[baldfat]

I really think the Open Source Community has been to focused on Microsoft for way to long. Even during the Ballmer ERA we had very Open Source Friendly People at Microsoft.

I think our focus needs to be on what is happening in the other areas.

1) Apple's Counterfeit Lawsuit for refurbished screens and Apple's Diagnostic Software requirement for basic repairs. If that mindset gets turned towards software we all will be in big trouble.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evk4wk/dhs-seizes...

2) John Deer and the very idea of ownership being taken away.

https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/

I think Linux has won the OS War, minus desktop. Now it is moving to the hardware that is running it.

[chithanh]

In what way is what Apple did to Henrik Huseby worse than than what Microsoft did to Eric Lundgren?

I mean, Apple sued a business and wanted property confiscated. But Microsoft actually had someone sent to prison.

Louis Rossmann who became famous with his Apple repair videos, and is otherwise very critical of Apple repair policies, had some choice words for Microsoft in this case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaoJErxYLtM

[nkassis]

Can't watch videos at the moment but found this article about this case:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/24...

[baldfat]

Eric Lundgren should have had people install Linux on the computers or some other Open OS. The issue was Microsoft made $25 a disc for selling to refurbisher shops.

100% agree its stupid but once Eric was caught he was in the hands of federal prosecutors and MS Lawyers that needed to "defend" the value of their property. This is why we encourage people to stray away from closed OS.

[sjwright]

I get irritated every time Louis and others bang on about those damn "refurbished" iPhone screen assemblies. Refurbished is a term that is frequently used to describe a used product that has been returned to near-new condition by replacing worn or faulty components with genuine parts or parts of equal specification.

These screen assemblies are NOT refurbished, they are not of equal or comparable specification. The replacement glass used on these refurbished assemblies is cheap fragile junk, not Gorilla glass or a comparable substitute. It's a greatly inferior product, so describing these assemblies as refurbished is at minimum misleading; personally I'd call it a scam.

If someone sold you an entire iPhone as "refurbished" where it's mostly genuine but an essential component was replaced with a third-rate fake—let's say the motherboard is a cheap Android equivalent running Android with an iPhone theme—everyone would agree that was a scam. The only difference between a fake motherboard and fake glass is most consumers will be unaware they've been scammed... until it breaks. (And even then, most consumers will just consider it bad luck and blame themselves.)

I know multiple people who have had their cracked iPhones independently repaired only to have the screen break again after a matter of days or weeks, under the most innocuous of circumstances. We are being scammed, and Louis Rossman defends the scammers.

[baldfat]

Your misusing terms. You are using the term refurbished but you really mean remanufactured.

Remanufacturing is the rebuilding of a product to specifications of the original manufactured product using a combination of reused, repaired and new parts. It requires the repair or replacement of worn out or obsolete components and modules.

Remanufacturing is a form of a product recovery process that differs from other recovery processes in its completeness: a remanufactured part should match the same customer expectation as new machines.

[sjwright]

You might be right from an industry wonk's perspective, but what matters is consumer expectation.

For example: Apple themselves uses the term refurbished to describe an iPhone that—but for the packaging—appears identical to a brand new item as far as any regular consumer could tell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refurbishment_(electronics)

[sjwright]

Actually if Wikipedia is anything to go by, the term remanufacturing doesn't apply here.

The term "remanufacture", however, is a distinct term used for products that are returned to the identical-to-new condition in industrial closed-loop processes, and which often possess the same warranties and guarantees as a new product.

I am definitely not talking about remanufacturing.

[baldfat]

Well what term are you using for a repair? If your using parts that are not under warranties nor is it the same as it was when it was manufactured?

When I buy parts off of ebay I don't expect them to be the same, no matter what the label is on the part. Just like buying "OEM" batteries on Amazon. You better know you have close to zero chance of having the same battery as you bought before.

[sjwright]

I'm not the one defending the use of the term refurbished. The fake-glass chop shops are the ones who are using it, and I think they should stop doing so.

[pjmlp]

Linux has won the server and HPC room war, there are many other kinds of deployments.

On mobile there is iOS and regarding ChromeOS and Android it is only an implementation detail, lets see where it goes if Google is serious about Fuchsia.

On game consoles we have a modified BSD on PS, Windows variant on XBox and Nintendo's own microkernel.

Then on IoT space BSD licensed OSes like mbed, Zephyr and RTOS are on the rise.

And then there is the whole mainframe and high integrity computing domains.

[emilsedgh]

Android it is only an implementation detail, lets see where it goes if Google is serious about Fuchsia.

I think you got it backwards. Android was a serious thing. Fuchsia is an implementation detail.

[pjmlp]

Not really, you missed the point that the Linux kernel is actually irrelevant for app developers on Android, to the point that ART might in the future run on top of Fuchsia and no one would notice.

There are no Linux kernel specific APIs in the list of stable NDK APIs.

https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis

As of Android 7 using non-stable APIs will kill the APK on launch.

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/nougat/android-...

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/improving-...

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/android-ch...

Only OEMs get to deal directly with Linux kernel.

You might naturally create an NDK application and do a bunch of syscalls, just it doesn't mean that the APK is guaranteed to work across all Android devices.

[emilsedgh]

Of course Linux is an implementation detail. When did I claim otherwise? That actually proves my point: Fuschia is another implementation detail as well.

[baldfat]

Linux = a kernel and if it uses the Linux kernel well that is what defines something as Linux.

[pjmlp]

Sure if it makes you happy, even if the userspace is completely different.

[baldfat]

Not happy, but how would you define Linux?