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On January 14th, Windows 7 reached its official "end-of-life," bringing an end to its updates as well as its ten years of poisoning education, invading privacy, and threatening user security. The end of Windows 7's lifecycle gives Microsoft the perfect opportunity to undo past wrongs, and to upcycle it instead.
We call on them to release it as free software, and give it to the community to study and improve. As there is already a precedent for releasing some core Windows utilities as free software, Microsoft has nothing to lose by liberating a version of their operating system that they themselves say has "reached its end."
Also at The Register and Wccftech.
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Free Software Foundation Demands That Microsoft Release Windows 7 as Free Software
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Fascinating is a word I use for the unexpected.
-- Spock, "The Squire of Gothos", stardate 2124.5
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:38AM (68 children)
It still has far more value than, for example, gnu HURD. And it still is generating more in support revenue than most Linux distros.
There are plenty of people who still want Windows 7 - far more than all Linux distros combined. So why should they give away an OS that people would install beside or instead of their current OS?
If Microsoft were to offer OEMs the chance to continue offering Win7 with support or Win10, we all know that Win10 would disappear.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:54AM (17 children)
"End of life doesn't mean useless."
When you're talking Windows, what with telemetry, forced upgrades at the worst possible moment, 'cozying up' with open source....etc etc etc.....
Any Windows is, actually, pretty useless and REALLY, if people were smarter, COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY.
Good thing for Microsoft that there are still A LOT of stupid people around.
"far more than all Linux distros combined."
Gee.... could that be because of all the different ways they force computer dealers to keep Linux off their computers?
Could it be because of shit like SecureBoot that fecks with Linux installs (it used to be so easy to install Linux...now you have to feck with UEFI etc.)
We know you work for Microsoft and need to pay your bills, but stop shoving the crap around in here, okay?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:19AM (5 children)
People who only browse the web would not care, but most people have both other software that won't run under Linux, software that doesn't exist except for Microsoft and Apple, and peripherals that either don't work are are missing functions under Linux.
Linux has it's place, but not on desktops in business or the home or schools. I tried in the 90s to get people to switch. It was what I used at work even after I gave up getting others to switch mid-00s. Nobody wants Linux. Those who gave up on Windows are quite happy with Apple, and apples TCO is lower than Windows. They will never switch, even if you offered them a free Linux computer. Or even a free Windows computer.
And they're right - if it meets their needs, why change for an OS that is lacking major chunks of the software ecosystem? People but computers to run software, not operating systems. They really just want the operating system to get out of their way.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:12AM
Which is why my district has spent seven figures on Chromebooks. It runs all the software we want, is easy to administrate, and when it stops working we can just replace it with the next $80 machine. In this Web/App based world, the actual OS matters less and less as basically anything will run the software you need.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:47AM
Higher support costs
Translation: not subsidised by malware merchants.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:21PM
People don't know the difference. I literally had a director tell me "we're already paying for MS Word licensing in our product" when our product was using Windows embedded OS and the only user facing app was our in-house developed GUI.
I'd bet more people can locate Laos on a globe than know anything about the distinction between an OS and an application.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:32PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @01:33AM
First hit for "tco windows vs osx" was this [ttps].
Apple is cheaper for businesses. One big factor is lowered time wasted on supporting users. Widnows doesn't "just work", at least not for long.
Now it's true you can buy a dirt-cheap Windows PC, but that's because the specs are shit in comparison to the cheapest Macs. When linus explained why he used a Mac, he gave the cost breakdown for his laptop, decently specced, compared with a Windows PC with the same specs. The Mac was slightly cheaper. Go figure.
And then there's Window's forced upgrade to Windows 10. When's the last time you heard of anyone losing data or being left with an unbootable machine because OSX updated despite all their attempts, including registry hacks, to prevent it?
And with Windows moving to a subscription-only model after Windows 10 goes EOL, you'll need to have an always-on internet connection and a current subscription or "your" computer becomes a brick.
A subscription for Windows, a subscription for Office, a few other subscriptions, it adds up.
