Thanksgiving for a Continued Thriving Linux FOSS Harvest

Happy Thanksgiving (Image Credit: Mepiscommunity.org)

More than ever, we need to give thanks as part of our American yearly custom of celebrating Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November.

It's not about the harvest.  Nor is it about the President 'pardoning' a Turkey or religious proclamations made by Church priesthood in any secular sense.

No, we should not lose sight of what initially formed as the 'Pilgrim' holiday during the early 1600's in New England.  Pilgrim and Puritan immigrants from England brought their traditions to New England in the form of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving celebration.

It might make more sense to have such celebration following when the 'real' harvest bounty occurs, but history being what it is, the date chosen for Thanksgiving changed over time, most recently to the fourth Thursday of November from the last with a resolution made by President Roosevelt in 1941.

In terms of what we should be thankful for in the Linux Community, I feel the strongest consideration should go to the Gnu Public License from which a great bounty or code base sprang forth.  This bounty remains the stock of open source software that keeps giving of itself over and over, thanks to one Richard Stallman.  We should never forget that without such a novel licensing framework in place, the success of a Linux kernel and its 'moving parts' in the open source 'factory' would not have been possible.

So, remember as you celebrate this holiday that giving back to the FOSS community is essential, or, we would still be under the rigid control of monopolistic proprietary software vendors the likes of Microsoft and Apple.

Thanksgiving wishes go out for a continued thriving Linux FOSS harvest! -- Dietrich

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Adaptation is Hard, Power is Hard

by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Difficult it sure can be to become a high-speed racing/Formula 1 driver. Arduous it is to become an advanced computer user. Virtual desktops are hard to grasp conceptually or practically for those who never saw them in a Microsoft-dominant computer lab, so how can one expect to popularise multiple desktop activities the way KDE does?

The concept of extreme abstraction and removal of features has been popularised more recently by the advancement of smartphones and tablets (I write many of my posts while walking in the streets with my tablet). The general philosophy is that users are dumb and they should be treated as such. The problem with this is not that it's insulting (in disguise) but that it discourages learning and self improvement.

In the past decade, with the hype of 'i' things gaining a foothold, the class of 'simplicity elitists' got a lot of mindshare. The idea of excessive simplification was famously chastised by Linus Torvalds who used the "Nazi" word to call attention to the reason he was leaving GNOME. Sometimes more is less, but it has become a stubborn cliché which is hard to leave behind.

When I was a teenager and used KDE the environment was still a tad cluttered and many of the presented settings I could not make sense of. KDE had already gained a reputation as desktop made by geeks, for geeks. By the time KDE3 was out and more so in KDE4 (once many bugs were out of the way) most of the daunting settings had already been 'shelved' in Advanced menus and the GUI laid out more intuititively. But the stereotype never died. To this date, one of the prominent patterns of Linux FUD is that it's hard. Well, the kernel sure is hard, but the user barely ever interacts with it. A command-line user interacts a lot with GNU and GUI users often prefer GNOME or KDE.

When people tell you that "Linux is hard" ask them, "which desktop?"

My father had no issues when I switched him from Windows XP to KDE and he is not even so technical; he is a store manager who likes sports. Since the real barrier is that Linux desktops are different we should ask ourselves not how we make GNU/Linux easier but how to make people easier to change. It's not about coercion but about diplomacy. People need to be patient when they adapt. Is GNU/Linux hard? It's hard for impatient people to adapt to.

- Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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War is Peace, Diversity is Fragmentation, Versatile is Difficult

by Dr. Roy Schestowitz



Companies that are crazy about control wish to own everything from software down to hardware. Apple could not tolerate BSD code without closing it and Microsoft just couldn't stand the idea of companies creating their own Windows shells -- a subject of antitrust litigation almost two decades ago.

Linux, as a kernel with a lot of development activity, has become the Swiss army knife for many who wish to rapidly create operating systems. Android is probably the most ubiquitous among those, depending on the assessed criteria. GNU is the Swiss army knife further up in the software stack and Apache is extremely popular in page-serving devices. All of those are Free/Open Source software (FOSS).

