Mashed Articles

Thinkgeek – We always love Thinkgeek’s selection, not least because of the effort they go to building their props, and the fact that usually, they’re really good ideas. This year’s include the Lost-themed Dharma Initiative alarm clock, My First Bacon, the Screaming Knife, and programmable tattoos.

Google Translate For Animals – Mooo. Bark bark bark. Meow*. Meow? Meow! Neigh. Snap snap snappity snap. Waah. Pikachu!

Abduction Insurance – The worrying thing is that we can see a lot of people wanting to sign up for this one. Tinfoil’s not as cheap as it used to be.

Step Outside, Posh Boy – The Guardian reveals Labour’s new poster campaign. Not actually a bad idea. For a while, this was top of the trending topics, which is more than you can say for the official slogans.

TextP – Watch any YouTube video in text mode. Just snip the bit off the end of the URL and paste it on the end of other videos and enjoy them in fine Matrix-Vision.

BattleNet Neural Interface – Just wait, Ubisoft will have this protection system ready for the next version of Splinter Cell.

Google’s New Name – Pity it wasn’t updated on the actual page any time we checked, although it might just not have been working for us.

Log Into XKCD – Take a poke around behind the scenes of the popular comic. Lots of funny hidden jokes in there. Try treating it like a text adventure.

Tentacular, Tentacular! – Ars Technica throws away the idea of doing a joke news post and writes its own Choose Your Own Adventure instead. Become a booth babe! Be captured by Google! Join the Church of Scientology! It’s all there!

Simon Singh Wins Legal Battle - Actually, no, that happened. Hurrah for rational thought and common sense finally prevailing.

(* Croak)

For a community that’s supposed to rally under the noble banners of freedom, fairness and fraternity, the world of free software is chock-full of disagreement, feuds and simmering rivalries. Rather than promoting the use of open source, this division does more harm than good. The Gnome desktop is pitted against KDE, while Xfce dislikes them both. Google sells 60,000 locked-down Android phones a day while Intel and Moblin are forced to merge their open source strengths into MeeGo in order to compete. Command-line junkies argue that menus and mice are unnecessary, while Linux distributions bicker over the freedoms they offer and the deals they’ve made. Just look at the last decade of development: Fedora held on to the moral high ground while OpenSUSE forged an alliance with Microsoft and Ubuntu, sacrificing freedom for usability and jumping straight to the top of the popularity list.

Behind the scenes, developers squabble over the virtues of GTK+ against Qt, Python versus Perl and everything against Mono. Then there’s a raging storm of debate that follows any discussion over which free software licence to use, or the true definition of ‘free’ software, or who should use it, or whether it should always cost nothing.

This division starts at the core of the Linux operating system and works its way outwards. Everything else hangs off the kernel, and Linus Torvalds, its progenitor and chief maintainer, plays the pragmatist. He wants people to actually use his work and he’s not overly concerned how they do it.

This eclectic position slowed progress toward version 3 of the GPL licence – used by most open-source projects – and Torvalds stubbornly clings to version 2 for the Linux kernel and his Git version control system. This matters – it’s difficult for other people to have confidence in the new version when the world’s largest free software project can’t make the jump. More importantly, Torvalds has openly criticised the Free Software Foundation, the non-profit corporation whose job it is to protect the rights of people writing GPL-licensed open-source software.

The FSF has to take a harder line than Torvalds. It ensures loopholes are closed by stopping companies like Tivo locking down its Linux-based hardware. FSF does this by following the letter of the licence, though its zeal can also take it too far. Recent campaigns have lambasted Apple with ‘Five reasons to avoid the iPhone 3G’, attacked Microsoft and Windows 7 for ‘threat[s] to the user’s freedom’ and even seen an assault against the as-yet unreleased iPad. All a bit embarrassing.

If you follow the second link on the FSF’s website, you’ll be taken to the Free Software Definition. Here you’ll be educated on why free software is a matter of liberty, not price. After that, there’s a list of four essential freedoms, geekily numbered 0 to 3.

If that doesn’t scare you off, take a look at some of the articles by the FSF’s President, Richard Stallman. Even worse, try looking for his rendition of the Free Software Song. We’ve got a lot to thank Stallman for, but helping to erase the antisocial geek stereotype really isn’t one of them.