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(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:30AM (3 children)
Correction: it's completely unnecessary for what you want to do with computers.
Unfortunately the past several years, many newer programs that depend on .NET refuse to function under Wine, and often there's no fully-functional alternative, either for Linux or without .NET.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:34AM (1 child)
Isn't .NET open source and the CLI compiles on Linux, or am I not recalling the situation correctly?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:48PM
name change was. Xamaran maybe?
Anyway they now own both the closed source and open source DotNet ecosystem. As a result they've slowly added questionably licensed libraries into mono since either late 2.x versions or 3.x, have started pushing the Visual Studio Lite dotnet version as the cross platform development studio instead of Mono, and started pushing nuget to download (prebuilt?) packages from the internet. It's all turned into a pretty nasty little clusterfuck with nant falling by the wayside as everything standardizes on msbuild.
I haven't paid attention to it in a while as I now consider all forms of DotNet toxic, but your mileage may vary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @08:07PM
unfortunately my ass. how about completely predictably? what kind of dumbass uses programs that depend on .net?
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday January 30 2020, @01:26PM (6 children)
I'll switch to Linux when they release a SolidWorks build. Because that's how I make my living.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:57PM
Email/phone the company and tell them that's what you want!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:33PM (2 children)
If you call that living.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:15PM (1 child)
All you seem to do is shitpost from a basement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:40PM
I don't have a basement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:07PM
Similar for me, when Libre/Open Office can deal with documents (technical reports) that have Matlab plots embedded. These plots have thousands of points on them and MS-Word deals with them just fine. Libre/Open might take 30 seconds to render the next page (or in the worst cases scramble the screen and lock up).
The docs come from my big customer so I'm stuck to open them...
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:45PM
For $3,995 a license I don't know why they wouldn't release it for every OS they possibly could.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:00AM (9 children)
Sad to see the troll mod being used for "disagree" more than usual.
The truth is Windows dominated the software market and most people aren't interested in learning another OS which wouldn't run half of their favorite programs.
I'm a linux/bsd fan myself, but I won't deny reality just cause I don't like it.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:34AM (7 children)
We can't even agree as to what Linux is any more, most distros come with software that hasn't changed much in a decade (except for games - make that two decades). The eagerly anticipated and much heralded unleashing of creativity in open source didn't happen. Everything is a bad copy of proprietary software. And some of the UIs are just SO fugly (gnome, I'm looking at you! Wish nobody had to).
The trend is changing slowly. People are realizing that free software isn't financially viable for developers unless it's incorporated into the surveillance economy, which is ethically compromising.
Now if the FSF actually gave a shit about improving the lives of developers, they would work to come up with solutions to the financial model. But no, they don't really care about the future of software, not beyond getting donations to keep their own paycheque coming. Want proof? What new models have they come up with? The "well, set up a foundation for your project and beg for donations " doesn't count. Even the SPCA has prior art. And the Heart Foundation, the Diabetes Foundation, the NRA ...
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(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday January 31 2020, @06:37AM (6 children)
Isn't that what heretics such as Roberto Mangabiera Unger [youtube.com] are about? Much more free software gets developed in Europe (although that's changing as Europe becomes more neoliberal), and large successful US-based free software projects such as VistA (ie. the hospital management software used by the VA) is being discontinued in favour of proprietary software owned by certain political donors. VistA is a good example of how US free software projects come into being ie. free software allows workers to implement solutions without being as controlled by budgets. VistAs death could not be arranged financially, only politically... but utimately politics is for sale. Even insurgent health employees won't be able to keep it alive. Free Software can't become mainstream in a neoliberal economy... but neoliberalism itself doesn't seem long-term-stable in itself, so perhaps things may change, and perhaps in the not so distant future.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @05:58PM (5 children)
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(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday February 02 2020, @10:08PM (4 children)
That's the nature of the economy, and it's hardly just software developers... it's doctors, lawyers, and practically everyone else in the same trap... you're screwing over your fellow citizen, yourself, or often both. It's the golden rule (ie. those that have the gold make the rules). All the FSF does is arrange the software world so the average citizen requires less "gold" to have influence in the world.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday February 02 2020, @11:38PM (3 children)
Nonsense AND bullshit. Anyone with a computer can create software that is closed source as easily as open source - just that if they create closed source, they have a greater chance of influencing their own personal world by making some $$$.
