A story from cmswire.com claims:
For a long time now, open source has been gradually expanding into more and more segments of the computing industry. In 2014 though, that gradual trickle became a veritable flood, and software development fundamentally shifted toward an open source model. For the infrastructure software used for scale-out computing, it’s virtually impossible to find examples that are not open source.
Clearly, open source is here to stay. Even if you believe you’re one of those rare open-source-free enterprises, you might want to reevaluate your situation, because chances are that you're using open source software and just don’t know it.
CMSWire has an article outlining key strategies for managing open source adoption in your enterprise.
Additional link: https://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/158-jim-zemlin/799252-2014-the-open-source-tipping-point
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @02:37PM
If open source is now on top we should expect to see various businesses trying to pervert the definition and otherwise corrupt it for their own profit and the community's loss.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by quixote on Friday December 19 2014, @02:53PM
You mean like Android? Build your whole business on other people's open source work. Create a proprietary layer with the "Ooh! Shiny!" stuff, and take a year or so to get around to opening the source you can't avoid opening because of GPL. By then enough people are after the next new-shiny and nobody cares anymore. Oh, and don't contribute back much of anything to the kernel until people begin noticing and the publicity starts getting bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @03:01PM
Yep. That's the game plan.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @02:57PM
I can not believe I am doing this...
You mean like systemd?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @03:10PM
In the same way that businesses emulated environmentalism with green branding - they have emulated technologists with "open" branding.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @03:42PM
You're onto something there but too late: open source already is the perversion of free software.
https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html [gnu.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @06:44PM
MSFT plays little tricks like announcing that they are "opening" *parts* of dotNET like it's some big deal--when those are the parts that the Mono project had already reverse-engineered already.
...and MSFT doesn't do anything without applying for a patent, so be sure to find/read the files that come with your "open" code.
PATENTS.TXT [google.com]
MSFT does NOT do Free Software.
Being able to -look- at the code and not having a permanent right to use/modify/redistribute it is just another of Redmond's word games.
It's the reason they choose the "permissive" licenses they do; they can always fork it and close it again when it's convenient for their business model.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
Larry Cafiero (Larry the Software Guy) recently put a great title on a column:
GPL or GTFO [fossforce.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Friday December 19 2014, @02:46PM
Is this one of the signs of the first coming? ;-|
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @03:06PM
Um, no. Microsoft and Apple own what's left of the desktop. Nobody outside of geeksville takes Ubuntu (or the flavor of the week new-new desktop distro) seriously.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hoochiecoochieman on Friday December 19 2014, @03:57PM
Wrong. I've seen Ubuntu being installed and used in schools because they don't want to mess with all the licensing trouble. And my country is one of the worse in terms of Microsoft brainwash!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @06:54PM
My understanding of the first policy adopted there was that if the software on already-deployed hardware reached EoL, TPTB won't pay for more EULAware for that system; use FOSS or pay for EULAs out of your own local school's (extremely limited) funds.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Friday December 19 2014, @02:57PM
Because if you mean being given code you won't be able to use [arstechnica.com] like TiVo? Sure enjoy that "open" code, for what little good it'll do ya. If you mean the "four freedoms" part of FOSS? Then you lost, give it up Chuck. We now live in a world where Google can turn a bog standard X86 laptop, a design that was formerly so well known and so open you literally had dozens of operating systems you could choose from, and make it as locked down as any cell phone. The same X86 you could once install anything from BSD to Windows XP is converted into a locked down thin client so proprietary with Chromebooks that only a handful of distros with hacked bootloaders will even run on the thing!
