Over at ACM.org Yegor Bugayenko reviews how companies benefit from open source:
'Tis the season to be jolly, and many people around the world are getting those warm, fuzzy holiday feels. One of the things that makes us programmers feel warm and fuzzy is open source software. With open source, you can easily see the code and documentation, and better yet, you can use it too. A lot of companies support open source as well, providing funding, labor power, and code for free.
Why give something away for free? A lot of individuals contribute open source code out of a genuine sense of altruism. Yet when it comes to companies, it's often a strategic choice, and one they expect to benefit from.
[...] Why go through all the trouble? Let's take a look at the tangible benefits of supporting open source, especially from the perspective of tech giants like Google. Let's start by looking at how companies support open source.
The author goes on to list benefits for companies that support open source, citing Google, Microsoft, IBM and Adobe as examples. He also mentions how Red Hat benefited from its acquisition by IBM. He concludes:
So what's the take away for all of this? Open source is a great resource for the community, sure, but it's also a valuable resource for companies. Open source provides sales, influence, branding, retaining and training opportunities, among others, for companies. And for individual programmers, open source projects offer a way to build skills, increase knowledge, and make connections.
Previously:
CentOS Linux 8 Will End in 2021
Open Source's Eric Raymond: Windows 10 Will Soon be Just an Emulation Layer on Linux Kernel
Microsoft Releases Open-Source Process Monitor for Linux
Google Takes Down Repositories that Circumvent its Widevine DRM
Related Stories
Michael Larabel writes in Phoronix about Microsoft's new open-source process monitor for Linux:
Microsoft's newest open-source Linux software is ProcMon for Linux, a rewritten and re-imagined version of its Processor Monitor found on Windows within their Sysinternals suite.
Microsoft's ProcMon tool is a C++-written, open-source process monitor for Linux that makes it convenient to trace system call activity. This ProcMon Linux version is open-source under an MIT license.
Microsoft released the source code to their ProcMon Linux version on Thursday and is marked as a 1.0 preview release. Microsoft is also making available a Debian/Ubuntu package of this preview build.
The Phoronix article includes a gif demonstrating ProcMon. To my amateur eyes, this looks like htop without the resource monitoring and instead has some stack tracing capabilities. Has anybody given Microsoft's ProcMon a test drive? What are your thoughts?
Open source's Eric Raymond: Windows 10 will soon be just an emulation layer on Linux kernel
Will Windows lose the last phase of the desktop wars to Linux? Noted open-source advocate Eric Raymond thinks so.
Celebrated open-source software advocate and author Eric Raymond, who's long argued Linux will rule the desktop, reckons it won't be long before Windows 10 becomes an emulation layer over a Linux kernel.
[...] Looking further into the future, Raymond sees Microsoft killing off Windows emulation altogether after it reaches the point where everything under the Windows user interface has already moved to Linux.
"Third-party software providers stop shipping Windows binaries in favor of ELF binaries with a pure Linux API... and Linux finally wins the desktop wars, not by displacing Windows but by co-opting it. Perhaps this is always how it had to be," Raymond projects.
Is It Time for Windows and Linux to Converge?
Last phase of the desktop wars?
The two most intriguing developments in the recent evolution of the Microsoft Windows operating system are Windows System for Linux (WSL) and the porting of their Microsoft Edge browser to Ubuntu.
For those of you not keeping up, WSL allows unmodified Linux binaries to run under Windows 10. No emulation, no shim layer, they just load and go.
[...] Proton is the emulation layer that allows Windows games distributed on Steam to run over Linux. It's not perfect yet, but it's getting close. I myself use it to play World of Warships on the Great Beast.
The thing about games is that they are the most demanding possible stress test for a Windows emulation layer, much more so than business software. We may already be at the point where Proton-like technology is entirely good enough to run Windows business software over Linux. If not, we will be soon.
So, you're a Microsoft corporate strategist. What's the profit-maximizing path forward given all these factors?
It's this: Microsoft Windows becomes a Proton-like emulation layer over a Linux kernel, with the layer getting thinner over time as more of the support lands in the mainline kernel sources. The economic motive is that Microsoft sheds an ever-larger fraction of its development costs as less and less has to be done in-house.
If you think this is fantasy, think again. The best evidence that it's already the plan is that Microsoft has already ported Edge to run under Linux. There is only one way that makes any sense, and that is as a trial run for freeing the rest of the Windows utility suite from depending on any emulation layer.
