[ale] mint 13 vm running out of storage space

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

I'm running out of time today, so I'll have to defer most of my additional study on this topc and replies, if any, until later.

I wanted to respond to a couple of things below with lots of snipping.

I never mean any offense here.

See below.

Ron


Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 2:11 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) <
>atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>
>>

-snip-

>RedHat is a billion dollar company. They sell support for code they
>provides full source for free (That's how CentOS gets built). Want
>support,
>buy RHEL. Do your own support, use CentOS (or Scientific Linux -
>developed
>on US taxpayer cash from RHEL srpm packages at Fermi Lab, CERN and some
>major universities.).
>
>Big Corps pay RedHat a load of cash for top quality support. In return,
>RedHat delivers that support and in turn makes the new code fixes
>available

-snip-

I think David said Red Hat made $ 100 Million in the last quarter.  What's not to like?

Well OF COURSE they're a profitable company.  They have a $ 10 Billion (assuming it's like Debian in complexity) product, which is in high demand, which they give away for free, which they can charge large amounts of support costs for, AND FOR WHICH THEY DIDN'T PAY FOR THE DEVELOPMENT COSTS!  So, all they have to do is a reasonable amount of continuous development and OPERATE A SERVICE BUSINESS with reletatively minimal overhead versus their revenue.

But how many other FOSS companies are profitable?  Is Ubuntu, Mozilla, LibreOffice?  Even if they are, I'll bet I can find you tons more who are not.  I don't need a support contract for FireFox.  Most people don't.   What about Wikipedia?  They're barely surviving.  Everybody contributes the articles.  They distribute them for free.  People love them, and use them all the time.  They have very large overhead, and are always begging for money.

Let's pick on Boeing, just because I like airplanes.  Let's say, hypothetically, way back in the beginning, when Boeing was founded, they decided to go all FOSS and FOSH.  They publish and give away all their plans, schematics, designs, strategies, source code, artwork, parts lists, vendor sources, etc.  ALL the intellectual property.  And, let's say they never patented any of it, since that's contrary to FOSS and FOSH.  What would be the result?

Well, the most likely result is that they'd have 200 competitors all mooching off of their designs, and that they would never be more than a niche company, and that they would never make any huge amounts of revenue.

There would be no Boeing 747 because they'd never get big enough to build one.

Here are some cool articles on the 747.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747
http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/table_aircraftdevcosts.html

All the following numbers except for the 1st one are hypothetical.

Now, let's say you have Boeing as they are today.  Let's say they've invested $ 3.7 Billion in development of the aircraft (according to the chart), plus the cost of all their factories and facilities.  Let's say, THEN they open source it.  They give away ALL the IP, as mentioned above, and even put the patents into the public domain.  Well, yes, everyone can review it, everyone can question it, everyone can suggest improvements to it.  But, also, everyone can STEAL it.  So, some other enterprising company, like Airbus, would say to themselves, you know, rather than spending $ 4 Billion to develop the Airbus A300, we'll just take Boeing's design, build a factory to make it for say $ 200 Million, produce the plane, and clean their clock.

So, with a $ 4 Billion advantage that they didn't have to pay, Airbus competitively wipes Boeing off the map.  They can even publish their changes to the designs, because they only have a minimal incremental cost in doing so.  There may be other competitors that do the same.

What is the chance that Boeing will recoup their ~ $ 4 Billion, and potentially make a profit?  NIL!  (In my opinion.)  What is the chance that they'll go bankrupt and others will fourish with their $ 4 Billion head start?  Pretty good.  (In my opinion.)

In this example, a FOSS / FOSH model simply doesn't work, at least not for the originator of the designs.

>
>> I'm not bashing FOSS.  I'm questioning the concept that it is the
>only
>> viable or proper way to do things.
>>
>
>Um. You ARE bashing FOSS. Again. Stop it.
>

Wrong.  Questioning and discussing does not constitute bashing.  The economic factors I'm discussing are real, and relevant to the companies which may be deciding to go down a FOSS / FOSH path or a proprietary path.

>The overall concept of FOSS is the ONLY long-term, viable method of
>advancing human society through technological achievements. All of

-snip-

That assertion doesn't hold any water at all.  We got to the pre computer era just fine without FOSS.  This is largely because it was impractical for large groups to collaborate all over the world.  Note that, within a company, a certain amount of info sharing must take place just to get the product out the door.

There are MANY viable ways to advance humanity.  They have different levels of cost, and different levels of freedom.  Which one is preferable, in a given circumstance, is entirely case specific.

There is nothing wrong with good people, doing good work, making good products and services, selling them for money, and making a reasonable profit.  There is not necessarily anything wrong with them keeping their IP to themselves, and this is sometimes the only viable way to start and or run a business and be profitable.  Every one of you reading this who gets a paycheck, and I (when I was getting a paycheck) gets said check only because someone is providing some product or service  and selling it.  And, I'll bet that most of those employers are not open sourcing all their IP and business strategies either.

I'll have to get to the rest later.  8-)

Sincerely,

Ron



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Ron Frazier
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