All that has happened is that big corps like Google have found you can have your cake and eat it too, they can pay lip service to being FOSS while making devices that make your average cellphone with its blackbox drivers and one off hardware look as open as the Rpi. I find it ironic as hell everyone feared MSFT when UEFI was announced and it turned out it was Google that would use it to lock out user choice but sadly we have seen the future and its locked down hardware with everything soldered to the boards, no access to drivers,and lip service paid to being "open" while in reality you'll have to jump through flaming hoops to get an OS not approved by the OEM to run and will have to give up functionality to get it to go...but you have the source, you just can't actually USE it for anything since the hardware won't run it without approval...yippee.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @03:36PM
No one that matters cares about FOSS-washing. All the big tech companies market their products with the sophistication as someone feeding treats to a dog. And why shouldn't they? The average consumer has no bloody clue what "open source" means, and if you explain it to them, they don't give a rip. I know, because I've been in the FOSS fight for 20+ years, and I've had this exact conversation dozens of times (easily hundreds if you count individuals at presentations I've given). Non-programmers want to know what a product costs (in the narrowest definition -- short term cash flow) and what it will do for them. Period. Longer-term and broader issues that FOSS advocates talk about so much literally don't register at all with the vast majority of consumers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Friday December 19 2014, @04:48PM
Many large companies, and pretty much *all* large scale computing oriented companies have realized the long term benefits. Consumers won't until they realize they're locked into proprietary formats that cost them a lot of money, and really, even them most won't care. Despite the wealth in 'civilized' countries these days, most people don't seem capable of thinking further ahead than their next paycheque.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @07:08PM
Brad Rodriquez has an excellent example of how having the source code can turn a wait-for-some-damned-corporation-to-get-around-to-it situation into a DIY fix.
Existing device driver for my new hardware doesn't support my desired resolution. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [goodbyemicrosoft.net]
...and, of course, said damned corporation may decide to NEVER bother.
See Hairyfeet's continual bullshit drum-beating about broken closed-source drivers.
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Friday December 19 2014, @04:29PM
Can you expand on that? The only laptops I know of Google putting out are the higher end ChromeBooks, and they're quite capable of running Linux, including the non x86 ones. As far as I'm aware they're not locked down in *any* way to Chrome OS. As a matter of fact, they're much more open than Windows with 'secure boot'. As for hardware drivers, they're not from Google, they're generally sourced by the phone manufacturers, and many are actually opening up there as well.
(Score: 1) by Hairyfeet on Friday December 19 2014, @08:53PM
Sure go pick up one of those $299 or less Chromebooks running X86 and try to run Windows or BSD on them, I'll wait....can't do it can you? in fact the ONLY thing you can run on them is a handful of "Bob's Distro" style Linux with a hacked bootloader, try running any normal distro? Nope not gonna happen. Oh and just FYI but this is nothing like Windows and Secureboot because you can turn off secureboot in all of 5 seconds, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to make these formerly bog standard X86 laptops run any OS you want, no way at all.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Friday December 19 2014, @09:24PM
Sure there is, all it takes is the interest. They're not locked down in any way, at least that I'm aware of. Just because nobody has done it doesn't mean it's locked.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Saturday December 20 2014, @06:43AM
Then why can it not run those other OSes OOTB, hhhmmm? I can take a Windows laptop with UEFI and Secureboot, turn off Secureboot, and be running anything from BSD to haiku in the amount of time it takes to install the OS...can YOU sir do this with a Chromebook? The ANSWER IS NO, which makes the Chromebook a restricted platform, simple as that.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Saturday December 20 2014, @02:55PM
Faster boot, lower cost, cheaper hardware? I assume you think raspberry Pis are locked as well?
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday December 20 2014, @09:45PM
What you are doing is known as "making a strawman" which means its quite easily for me to take a match to it, just watch...The Rpi is made of a single broadcom SOC that has only a few OSes ported to it, X86 is 40+ years old and is backwards compatible which means everything from the 386 up should be trivial to run, the only restrictions on the Chromebook is CORPORATE MANDATED AND ARTIFICIAL while the Rpi has legitimate hardware limitations due to the choice of SOC used...WHOOSH! Wow look at him go, got any marshmallows?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @10:01PM
I happen to have a chromebox [amazon.com] right here on my desk - it is a chromebook without a keyboard or monitor. I bought it because it is a fantastic Kodi (xbmc) box [kodi.wiki] but it runs Ubuntu and even vanilla debian just fine. [deconetworks.com]
But then, you knew that which is why you explicitly named windows and bsd. Their problems have nothing to do with google "locking out user choice" - there is no UEFI secureboot crap or anything else like that involved here, No active attempt to stymie them, just a decision to do the bare minimum for their own purposes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Saturday December 20 2014, @06:00AM
Uhhh you can't run anything but a handful of LINUX ONLY that have a HACKED BOOTLOADER...hmmm, isn't that EXACTLY what I said? yes it is, its exactly what I said!
