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发信人: linuxrat (叫我老鼠错不了), 信区: Linux
标 题: LWN对'99的回顾和展望2000年的计划..您的计划呢?
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Thu Dec 30 20:43:20 1999)
我的计划是: 继续happy hacking...life, GNU/Linux, BSD, BeOS, QNX, CCE...
翻译英文文档, 做发行套件...继续灌水...没水灌了之后然后辞职....呵呵....
然后么就可以找MM啦....哦, 差点忘了, 还有HURD也要hacking的说. 今天刚
把文档和软件给DLed回来, 还没有整理呢...下个世纪吧...(警告ttao! 不许
因为看到"下个世纪"这个词就说"还剩两天呢", 否则我下个世纪跟你没完!!//grin)
回顾么, 没有MM真是自由, 买了台LinuxPenguinWorkstation, 自己就有了一台
机器整天可以happy hacking...见到了RMS大爷, 拍了几张合影, 陪大爷去爬了
一趟长城, 见到了很多SMTH大牛, 卖了两次LinuxCD...和www.clinux.org的负责
人见了一面, 还有cirrus, CuteGuy...哇....这么多的事情啊...
================== Begin of review and prespect====================
Leading items and editorials
Another year ends, so it must be time for an LWN retrospective and
look forward. Interested parties may want to review the 1998 year-end
LWN for a similar summary of where we were a year ago. Things have
changed a lot.
So what are the themes of 1999? Here's a quick look:
* A year ago, people still wondered if it was possible to make money
working with Linux. Few people ask that question anymore. Linux
stormed decisively into the stock market; clearly people think
there is money to be made. We have our first Linux billionaires.
Anybody who makes a name for him/herself as a Linux hacker does
not lack for job offers. Highly commercial Linux trade shows draw
ever-larger crowds.
Many questions remain about the long-term viability of specific
Linux companies, but nobody doubts that there is money to be made
with Linux.
* A year ago, Linux was criticised as being unsupported. Nobody says
that anymore either. Companies like Linuxcare and Red Hat have
high-profile support operations; if those companies are still too
small to make your CIO sleep at night, companies like HP and IBM
should do the trick. Linux now probably has the widest variety of
support options of any operating system out there - and any one of
them should be able to actually fix problems.
* Open source software development has become institutionalized and
funded. Volunteer hackers remain the heart of many development
projects, but more and more of them are finding that companies
want to pay them for their efforts. The sourceXchange and
Cosource.com have sprung up as another way to fund open source
development. Resources like SourceForge provide infrastructure to
help free software projects along.
Ad hoc free software projects abound, but much of the core Linux
infrastructure is now in the hands of people who are paid to work
on it.
* Last year, LWN made the obvious observation that big business had
discovered Linux. This year, instead, big business has discovered
open source. Companies like SGI, IBM, and HP are running large and
important open source development projects. Others, like Compaq,
Creative, Matra Datavision, and many, many more are doing
significant software releases of their own. Others, such as Sun,
haven't quite figured it out yet, but may get there.
Even a year ago, the idea that a large corporation would find
releasing its code to be in its interest was considered pretty
radical. This year, it's just another business strategy. That is a
tremendous change.
Many other things happened, of course...that big proprietary software
company was found to be a monopoly... license wars abounded, but had
little effect on the rest of what was happening... the 2.2 kernel...
Samba 2.0 breaks into the domain controller business... Linux failed
to fragment or fall apart... almost every Linux web site on the planet
got bought... and so on. See our 1999 Linux Timeline for an attempt at
a complete list (final version to be released just after the beginning
of the year).
What awaits Linux in 2000? We don't know much more than anybody else,
but that hasn't kept us from sounding off over the last couple years.
Here's a few ideas:
* Like it or not, the release of Windows 2000 is going to be an
important event. It could well be the thing that fuels Linux's
next big growth phase. If it is, as some have predicted, an
all-time commercial flop, the resulting rush to Linux will make
everything that came before seem insignificant.
* The release of Office for Linux, which might happen in 2000, will
be another defining event. Office would further "legitimize" Linux
in millions of businesses; it would also make life much more
difficult for commercial and free Linux office suites. Linux
systems running Office may beat other systems running Office, but
that is still not the vision many of us have of our desired
computing future.
* Linux stocks are currently valuable for a number of reasons; one
of those is their scarcity. By the end of next year, that scarcity
will no longer exist. Expect a true flood of Linux IPOs over the
next six months; also expect companies that are already public to
try to reposition themselves as Linux companies - along the lines
of Corel.
* The pressures of being public and of increasing amounts of money
in play will erode the friendly nature of the competition between
Linux companies. The "we are all in this together, against
Microsoft" line will look increasingly timeworn. Linux companies
will be competing against each other.
* There will be an explosion of vertical applications for Linux.
Already we are seeing applications for restaurants, medical
offices, and e-commerce sites showing up. Many more will come,
especially as industries discover that they can do better with
cooperatively-developed open source software. There is probably a
promising future for companies that can set up and coordinate
development projects for vertical applications.
Beyond all that, look for the usual tremendous growth in Linux
deployments, more endorsements from the commercial world, continued
pointless licensing flamewars, and no end of things that nobody
expects.
Another issue for 2000 is protection of algorithms. Software patents,
clearly, are an important aspect of this problem. The software patent
issue may well come to a head in the coming year, as silly patents
bite more and more people. The level of discontent will certainly
rise; whether it's enough to bring about any kind of worthwhile change
remains to be seen.
Software patents are bad enough, but free software also is vulnerable
to attacks on reverse engineering. The current attack by the "DVD Copy
Control Association" against 72 defendents demonstrates clearly the
extent of the problem. The DVD folks put together a poor,
closed-source encryption system that was easily broken; now they want
to use intellectual property laws to put the genie back into the
bottle. They will fail, but the amount of grief that they can cause in
the meantime is large.
Defendants are being named in this suit for the crime of linking to
places where DVD information could be found. Deja.com has been named
for carrying a netnews posting with links.
The attack on reverse engineering is scary. If it succeeds, expect to
see a lot more like it. And once it is illegal to look inside a box to
see how it works, it will be always harder to create free software
equivalents, to deal with problems, or even to look for "NSA keys." So
much for freedom.
The attack on linking is perhaps even worse. It is reminiscent of the
"Communications Decency Act" of the mid-90's, which attempted to
criminalize the provision of legal information. If linking is a crime,
then the web is in trouble, and freedom along with it. It is
encouraging that (just before LWN went to "press") the initial motion
for a restraining order (to prevent posting or linking to the DeCSS
code) was denied by the court, but this fight has just begun. Let us
hope that 2000 goes down as the year when these sorts of attacks were
beaten back.
==================== End of review and prespect=====================
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| 以无法为有法 ， | 拳本无法，有法也空； | 我爱GNU/Linux, |
| 以无限为有限 | 一法不立，无法不容。| 因为我爱自由！ |
| | | |
| 截拳道宗师-李小龙 | 意拳宗师-王芗斋 | 土人 Linuxrat |
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