The big users of FOSS have all the gold. Google. Facebook. Amazon. So it's funny how that worked out, taking FOSS and locking it away on servers so it's no longer open?
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(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday February 03 2020, @07:48AM (2 children)
Really? I know more open source than closed source developers, and if closed source developers are better paid on average I'm not seeing the evidence - only a few are well paid. I even think Bernie Sanders helped people at both IBM and Google at different times engage in industrial action for better wages and conditions. I think you're blaming the FSF for a society-wide problem. Tomas Piketty got his Nobel Prize by collating centuries of data, and finding the deep mathematical truth that the capital class's return on investment is ALWAYS is greater than one (on average), and that this means that it's a mathematical certainty for capital to own everything and for the rest of the economy to always be in extreme poverty. (Fun side-fact - the old game of Monopoly was originally invented to teach how this ALWAYS happens). Europeans for centuries escaped from the centres of advanced civilization to the wilds of the New World for exactly that reason. Things were different for a time only because after WWII governments took extreme measures to make things different (ie. 90% top marginal tax rate, ~45% company tax rate), but now under neoliberalism we're sinking back to the norm (and blaming it on automation, kids today etc...).
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday February 03 2020, @12:05PM (1 child)
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(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday February 03 2020, @04:13PM
Don't blame the FSF - the AGPL bans SaaS. People make good livings from genuinely free software. Just because eg. the US government has been given enough incentive to allow corporate spying hardly means the blame lays at the FSFs feet. The same with monopolistic behavior, and on down the line.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:41PM
He's repetitive to the point of trolling.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:46AM (13 children)
Who said Windows 7 was useless? Not the FSF.
The real problem isn't that Windows 7 doesn't have value, but rather that it'd be an effective competitor to future generation Windows. A lot of businesses held on to Windows 7 as long as they could. Releasing it so that it can be supported forever means a lot of lost business for Microsoft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:57PM
MS did... But you forgot to put on the "corporate filter goggles".
Once you put on the "corporate filter goggles" you realize that MS's definition of "useless" is not what you think.
Their definition of "useless" is "does not bring in revenue by spying on users to sell their data to advertisers".
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:16PM (11 children)
Again, the FSF is being a hypocrite. They aren't even in the business of producing software, and they want to tell software makers to release something for free that still generates money.
Looking at the FSF financials, I don't see them working for free. In fact, their "job" seems to be raising funds to keep their jobs. Sort of like "we have to keep the toll booths running to pay the toll booth attendants."
So this is just more free advertising for them. They know it won't happen, they know it's a bad business deal, they know that if Windows 7 became freeware that linux would disappear from most of the few home computers that use it ...
I mean, seriously, if free software can't even compete with paid software now, how much less will it be able to compete when people can ditch linux and have all their games, peripherals, and other software just work?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:19PM (10 children)
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:36PM (9 children)
So how did the HURD work out again?
And why did gcc basically have to be abandoned whole and replaced with egcs, which was then renamed gcc?
In other words, they didn't do a whole hell of a lot. Tried and failed to make an operating system. Tossed their failed compiler for someone else's. Realized that they couldn't do software, so changed direction. Spent some time having Stallman representing them, eating toe cheese and making misogynistic and transphobic comments.
The FSF could disappear tomorrow, nobody would notice except the people collecting a paycheck from them. It's not like they actually ever did any of the grunt work.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:55PM (1 child)
egcs didn't REPLACE gcc.
