yunoe's comments

Much of the "gig economy" seem to basically be "urban day labor".

It's not very appealing to respond when you don't give any reasons. I work with making and maintaining Linux distributions for enterprise, and previously embedded, systems (including desktop). We commission open source work, buy 'support' from major vendors and upstream our own changes. I don't share your views and judging by the development in things like e.g. configuration management I don't think I'm alone.

> So which is it, I am fine if I want to run the newest, or if a do not need the newest? Your statement is a contradiction

I don't see the contradiction, maybe I didn't express myself very well. The problem is when you mix old and new software and distributions. As long as you run a single release (old or new) and all software is for that release you're fine. When you have to deal with many different versions of third party software, libraries, interpreters, shells, build systems etc. is when you run into problems. Just like in the case with "ExpensiveScannerManager95".

> Open source might be part of the answer to this, or some kind of legal 'right to migrate'.

It isn't. Everyone who tried to decide over which version of a distribution to run should know this. It's fine as long as you run the newest or don't need new things. But once you need something specific and especially once you start installing things outside the package manager things go down hill quickly.

I wish people wouldn't use this argument in favor of open source, because if you make institutions choose between open source and proprietary solutions based on "updates" it's appstores, cloud software and subscriptions that will win.

> If someone has a computer hooked to an MRI machine and to the hospital network, and it runs outdated/insecure software then someone made a mistake somewhere.

If you want a system to reach 100% it can't rely on not making mistakes. If all operating systems are supposed to be updated, then this has to be enforced as part of the software. The software e.g. shouldn't accept traffic unless it's up to date.

I get what you're saying. I don't like part of the direction Microsoft is taking either. Yet, I don't agree with your perspective.

What's happening here is that Microsoft, after a number of years of troubles keeping up, are following the market. WSL is presumably not meant to compete with Linux or FOSS as a desktop OS, but with Mac OS and Linux as developer platforms.

Companies like Google and Apple figured out that if you just give people their pony e.g. base your things on FOSS, they won't notice when you centralize everything, track everyone and generally behave badly. In many ways Microsoft is doing better here. Their projects aim to be cross platform and are being developed together with the community. Instead of usual the code dump and silent mailing list we've become accustomed to from some companies.

Linux have had the chance to do better for awhile now (and in some ways it has). Microsoft have been critized constantly for Windows 8 and now Windows 10. Apple left a huge hole in the "professional" market for years, including after the new Mac Pro and the new MacBook Pro. If some developers move to Windows because of this I think that's fair.

This is a pretty ironic comment though. The article is basically arguing that our views, to a large degree, are based on our previous held ideas and that the way to remedy that is by taking a more complex and serious view of things. And now you're essentially saying "ignore that, here's what I think" in reference to the article.

I think you all are missing the point. As Google gave away Android for free with the support of their brand, services and user base it essentially killed all the alternatives (MeeGo, WebOS, BlackBerry 10) and companies that were focused on software (Palm, Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, BlackBerry). It's not at all unexpected that these Asian companies can't compete in terms of systems design, both in terms of experience and ownership, but also just cost. Almost no one is making any money (other than Samsung, which is extremely very vertically integrated, at least in theory). Throwing in cheaper chips and making the software flashier is really the only business model that is available, even if some manufacturers like Mi do offer long term support.

They are of course entitled to their feelings, but saying that Spotify was doing something nefarious is unreasonable. Being able to send a receive information is part of how the Internet is supposed to work. That's what's makes it different from other things like cable TV.

It's DRM, data caps and walled gardens that have convinced people otherwise. The next logical step is separating clients and servers altogether. Why should I pay for data if I'm only a consumer? In that case we might as well let youtube and netflix pay to deliver the content. And then it's back to cable TV again.

PS. You also have to remember that Spotify is 10 years old. Internet infrastructure and things like cloud offerings wasn't as good. It wasn't just a move to save bandwidth, but to actually be able to offer a good service (low latency, high throughput, for free). Which still isn't easy.