Free Software Linux

Pamela Jones of Groklaw rightly takes umbrage that Sun Microsystems apparently stood by while The SCO Group attempted to foul the pedigree of Linux, but how much righteous indignation is warranted is debatable. Jones writes:

Tony Mobily’s recent FSM post A future without Microsoft and the resulting comments have caused me to consider the way we use numbers to argue for free software in the marketplace. I’m not convinced that it’s the best strategy because those waters are particularly muddy when it comes to comparing free and proprietary software.

An analysis of Microsoft's latest admission regarding the Free software threat.

Having had a scientific education I know something about the basic problems of classification. You're facing this enormous variation of a real life population and now you have to recognize and define properties, devise some way to measure them and then group them together in a way that not only makes sense, but gives you some useful insight in the world you're trying to analyse.

Secunia have reported that more flaws were found in Redhat Linux (633) than in Windows (123), but even a blind man can see it is nowhere near a fair comparison.

Reading Marc Fleury's post on the subject of open source and proprietary software (a response to my post on Benchmark's investment in Engine Yard), you'd be tempted to believe that the world is growing more proprietary. Reading InfoWorld's response to Marc, you'd be certain that yes, the world is definitely closing off.

I'm really fascinated sometimes how many people talk about Linux. This definitely includes your truly - we often talk with our emotions and with some sort of will to make to a headlines. It is not bad to be passionate about something, but it leads sometimes to overvaluing the issue on hand. I make such an error myself at times.

Half of the disappointment concerns a popular FOSS news site, and the other is an individual who believes that Microsoft bashing needs to come to a halt and that anyone who essentially disagrees will be seen as nothing more than a conspiracy theorist. So, who is up first?

Regular visitors of my blog know that nothing outrages me more than people who apply these guerrilla tactics. Whether it is Ian Ferguson who said that "the flaming Linux bigots should take a backseat", Mohit Joshi, who equaled GNU to communism or the more recently Bruce Byfield, who obviously couldn't take the heat anymore and decided to proclaim unilaterally that all bloggers who don't agree with him are automatically "conspiracy theorists".