New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux
Why is Linux free?
Nearly all the Linux distributions in the world are free, meaning that they cost $0 to install and use on your computer. The reason for this is that all Linux distros take their software from the same pool - if one distro has a really awesome program, chances are 50 other distros also have exactly the same feature, so if a company tried to sell their version of Linux people would just go elsewhere.
The big upside to all this is that if you ever decide you don't like the direction one distro is taking, you can jump ship and try a different one - you'll find all the same software there ready for you.
P.S. this is not an original response. I quoted that from the first result in a Google Search for "Why Linux is free?".
Why Win not a free?
Technically Windows 10 IS free, for at least 1 year after release.
Its true that Windows was written by the linux guy and Bill Gates stoled from him?
No. Linux emerged in the early 90's while Windows has been around since the early 80's. Linux is relatively new.
You really should Google more
Your lack of knowledge of OS history is refreshing. Seriously. It's all quite fascinating stuff to learn, I'm jealous that you get to experience it
https://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~pxk/416/notes/01-intro.html
Some people here are mixing up free as libre with free as in free beer.
It started as a summer project with the idea "I'm going to write a basic, free (as in both libre and gratis) OS for fun and learning purposes"
This was during the patent wars on BSD and AT&T so it had a very good statistic chance
You can pay for Linux if you want, RedHat is not free the last time I checked.
Must i be pro to open a topic here? Am asking for your opinion couse i need your opinion for something.
Understand "they" is not an individual or strictly for-profit entity. Many Linux distros are something of a labor of love.
Yep. It's like raising a child
But its easier to tell the kid to "f*** off" than linux/a bunch of angry linux lovers
Did I say you had to be? Read again:
Some developers may well be freaks, but the bulk of the open source/free OS is driven by a sound business model. Many linux components and applications are given away for free because the main developers are making money in another way. Large scientific institutions (such as CERN) and large IT consulting/service companies (such as IBM) need software to accomplish their goals. They don't get paid because they write the software, they get paid because they deliver a service/product/research/something that someone want to pay. The software is merely a tool for them. Open sourcing is a clever way to spread the developing cost of the generic components, and to nourish a wider base of developers that are already accustomed with the technology and don't need costly training for secretive in-house technologies.
When a patent troll targeted some linux intellectual propriety, IBM stood up and beared the legal cost that was needed to destroy it, because a cheaper standard settlement would have meant weakening the open source, and this would have hurt greatly the IBM consulting business (google: SCO vs IBM)
The huge success of world wide web has been driven by this framework, see: http://home.web.cern.ch/topics/birth-web/licensing-web
Hardware design can be open sourced as well, with the same business motivations, see http://www.ohwr.org/projects
If you ask me, everything should be open-source. It'll allow the economoy to grow rather than competing directly with one another.
I think most people would prefer to ask someone well versed in macroeconomics.
I suspect most people would like everything to be open source because they don't like paying for stuff.
I don't mind paying for software. Fact, I've paid for all of our MSDN accounts, Adobe licenses etc.. But most people, yes, do not want to pay for software, so they ride the band-wagon of users wanting free stuff or open-source, but of course, there is a bigger picture than just having free software. It's about security, quality, freedom, flexibility, interchangeability. Authors are motivated by pride and recognition rather than a development plan supplied by a marketing department. Most people wont understand and respect this type of behavior and logic. Microsoft. Paid software, windows. Junk? Look at all the issues that arise from within. Now compare that to CentOS or Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Look at all the support forums available, because the community, the community itself is different!
Fact of life.
Technical people care about Linux being free as in freedom.
Most people care about Linux being free as in price.
Open source != free. cPanel is open source but it is not free as in freedom or free as in price. Even Windows can be open source - you can buy a source code license.
You are quite correct, though it depends how you define "emerged". Linux emerged from Unix which goes back to 1970. There are really no new ideas in Linux (it's a free implementation of Sys V), or in *BSD (a free implementation of 4.4 BSD). Windows really did start with its own ideas in the 1980s (many of which weren't all that great ;-)
BTW, Linux is only partially free in the freedom sense. The GPL imposes significant restrictions on what you can do with Linux and removes some of your freedom. *BSD is much freer.
But of course, absolute freedom is not necessarily the best situation. But if that's what you're judging, the BSD (actually ISC these days) license is inarguably freer than the GPL.