What happened was gcc, which was focused only on being a GNU C Compiler wasn't moving fast enough in development for the rest of the open source community (I blame it on questionably leadership or lack thereof when Stallman handed it off...) The schism that lead to the fork of gcc into egcs also involved adding other compiler frontends into gcc to turn it into a suite. Instead of g++ having to be compiled against an existing source of gcc, along with gfortran, gchill, etc the majority of the community decided to integrate them together, turning the gnu c compiler into the gnu compiler collection (a retronym when egcs was remerged as the 'true' gcc fork, with leadership duties in part/whole being taken over by the egcs team.) The result of the egcs schism was much improved features in gcc, but at the expense of maintainability and ease of understanding, many bugs and regressions (above and beyond the vanilla compiler) and leadership which eventually became as inept as the initial gnu projects.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:19PM
In other words, gcc was scrapped for egcs. So what's your point again?
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 31 2020, @12:27AM (6 children)
Because egcs was better. I see you neglected to mention that egcs was a gcc fork and also open source.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @02:49AM (5 children)
Doesn't change the facts. gcc was dumped for a fork, egcs, that was better, because (if you dig into the email correspondence) Stallman couldn't even incorporate parts of egcs that he wanted into gcc. So basically, he had to throw in the towel.
He kept making demands to the egcs maintainer to do his (Stallman's) work for him. That didn't help things. If you keep telling another developer exactly how you want something implemented, eventually they'll tell you to go fuck yourself and do it yourself.
And this isn't limited to open source. People who micromanage coders but can't code themselves usually get told off at some point. It's very cathartic, and based on personal experience I can highly recommend it. At some point you have to inject some reality into the process.
What has Stallman done except flap his gums and eat toe jam and defame a sexual assault victim and couch surf in the last two decades? The world didn't suddenly change when he was forced by his own stupidity to drop out of sight.
Nobody really misses him. Shows how inconsequential he really was. And why, even though he's not dead, we can refer to him in the past tense. He might not be dead, but he's gone.
And he's not going to ever make a comeback.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 31 2020, @03:49AM (4 children)
Nor would I see a need to change those facts. In particular, think about that last phrase, "he had to throw in the towel". A poor development process was short-circuited by that fork. You can't do that with closed source.
Telling off doesn't force them to change. Building a better product that is a plug in replacement for their project does. Closed source is a great way to prevent change of that sort. You can tell them off as much as you'd like, they still the code in the end.
Why do you care? I find it bizarre how much of your diatribes against open source veer into these dead ends. Here, Stallman's toe jam, earlier FSF's imaginary hypocrisy, or the replacement of an open source gcc with a closely related fork. None of that shows the problems with open source, particularly the problems inherent to open source.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @04:17PM (3 children)
Then you don't know very much about closed source development. There's always tension between development teams and inside development teams that leads to forks, where one group says "fuck this shit, we're going to do it differently."
Again, you don't know very much about closed development. Open source is resistant to change from criticism - "don't like it, fork it," "RTFM", "$NOT_A_BUG", "$WONT_FIX."
Closed source, on the other hand, has very well defined stages of escalation. Telling off the boss is one such stage. Ignoring the boss and doing what's right instead is the next step (usually followed by "See, I told you so. Now let me do my work my way."), followed by "I told you NOT to try to "improve" it. I wrote it that way for a reason, and now you've just DOS'ed the server", followed by "Buh-bye - I quit." There are other intermediate stages, but you get the gist. Closed source is a meritocracy in that developers can prove that their solution is right. Open source, the developers don't give two shits about critics. It's their itch, they'll scratch it how they please.
Management never wants it to get to the last stage, because THEY sure can't do the work. Open source software, what management? Seriously, if you followed the gcc-egcs process, what management? RMS didn't know what he was doing, tried to impose his will on volunteers, and they finally told him to fuck off.
I'm going to assume you mean "they still get the code in the end." As I pointed out, not if you quit. There are plenty of projects, both closed and open source, that die because people get fed up and quit.
I've been quite specific about the problems with open source. But let's get to your claim that the FSF is a side issue. Au contraire, the FSF could disappear tomorrow and nothing would change. The FSF is irrelevant. A distraction. The current article is just another example of their stupidity in trying to generate attention and donations to keep their own paycheques going, because they don't have any solutions to the problems of open source development.
