I agree with you that Linux is a wonderful OS and I enjoy it an many of the free applications that run on it. However, I don't mind paying money for software that I feel is useful and fairly priced. I encourage people to donate what they can (money, code, hardware) to Open Source projects that they belive in. The programmers aren't necessairily doing it for the money, but they do appreciate the compensation and the less they have to worry about money and their "real jobs" the more the can work on the project you're supporting (at least in theory). Anyways, in many economic systems there exists the idea of a fair exchange towards the mutual benefit of both parties. You're getting a good piece of software so it makes sense to "give back" what you can to reciprocate.

This is my personal view and I'm sure some people will disagree with me. But this is one way we can move towards a system of free software and soften the economic blow to programmers who rely on software sales for income.

Linux isn't an OS, it's only a kernel. The OS you are talking about is the variat of GNU system based on the Linux kernel. Please, since in your posts you talk ofter about giving authors what they deserve, try to call things with their names.


I wouldn't call myself a software developer but anyway It just meant to be ironic. You asked what "could ever be" ( -_-;; ) the motivation for an author to write a work if he can't earn from licences selling. I just meant to make you to notice that there are already authors that often doesn't care about and that they aren't few. The authors I'm talking about are Free Software developers but they're not the only ones and not only in the software field.


The right? What right?I think that, once the work is developed, there shouldn't be anyone to tell how a user can or can't use that work. You call it a right, I call it an abuse.


You seem still to miss the difference between RELEASED and UNRELEASED information. Once again, your example is non-sense. My social security number, credit card number, and the pin number to my bank account are information I don't want to be released. After a writer release a book IMO he doesn't have any right to say how a reader can or can't use what he wrote.


Italy.


It depends on what do you mean with "necessary". If you mean that you want to earn as much as Bill Gates, maybe not but I think that nobody should be never allowed to. Bill Gates could buy a whole country. I don't think it's acceptable. If a system allows that, there's something wrong with it.

I'd like to make you to notice that Bill Gates isn't even a programmer anyway. =) This is the sad thing... Do you think that a Microsoft programmer earns a lot of money? I don't think so. And even it they do, think about all the programmers Microsoft made unemployed with its anticompetitive policy.

Furthermore If I say to someone "Linux" he immediately thinks about Linus Torvalds. If say "Windows" are could he tell me the name of a single Microsoft developer? I don't think so. And the proprietary software system is supposed to be the system that gives programmer what they deserve? Com'n... please don't make me laugh...

Proprietary Software provide (and not even always) compensation only for publishers, bloodsucker that the world should get rid of as soon as possible. Free Software would free programmers from publishers as well.

But I now ask you the question back. Does your proprietary system have to potential to always provide the compensation for the programmers in every situation? Please, if you want to be taken seriously, don't answer yes...


Well, I don't know about you, but I call this "competition", the thing free market should be about. If you don't want to lose subscribers than make your service competitive. If you fear to lose subscribers then maybe you have something to hide... What you say shows once again how the proprietary software is only great when you want to adopt anti-competitive policies. And yours is supposed to be the country of free market...


Fairy tales... Who said that a source in order to be safe has to be unclean, complicated and confusing? What planet do you live on?


It ruins that only in a proprietary software system.

With Even if the source code is available you can't run the server on the every day computer. Thus there would be more competition between service provider, prices would be lower and people would be able to access more easily to a game and to try more games.

Communities and games that suck would disappear in a Darwinian way. The developers community would focus only on few games to make them better and who provides the game service would compete only on the quality of service field.

Thus with Free Software player experience would get better not the other way around.

Videogames (supposed that people need them, but I don't think so) would exist even without proprietary software.


You argument is weak. The source code being closed because doesn't make a program safe. The security of a program relies in the security of its data strucures, not in its source closing. I don't believe in security through obscurity.

Let's think about OpenSSL. People use it for example to exchage very sensible data in a safe way. But its source is open and people use it anyway. Does this mean it isn't safe? I don't think so...


BTW, you can keep on arguing about how much software owners (not always programmers, that's a point you seem to miss) earn or about videogames. This won't change the fact that if you weigh the Rights and the Freedom of the users, they outbalance the privileges and interest and the abuses (because that's what you were talking about) of fews on the social usefulness scale.


It's a matter of control.

Computers are everywhere. We depend on computers. Computers depend on software. Then who control software control us. If there's a software owner who can control what a user can or can't do with that software, the software owner can use this power against users.

If the software is closed you can't know what that software actually does. What about voting machines? Proprietary software give too much power in the hands of few people that can control our lives. This is not acceptable. Free Software give users control back.


It's a matter of sharing.

The proprietary software make people to think that sharing is bad. Our society and our culture is based on sharing. Sharing isn't something bad, it's something that should be encouraged. Human culture developed with sharing. Free Software allows people to share again.


