Linux long term survivability, was Re: Linux's approaching Achilles' heal
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From: Rod Pemberton on 17 Nov 2007 03:51 "Dan Espen" <daneNO(a)MORE.mk.SPAMtelcordia.com> wrote in message news:ic8x4xa708.fsf(a)mk.telcordia.com... > nbaker2328(a)charter.net writes: > Sigh, had to go to Google to read the other six posts that didn't propagate well... > > Like a run-away freighttrain, the Open Source Community's "standard > > practice" (_faux peer review_ plus shoddy coding standards and casual > > dismissal of bug reports pointing out critical flaws http://pulseaudio.org/ticket/158 > > ) is exactly the mind-set that will bring Linux tumbling down the hill > > into the valley of the forgotten, non-important OSs that "could have > > been". > > Although I strongly believe there are reasons to support the claim that Linux is or will be "tumbling down the hill into the valley of the forgotten, non-important OSs that 'could have been'," I don't believe the issue is the mindset of Linux coders, their standards, their failure to fix bugs, or even other issues such as reversion of prior bug fixes or filesystem problems... The real primary issue is money. Can Linux survive long term against a company with billions in financial and physical capital, licensed and proprietary software patents, driven programmers who are _paid_ to program for a living, and an endless supply of software drivers written for their OS's API by hardware manufacturers. Secondary issues include software development time for new PC hardware or circuitry and the far above average intellect of "their" large paid programmer base versus the average IQ, skill, and time constraints of many unpaid "Joe Six-pack" 's. I see Linux running into a wall due to the rapid continuous changes and advances in PC circuitry unless a huge infusion of cash is found. A for profit Linux OS corporation needs to be formed. Getting Apple to dump OS X for paid copies of Linux would be a good start. If Linux can't compete with OS X for profit, I really don't see a long term PC future. Perhaps one might as well dump Linux now and embrace OS X... Personally, I also think some long term design changes are needed. I'd recommend a adopting a syscall only based version of Linux as it's primary form, like UML. If only a syscall interface had to be written to bootstrap Linux, cross-compiling to other platforms would be faster and easier. Unfortunately, even with a UML version available, Linux's syscall interface has bloated from 40 implemented functions in v0.01 to 290 in v2.16.17. The number of syscalls needs to be drastically reduced or the syscall interface needs to be built entirely on a small set of functions. I'd also recommend using some other highly popular interface that allows development of almost OS applications, say the SDL library, instead of the current syscall interface. If SDL, this would allow numerous OS-like applications such as DOSBox, Scummvm, etc. to run as the "higher level" OS. Writing the low level OS portions are a pain. Nobody really wants to do that. It's already been done fairly well for Linux. Much of the low level parts of Linux have been extracted from Linux for the LinuxBIOS' FILO project anyway. Allowing different top-ends to the OS would encourage much more upper level OS development and adaptation. This adaptability might be a good long term advantage against a corporate competitor that has become stagnant. Rod Pemberton |