Linux long term survivability, was Re: Linux's approaching Achilles'heal
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From: Bruce Coryell on 17 Nov 2007 16:34 Rod Pemberton wrote: > "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 > Actually there are "for profit OS Linux corporations" around - such as Red Hat, Novell (Suse), Caldera, and others of their ilk... OS/2 is still around, though not owned or supported by IBM anymore: http://www.ecomstation.com/ OS/2 was one sharp operating system about 15 years ago, just never caught on. But if this company is smart, they could really position this as a viable alternative to Microsoft. Another OS that could be a good alternative, if they positioned it a little better, would be Sun's Solaris operating system. I tried an evaluation copy and my system really hummed with it, even at 800 MHz. Just that the networking support with Linux and MS was a little rough.
From: Joe on 18 Nov 2007 12:06 Rod Pemberton wrote: > "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. This has been the situation for the last twenty years. Linux and GNU were born into and grew up in exactly this environment. If they die now, it won't be for this reason. Microsoft certainly has good people working for it. But they are very closely constrained by the requirement to keep re-selling what is broadly the same software, and even more so by the importance of maintaining the near-monopoly. What innovation does occur is almost entirely aimed at keeping and improving the incompatibility between Windows and the rest of the IT world, and to some extent even with earlier Microsoft software. GNU-Linux has no need or use for planned obsolescence. One particularly crippling constraint is that much-loved marketing word 'integration'. This means linking together relatively unrelated programs so tightly that connection with non-Microsoft software is difficult or impossible. This is the exact opposite of what is probably the single strongest programming imperative, to isolate sub-programs as much as possible and to use only well-defined interfaces between them. A simple example: the Windows Small Business Server contains a POP3 downloader which drops mail straight into Exchange mailboxes, because it can, and because the suits can then use the 'i' word. The competitive POP3 download products all deliver to localhost:25 by SMTP, keeping the interface clean and simple. The result is that the competitors can utilise a number of Exchange features which the built-in POP3 connector bypasses. While Microsoft is not a company to be underestimated, it should not be overestimated either.
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