What you are attempting is the classic free as in hypocrisy [tmrepository.com] because for something to be TRULY free? you are free to choose things OTHER than Linux! With those exact same bog standard X86 parts BEFORE Google got a hold of it you could do just that...can you do it after? If the answer is no then they have RESTRICTED YOUR FREEDOM, and you re no different than the apple user tweeting how nice this cage you are in looks.
Remember boys and girls freedom includes freedom to choose other than Linux and no matter how you spin it, no matter how many times you take up for Google, you cannot change the facts and the facts are that BEFORE it was tainted by Google the exact same laptop could run ANY OS from BSD to ReactOS to Haiku to yes even WinXP...can it do so after being Google'd? I rest my case, what you have is a glorified cellphone. remember kids you can run a hacked version of Android on that Android phone....but you CANNOT run Debian ARM, Ubuntu ARM, or anything other than an OS that has been Google'd...sorry, that is NOT freedom and neither is that Chromebook, some of you are just tweeting about how nice that cage is is all, no different than the appleites.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday December 25 2014, @01:47PM
Where were you when people made this argument against Windows? And now you're complaining that a proprietary operating system from one company doesn't work with proprietary hardware from another company but that open operating systems work with hacked bootloaders. That isn't good enough for you because running anything except your favorite line of operating systems is a perverse minority choice and should be discounted despite there being zero (or very close to zero) people running Windows on Chromebooks.
I laugh at you and I'm going to legally re-compile some part of my operating system while you wait for the second Tuesday of next month (or maybe the month after or maybe the month after that) for patches that may never arrive. If I get particularly bored, I'll port some code to unsupported hardware. Your favorite operating system may support 6,000 printers but it doesn't support one cheap laptop which is popular and widely available.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday December 26 2014, @08:55AM
Uhhhh..I was supporting MSFT being broken up? And lets see how many TMs you used shall we? You start off with linux hate is microsoft love [tmrepository.com] and a hint of you're just as fanatical [tmrepository.com], follow it with Use Distro X (with hacked bootloader [tmrepository.com], insinuate you just don't understand [tmrepository.com] and broadly hint at Google can do no wrong [tmrepository.com], with a little free as in hypocrisy [tmrepository.com] for good measure and end with a lovely strawman since you CANNOT RUN WINDOWS AND BSD AND HAIKU AND REACTOS and a bunch of others so its only a minority that would actually want those which means? The FOSSie classic you don't need that [tmrepository.com] for a finisher. Ahhh TMs, showing the drones dribble talking points for over a decade!
So wave your little Linux flag all you want, won't make black into white, straw into gold, or DRM into open. And no matter how you try to spin it the fact of the matter is you can go buy any Best Buy Special Windows laptop with Secureboot and UEFI and be booting into anything from BSD to ReactOS in the time it takes to install the OS...is that the case with Chromebooks? NO IT IS NOT, therefore Chromebooks RE a restricted platform, END OF STORY.