As for RMS, his knee-jerk response for complaints about the lack of a proper funding mechanism was always "give away the software and sell support." He's part of the problem. That model is doomed to perma-fail because nobody wants to buy a product that's so clunky it needs constant support. Which would you rather use - a closed-source product that has almost no need for support because it just works, or an open source product that needs constant support, interrupting what you're doing at all the wrong times.
A product that depends on support revenue to survive is going to be motivated to require more support. Which is why we don't see very much innovation, just 1,000 distros, all containing the same software packages, many of which haven't really changed since the end of the previous century.
And as I've also pointed out multiple times, open source has as many bugs as closed source. Companies that specialize in this area have found that "open source means all bugs are shallow" is both a lie and deceiving.
You'd think with the slow pace of improvements in open source software that distros would have improved over the last two decades. They haven't. You STILL can't give them away.
I still use it, so I'm acutely aware of the lack of improvements since the '90s. But I agree with others who have taken their projects closed - it's the only way to go, because open can't compete with closed in the marketplace.
Now if you're doing it as a hobby, that's another thing, but some people want to actually earn a living at their profession.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:03AM (2 children)
Except of course, when that doesn't happen. Closed source is notorious for this not happening. It's only one company. They routinely don't have the resources to fund multiple development teams for the same thing (really who does this even they can afford it?), nor the interest in doing so. After all, where's the competing product with better software going to come from when it's all in house under your control?
And I find it hard to believe that your life experience hasn't exposed you to dozens of closed source products that do worse the very things you criticize open source for: WONT_FIX, dependence on support revenue, more bugs, no innovation for years, etc. It's absurd that we've even discussing these supposed faults of open source while ignoring that closed source doesn't naturally do it better.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:44AM (1 child)
Not doing this just means you're building up huge technical debt that you won't be able to fix later. In other words, Agile ain't.
If you can't go this route in house you need to look for another house, because you're doomed. Open source doesn't have the same pressure to deliver the best product with the fewest bugs. You can always let release dates slide, and bugs will get fixed whenever because it's open source - don't like it, fix it yourself and submit a patch or stfu.
Dependence on support revenue? Are you kidding? If it doesn't work it doesn't get used in the first place. Support revenue is only for new features, not bug fixes, and new features are a new version of the product, not the same product. No reason not to offer both to customers and let them pick their price point.
Products that don't produce get you laid off. Open source product doesn't satisfy the user? So what, it's free, there's other users out there, it's open source, let the user community improve it. Can't ask that for closed source. YOU have to deliver, not foist it off on the community and curate the results. But that's why so many open source projects try to develop a community - it's easier to curate other people's work than to actually do the work yourself.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 01 2020, @06:03AM
Unless, of course, you don't do that. Sigh.
This is very different from the competing high level forks you described in your last post:
which is still bullshit. Just because there's a little intra-team rivalry doesn't mean the code will get forked when it needs to.
Notice your misleading use of the phrases "even on a small project" and "even small teams" as if the active and competitive dynamics you described were also true for large, scoliolic teams without initiative or drive. And of course, your appeal to imaginary authority of the "ladder". How high up the ladder are you now?
Unless, of course, your purpose in work is to collect a paycheck and little else.
I take it you've never looked at the software industry before, being no doubt, a complete neophyte to this reality thing. /sarc Crazy as it sounds, there really are huge firms whose business model is centered on providing service for closed source software. Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, HP, and SAP come to mind for a few examples.
I take it you don't get what "produce" means. A large part of the business world can produce shit as long as nobody gets fired for buying it. It's a very minimal definition of "produce". I can see how that would be attractive to be on the profitable end of that. But being on the other side sucks.
For a glaring, enormous example of that, we have Microsoft and its basic products, Windows and Office. They don't improve the product except by breaking backwards compatibility, forcing a lot of customers to upgrade for no gain.
And this curating work that open source communities do? Sounds pretty useful to me.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:03AM (4 children)
End of life doesn't mean useless.
