Re: Future of IT in Lebanon

"BM" <m-e-d-a-w-a-r@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dn88am$qgn$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[......................]
> > I'm responding to a current theme of yours on SCL, which is actually
> > relevant: that Lebanon's best chances are by going Linux and Open
> > Source to develop an IT industry.
>
> No Joseph, that is not exactly my point. My point is that *both* Open
> Source software and commercial software are needed in Lebanon. The
> options presented today to Lebanese are commercial vs pirated. That's a
> false choice. The choice should be commercial for those who can afford it
> and open source for those who can't. Piracy should not be an option
> because it is very detrimental to an IT industry in Lebanon specifically
> and Lebanon in general.

You seem to be talking about the use of software by consumers, I'm talking
about *developing* (the key word in my paragraph above). As for your above
point, there actually is an option #3: make your pricing relative to your
particular market demographics.

[...........................]
> > and while it's in the process of building a software
> > industry, it cannot affors to experiment,
>
> Define experiment. Linux is older than windows NT on which XP is based.

This is not about age, it's about market share. If I'm running my own
company, and I have a finite number of resources, and I'm a startup, I have
to develop a product line that will not only guarantee the fastest return on
investment, but will allow me to get into the market before it's way too
late. This means: Windows, Mac (for traditional applications), and Java for
Web-targeted applications and Oracle for database applications. Of course I
would set aside a couple of resources to build a plan to plan for other
platforms that may become commercially relevant at some point in the future.

> > and needs to focus on the
> > platform that guarantees it the largest number of potential seats.
> > Linux is not it,
>
> I disagree. Taking Linux off the table is a very costly proposition. You
> are not going to be able to get Lebanon piracy users to start paying for
> an OS they can't afford.

You're talking about end users, I'm talking about building an IT industry.
[................]
> > Open
> > Source is something I am not convinced would be to Lebanon's benefit
> > at this point, especially if the focus is on secondary applications
> > (to avoid getting squished by the big boys).
>
> We have a fundamental disagreement here.. why is open source ok elsewhere
> but bad for Lebanon? Why do you propose to deprive Lebanon of the fruits
> of Open Source? I don't understand.

You're talking about using software. I'm talking about developing software.
Lebanon's IT industry would be stillborn if it went that way. I undestand
about the sharing, but Lebanon needs a different angle, in order to compete
with the likes of India, China, etc. Can Lebanon compete? sure. Israel does,
and it does it by finding niches to fill. I'm being practical, although I'm
personally a user and future contributor to Open Source, but my company is
not based in Lebanon.

> Off topic quickies:
>
> >>>To flat out say that Linux progammers were made and the mold was
> >>>broken, would fall into the realm of religion.
> >>
> >>Agreed, which idiot is saying this?
>
> [..]
>
>>>I disagree with your premise. The hardware can be a Turing Machine.. how
>>>you program it makes the difference between men and boys :-)
>>
>>
>> And I disagree with your disagreement :-) as I'm not talking about the
>> art of programming, I'm talking about the general architecture of the
>> OS/Kernel (whatever you want to name it) that makes it vulnerable, and
>> there are certain degrees of vulnerability.
>>
>> Now, do you want to remind me about the statement you made earlier in
>> regards to progammers skills, vis-a-vis your statement here about
>> sepration of the men from the boys :-)
>
> How do the statements above relate? One disagrees with the notion of
> Linux programmers being somehow unique and the other suggests that there
> is a separation between the hardware and the software (at least in
> theory). So how are the two quotes related? I quoted them for your
> convenience.

OK, you agree that it's foolish to claim that programmers for a particular
OS environment are better than programmers for a another OS environment.
Then in another statement, and in indirect reference to programmers skills,
you allude to a class of programmers being better than others. At least,
this is how I read it, else what's the point of referencing men and boys? I
left the quotes in for your convenience.

>> Call it whatever you like. It remains true. Does the Linux community have
>> any evidence pointing to exhaustive testing in the field, with millions
>> of deployed *end user* units, and hundreds of thousands of applications?
>> No.
>
> The devil is in the definition.. I suspect that by application you only
> qualify commercial applications. What is an application? Is it measured
> by size (the more bloated the more it's an application?) Is it measured
> by cost (the more costly the more it's an application)?

