What Would Be Disastrous For Linux, Open-Source

[mrugiero]

With all this talk of socio-economic systems, I'm surprised that noone has suggested politics as a major threat to Linux. With all the in-fighting, we always risk fragmentation.

That might be because noone has stated their position, we just tried to be descriptive about socio-economic systems :P
But you have a great point, fragmentation (independent from the cause) is a great threat to open source as a whole. In fact, unichrome drivers show an example of how fragmentation can kill a project, and many others that I'm not aware of :P

[DeepDayze]

With all this talk of socio-economic systems, I'm surprised that noone has suggested politics as a major threat to Linux. With all the in-fighting, we always risk fragmentation.

This is true as MS can try political means to crush FOSS if all its efforts such as lawsuits (remember SCO?) fail.

FOSS lovers can counter this by writing to their elected officials to urge them not to cave in to MS's demands, if this ever came to pass

[?John?]

The mere idea that you can trivially make claims to own an idea, not an implementation, is simply out of this age.

Exactly. Pirates got a point.

Especially since the large ones in the industry have started to use it as a normal trick of the trade to keep the smaller competition in check. Once Linux makes enough money for some party, the patent trolls will come to leech off what they percieve as their share.

Yet another good reason to "get that crap outta here!"

[Honeyman]

The End of BSOD

I think that would really scary:
Microsoft gets out a Windows 8 that not only works reasonably well and is as customizable/configurable as Linux, but which does not feature the notorious BSOD anymore.
People would barely have any incentive to switch to Linux any longer. Linux newbies usually do not care about Open Source Stuff and its philosophy.

[Remco]

With all this talk of socio-economic systems, I'm surprised that noone has suggested politics as a major threat to Linux. With all the in-fighting, we always risk fragmentation.

[wirrbeltier]

Oh noez, Politics!

+1 for patents being the greatest threat to a widespread adoption of Linux, though.
The mere idea that you can trivially make claims to own an idea, not an implementation, is simply out of this age. Especially since the large ones in the industry have started to use it as a normal trick of the trade to keep the smaller competition in check. Once Linux makes enough money for some party, the patent trolls will come to leech off what they percieve as their share.

[mrugiero]

Hmmm... I think it is a bit more complex. See, two of them are ways to use the power, and two are economical politics. Also, they are too polarized. What about interventionist capitalism? It is not communism, private property exists, just they have bigger taxes to redistribute, being that to the poor or to different sectors of the economy, or to education, etc.
Also, being two ways of directing the country (or whatever it is being managed) and two ways of directing the economy, you can combine them as they are independant.
In fact, in Argentina our first neo-liberal government was a dictatorship. And it was authoritarian. Both, you see? And you can see authoritarian (in fact, most are) communisms. About libertarians, I'm not sure my country had that in the last 50 years...

1 minute edit limit ??

In fact, looking the compass you linked to, it uses the four as directions, so it is implied it can be combined and not be "total" whatever it is.

[mrugiero]

[OFFTOPIC]

Well, nowadays there isn't just communism and capitalism, but 4 distinct political/social branches.

Communism -> Neo-Liberalism -> Authoritarianism -> Libertarianism

Linux isn't communism at all; in reality, Linux is like more a Leftist/Libertarian movement. (I don't understand why a lot of people confund/mistake Communism with Libertarianism when they're very different political/economical/social ideals).

Some useful info click here.

[/OFFTOPIC]

Hmmm... I think it is a bit more complex. See, two of them are ways to use the power, and two are economical politics. Also, they are too polarized. What about interventionist capitalism? It is not communism, private property exists, just they have bigger taxes to redistribute, being that to the poor or to different sectors of the economy, or to education, etc.
Also, being two ways of directing the country (or whatever it is being managed) and two ways of directing the economy, you can combine them as they are independant.
In fact, in Argentina our first neo-liberal government was a dictatorship. And it was authoritarian. Both, you see? And you can see authoritarian (in fact, most are) communisms. About libertarians, I'm not sure my country had that in the last 50 years...

[not.sure]

What if Microsoft bought Redhat?

[evolution]

I have to disagree with open source views being more Libertarian then Communism but then again even the open source movement operates under a guise. It would also depend on which of the various open source factions you want to compare it to. BSD would be closer to libertarian as it aims more for the rights of the individual for example and the GPL crew would be closer to the ideals of communism where it is more about the community.

Well, my point of view is that I think linux kernel / OS software development is more like "socialsm" than "communism", as communism IMPOSES a community to do something, whereas socialism can be considered as a more moderated / democratic way of communism (something more like "democratic development")...

You also have a very plausible point-of-view, I respect it...!

That doesn't really help anything as even though it is developed outside of a patent following country it still would be in infringement in the countries that do have software patents.

This as well doesn't guarantee that it will be "patent-free". The problem with software patents is that you don't need to copy code to be in infringement. One can simply duplicate the functionality and be in infringement. One doesn't even have to be knowingly infringing on a patent to be in infringement.

So all, in all, patents are like what I said: they destroy progress... and are, unfortunately, a major threat to Linux, Open-Source...

Cheers