End of life needs to mean end of copyright. Either support it or lose it. Simple
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:10PM (3 children)
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(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:17PM (2 children)
You know, back in the day before Disney, this is in fact what happened...remember that thing called the Public Domain?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:39PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:06PM
Copyright got its' start in 1710, before Disney even existed.
Yes, with an acceptably short duration, not the insanity we have today. Disney's law [those are the people that wrote it along with Sonny Bono, then rubber stamped by our elected officials] is a contemptuous ass. Rodney Dangerfield deserves far more respect.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:49AM
End of life doesn't mean useless.
No. Microsoft means useless.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:14PM (17 children)
THAT right there is why the FSF's position exposes a truth that people dance around.
Microsoft manipulates people into "choices" that they would never voluntarily chose.
Windows 10 Upgrade Available!
Choose one of the following options by your own free will and informed choice:
* Click Yes! to have Windows 10 installed!
* Click No! to have Windows 10 installed anyway!
* Or click the X to close this window, and still have Windows 10 be installed.
* Or immediately pull the computer's electrical power cord from the outlet to have Windows 10 start up the next time you boot! (The system startup code has already been upgraded to install Windows 10 for your convenience.)
Or . .
This computer has been Upgraded to Windows 10!
To have this computer restored to a usable condition,
please send 3 Bitcoin to Microsoft.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:48PM (16 children)
Nobody is being manipulated. Try getting friends to install linux. I did. They all either went back to Windows or bout a Mac. Linux is shit for the average user.
Try fielding "this won't work." calls. "How do I do this" questions. "Why won't my old software run?" "How come I can't buy a program that does "X" for linux but I can for Apple and Microsoft?" "Why doesn't my printer scan any more?" "How come my printer won't print in colour any more?" "Why won't my printer print in high resolution any more?" "How come sound still doesn't work?" "My kid is driving me crazy because he just bought a game and it doesn't run." "My computer is driving me crazy because I just bought a game and it won't run." "I sent a spreadsheet to my boss and they can't open it." "I sent a word processing document to my coworker and they can't open it."
The only people being manipulated were us, the ones who bought into the lie that the cornucopia of amazing software was about to be liberated by the free software model. We bought into it, not because it ever made sense, but because we wanted to. Because we were idealists more than we were cynics.
We got played. We got suckered. We were schmucks, useful idiots for people like the folks running the FSF, who are more interested in their paychecks than in finding financial models for free software that works, because they know that there is no financial model for free software that works.
"We'll create foundations, and collect paycheques running those foundations." That's the FSF model in a nutshell. They don't actually produce anything of value to the average user.
As for the forced upgrades, if your computer was damaged or left unbootable or lost data, you should have gone to small claims court. Microsoft ended up paying $10,090 to one woman [theregister.co.uk]. If you didn't sue after a forced upgrade, you only have yourself to blame.
The argument is simple, after a forced upgrade, Windows 7 no longer works -it's gone. You didn't ask for Windows 10, it damaged your Windows 7 install, you want to be compensated. Sue. Collect. Buy a Mac. Your Windows problems are history.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:36PM
I believe that you completely misunderstood the comment you replied to.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @04:54PM (11 children)
As I said, but I'll say it differently, is CHOICES.
Or rather, lack of them. Microsoft can force people to "choose" things because there IS NO CHOICE.
In the 1980s when MS-DOS was the thing, there were other better alternatives. Microsoft would only allow OEMs to sell MS-DOS if they paid for MS-DOS for every PC they sold, whether that PC has MS-DOS or not.
Naturally, this put all competing better alternatives out of business. There already were multitasking OSes. Some of them CP/M like. Some Unix like. Crude by today's standards, but remember this is a time when PCs had maybe 128K or lucky ones 256 K of memory.
Today, Linux is better. But as IBM learned in the 1960s, "software lock in" is a real thing. And it's a catch-22. Users can't take their software to Linux. Developers won't build for Linux until there is a substantial user base. There won't be a substantial user base without all that software.
