This is actually rather lovable FUD. Here’s this guy, Jeremy Allison, who has made an enviable living (and life-style) out of plugging away at Samba for twenty years, and good luck to him.
We won, and we didn’t notice.
But (and I ask this honestly) does anybody actually use Samba for anything important?
I never knew that it was originally developed at IBM (which is interesting) and targeted at DEC (which is even more interesting). However, the only things it is currently good for are (a) NFS-ifying an NTFS filesystem and (b) talking to Active Directory.
I would assume that either or both of these are anathema to the Loons.
And, of course, Samba 4 will be out “real soon now…”
... and this is where the whole, otherwise good-natured, article goes askew.
No-one else, other than Microsoft, does a print server. No-one else does an Active Directory server, and Samba 4 when it’s finished will be a complete replacement for Microsoft.
Samba, the new Voldemort™! Well, of course, it’s just a slip of the tongue. Jeremy meant … well … he meant … um … something entirely different, it’s not clear what. But it’s an attitude that pervades the entire interview.
Jeremy used to dress in black leather and enjoy LinuxWorld parties until they filled up with Suits, which is a Bad Thing, so now he hangs out at Linux Foundation parties. (No funny remarks about the Gimp and nineteenth century corsets here, please. This is a family site.)
And he’s corresponded with Richard Stallman, who insulted him (no surprise there), and he’s met Linus T, who didn’t have a clue who he was (please stop snoring), and did I mention the enviable lifestyle? Which I assume is amply funded by a proprietary company of some sort. Thus:
But I am still a believer in free and open source software. You can create proprietary software that is as good as open source software. It’s just a lot harder. The pressures to ship proprietary software are much greater, and it’s harder to find the time for the care and effort you need.
All you need to know about the FOSS Developer Mind (and I am not talking about Loons like Adam here. Loons do not develop, almost by definition. And, if Adam is a fair representative, their minds defy the notion of Planck’s constant). Get rid of the deadline pressure, and replace it with the many eyeball pressure. Yup, it’s ProvenToWork™.
And then there’s this sad little appendix of an apologia pro Luna mea:
People say we’re an old project but Tridge did some statistics on this, and our rate of change in Samba is greater than the rate of change in the Linux kernel.
Indeed. In the real (proprietary) world, we measure things in terms of ROI (return on investment). In the faded hippy Loon world, apparently, the equivalent is ROC (rate of change).
Constant churn as a measure of success? Surely that is a Good Thing?
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Shamelessly lifted link from LHB, btw. It’s still cookin’ over there, under the nigger-baiting sock-puppet surface.
Comments
“Linux is now the embedded industry.”
Can you count the number of things are wrong in just that one sentence?
And, by the way, drop the n-word. We don’t need no such thing 'round here.
Hell, I’ll use it where appropriate. Baiters of Afro-Caribbeans makes no sense whatsoever.
Using the term “n1gger” reminds you (well me, anyway) of the sort of scum-bags who came up with the term in the first place.
“We won, and we didn’t notice.”
Oh, I see… So, does victory in loon terms require a complete and total loss (“for the…” and later “of the…” – “...users”) or is that optional?
“No-one else, other than Microsoft, does a print server.”
CUPS?
“No-one else does an Active Directory server”
Why the f*ck do you need ADDS if you don’t want Microsoft? UNIX got NIS and LDAP..?
“Samba 4 when it’s finished [...]”
Probably not out before Half-Life Episode 3.
“a file server for me, because that’s the whole point. It still is a file server for me.”
NFS?!
“It’s being shipped but doesn’t do trusted domains yet and doesn’t do forests.”
LOL. AD without forests? Does that mean I only got one domain for the whole infrastructure?!
The real thing I never got about ABM and Samba, why do you want to write something you can’t use without Microsoft software?
“The real thing I never got about ABM and Samba, why do you want to write something you can’t use without Microsoft software?”
That’s because Unix is supposed to oh-so perfect for servers and the loons just don’t seem to get the idea of what people expect to get out of their investments at this day and age. I even had a nutjob telling me at one point how AD could be replaced with just OpenLDAP and a bunch of PowerShell scripts. Yeah, that’s when I realized you could get bit rot in the loving brain.