The flexibility of this software is hard to compete with. Corporations and/or large communities surround those projects. Due to the old tricks of newspeak, propaganda, spin and FUD we have become accustomed to hearing words like 'fragmentation' wherever FOSS goes. Recently, a lot of this has been said about Android. The other day a notable Linux advocate, SJVN, addressed the Android "fragmentation" FUD by writing a tongue-in-cheek report about Windows:

The transition from XP to Vista, to Windows 7 and most recently, both iterations of the newest version of Windows, 8 and RT, as well as all patch iterations and dot versions in between, has left a scattered landscape of PCs in various states of OS upgrade version malaise. (Cough) This has created problems for Windows developers when coding applications, and when they test against different versions of the OS and different target devices. (Oh my!) The introduction of multiple versions of PCs, as well as Windows virtual machines and emulators running in Mac OS X and Linux, has further complicated this situation by creating additional "forks" of Windows, which have their own unique application issues that developers need to address. (The horror! The horror!)

This puts in perspective one aspect of the FUD's shortcomings. Because Windows also supports nearly as much hardware as Linux does, the 'fragmentation' may relate to hardware too. Let's face it. A power which is diversity -- something that Apple actively discourages -- should not be portrayed as a weakness. Linux and GNU are very compatible with UNIX owing to POSIX. GTK applications are quite compatible with applications that use Qt, and vice versa (narrowed down to two options just for the sake of concision). This took a while to achieve, but we are there now. Diversity is secured in the compatibility/standards sense, owing in part to compartmentalisation. People who chastise GNU/Linux over 'fragmentation' are either dishonest or have not kept up with GNU/Linux for nearly a decade. To say that GNU/Linux is 'hard' because it facilitates advanced features is also to overlook the progress made in the past half a decade in KDE and GNOME. But that's a subject for another day...

- Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Linux Advocates and Freedom Advocates

by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Some Linux advocates have had the bitter experience of being labelled "faux" advocates and dismissed as being invalid advocates who must be ostracised. People who are Linux advocates arrive from a wide spectrum of backgrounds, either political, philosophical, or whatever. Some Linux advocates engage in parallel activism in the areas of feminism, government transparency, censorship/free speech, and science, to name just a few. Those do not interfere with the goal of advancing Linux, or GNU/Linux.

It is disheartening to see and I regret to say that some Linux advocates get muzzled because to them, GNU/Linux advocacy needs to accompany a broader agenda, which may or may not convey some of the same principles adhered to by GNU/Linux luminaries.

It is fair to say that Linux is apolitical because the project's founder rarely mixes his technical work with political burden. But if by "Linux" one refers to a broader system, for instance GNU/Linux with some vast desktop environment like KDE, then it is fair to say that freedom advocacy deserves plenty of room. KDE and GNU both market themselves as being pro-freedom, more so than Linux.

When Linux advocates argue that freedom takes precedence over power (as in the power of a program), they should not be dismissed as "radical", "extremist", etc. It is most likely that these people actually represent the views of many Linux developers, where by "Linux" they refer to a system far bigger than a kernel. Whether immersion of politics in software contributes to infighting, division and alienation of corporate participation is a subject which merits debate. But open discussion is definitely compatible with the underlying strengths of Free and Open Source software.

-- Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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GNU and Linux: It's Not Just About Attribution But Also Philosophy

by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Branding is the key

An increasingly-tiring debate over the naming of the (GNU/)Linux operating system was recently rekindled. It occurred rather virally after several Web sites and longtime authors who habitually cover the subject of (GNU/)Linux had weighed in again, opening an ageing jar of worms.

Like many flamewars in the GNU and Linux world, we should accommodate these, not suppress them. With suppression -- after all -- moral advantages are lost. It is widely understood that no corporation wants to project infighting, but in the Free software world corporations are not central. Likewise, branding is not the top priority.

What the argument over the names often boils down to is philosophy, not just attribution or credit. GNU was created with software freedom in mind. Linux, in its genesis, was proprietary until it adopted the GNU GPL licence and then became mainstream. A former colleague of mine was the first to distribute GNU and Linux -- a practice which over time saw the system's name abbreviated to "Linux". The motive for this abbreviation is an interesting subject which merits its own in-depth research.

