.

I agree with you, I think for me the issue is who is responsible for
improving it. As in the intial post, its a group of geeks in their spare
time, typically with responsibility to know one - and no real deadline for a
fix. Now thats not something I prefer to rely upon - no one to litigate
against when it really goes pear shaped and costs you a mint. But then I
would only choose products with core support if I could.

Followups set to cola

<huge sig, and badly quoted message, snipped.>

Mine too

 

[Jim Richardson]

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Me too ........... although I must admit I personally buy very little
software as I rarely find its worth the money - regardless of where it
comes from.

Too much of it is worth less than they want you to pay for it, that's
true.

Now you see I'm entirely the opposite end of the tree, as my support
costs are almost nil for my MS kit, it would take me longer to support
the linux box I have, and thus cost me more in support time and setup
cost. The boxes I have rearely get taken down. But I'm more familiar
with the MS kit I have than the Linux kit I have.

There's certainly an amount of "investment" in the software you use. Be
it OSS, CSS or whatever. It was quite a change for me when I switched to
Linux at first, not difficult, and it was definately worth it, but there
was a "hump" to get over at first. As there is anytime you change from
old, to new.

I do like Open Office and I've even recommended it as a replacement
for MS office, now that I can see as being a string contender for
replacing my installation of Word etc. Until my office installation
breaks though it'll sit where it is.......

I have not yet found something that OO can't handle, compared to
MS-Office, but I don't consider myself a "power" user of either suite. I
tend to use spreadsheets, python, and editors, not office suites, and
rarely, word processors.

Yup.....they are in the business of selling consultancy and tin. They
will happily sell you Microsoft consultancy and HP tin if it would
make them a profit I would expect.

Of course, which simply drives home the point, that there's lots of
money to be made with OSS.

Yep- they keep that one as hidden as they can dont they......

It's not the only area, they also sell OSS, something else they don't
like to talk much about, especially after their "GPL is
unamerican/cancer/viral/etc" spewings.

I agree with you, I think for me the issue is who is responsible for
improving it. As in the intial post, its a group of geeks in their
spare time, typically with responsibility to know one - and no real
deadline for a fix. Now thats not something I prefer to rely upon -
no one to litigate against when it really goes pear shaped and costs
you a mint. But then I would only choose products with core support
if I could.

You have that option with OSS, you can hire the geeks directly... When I
have a problem with OSS appfoo, I can contact the author, or the
maintainer, directly, and I get a responce from them, usually very
quickly. With CSS, I contact "customer service" well, if you grew up in
the country, you know that "service" is what a stallion, does to a
mare...

Is the support from the OSS writers perfect? of course not, but it's
been far more useful and functional for me, than the average CSS
products I've needed support for. Some CSS products have great support,
most, don't. The software is so often (for me) a side aspect of the
product, and it shows.

I am intrigued by your "geeks in their spare time" comment. Are you
making some sort of claim against the abilities of said geeks? I am
unclear on your meaning. Is it that you prefer people who only think
about the work from 8-5 M-F and only do it because they have to for a
paycheck? I personally prefer to deal with people who are writing
something to be used, than writing something to be sold. That after all,
is the real defining difference between most OSS, and most CSS, CSS, is
written to be sold, OSS, is written to be used. It shows.

Mine too

You chopped the followups set to cola, and readded the ms newsgroup, I
have complied with your desire to cross post this between those groups.


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[John]

I am intrigued by your "geeks in their spare time" comment. Are you
making some sort of claim against the abilities of said geeks? I am
unclear on your meaning. Is it that you prefer people who only think
about the work from 8-5 M-F and only do it because they have to for a
paycheck? I personally prefer to deal with people who are writing
something to be used, than writing something to be sold. That after all,
is the real defining difference between most OSS, and most CSS, CSS, is
written to be sold, OSS, is written to be used. It shows.

Merely terminology, passing comment to what Balio suggested in that he
eventually found a bunch of people meeting his needs, perhaps geek was too
strong a word. That said, even I claim to be a geek in my spare time, as I
dont get paid for most of what I do in my spare time its all just about
sharing knowledge and helping others out - knowledge to be used rather than
sold.....in a way my contribution I guess, as small as it might be. What
often worries me about the OSS movement is just that - sometimes the most
critical thing you might be looking for might only be supported by someone
like me - doing his/her bit when they can.....its not a bad thing, its very
noble - but not always what you want to see when you need the actual thing
they might be working on.

You chopped the followups set to cola, and readded the ms newsgroup, I
have complied with your desire to cross post this between those groups.

Thanks Jim, I tend to lurk in the MS newsgroups usually - hence my
involvement in the initial post as it was cross posted in.

 

[Jim Richardson]

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Merely terminology, passing comment to what Balio suggested in that he
eventually found a bunch of people meeting his needs, perhaps geek was too
strong a word. That said, even I claim to be a geek in my spare time, as I
dont get paid for most of what I do in my spare time its all just about
sharing knowledge and helping others out - knowledge to be used rather than
sold.....in a way my contribution I guess, as small as it might be. What
often worries me about the OSS movement is just that - sometimes the most
critical thing you might be looking for might only be supported by someone
like me - doing his/her bit when they can.....its not a bad thing, its very
noble - but not always what you want to see when you need the actual thing
they might be working on.

I guess it's a perspective thing. I like having the source, even if the
geek in question blows me off, flees to the south of france, or
foreswears computers and takes holy orders, I have alternatives. I can
do it myself, pay someone else to do it, or wander around asking for
help. I have no such option with CSS. I am bound to the corporation in

Thanks Jim, I tend to lurk in the MS newsgroups usually - hence my
involvement in the initial post as it was cross posted in.

Fair enough, just wanted to be sure, as usually, cross posting between
someplace like COLA and some less, er, energetic newsgroups is frowned
upon by the readers of such a newsgroup.


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[Net Resident]

(top posting corrected)


Well, perhaps I was too hasty. If you do indeed work for M$, maybe
you're just expected to use their crappy software, and to top post,
despite the fact it makes you look like an idiot.

Heck, maybe Billy G himself is a top poster. That would explain a
lot...

LOL

 

[Net Resident]

Chris,

I don't work for Microsoft, none of the MVP's do, but I do use a lot
of MS software as it usually suits the purpose for which I use it and
its typically conventient....still OE isn't the best newsreader, and
its signature editor sucks big time.

Just out of interest, what do you mean by top poster?

Regards

John

OK, going on the premise that you truely are ignorant (no insult) of
Usenet practice and etiquette; it is bad form and practice to top post.
If you do a simple Google search you will turn up a number of sites that
elaborate on the issue.

Sometimes when people are first introduced to this issue they reject it
as a non issue (because of a failure to understand the weight of the
issue) or become indignant. I can tell you that it truely is in *your*
best interests to observe this practice if you want to be taken
seriously by the long time Usenet posting community.

As mentioned in another post, I suggest you get OE Quote Fix
http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/. It makes OE perform
better and the person using OE look better.

(I made an exception and left the cross posting in...)

NR

 

[spike1]

Chris,

I don't work for Microsoft, none of the MVP's do, but I do use a lot of MS
software as it usually suits the purpose for which I use it and its
typically conventient....still OE isn't the best newsreader, and its
signature editor sucks big time.

Just out of interest, what do you mean by top poster?

Top post. What you did just then...

Bottom post... What I'm doing now.

This is a typical toppost thread

Yes, I think so

nice day, isn't it?