personsunknown

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

I can tell you my experience as to why Linux won out in production. Many years ago when I was doing enterprise systems administration, we were using both Linux and BSD equally in the beginning. But what eventually gave Linux the edge was hardware support and package management. Linux had solid SMP support first, which meant we could replace expensive UNIX servers like Suns and AlphaServers with much cheaper Intel based multi-processor servers. PLus Linux had more drivers for hardware like RAID and network cards. We didn't have to hunt down specific, often older, hardware like we did for our BSD servers. Also IBM ported Linux to it's z series servers so Linux had a (what we used to term) "big iron" server solution first and could replace proprietary solutions like the high end HP9000's. Package management was a huge plus. It greatly reduced administrative time. Major software upgrades, like when we had to replace libc6 on all our *NIX servers because of a major security bug, would take hours on the BSD servers but minutes on our Debian servers.

personsunknown

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Ubuntu contributes very little to Debian.

personsunknown

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Fine cooking is a combination of simple things. You meld together a sequence of simple tasks that result in a complex recipe, but we still do the basics of cooking that our "caveman" ancestors did. When the simple things become unnecessarily complex, it prevents us from creating a good recipe. We get so caught up in the unnecessarily complex details that we lose site of the goal.

personsunknown

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

"I'm arguing that I've worked at far too many companies that went bust, because their business model was broken, in order to fund my own hacker activities outside of that."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you are saying that hackers can't survive because the scene can't exist without the corporations funding it's participants. This is contrary to history. In my generation the industry considered us criminals even though most of us weren't. The hacker scene was around long before the industry embraced it and will be around long after whatever unicorn of the month loses it's horn. It's not going anywhere. It constantly changes and every generation has added it's own chapter, but that's what makes it what it is. So that leads me to my next question... What could you have not done if you didn't have corporate funding from these several failed companies you worked for? What prevented you from just doing it anyways?

personsunknown

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Exactly. hipster != hacker

personsunknown

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

That's a cop out. The scene "sustained" itself just fine. Now people working at Facebook call themselves "hackers". It was as much about a philosophy as it was about technology. When the industry moves on to the next buzzword, we'll still be here.

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