“why do you want to write something you can’t use without Microsoft software?”
Thanks ChrisTX, now reality is bending and my machine is melting… Adam, is that you?
Didn’t OS X Lion drop Samba and replace with their own solution that doesn’t blow total chunks?
Didn’t OS X Lion drop Samba and replace with their own solution that doesn’t blow total chunks?
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20046383-263.html
Yes, an outright up-yours to GPLv3.
Thank goodness there is still sanity in the world.
Technically, you could replace Active Directory with OpenLDAP and a bunch of PowerShell scripts.
In which case, what you would have would be a badly engineered, buggy, slow clone of Active Directory that doesn’t work as well and freezes up every now and again.
It is the Way of the Loon.
Interesting article that, Joe. I thought you’d sworn off (or at) the Mac?
It’s possible that both you and Topher (who has a weird vision that Python will eventually embrace GPLv3. I feel safe in saying this will never happen) are wrong as to the motives.
I doubt it’s anything to do with the license. I suspect it’s because Samba 4 is JustAroundTheCorner™, and — as with so many Loon projects — it’s currently backward-facing and doesn’t do much of a job at supporting a Win7/Server 2008 environment.
Still, as Jeremy says, if you work really, really hard at it, there’s a small but real chance that Proprietary Software will be almost as good as Open Software.
sooner or later all things must come to an end.
Funny how that “end” comes so fast when it’s fLOSS, isn’t it?
“Thanks ChrisTX, now reality is bending and my machine is melting… Adam, is that you?”
I meant, if you want to replace Microsoft, why clone them and build somthing that is intended for use with Microsoft?
Well, this is the originality we get from the FLOSS community. I don’t see why they keep trying to clone proprietary software instead of creating originals.
It’s lame how many projects start with the phrases X is replacement to Y on Windows, X is clone of Y for Linux/Unix, X is the FLOSS answer to Y… and so on. If they are going to spend their time writing crappy software, at least write original crappy software.
“Well, this is the originality we get from the FLOSS community. I don’t see why they keep trying to clone proprietary software instead of creating originals.”
Well, if they didn’t, no one will ever use their software. What are the biggest complaints people have against Linux (other than the loony fanboys)? “It doesn’t work well with my current software/files/devices/whatchamacallit”, and that’s despite the fact that they’re trying to make it work. Now imagine if they listened to you and didn’t even bother with interoperability.
As for originals, there are many. Most of them are in programming languages and web frameworks categories. I have no idea why those categories though.
Thanks! Interoperability™.
(I think I know what you mean, IMGX64, or at least I think I’m listening … but really. It just ain’t gonna happen on the Desktop, is it?)
@IMGX64:
Programming languages and frameworks and so on. FOSS? OK, let’s stretch the definition for these purposes. I have no idea either, but it’s interesting, isn’t it?
You don’t come up with a language or a framework for ideological purposes, and neither one works as a “look at me! I can has cheezburger!” sort of thing.
People are going to use those things. Otherwise you’d never even hear of them.
And despite what the Loons say, Perl and Python and Ruby and the rest are not FOSS, and did not happen because of FOSS, and would have happened whether or not somebody uttered the sacred initials FOSS.
“It doesn’t work well with my current software/files/devices/whatchamacallit”
Interoperability and product design are not the same thing.
FOSS invents and creates nothing – they merely try to copy* proprietary designs and they can’t even do that properly.
(And when it comes to interop, they mostly just fail…)
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“Perl and Python and Ruby and the rest are not FOSS”
???
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/FOSS
http://dev.perl.org/licenses/
http://docs.python.org/license.html
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/LICENSE.txt
I do think the term “FOSS” is a bit ambiguous, and referring to them as “open source”(about practicality) or “free software”(about ideology) is clearer, but FOSS is the term you’re using.
I believe Ruby and Python are closer to open source than the ideology of free software. I don’t know about Perl, but it’s a crazy language anyway.
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“and did not happen because of FOSS, and would have happened whether or not somebody uttered the sacred initials FOSS.”