So, the end state this all points at is: New Windows is mostly a Linux kernel, there's an old-Windows emulation over it, but Edge and the rest of the Windows user-land utilities don't use the emulation. The emulation layer is there for games and other legacy third-party software.
Also at The Register.
Previously: Windows 10 Will Soon Ship with a Full, Open Source, GPLed Linux Kernel
Call Me Crazy, but Windows 11 Could Run On Linux
Microsoft Windows Linux for Everybody
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
Google Takes Down Repositories That Circumvent its Widevine DRM
GitHub has removed several repositories that helped to bypass Google's Widevine DRM, which is used by popular streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon. Google requested the code to be removed as it would violate the DMCA. The company also sent a sensitive data takedown request for the associated RSA key which, ironically, remains easy to find through Google.
[...] The code, originally published by security researcher Tomer Hadad, is a proof-of-concept code Chrome extension that shows how easy it is to bypass the low-security ["L3" version of Widevine Digital Rights Management]. Google was aware of this vulnerability and previously informed Krebs on Security that it would address the issue.
[...] Google sees the code, which was explicitly published for educational purposes only, as a circumvention tool. As such, it allegedly violates section 1201 of the DMCA, an allegation that was also made against the youtube-dl code last month.
[...] This 'key controversy' is reminiscent of an issue that was widely debated thirteen years ago. At the time, a hacker leaked the AACS cryptographic key "09 F9" online which prompted the MPAA and AACS LA to issue DMCA takedown requests to sites where it surfaced.
DMCA: Digital Millennium Copyright Act
DRM: Digital Rights Management
AACS: Advanced Access Content System
MPAA: Motion Picture Association of America
AACS: Advanced Access Content System
AACS LA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_LA
CentOS Linux 8 will end in 2021 and shifts focus to CentOS Stream:
CentOS is an acronym for Community Enterprise Operating System, and it is a 100% rebuild of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). While RHEL costs money, CentOS offered as a free community-supported enterprise Linux distro. Developers and companies who are good at Linux and don’t want to pay RHEL support fees always selected CentOS to save money and get enterprise-class software. However, the free ride is over. Red Hat announced that CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end at 2021. CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as the upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
CentOS' blog announcement:
The future of the CentOS Project is CentOS Stream, and over the next year we’ll be shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream, which tracks just ahead of a current RHEL release. CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end at the end of 2021. CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as the upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Meanwhile, we understand many of you are deeply invested in CentOS Linux 7, and we’ll continue to produce that version through the remainder of the RHEL 7 life cycle.
Also at Phoronix.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday December 18 2020, @09:16AM (7 children)
IBM buys Red Hat, Red Hat CEO becomes IBM CEO [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday December 18 2020, @12:18PM (1 child)
It's one way to by a CEO...
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday December 18 2020, @12:18PM
*buy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @03:17PM (4 children)
Who made WHOM.
You're welcome.
--Grammar Nazi
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @03:39PM (1 child)
Nice, Not to putdown; just correct. Much Love for you GN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @03:56PM
Years ago we had a woman that grammer and spell checked our scientific papers/presentations. We called her "Hyphen Lady". We also had a graphics department. All of those are now gone as am I.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday December 18 2020, @11:57PM
Enjoy [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Saturday December 19 2020, @09:57PM
while you clearly have never heard of the extremely popular band ac/dc, you're not just a faggot, you're ac/dc.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @10:35AM (1 child)
And time to ban the person who used the spam mod from moderating,
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=41095&page=1&cid=1087044#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
This is NOT spam and should be fixed.
(Score: 3, Touché) by fakefuck39 on Saturday December 19 2020, @10:01PM
time for some real reporting. is there a single person on this site who does not read at -1, disables the showing of moderation, and hence has the content they see selected by random internet strangers?
I don't think there are many of these people. there is however at least one person who pays attention to moderation and commenting, so the moderation is doing its job: keeping you busy and keeping you thinking you are actually doing something with these internet points. because let's face it: if it wasn't for the internet points, which are to you important, you literally would have nothing else. because you're an enourmous, physically ugly, socially awkward, loser. and you're fat.
(Score: 4, Informative) by rob_on_earth on Friday December 18 2020, @02:01PM (3 children)
early 2000s
I told my partner that a game I had written had been downloaded over 40,000 in a few months. The first thing they asked was how much money did I make.