It's a matter of Freedom.

With proprietary software fewer people use the program, none of the users can adapt or fix the program, other developers cannot learn from the program, or base new work on it.

With Free Software, there is a wider use of each program that is developed, the ability to adapt existing programs for customization instead of starting from scratch, a better education of programmers, the elimination of duplicate development effort.

Proprietary Software take users' Freedom away. Free Software give the users their Freedom back.


Proprietary Software is a plague and shouldn't exist. People deserve Free Software.

Yes, when I said Linux I meant GNU\Linux. I assumed those reading my post would be familiar with the fact that GNU\Linux is often shortened to Linux for conveinence, not out of any disrespect.

Your view that it is abuse for programmers to try to control distribution of there programs is as exteemist as my view that it is their right. I'll just agree to disagree with you there, I'm not convinced it's abuse but I can see how you would disagree that it's a right.

I don't see everything as "RELEASED" and "UNRELEASED" I belive there should be such a thing as "LIMITED RELEASE".

Thank you for satisfying my curiosity.

I don't think that every company should be like Microsoft. I also think that Bill Gates has more money than he deserves. However, not ALL software companies operate as Microsoft does. I don't think it's fair to use the most extreem possible example to represent the entire group. And I don't think that a proprietary system ALWAYS provides developers with compensation, but neither can open source (unless we make changes to our economic system and society at large). Of the programmers whom I've talked to who worked either directly or indrectly for Microsoft, none of them ever complained about their pay. They got what they wanted out of their relationship with Microsoft because they knew who and what they were dealing with going in. If they wanted all the glory they could have found other companies to publish their code or they could have published it themselves.

My point is not that competition is bad, but I prefer to see competiton on the level of EverQuest vs. Dark Age of Camelot. Not Glient A of EQ vs. Client B of EQ.

Have you ever written a cheat for a game? Better yet, what experience do you have with anti-cheat technology?

The MMORPG market is already competetive enough. The few good MMORPGs availible are competing over a reletively small crowd and it's enough to worry about competing with other games without the threat of other servers or variants of your own game. If the subscription prices got any lower how would they be able to afford the 24-7 tech support and full-time staff who work to deliver new content, let alone the bandwidth and other operating costs.

I'm not saying that closed-source will make it more secure, just that it adds one obstacle. How would you pick a lock if you didn't know how the lock worked? OpenSSL is encryption software, security is it's job. Are you suggesting we add the overhead of strong encryption to a real-time, multiplayer game? The servers already have to compute enough already w/o wasting cycles decoding encrypted packets. And the system requirements for clients would jump if they had to run commercial-strenght encryption algorithms allong with the rest of the game's code. Counter-Strike (a mod for the FPS game Half-Life) can get 30 frames-per-second on a 266MHz machine, if that machine had to run encryption in the background the frames-per-second would drop to about 4. Have you ever tried to play a First Person Shooter at 4 frames per second? It's soo much easier to just hide the inner workings with closed source than to try to protect them with encryption.

Games may not be necessary software, but I belive someone else on this message board (or maybe on TransGaming's board) said, "It's unfortunate that the success of an Operating System lies it's it ability to play games." And isn't that why most of us use the nvidia driver instead of nv? Would you suggest that we stop playing and developing games because they aren't strictly "necessary" to the computer industry? Computer games have caused us to push the limits of technology and motivate many people to buy "better" hardware, which helps the hardware manufacturers. Would we wouldn't have software if we didn't have hardware so what's good for hardware is good for software.

I know that software owners aren't always the programmers who wrote that software, however the programmers who wrote the software still benefit when the company they work for has a good quarter.

On a more related topic, has anyone tried the nvidia driver on a laptop? Does it work as well on laptops as it does with desktops? ATI doesn't even release drivers for most of their mobile cards but nVidia uses that "unified driver model" so it should work rite?

Just a question, why cant closedsource drivers be integrated with an opensource OS? Not every part of linux HAS to be open source, considering a lot of ppl like me never mess with changing linux source code anyway.

P.S. I am a huge Nvida fan and have never purchased anything but NVidia. THANK YOU NVIDIA, You have my loyalty.

it dose not HAVE to be anything. what we are reading are two very extreme view points. i tried to plant the seed of open mindedness and relax behavior without success. but one could consider me an extreme by own motivation.

i love nvidia too

Yep, you speak for me too : )

I for one don't care about the source code for the drivers that nVidia has already made.

One VERY valid reason why nVidia should release documentation for their chips is that if they do the drivers the FOSS community makes, can, and will, be included in the kernels and what-not (X servers) that the FOSS community creates. This means that nvidia hardware will be supported out of the box. It also means that if you decide to get a very uncommon processor, you will still be able to use the nvidia chips. This in turns means that if people want hardware that works, they will be more inclined too choose nvidia. System designers could add an nVidia chip to PDAs, multimedia devices and what-not.