That’s like arguing Microsoft’s success didn’t happen because of IBM PC, and would’ve happened on any other platform. Therefore, IBM PC is not important.
In fact, I think the only programming language with a closed source main implementation1 which is worth using is C# (and maybe F# if you’re into that sort of thing). (Is Objective-C considered FOSS? Wikipedia says its main implementations are Clang and GCC, but is the Objective-C part FOSS too?)
And why did Sun release Java (and more importantly, the JVM) under the GPL? Was it just peer language pressure? It was already widely used before that. I’m still stumped.
[1] C, C++, and other languages where the standard comes before the implementation don’t count, obviously.
@IMGX64:
I see where you’er coming from, but you’re overusing the quotes in this case. It’s not an argument from authority, it’s an argument from common perspective.
Call something FOSS, and it is inevitably tarnished with the Foundation’s ugly little brush.
Call it “open source,” and it isn’t.
I submit that practically any language you can think of (non-proprietary, of course) falls into the latter camp. With the exception of the odd Gnu-specific one, of course.
Is this an important distinction? It is to me. I find it particularly disgraceful when feeble-minded technical failures (ie the Loons) co-opt an entirely orthogonal success to buttress their own demented feelings of self-worth.
And “That’s like arguing Microsoft’s success didn’t happen because of IBM PC, and would’ve happened on any other platform. Therefore, IBM PC is not important” is a genuine (albeit simile-based) straw man.
“That” is nothing of the sort. Perl1 predates Linux by seven years and came a mere two years2 after the Gnu Manifesto and the Foundation.
To address your specific case, I am not arguing that the IBM PC (here: “FOSS”) is unimportant. I am not even arguing that the IBM PC (here: “FOSS”) is not a contributor to the success of Microsoft (here: “Perl, Python, language of choice”).
It’s fairly asinine to compare a fundamental requirement (hardware, in the case of Microsoft software) to an accidental accessory (licensing, in the case of Perl etc), but I’m well aware that you are too intelligent to miss that point.
In other words, in some context, “FOSS” may well be important. Just like cutting your own arm off and bleeding to death is important.
In the context of Perl, etc, I submit that it is not.
Weirdly, I’m not even sure that FOSS has helped Emacs much — I use the damn thing whenever I can, and yet I do not care whether or not I can access its internals.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSS
I’m not sure what this endless stream of references achieves, but I’m willing to join in.
(And I hate to keep whacking away at this particular mole, but I’ve spent some time looking through the open source of the Python engine and trying to figure out how to get rid of the Global Lock, in order to implement some form of TBB underneath. Which I think would be an excellent combination of platform + language.
Maybe I’m dense, but it just doesn’t seem possible in a sane period of time. Open or otherwise, the source just defeats me.)
“Call something FOSS, and it is inevitably tarnished with the Foundation’s ugly little brush.”
Yeah, I see your point.
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“It’s fairly asinine to compare a fundamental requirement (hardware, in the case of Microsoft software) to an accidental accessory (licensing, in the case of Perl etc), but I’m well aware that you are too intelligent to miss that point.”
Fair enough. But who would use a closed programming language these days (except ones backed by a big company like Microsoft)?
Maybe I’m looking at this from the wrong perspective. Languages are targeted towards programmers, who are by definition interested in code.
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“Weirdly, I’m not even sure that FOSS has helped Emacs much — I use the damn thing whenever I can, and yet I do not care whether or not I can access its internals.”
And I’m a Vim user. Let’s start a flame wad2b discussion. (Just kidding, I’m well aware of all arguments for Emacs, and I chose Vim after a long consideration).
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“I’m not sure what this endless stream of references achieves, but I’m willing to join in.”
Sorry about that. I just found it odd that you called something non-FOSS when it’s clearly FOSS. I assumed you had some wrong assumption.
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“trying to figure out how to get rid of the Global Lock”
Join the club. The CPython developers tried that several times to no avail, and even a team of Google engineers failed to do that with Unladen Swallow. Getting rid of the GIL is pretty much a recurring joke in the Python community (for various degrees of 'joke’).
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