This sounds Clintonian :-) By applications, I don't mean "Hello World", and
I don't mean random tools, I mean word processors, spreadsheets, etc.

>> You'd have to be a bit more specific. The term WYSIWYG was coined by a
>> small Seattle company called Aldus, it was bought out years later by
>> Adobe. I don't understand what you mean by entering content without
>> worrying about formatting.
>
> Wasting time with paragraph headers when all you need is a tag that
> identifies something as a header (possibly nested) and choice of overall
> format for a document and let the software do everything else. Numbered
> lists is another example. Table of contents is poor, you have to manually
> refresh it. You have to tell the TOC not to include subtitles in the TOC.
> Page numbers need to be manually refreshed.. how many times have you seen
> a Word document with page 19 of 1? In the eighties I didn't have to
> manually format these. In Word I still do.

I see, you mean manually entering formatting information. This is what you
mean by WYSIWYG? A company I know used to use an authoring environment
(possibly the same you mention above), on Unix workstations. Switching to a
Windows application saved them millions, and endless hours of training.
You're confusing what a techie may prefer to what an end user may feel more
comfortable with.

>> How was it leaps and bounds ahead of Excel, and which Quattro? DOS?
>> Windows? Version 1? Version 5? Version 6?
>
> Quattro for Windows... feature for feature comparison at the time.. Today
> in Excel to program macros, you have to learn Microsoft's programming
> environment, an external environment. In Quattro as in Lotus 123 before,
> Macros were just a sequence of statements between curly brackets in
> adjacent cell in the same spread***.

You have to learn the 123 and Quattro macro language, don't you? Same
difference.

> There is nothing to it except intimadation and opportunism that a court
> venue will rule on someday.. in the mean time allegation are mere
> allegations until proven.

Don't you think someone may have thought about this before they spend
millions on it?

>> Sure, let the lawyers argue that. In any case, I did not say that Linus
>> is a replica, what I said was that it's a branch from the same *tree*
>> (not another tree).
>
> This arbor analogy is not precise.. what does "same *tree*" means? Same
> architecture tree, same source code tree, same peach tree?

It all starts with the Unix source code that AT&T labs released to
Universities. That's the root, everything else is a branch. When you say
it's a different tree, do you mean that the *architecture* only was
borrowed? All of the university implementations of Unix were not simply
seeds (architecture), but modifications of the original sources, making them
*branches*. By the time it got to Linus, he was working off one of the
branches, and not a different tree (using the seed). I'm not privvy to his
work, but he had the Unix sources at this school that everyone else had, and
he worked with those (I get my information from the Linux Advocacy web
site).

>> If it was a clear cut, then why are lawyers still arguing over it?
>
> That's what lawyers do in life :-)

Perhaps more companies providing server-class Linux would not mind providing
clear indeminifacations (not dilluted language).

>> Are you changing your position on the funding? :-)
>
> You are mixing labor and funding. There is a lot of free labor that goes
> into open source and little funding.

The end result is the same. Paid or not, it's about the amount of resources
going into a project. Slaves were hardly paid, but their ended up building
the pyramids.

> Incidently, Sun yesterday opened its Ultrasparc T1 chip :-)
>
>>>Java is not yet a standard and won't be until Sun opens it up.
>>
>>
>> Sorry, but this is not the way the market sees it. We may split hairs in
>> here, but in reality, developers our there are writing for Java (and a
>> few for Microsoft's .net).
>
> Right now both are owned by monopolies.. programers write for both
> environments because they are the only game in town. This does not make
> them standards. Sun can change the java spec at will. Developments of
> the java spec are weighed by Sun's bottom line. Sun's bottom line is
> paramount. Ditto for .net.

The officialdom of a standard is not what makes it acceptable by the market.
Market acceptance is all that matters. Lahoud is an official President, but
does that make him a real president? Sanyoura is no the *elected* president,
but who's leading the country?

> So, back to the main question: If open source is OK for people to use
> outside Lebanon then why is it not OK to use in Lebanon?

Use and development are two different things.

> bassem


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