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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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Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
(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.