Of course I gave it away for free. They could not understand that I would not charge money for it.
I explained that if I had charged money for it they number of people willing to pay for it would have be miniscule and my goal was to spread they joy I had had in creating it. My goal was also to offer the community a fully playable game with with comments for every single line of assembler.
Information wants to be free, software is information...
if you are interested, it was Space Invaders on the Dreamcast VMU [jumpstation.co.uk]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @03:22PM (2 children)
Clearly you understand that *everything* cannot be given away for free though. Right? That results in poverty for the "givers" but not for the "takers." It also results in bad allocation of resources as the "value" of a resource is never established.
Some charity is OK and definitely welcome, but you can't base a society on this. Every communist society ever implemented has been a bloody failure.
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Friday December 18 2020, @03:38PM
... transactions tends to make the healthiest and most robust society IMHO.
I made a video on this in 2011:
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY [youtube.com]
Hoping that someday that idea gets picked up by the mainstream as common sense...
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 19 2020, @01:21AM
China doesn't look to be failing to me, and Cuba is doing damn well for sitting in the shadow of the colossus that hates it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @02:30PM (9 children)
> you can easily see the [...] documentation
In most cases, you can easily see that there's isn't any documentation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @04:37PM (8 children)
The code *is* the documentation!
Many lazy shits actually say this and may believe it. Very convenient in that it results in less work for them.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday December 18 2020, @06:08PM (7 children)
You got it for free and it's an open project, perhaps the documentation is waiting for you to write it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @06:30PM (6 children)
In the same way that I've just eaten a meal, and now the dirty dishes are waiting for you to wash them.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday December 18 2020, @07:05PM (5 children)
They cooked the meal. Rather than helping serve it, you just sat at the table clacking your silverware. Then you crammed the meal down your pie-hole burping and farting the whole time, wiped your mouth on the tablecloth, complained about their choice of wine and that the tablecloth you wiped your mouth on wasn't silk, then left the mess for them. Next week you may wonder why you didn't get invited to dinner.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @09:17PM (4 children)
Too many free software advocates are disingenuous with how they promote their software. Just admit it's half-assed and will remain so forever. If free software were what its promoters claimed, everybody in the world would by now be running Linux, Open Office, and Gimp. Still hasn't happened.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday December 19 2020, @01:41AM
The various OS vendors said that about Linux.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 19 2020, @02:10AM
All software is half-assed. You just don't usually get to see the proof of that from perspectives other than the UI.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 20 2020, @06:59PM (1 child)
no one but dumb Windows users speak of Open Office. It's Libreoffice you dirty-legged retard.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday December 20 2020, @10:15PM
LibreOffice and OpenOffice are largely compatible. They just have different bugs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @03:52PM (4 children)
"Open source" was the term coined by corporations for one portion of what was being done in the free (libre) software movement for well over a decade at the time the term "open source" was coined. Open source is a weak promise that says you can view the source, but there might be restrictions on your right, as a user, to use it. "Open source" took the process and jettisoned the ideology of free software.
Free software gives the user the right to modify the source as its foremost concern. It is a much stronger guarantee.
As GNU states, free software is worth pursuing even if a project is at a stage where it is objectively inferior to a proprietary competitor-- simply because it respects the users' freedom. Where "open source" is all about the development process. Many eyes, etc. But, most free and "open source" projects do not reach the number of contributors to achieve the benefits "open source" proponents claim:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/when-free-software-isnt-practically-superior.html [gnu.org]
There was a user on this site who was badmouthing the Pine phone for not being competitive, for Joe user, with proprietary alternatives. That user's argument completely missed the point. The Pine phone is amazing and fantastic simply for existing and offering an alternative to proprietary competitors. The pace of improvement in the software (by the community) is truly amazing! Does the Pine phone user experience match an iPhone? No. That isn't the point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @04:40PM (2 children)
So as you said, ideological purity is the criterion for choosing software/hardware.
Not how it functions as a tool. Bizarre religion you've got there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @05:55PM
Same AC as GP.
The point is that things do not instantly materialize fully formed. It takes time.