It is important that people understand the advantages and some of the ramifications of using open-source software, but it’s more important that these issues don’t put people off trying to use it in the first place. Nothing is perfect, and the FSF seems to forget that we all need the freedom to choose for ourselves, whether we end up going for Mac OS X, Windows 7 or Ubuntu 9.10. In a video created to mark the FSF’s 25th anniversary, you’ll find our very own Stephen Fry sitting in a comfy chair while waxing lyrical about the joys of free software. He explains why sharing code is good and why closed systems are the software equivalent of bad science. On a small desk to his right, sitting conspicuously open, is his MacBook Air, presumably running the evil, locked-down and proprietary OS X. And that’s just fine.

What the open-source community needs is a little less division, a little less evangelism and a little more compromise and understanding. It’s a movement built on high ideals, but most people use the software because it works and they like the way it feels. In the end, those are the only things that are important, because without users there would be no work for the Foundation to do at all. It’s high time everybody lightened up.

There are three reasons why Linux isn’t succeeding on the desktop, and none of them are to do with missing functionality, using the command line or the politics of free software. The first is that there’s too much momentum behind Microsoft Windows and too many preconceptions about the alternatives. Linux is perceived as having too much of a learning curve for relatively few advantages and an unknown heritage. Migrating big business to a Linux desktop is akin to turning a T1-class supertanker around mid-Atlantic. The opposite direction may look brighter, but it’s easier to chug onwards into the storm.

You only have to look at the number of people clinging to Microsoft’s venerable Office suite to see this point clearly. For the vast majority, most of its functional fecundity is wasted. Many people could arguably be just as (un)productive with Notepad, Calculator and Paint, let alone using an open-source alternative such as OpenOffice.org. Its use seems to have more to do with keeping face when attaching files to an email than a genuine operational advantage. Most people will only consider an alternative when there are bigger issues, larger icebergs or uncertain territories on the horizon.

Away from the desktop, Linux is faring better. Smaller, more agile businesses quickly quantify the cost advantages to produce cheaper and more competitive products. This is why embedded Linux has been such a success on everything from Chinese mobile phones to almost every NAS box around. This may mean that success on the desktop is only a matter of time, or it may mean that the Linux desktop is too far removed from the Linux kernel.

The second reason for failure is that Linux lacks centralised marketing. This is because there’s no real Linux Central. It’s just a trademark owned by its creator, Linus, and a term normally reserved for just the kernel of the operating system – hardly the easiest product to sell. There are plenty of people advertising their own Linux endeavours, all keen to push their own angle on its advantages. This divided effort compounds the problem. With the likes of Red Hat, Novel and Canonical all fighting for their own slice of the pie, there’s no one left to push Linux as a distinctive brand. That’s something Apple and Microsoft do extremely well, and something Linux leaves to Tux the penguin.

Many would argue that standards are the answer to this conundrum, and that would mean a single base distribution. This could then be the only distribution called ‘Linux’ – everything else would become ‘Linux-based’. Mozilla manages this well with the use of the Firefox brand. It’s freely distributable and modifiable, but it can only be called ‘Firefox’ in its untouched incarnation. Change anything and you need to change the name. For example, Debian calls its Firefox build ‘IceMonkey’ because it needs to reserve the right to make modifications, thus breaking Mozilla’s standards. This may cause confusion if you look for Firefox on your Debian desktop, but it also sets a precedent for the kind of experience that Mozilla expects its users to have, and Debian hackers still have the code to mess around with if they need to. It’s a compromise, but it might work in a world with hundreds of Linux distros.

The third reason is easy to see but harder to solve. It’s the reason why you’re not using Linux now. The solution would make all other problems redundant. The reason why you’re not using Linux now is because there isn’t a good enough reason to. Sober advantages such as better security, improved performance, rock- solid stability and low cost aren’t going to win converts. These advantages aren’t exciting enough; they’re the equivalent of a spreadsheet of mortgage repayments.

What we really want is a significant upgrade, something you’d normally pay for. Perhaps we should focus on value. Recent analysis of the kernel by Jon Corbet showed that 75 per cent of the 2.8 million lines of code in recent contributions were written by paid-for developers. That puts Linux freedom in context.

But the biggest challenge is sexiness. There’s very little of it in Linux unless you’re an antisocial geek, and products like the Apple’s iPad illustrate this massive divide painfully. As Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, puts it, “Linux can compete with the iPad on price, but where’s the magic?”

Linux has the programmers, the managers, the community, the innovation, the time and the skill. But to succeed in 2010 and the coming decade, what it really needs is a magician or two.