Rather than argue about what the system should be called we should pay attention to Katherine's post  and ask ourselves, what is it that should be prioritised? Freedom or popularity? These are not mutually-exclusive and describing the problem as such would be a false dichotomy. But practice suggests that those who insist on calling the system just "Linux" are happy to de-emphasise the values originally incorporated into GNU in 1983.

Richard Stallman famously said, "Freedom is having control of your own life. Power is having control over someone else's life." To a lot of people -- yours truly included -- freedom and justice are the goal, software is part of the means. For those to whom branding wars are of greater interest, the "Mac versus PC" (or Apple-branded PC versus Windows-saddled PC) is right around the corner. Or as I often put it, those who do not like Microsoft go to Apple, whereas those who do not like proprietary software turn to GNU/Linux or BSD.

Distributions of GNU/Linux bring yet more brands into the debate, not to mention all the pertinent components that belong neither to GNU nor Linux. Distributions adopt different philosophies which often reflect the views on their founder, e.g. Mark Shuttleworth in the case of Ubuntu and Patrick Volkerding in the case of Slackware Linux, Inc. The brands we use to refer to software often reveals something about our preferences, philosophy, likings and convictions.

Rather than fight over naming of systems let us reason about the innate values each of these brings. Brands are instruments of association, reputation, kinship, and/or status. We need to go deeper and explore what actual substance each of these has got. And we can choose the brands which suit us best.

- Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Why Advocacy of Linux Must Not Tolerate Censorship

by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

When  the GNU/Linux system was created 30 years ago it was motivated by the belief that -- as much as we may wish to control others -- in order to guarantee everyone's individual freedom we must decentralise and mitigate/neutralise remote control. Isolation between users and developers was annulled. Every user was capable of doing what a developer could. This clever 'hacking' of unwanted relationships between users and developers, such as the exclusivity in access to code, was removed in the licence sense.

Linux thrived owing to the adoption of licensing requirements that assure each and every contributor will retain full control over the entire system, dependants included. It sure is a motivator for many who work for FOSS-centric companies. It's a recruitment tool, too.

If code is law, as Professor Lessig put it, then using code we can control behaviour too. If we are to honour the same principles that motivated the GNU/Linux system, then we must reject the notion of censorship, no matter the platform. Not every commit -- so to speak -- needs to be accepted upstream, but its existence should be allowed and its integrity honoured. Free software is about a diversity of practices, not about imposition from above or the direct and at times explicit coercion of one over another.


Over the years I have come across thin-skinned people that excuse their practice of censorship by calling those whose opinions they do not agree with "trolls", or some of those equally insulting terms like "shills". This labelling is being used suppress comments or writers -- an issue I am familiar with as a former writer for some online news sites. My experience there taught me the role played by editors to whom controversial but otherwise truthful statement are too 'hot' to publish. This is how ideas get silently killed, or spiked. It manufactures the habit of self censorship -- an unnecessary restraint which limits one's scope of thinking.

Speaking for myself, I never deleted comments or suppressed replies, even though many of them (thousands among tens of thousands) included insults and sometimes libel. We must learn to tolerate opposing views and even disruption. That is what freedom is about.

In order to stay true to the standards of Linux and GNU as successful, leading projects that respect and harbour all voices we must stay true to the same principles that made Free software thrive. Failing to do so would lead us down the path of many failed projects which -- unlike Linux -- no longer attract volunteer contributors (who at times, in due course, found way to get paid for it as well).

Advocacy which is hinged on amplifying oneself while silencing the rest is not advocacy, it is marketing. And marketing is almost antithetical to what science-driven programming strives to achieve. In science, bad ideas die based on their merit, or lack thereof. The messengers earn or lose credibility based on their words. Let bad commentary die based on readers' assessments. Don't suppress it at an editorial level as that would project weakness, not strength.



- Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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Linux or GNU/Linux: Is the Distinction Worth Preserving?

by +Katherine Noyes

As a young reporter just starting to cover Linux not so very many years ago, I quickly learned that simply calling it “Linux” is a grave mistake in the eyes of some.

“It should be GNU/Linux,” they'd urge. “Linux is just the kernel.”