I used Slackware Linux immediately upon Patrick's first release in '93. The GNU project had been working on the user space bits since the mid-80s, so they were pretty good. But, it was not the same experience of just works as on my Sun workstation. A couple years later, I moved to GNU/Linux as my sole platform, and today, GNU/Linux runs nearly every server on the Internet and nearly every super computer, most telecom infrastructure, and most consumer electronics. And, the Linux kernel (sans GNU) runs the vast majority of phones (including android and contemporary feature phones). It is not religion, it is recognizing the reality that things do not simply materialize, it takes time and effort. And, it is worth putting in that time and effort, even in those early stages, because software freedom as all freedoms from below, is an intrinsic good.
GCC is another good example. In the early 90's, you had to include C++ template code in the header files. ATT's C++ compiler was much better back then (it was the reference implementation). GCC now is ubiquitous while ATT's compiler is not. GCC got better. In fact it got so good with such incredibly wide platform support that no proprietary compiler is even comparable. But, initially the reason to use (and contribute to) gcc over ATT was that software freedom is an intrinsic good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 20 2020, @07:03PM
Ahh the old "best tool for the job" matra of the Suited Whore. Your pitiful rationalization is not even based on the truth and every Linux user knows it. You just look like another clueless, shameless slave.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @10:12PM
Your point is valid and well taken, but somehow skirts around the biggest benefit both have over closed/proprietary software: Trust.
If you are a company, you are at core a trader. All traders, trade on trust - if they are not trusted, they cannot trade. This is why old CEO's find themselves unemployable at a certain point: They've burned up all trust everyone has in them, by their hard-hearted actions. They are now waste, because being a bully and 'winning' by the simple expedient of brute force, eventually catches up with you. Once everyone knows them, they will be unable to find the ready supply of ignorant marks they need to maintain their status quo. (maybe they'd better just run for US president?).
Open source, even if much weaker then true 'free as in freedom' software, is still easier to trust - because at least the company is 'working in the open', and leaving a indelible trail through shared repositories of what they're currently doing, such that anything nefarious would be impossible to redact, and easily traceable to whoever contributed it, no matter how obfuscated it was.
What irritates me more, is the supposition that computers are somehow much different from other things intended to store information (apart from their obvious enhancement in also being able to *process* information and *do* things, note).
With textbooks full of maths, sciences and engineering we have accrued shared knowledge in 'book' form in exactly the same way that 'free software' does: So free software is and has always been consistent with the very foundations of our current civilisation. (The copyright and/or cost on any particular book being akin to the costs of getting onto the internet - note you don't have to pay an ongoing license fee to be able to add or multiply numbers!).
Secrecy, on the other hand, has always been the first priority of bad actors: Intending to exploit the ignorance of others, that they might collect more currency than is their rightful due. On some level they must realise that they can only take such advantage so long as there exists a gradient of knowledge. It being hard to generate practically useful new know-how, it's far easier to contain what you have, so you might surf further on its wave.
Interesting that of all the 'benefits' listed in the article, they somehow missed 'because it is the way trustworthy persons behave'. But I guess if they did, they would have to acknowledge that no, actually this describes 'free software', not merely the 'knock off' brand.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @05:37PM (1 child)
Yes I get benefits and find value in open source software.
But joy?
No, it is quirky, difficult to configure, easy to break, frustrating and I curse it daily
I can only tame the beast by confinement in a Docker container
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday December 19 2020, @12:40AM
You didn't consume enough FOSS it seems.
If you were to be at that stage, your comment would have been along the line of "the joy of configuring a quirky, frustrating, easy to break software and having a legit excuse to curse daily".
I mean, look, as an analogy: when was the last time you could openly curse your hated manager every day and be paid top money for it?
Oh,yea,almost forgot
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by corey on Friday December 18 2020, @11:05PM
Not really on topic but warm and cozy here in Oz at this time of year is at the beach.
And I’m not sure who has time to code at this time of year, first it’s a Christmas rush, work and then getting ready to go somewhere, then it’s Xmas day, then a couple of days to recover from the food and drink, plus the Boxing Day family fun like cricket in the backyard. Then there’s New Years and we’re back to work a couple of days later.
But I have kids so no time to code ever anyway.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday December 20 2020, @10:23PM
Jitsi seems to be doing OK with their free software.
Of course hardware isn't free. They make money because many people who want to use Jitsi do not have enough internet bandwidth to run their own servers. And they don't want to establish enough bandwidth 24/7 for the much rarer times they actually need it.
The free service they provide is, I think, a kind of loss leader.
And having the software be free provides a modicum of trust.
-- hendrik