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- Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
- Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!umn.edu!noc.msc.net!news.stolaf.edu!lars.acc-admin.stolaf.edu!johnsonm
- From: johnsonm@lars.acc-admin.stolaf.edu (Michael K. Johnson)
- Subject: Re: MONEY + Linux
- In-Reply-To: goer@kimbark.uchicago.edu's message of Thu, 17 Dec 1992 03:39:17 GMT
- Message-ID: <1992Dec17.203136.18995@news.stolaf.edu>
- Sender: news@news.stolaf.edu
- Organization: St. Olaf College; Northfield, MN USA
- References: <1992Dec17.033917.2963@midway.uchicago.edu>
- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 20:31:36 GMT
- Lines: 91
-
-
- In article <1992Dec17.033917.2963@midway.uchicago.edu> goer@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes:
-
- Can Linux go on forever without some commercial support? I mean,
-
- No. Nor would it go on forever /with/ commercial support. Linux is
- not immortal. But I imagine that was not what you meant by that
- question... Many of us who work on linux do so, not with any thought
- of remuneration, but because it is interesting and rewarding in and of
- itself. I did not write the improved printer driver, for instance,
- because someone paid me for the many hours I spent, but because I
- learned from it. And now a few people are having problems with it,
- and I will put as much effort as necessary in to resolving their
- problems. I have seen this attitude with most people writing for
- Linux. It is precisely /not/ commercial -- It is better.
-
- In case you think that this is silly ideological muttering, consider
- this: For many months, people have been telling the newsgroup and the
- mailing list /why/ they dumped their commercial OS's. If you have
- read those posts, you will notice one /very common/ reponse: BETTER
- SUPPORT. This is coming from people have have been using different
- flavors of commercial OS's for years, as well as relative newcomers.
-
- If you /really/ want to pay for commercial support, it is my
- understanding (may be flawed, if it is /someone/ please correct me)
- that cygnus support is considering supporting or does support. I know
- that there are other people who also offer commercial support for
- linux, and it is certainly better than the "service plans" you can buy
- from commercial vendors, in many respects. One is that the person
- providing the support can actually do something about bugs...
-
- it's hard to see anything as useful that's maintained by folks that
- aren't doing it for a living - at least the size of a 386 UNIX
- implementation. Is there some way that a useful remuneration path
- can be arranged. E.g. could universities be site-licensed, thereby
- gaining the right to have attention paid to their bugs and config-
- uration problems, and to receive regular updates?
-
- This is simply not needed. It might seem like it might be needed to
- someone who does not understand the ethic under which Linux is being
- developed, but "The proof of the pudding is in the eating", and the
- eating has proven the pudding well. Empirically, look at what has
- happened. A large group of people has grown up to support each other
- (and flame each other from time to time ;-) and in one year of
- widespread use, Linux has become one of the premium OS's to put on
- your 386. Compare that with, say, coherent, which has existed for,
- oh, maybe 6 years now? Something like that... It has been sold and
- supported commercially, but comes from the same cloning background as
- Linux. Which one works better? You be the judge.
-
- This might seem to come out of the blue to people on this list, but
- many, many people won't touch Linux because they don't see it as
- "going anywhere" except into an endless chain of mixed expert and
- amateurish accretions that can't possibly be maintained properly.
-
- I don't feel a need to cater to people who are stubbernly unwilling to
- challenge their own beliefs about what software can be "going
- anywhere". If people won't beleive that free software can survive,
- why do we need to cater to thier commercial delusions? Let them eat
- cake... ;-)
-
- As far as proper maintainence: Linus has been better maintained than
- most commercial source code I have seen. As my mother always says,
- "Actions speak louder than words." It is very easy to be skeptical
- about Linux being maintained, in theory, but when you look at what
- really happens, it does work. If people will rail against facts, I
- have no psycological need to convert them -- they will likely just
- poison the air in this newsgroup.
-
- I have responded in c.o.l instead of by mail, because I feel that this
- comes up often enough to point out the problems with this argument...
-
- One other thing, tangentially related to this posting:
-
- I have seen a distressing number of people who assume that the purpose
- of Linux is to take over the world. If people read Linus's postins on
- the subject, and those of the other kernel hackers who have
- contributed, they will find that this is simply not the purpose of
- Linux. This purpose is presumed by others, seemingly automatically
- assumed from the mere existence of a *nix clone.
-
- LINUX WILL NEVER DOMINATE THE PC MARKET. This is a statement which is
- almost assuredly true, despite Linux's superiority to things like DOS.
- Does it bother me? No. Why should we act like the 13th century
- crusaders? Let's be civilized. For those who wish to escape DOS, and
- escape has been provideed. for those that don't, don't drag them into
- our party unwilling: it only sullies the air.
-
- Hope this is useful to some, at least...
-
- michaelkjohnson
-