Microsoft's world of "lack of choice" is under threat today. Chromebooks. (eg, the real "year of the Linux desktop") By the time Google has finished with "crostini", an ordinary unsophisticated user, like my mother in law, will be able to pick curated Linux applications (eg GIMP, Inkscape, LibreOffice, etc) and install them on a chromebook. They will run in a container within a secured VM, but that is all invisible to the end user. Just an integrated desktop experience. I personally think this could be a killer feature if Google doesn't screw it up.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:14PM (10 children)
And yet the Chromebook is a walled garden. So much for choice. Even Windows doesn't go that far, and it isn't run by an advertising company looking for more ways to mine your data.
Chromebooks are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Unless you're into surveillance capitalism.
And why should Google get to curate anything? Do you trust them that much? Even Apple and Microsoft are now seen as less evil. WAY less evil.
Also, back in the 80s, people mostly bought computers and operating systems separately. I know my first 3 computers were without a disk operating system - I bought those separately, and only one was from Microsoft. There was no restriction on what you could buy at retail, and most people bought from retailers.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:45PM (9 children)
By the very early 1990s, DOS, then later Windows was bundled with the hardware and preinstalled for your convenience. By 1993 for sure. By 1995 you got a CD tailored to the OEM. By about 2000 you didn't even get a CD anymore.
Chromebooks are a
prison campwalled garden, but not as bad as an iPad.You can root your chromebook, with Google's blessing. Even install different firmware to boot non UEFI and unsigned boot loaders, if you really want to go that far.
Granny's (my mother in law's) first computer in 2006 was an old Win 95 machine loaded with Ubuntu. That worked fine for years. Later we got her a Dell mini tower PC that had Ubuntu pre-installed from the factory. When that was too old, we tried out a chromebook. She loves it.
Some people love their iPads. Even make love their Windows 10 some people do.
A chromebook that offered turnkey install of Linux applications strikes me as a toe-in-the-door way to introduce people to applications that are native to Linux. I'm not sure why that would be a bad thing. It's a pretty easy upgrade from such a chromebook to a Linux distribution with a Chrome browser and the same Linux apps. (but minus Android -- modern chromebooks also run android apps)
Of course "crostini" is not a released feature for chromebooks yet.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:01PM (8 children)
Nope. Most people in the early 90s bought their computers from local retailers, not OEMs. I was buying bare-bones PCs until the mid-2000s, when I just bought laptops with Widnows pre-installed. So no, retailers (unless you went to a big box store) weren't selling the OS with the PC unless you asked for it. They still don't.
And you most certainly could buy retail CDs of Windows with a new computer in the XP era. Bought a copy in the mid-2000s for some video hardware that required it at work. If you bought it at the same time as the computer, you got the OEM disk; if you bought it after, you got the retail disk, but it was most definitely available on CD in the 2000s.
You could still order a disk set from HP for Vista computers, and this started in 2007, so your memory is either faulty, or you only frequented Best Buy and Dell.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:44PM (7 children)
I won't disagree. I was a Mac-only guy until 1993.
In 1993, our PCs came with MS-DOS, and floppies so you could re-install it. In that time frame, I noticed that Windows was beginning to come preinstalled on PCs that our customers purchased. By Windows 95, as I recall, all PCs came with it preinstalled. Nobody installed Win 95, at least not consumers.
But I would be happy to learn of any information about this which is missing in my knowledge. I never got into PCs. They were just furnished for me at work, and I wrote code for them, as well as for Macs.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @12:21AM (6 children)
Even in the Win95 era, most people didn't buy their PCs from big box stores with Windows pre-installed. There was a thriving local 3rd party computer assembler industry that sold bare-bones PCs so you could install whatever you wanted. They were hundreds of dollars cheaper than the big box retailers, could be ordered with whatever parts you preferred, and you then installed whatever you wanted in it.
Even today there's a store chain that sells PCs without Windows installed. It's not a law. They offer 12 different pre-assembled barebones systems, or you can custom order what you want without an OS, or you can order a computer with Windows OEM.