GPU manufacturers are not bound to one CPU architecture. It would be very reasonable to add a GeForce 7950 GTX chip to an ARM based computer (it would be rather overpowered though), and if there where open source drivers, that 7950 GTX would actually work -- without those, nVidia would have too release a compiled version of the drivers, which requires the user to know if he is running his OS in big or little-endian (ARMs have an instruction that change their endianess), and if nVidia doesn't ship the right drivers -- well.. sucks to be you.

Documentation could also enable MS to make these drivers, which in turn would mean that nvidia would have an even larger advantage over competitors.

nVidia is not forced to stop making their own drivers. If they have some sort of secret killer way of doing something, it might be a good idea for them to make their own drivers, which could be faster. Possibly, even just releasing a firmware, to enhance the driver already made by the FOSS community.

Right now, I am having problems getting my hardware to do what I want it to. X crashes more than what is comfortable. My xrandr doesn't work -- it's been getting worse and worse for a couple of releases now, and because of the way their libGL works, I can't use my onboard GPU as well as my 7900 GT, at the same time (I have to completely uninstall the nvidia drivers).

I am considering getting a motherboard with an onboard GPU, which does have open source graphics drivers. I win on more than one point if I do this:
1) power consumption. My 7900 GT requires extra power from my PSU and that my PSU is at least a 400W PSU -- my CPU doesn't have those requirements.
2) Heat. My 7900 GT produces more heat than my +800 MHZ overclocked dual core CPU.
3) Money. I can sell my 7900 GT and get a bit of cash back from the purchase. Some of that I could spend on a new motherboard which has an FOSS enabled GPU (also, I save money from (1), and (very little) from (2) -- less active cooling).
4) Easy of use. It's just easier to use something that works, and that works out of the box -- don't you think?
5) Bugs. nVidia software for FOSS OS' are riddled with bugs. While FOSS software isn't perfect, it certainly is easier to find out what those bugs are and how to avoid them (if possible) -- have you seen a bugzilla for nvidia drivers?
6) Noise. My 7900 GT make a LOT of noise.
7) X support. X is going through a fase of change right now. AIGLX and XGL have just arrived. Some GPUs (FOSS all of them) works without any problems on AIGLX -- nvidia's doesn't (well, I haven't found anyone who has made compiz work on AIGLX with the closed source drivers). Personally X crashes on my computer if I load any modules while also loading the nvidia driver.

While onboard GPUs rarely are great, I have had some that where competitive to PCIe based GPUs, and certainly if you consider the points I have made above. Usually a motherboard with an OK GPU is not a lot more expensive than one without a GPU at all, so all in all, it just means one less piece of hardware i have to consider. And yes, I am aware that onboard GPUs are not near that of the top GPUs, but they are, by far, enough to run the need of most people's, even gamers, today. I doubt that this trend will change -- so far it's been going towards more and more powerful onboard GPUs, relative to AGP and PCIe based solutions.

I Agree all the comments,

As i learn RedHat Linux[033], i want to get the job in linux Background, and i know Perl and Shell Scripting, But i am Working as Software Tester. will it possible to get job in Linux background or i do remaining 2 modules...

Plz Help me..

Wow that's great news.
I guess my move towards Linux has inspired a lot to others.
There are many more to come and enjoy Learning/using LINUX.

That's odd.. I thought Linux was standing quite solidly as it is without being a major gaming platform. Funny when you think about it though-it's like saying Windows exists only because there are more games that will work on it.

I've been with Linux since Linus released the first kernel and have seen all the variations on the theme that Linux will never/will not until/can't/won't etc., etc. There has been zero impact from the negatives, the bogus studies and whatever dirt has been thrown at it - it still thrives, improves and expands. I couldn't care whether it's called simply Linux or GNU/Linux, it does the job admirably and is attracting wider and wider use.
I have relatives that I've equipped with Linux-only PC's and the only point that I have had to explain a few times is that when they buy a new piece of gear, the nice shiny CD's aren't necessary - the last time was when one of them got a new digital camera for Christmas and plugged it in, konqueror fired up and displayed the pictures he had taken, still he asked what he needed to do with the CD's, I told him they were (Windows only) useless with Linux, then installed and walked him through Google Picasa. His daughter was then handed the CD's to install on her Windows laptop. Petrol for petrol engines, diesel for diesel engines, that simple.

The newer Intel 915 cards are actually quite decent, the total opposite of the way integrated graphics used to be. Runs Beryl and Compiz quite nicely

Oh, and their 3d drivers are totally open sourced and integrated into the kernel. (AMD follow suit? please?)