That distinction was made crystal-clear for me when I had the opportunity to interview none other than Richard Stallman, whose willingness to be interviewed was actually conditional upon LinuxInsider's agreement to use the term “GNU/Linux.” (Image credit: springfieldpc.dyndns.org)

“Linux is just one component of the GNU/Linux system, which is, in turn, just a part of the world of free software,” Stallman told me back then. “You'll have no chance of understanding or explaining anything about the Free World if you don't keep those distinctions straight.”

The Free Software Foundation, of course, provides a very nice explanation of the difference on its site.

Rarely sighted

Fast forward to today, and I still occasionally hear the same argument made. Just the other day, in fact, I was reminded by a reader of the distinction.

Take a quick scan through the Linux media, however – including not just LinuxInsider but also Linux Today, Linux Journal, the Linux Line section at PCWorld, and the site you're reading now, among numerous other publications – and you'll soon get a pretty strong indication that the distinction is rarely upheld.

You won't see it made routinely by the Linux Foundation or on Linux.com, and Linux creator Linus Torvalds himself has reportedly dismissed it.

My question to you, fellow Linux Advocates, is whether it's really still worth making. Personally, I don't think it is.

More than a mouthful

I realize that there are strong historical and philosophical reasons for separating the Linux kernel from the GNU system.

I also realize that it's technically more accurate to call it GNU/Linux.

What I'm also aware of, however, is that few beyond the inner core of free software enthusiasts still adhere to or understand the distinction; to most mainstream users, it's baffling. The term GNU/Linux is klunky and unwieldy in printed text, and even more so when you're speaking.

Meanwhile, as Linux advocates, we all want to promote Linux, and to advance its use over proprietary counterparts – right? We'd like to see Linux covered as much as possible for all its many successes, making clear to the mainstream world that it is now a fully competitive alternative.

Are those goals worth sacrificing in the interests of a linguistic distinction? I'm thinking not.

Connecting the dots

Please make no mistake: I am nothing if not an advocate for Linux and free software in general.

Personally, however, I'd rather see Linux trumpeted on the pages of PCWorld and other mainstream publications as “Linux” than see stories passed by because of the niggling debate over its name, which tends to make editors groan. Personally, I'd rather be able to have a conversation with an SMB about the advantages of “Linux” than have to bog down my speech with the clumsy “GNU/” as well, thereby potentially confusing them.

Realistically, we're lucky if mainstream users and readers today are familiar with Linux, per se; I generally make sure to add the “Linux” name to headlines involving distros such as Ubuntu and Fedora to help them make that connection.

But to add “GNU/” to the conversation? It's unreasonably idealistic, and just doesn't make sense. If we want to advance the use of Linux in the mainstream world, let's leave the history and the deep-seated philosophy for the background.

It won't get lost, I promise; rather, it will still be fully available for those who care. For all others, it will free up the “Linux” term to help us chip away faster at all the many proprietary monopolies in this computing world.

In closing, I offer you this last bit of evidence. Go to Wikipedia.org's home page and search on "GNU/Linux." What do you get? It redirects you to "Linux." That, I think, sums up the prevailing sentiment nicely.

-- Katherine Noyes

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Software To Love

By Robert Pogson

Some software you just have to love. It works well. It's easy to learn. The price is right. You can share it with others and not have to fear a knock at the door. It's Free Software. Love starts with the terms of the licence:

• OK to run the software,
• OK to examine the code,
• OK to modify the code, and
• OK to distribute the code modified or not under the same terms.

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The GNU/Linux "Desktop"

Wildebeast or Gnu (Photo credit: jomilo75)

By: Robert Pogson

Personal computers and the software that runs them has evolved greatly over the years. In the process, motherboards (the guts of the computer) have become smaller and more functional as the number of transistors in a chip has risen from thousand to hundreds of millions and clock speeds have increased thousands of times. In the process, software has changed from simple monitors controlled by serial links to complex operating systems with hundreds of processes running and GUIs (Graphical User-Interfaces). For many years the GUI has followed the "desktop" paradigm, a virtual space where "documents" and images and multi-media "files" lay about or were placed in "folders" and a user pointed and clicked to start processes, usually starting a new application or a new process (usually seen by the user in a window). There are many personal computers these days leaving the "desktop" paradigm for a new style or out of necessity, being on tiny screens like smartphones. There just isn't enough space on the tiny screen for much of anything to point and click and fingers are fumbly pointing devices anyway.

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