Just that most retailers don't want the hassle of selling anything that isn't simple that a sales droid can sell off a shelf without knowing what works well together.
If you live in a decent-sized town you should be able to find a place selling barebones systems and computer parts so you can build your own.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @04:49PM (5 children)
Gateway 2000 is maybe an example of what you are describing. But these gradually declined and pre-installed systems gradually arose. There wasn't one magical day when everything flipped. It was a gradual process. By 95 that process was underway.
Also, a bit of friendly advice. Just FYI. It turns out, it is not a good idea to use peanut butter as a substitute on the heat sink for cpu thermal paste. Who knew?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @06:16PM (4 children)
We ordered a Thunderbird cpu, along with motherboard, etc., and the machines always arrived DOA. For the 6th, just give me the CPU and I'll assemble it. Turns out they didn't know that you needed to have the heat sink attached even if you powered it up for just a few seconds.
Showed them how to use very fine silicon sandpaper to remove any oxide on the heatsink, then spread some heat sink goop on it with a business card, then remove all but the smallest visible trace with the business card. Thing worked just fine.
Guy assembled computers as a sideline, powered up without a heat sink, then called me to ask me what to do because Windows wouldn't boot. I explained that the newer parts of the chip were really heat sensitive, but it would run DOS games all day really really fast - that he had turned his chip into an 8086.
Now in theory peanut butter (smooth) might be able to work - if you put the whole motherboard in oil. Run it hot enough and you can fry donuts and still not fry the cpu. It's the nasty hot spot that kills it. A lower temperature, distributed evenly, isn't so bad, but the sharp expansion of just one area ... not so good.
Back when Matrox was starting out, I stopped by their early production "facility". Lots of video cards undergoing a nasty heat bake to make sure they wouldn't fail in use. The shipping doors were open to keep the rest of the place kind of tolerable on a summer day.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @07:16PM (3 children)
If you put it in oil, you won't be rewarded with the smell of peanut butter cookies prior to the meltdown.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @08:31PM (2 children)
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @10:40PM (1 child)
I seem to remember that from long, loooooong ago on the green site. Like early 2000s. Styrofoam cooler. Mineral oil. The cold side of air conditioner coils and the motherboard both went into the mineral oil. It seemed to work. Or so they said. But for how long, or how well, who knows.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @11:05PM
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @01:25AM (2 children)
You seem mad.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @04:50PM
I sometimes get that impression as well.
But I try to be cheerful in my reply.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @08:57PM
If you read her post history and journals, you'll quickly discover that her life sucks or she believes it sucks at a minimum. Not a surprise that she then starts to get angry at the world for her plight. And once that death spiral starts, it can be hard to pull out of it. Everything else seems to ultimately stem from that. She has the right to feel how she feels, but I hope she decides to get the help she deserves eventually.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 31 2020, @05:42AM (1 child)
>End of life doesn't mean useless. It still has plenty of value, and they know it, so their position is hypocritical.
Wrong. EOL *does* mean useless. End-of-life means exactly what the words say: the lifespan is at an end; it's dead. If it's dead, it's useless. So what harm is there in open-sourcing something that's dead and useless?
If it still has value (which it does, because MS is extracting money from companies for continued support), then it isn't really EOL, and MS is simply lying.
The FSF is calling MS out on their hypocrisy and lying.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @05:25PM
EOL means that regular support is at an end. Everyone knows that. It's like a human - it's old, it's dead, unless you're willing to pay for advanced life support to extend life for a while longer.
It's the same as in real life - some will opt for life support, others will say DNR. Still others will say "fuck this shit" and opt for euthanasia.
The FSF is just attention-whoring. Everyone knows it. Why should they stop making money off an older OS? They'd rather everyone just change to W10, because it's easier to support just one OS, but if they are going to have to pay to support W7 for those who don't want to upgrade, they're well within their rights to ask for money.
Same as if one of my old bosses asks me to work on software I haven't touched in a decade. Show me the money. I'm not going to fix it for free if it's non-trivial (trivial, sure I'll do it as a freebee, why not, just for the heck of it?)
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