Linus Torvalds is love... Linus Torvalds is life...
Making a project open source does not guarantee it will be higher quality, more flexible or more interchangeable.
Money is as close as one can come to universal motivation. Marketing departments generally don't build development plans.
Primarily because it's not particularly logical.
I have less problems with my Windows desktop than my Linux desktop.
Unlike problems that don't happen with open source projects, like the OpenSSL vulnerability that didn't happen.
Support forums for Windows are all over the Internet, I've never had a problem finding help.
Understand that I am not opposed to open source, I use and support a lot of it. I even write it. However, it's not an instant answer to all of the world's software problems.
Windows is your only example? I can think of a half-dozen other operating systems (AIX, Solaris, z/OS, OS/400, etc.) and they are all highly quality. Some are much higher quality than Linux.
And beyond OSes, there are a zillion examples of high quality commercial software.
It's worth noting that most innovation happens in the commercial software space. A very large percentage of what you see in Linux is free clones of commercial software. Heck, Linux itself is a clone of Sys V, which is a commercial product.
And in the parallel universe, AltBuyAds created a thread titled "Why Linux is not free?".
Sorry, had to post this. Been watching too much Fringe
"It's not about Free ... it's FREEDOM"
http://linux.or.id
Mainly because of GPL, which protects the open source of Linux, even if someone makes a paid Linux distro, the code licensed under GPL still needs to be made available. A person did try to trademark the "Linux" name, took all the work the "freaks" (BuyAds tm) did and started selling it but eventually lost these rights in court.
It depends what innovation means.
And it depends what a clone is.
IBM-PC standard (x86) is de-facto standard for tens of years because it was open. Apple tried a lot with their Motorola closed standards and were close to bankruptcy before Steve Jobs came back. Also the IBM's own MCA failed, even though, technically, was just an improved variation of the x86 standard design. People choose the open standards over a better product.
Innovations happened in the hardware area only by the big boys (Intel and at some point AMD as well as others in other areas) until recently when ARM took off BECAUSE of their licensing model. Without the ARM revolution, we would have had twice as clunky mobile devices costing 3 times as much in average. Everyone benefits, the consumers, the producers, the programmers from this ecosystem EXCEPT the big boys. The chinese are making little miracles in terms of power and cost. Why do you think Microsoft is thinking to make their OS somewhat free? Why is Intel subsidizing their "mobile" CPUs making windows devices so cheap these days? Because they are squeezed by the competition and EVEN SO, they are somewhat turning a profit from it, by the sheer scale the mobile devices are penetrating due to the work of others, so, while Intel and Microsoft might not exactly benefit from openness, they do not lose either. The big fabs can get cheaper machines because even their suppliers can operate at an economy of scale, this is why powerful little devices cost less than the power bill for a month in many households.
The software and hardware have free alternatives today, open standards and open source, if you wish to have control over the platform, you can create real open ones where auditors can search for backdoors and create a really open and uncensored internet over those, without servers, without control, fully encrypted.
This is not only needed to further spread knowledge and power through the masses, empower the random joe to know his rights and fight abuse, but also empower those that can and wish to further improve upon this knowledge. Commercial products have to obey the pressure from governments and cults, you cannot make money without those guys approving, but the open ones can be made even by enthusiasts with little money. Crowdsourcing is a reality and it is going to make a major difference, even the little guys will have power if they unite, bitcoin reminds me of the monopoly which the local communist times telecoms had here. With the advent of mobile phones, they were charging an arm and a leg to call on mobile, 10 times more than international calls and those were really expensive in the early 90s when the romanian currency was not convertible, and what happened? People started to use more mobile phones and ditched the fixed lines pushing the telecom into bankruptcy. Same with the internet access, I was paying 100 $ for a 4K link, so put up with neighbours to share a "business" link and many other people did the same, so we had companies growing all over from these not only making the state company obsolete, but also creating such a competition that the local internet is among the best and cheapest in the world. Thanks to this, romania has one of the most democratic governments and when the internet wanted to choose a certain president, from the projected 40-60 for the prime minister, it became 57-43 for the opposition within 2 weeks.
Yep, the game is not over, we havent lost yet, and if we continue the fight every day, will never lose.
Technically it's not. You must already own Windows in order for you to get it free (as an update to an existing copy of Windows7/8).
it's free because you don't need to pay for it.