BTW doesn't it bother you, even just a little, that you and the other FOSSies have been dribbling the same bullshit for sooooo damned long they can be broken down into simple memes? In fact I bet my last dollar if you dare respond to this the response will be NOTHING BUT MEMES since a pissed off FOSSIe ends up just spewing talking points, from best OS evar [tmrepository.com] to you hate freedom [tmrepository.com], from shift the blame to the user [tmrepository.com] to Windows is not ready for the desktop [tmrepository.com], its literally all memes all the way down, why? Because its been SSDD for 22 fucking years now, THAT is why? Linux will NEVER be stable because of assholes like Pottering and Torvalds "scratching itches" and ripping out critical subsystems, to assholes (which sadly your probably support for religious reasons) keeping a broken mess of a driver subsystem because if it were to work like every other OS on the planet then you might gasp! Have invoked the stable kernel ABI [tmrepository.com] meme which to this day the ONLY argument against having common fucking sense like every other OS is a RELIGIOUS argument by a developer!
So go wank off to a Bash script, cheer your Google gilded cage, meanwhile Chromebooks are filling up Craigslists for pennies on the dollar because nobody wants an overhyped thinclient or Linux which is now literally below "other" [hitslink.com] and as you can see has been dropping like a fucking stone, with "other" now fricking double the userbase that Linux has ROFL. But I will still rail against turning X86 into another cellphone, whether it can run a hacked version of your last place OS or not!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Monday December 29 2014, @06:00PM
You've definitely got that backwards because you assume my dislike of Microsoft implies a like of Linux. I'm amused that you're so riled about a x86 laptop which doesn't run Microsoft Windows.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday December 20 2014, @07:28PM
Full disclosure, I don't actually own a Chromebook. However, from the documentation, it looks pretty easy to put Chromebooks into developer mode where they will run Linux (and possibly *BSD) just fine.
In general though, I get your point. There seems to be a big effort to move away from PC like devices to much more proprietary and undocumented systems. On the positive side, there are also a lot of inexpensive systems coming out that are designed explicitly to be hackable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 20 2014, @07:56PM
inexpensive systems coming out that are designed explicitly to be hackable
...and some that are more general purpose and more costly.
Purism Librem 15 is specified with 100 percent open hardware and open firmware.
Last I heard, it has $82,000 of its $250,000 Kickstarter goal.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday December 20 2014, @09:38PM
THANK YOU, now please ignore the rest as reading the FOSSie responses done pissed me off because unlike you they do NOT get it!
Jesus Tap Dancing Christ on a cracker why is it soooo fucking hard for a FOSSie to understand that "run everything = good" and "run only a highly limited subset = bad"...are they REALLY so God damned fanatical about their God that as long as ANYTHING that was "blessed" by their lord and savior [aniszczyk.org] will run its fucking wonderful?
Jesus Christ people, don't you see what you are losing? X86 has been the most open, most documented, most alterable arch in the history of the entire fricking planet, understand? NOTHING has ever been both as common and as open as X86! There are literally hundreds of millions of X86 units out there in all shapes and sizes you can run ANYTHING from BSD to Windows 3, new OSes, old OSes, ports, homebrews, X86 has more fully documented hardware than anything in computing history, and they are turning it into a glorified fucking cellphone...and you are OKAY with this as long as one of the handful of limited choices you have is something GNU?
This is why FOSSies fucking disgust me, they are just as big a hypocrite as any Appleite or softie but are even worse as they pretend that they are about "freedom" but when the rubber meets the road you find out its just more flag waving hypocrisy [tmrepository.com] only made worse by being wrapped up in 1984 doublespeak about "freedom". Yeah freedom to be like YOU...fucking FOSSies, the ass cancer of the planet.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quixote on Friday December 19 2014, @02:59PM
The heartbleed bug showed that. The entire Fortune 500 was vulnerable, the entire world uses SSL, and there were two (count 'em, two) full time developers when the thing broke loose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @05:18PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @07:34PM
My understanding of the situation is that there was a huge amount of legacy support in the project.
When the OpenSSL project started with the old code, the first thing they did was strip out the obsolete stuff.
This reminds me of MICROS~1's "big" "contribution" to the Linux kernel.
The 1st thing gregkh had to do was go in and rip out 65 percent of the code (that was simply
MICROS~1's usual bloated mess). [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [unixwiz.net]
Note also that M$ only made the "contribution" after they got caught violating GPL.
.
Now, look at the time it took the FOSS guys to release patches and compare that to the 6-month cycles so often associated with how long it takes M$ to put out a patch after they have been alerted to a flaw.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday December 20 2014, @02:03PM
the entire world uses SSL, and there were two (count 'em, two) full time developers when the thing broke loose.
"Two?! Two!!! Why am I paying for two full-time developers when I only needed one to do the fix?" - PHB.
"And a good one, who really eats, sleeps and breaths coding would probably do it for free on his own time because it's a cool thing for him to do."
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Friday December 19 2014, @03:35PM
It did?
I don't know, get a Nike Endorsement contract?
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Friday December 19 2014, @11:31PM
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Friday December 19 2014, @03:59PM
Is someone trying to kill open source through complacency?
Sorry kids, the game's not over yet!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by richtopia on Friday December 19 2014, @04:18PM
Get the cameras. We won because I say we won.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @05:25PM
Most servers are Linux, even M$ uses Linux servers because it works better.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday December 19 2014, @06:34PM
With Apple's iOS walled garden and Mac built on open source, Google's Linux-based Chromebook not allowing people to store data or run programs locally, corporations making billions off of open source platforms while not giving back enough to fund maintaining critical software components leading to bugs that threaten the foundations of the Internet, Google moving functionality from Android into the pay-to-play Google Play services, companies exploiting open source platforms to deliver content wrapped in DRM, Amazon creating an Android platform that puts browser traffic through a proxy so they can track it, Firefox 29, Gnome 3, Unity, systemd, and ... well, what have we won, exactly?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Friday December 19 2014, @09:09PM
those foolish enough to volunteer on FOSS projects have won the right to work for free for the enrichment of the corps, that's all that has been "won". As another pointed out SSL had a grand total of TWO lousy full time devs working on it, even though it was being incorporated into product after product by all these billion dollar corps. Part of me wants to laugh and say "told you so" as I said for years that following FOSS the RMS way of tying free as in beer to free as in freedom would end up with programmer's labor being worth less than a bucket of piss, and part of me is just sad as Google has masterfully pulled a EEE with Android so now you have your mobile just as proprietary and corp controlled as any desktop, it simply plays lip service to FOSS.
I really hope they gave a new car to the guy that came up with that "don't be evil" bullshit as to this day there are many that will ignore all the obvious asshattery because of that BS slogan. I mean if MSFT released an X86 laptop that was so locked down you'd need to put it into "dev mode" and run a hacked bootloader that only a couple of "Bob's distro" style OSes could use while none of the mainstream OSes ran? Holy shit there would be calls for antitrust and breaking up the company. But since its Google and they pay a little lip service to FOSS and "don't be evil"? Nerds will zerg rush to defend that douchebaggery!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 20 2014, @12:29AM
Microsoft has a monopoly in that space and hence is subject to antitrust law. Google, at least in the realm of desktop computer systems, does not. Nothing about the Chromebooks I've read says it's got a locked bootloader, and just because only the people behind Bob's Distro have bothered to make the effort doesn't mean it's outright impossible. It's no gaming console where they'll DMCA your ass if you even try and they'll make every effort to stop you. Free and Open Source software has never been about free lunches. It's always been about Some Assembly Required. If you're not willing to put in that effort then you have no place in that community. You are free to mooch off their labours if you like but if you want something special done, either do it yourself or pay someone who has the skills to do it. FOSS empowers you to do that. That's the way it's always been.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by darkfeline on Friday December 19 2014, @11:39PM
I used to be a part of the Open Source crowd, but now I feel like Free Software is the way to go. A lot has been written on the subject, more eloquently than I could manage, but basically, Open Source is just Free Software without contribution. Free Software compels contributions as "payment" to the common good, while Open Source rips that out for the benefit of anti-social corporations as the curtains rise for The Tragedy of the Commons.
In other words, Open Source is just corporations taking advantage of and exploiting public resources, like greenwashing for publicity and funding.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday December 20 2014, @09:25AM
"Mission Accomplished"