Well, 12 months have passed and Linux on the desktop still sucks. Lunduke’s proposal in this video was that Linux desktop users should pay for software, donate 100$ per month for GIMP… madness. Yes, this would most likely make desktop Linux better, but it won’t be the same Linux we all love so much anymore.

He is forgetting what the motivation for most people is to run Linux. Take any of those “why linux is better” websites, what are the main reasons it is “better”?

Here:

http://www.whylinuxi…index.php?lang=

http://www.whylinuxi…index.php?lang=

http://www.whylinuxi…index.php?lang=

Take the “free” (as in beer) away and Linux crumbles totally. It’s the only thing that truly speaks in its favour as desktop OS. The rest (stability, viruses) are moot points, Windows and Mac are just as stable now. Maybe even more.

Lunduke’s only argument why his proposal might work, is that some Linux users paid for his programs (1 in 50 visitors?). But he doesn’t explain what programs those were. And just why should someone pay 100$ dollars per month for GIMP if he/she can just as well buy the much more powerful Photoshop? Just because Gimp is “libre”?

If you want pay for your software regulary, run Windows and Mac. You will get better software to boot.  OK, I’ve forgot, there is still the fanatical FSF sect who cares primarily about the ideological purity. But with the “popularity” of Ubuntu, this sect is getting marginalized even in the Linux world. The cheapskates are the main audience.

Let’s face the truth: There is NO technical superiority of the Linux system anymore compared to Windows and Mac.  It was the case in the 90s, Linux was indeed technically a better OS than the Win9x line and classical Mac, but this is the ancient past now.  Freetards can now cry ”Viruses, Viruses!” as long as they want, but the truth is, it has much to do with market share and the fact that users like to install shady software, as Android is experiencing right now. If you like deathmarches, you can depend solely on repositories of course, but the bad outweighs the good here. The only argument freetards bring forth at this point is usually the ancient “IIS Argument” which has been debunked long ago as well.

And seriously, get rid of the “Linux is secure by design” trademark. That design was even present in NT 4.0 already. Seriously, it’s comical how freetards still to this day are just floored by user account separation.

In short, there are only two realistic reasons to use Linux on the desktop today:

1. You have an axe to grind with MS/Apple
2. Cost

Paying for Linux kinda defeats the most important point. So of course, it’s one year later, and Linux still sucks.

But, I am not blind and I have no problems pointing out the shortcomings of companies when it needs to be done. Microsoft announced that it will not release Internet Explorer 10 for Windows Vista:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215791/
Windows_Vista_No_IE10_for_you

Regarding Windows Vista, our decision with IE9 [and 10] was not to build to the lowest common denominator .. Microsoft confirmed that the new browser is intended only for Windows 7

What?! Windows Vista together with the Platform Update that was released for it in 2009 is almost equal to Windows 7 API wise.

The core component of the new Internet Explorer versions, Direct2D, is available on Vista. Microsoft themselves have said that the update was designed to ”[make] it easier for developers to develop for Windows 7 and Windows Vista without impacting their users“.  (source)

The Platform Update includes among other parts:

Windows Graphics, Imaging, and XPS Library: components for developers to leverage the latest advancements in modern graphics technologies for gaming, multimedia, imaging and printing applications. It includes updates to DirectX to support hardware acceleration for 2D, 3D and text based scenarios; DirectCompute for hardware accelerated parallel computing scenarios; and XPS Library for document printing scenarios.

Just what the hell will Internet Explorer 10 will do, that this will not be enough to run it? Killing of the support for Windows XP with Internet Explorer 9 was understandable, this action is not.

Given the fact that the time frame between the first Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview and the final of IE9 was exactly one year, as it was the case with the first public beta version of IE 8 and the final, and the fact that the first Platform Preview of IE10 is already available, it most likely means that IE10 final will be released around April 2012. The mainstream support for Vista ends on the tenth of April 2012:

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/?sort=PN&alpha=WINDOWS+vista

I guess this means IE10 will probably be released just a few days after the end of mainstream support, just narrowly in time to justifiy the shaft Vista users will get. I won’t be surprised if Microsoft artificially delays the RTM version for a few days just for this purpose. A dick move par excellence.

Yes, Vista was not exactly well received, most of it was due to massive exaggeration of issues that were mostly fixed with SP1 I might add, but this doesn’t justify this decision. Of course, Microsoft legally has all the rights to do this, but it doesn’t change the fact that this policy is boneheaded to the extreme and feels almost like an expression of contempt for the people who bought Windows Vista.

A bad move that tarnishes the Windows brand and the trust in the product for no good reason.

————————————-
The results:

Windows 98 ( 0.0% )

Windows Me ( 19.35% )

Windows XP ( 19.35% )

Windows Vista ( 45.16% )

Windows 7 ( 16.13% )
————————————-

Well, in this case, the minority was right, because the Windows version, that freetards hated the most was:

[SPOILER SPACE]

[SPOILER SPACE]

………

YES! Windows XP! Surprised huh? Windows Vista was hated too, but, freetards had even more venom when XP was released. You must remember that at the time Vista was released, community sites like Digg and the like already existed, so the Vista-negativity was more ubiquitos,  while in 2001 the freetards had less places to vent. Despite this, when XP came out, the tone in freetarded circles was even worse.

The above graphics are from a now defunct site called “BoycottXP”, it was established in 2001, shortly before the release of XP. Here is an old snapshot:

http://web.archive.o….boycottxp.com/

Quote from the site:

We’ve noticed lots of submissions from Anonymous Heros, and while we aren’t going to prohibit that just yet we want to encourage everyone to create an account before submitting. Also, try to keep comments as comments and actual story submissions as story submissions. We’re working on this becoming more automated – but for now control yourselves!

Here’s a snapshot of how XP was received by the freetards:

—————————————————

——————————–

————————-

-

——

————-

Yes, that’s about the same XP, that is so revered today! (Even in semi-freetarded circles)

All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again:

The same unsubstantial FUD and exaggerations: What was “DRM” with Vista, was “Passport” and “Windows Media” with XP.

Boycott sites: Boycott XP – Windows7Sins

Arguments: XP is just a Service Pack to Windows 2000.
the same people say now, that Vista was just a Service Pack to XP and 7 is just a SP to Vista. By that logic, almost all Windows users are effectively still using Windows 2000 today.

Not seeing the real deal – NT stability was finally made available to home users. This was the game changer that most freetards completely overlooked.

The astounding hypocrisy so prevalent in the Linux community: The last FUD-ridden article was not written by some run-of-the-mill freetard on Slashdot but by Red Hat. It’s amazing that freetards only accuse Apple and Microsoft (and everyone else) of FUD and “astroturfing” but never saw and still never see the even more blatant FUD on their side.

And the usual “KDE ripoff” accusation (but at the same time, it’s a “Fisher Price” OS, while KDE looks “professional” – so what is it?)

So, the campaigns and arguments we see today with 7 and Vista were first pioneered with XP. It was the Windows OS, that freetards hated the most.

Take your guess: Which Windows version was the one, the freetards hated the most?

I’ve covered the hypocrisy of Richard Stallman and the FSF before, but the copyright situation is such a blatant case of astounding hypocrisy, that I feel this deserves one more post.

So, rms is pissed about recording companies enforcing their copyright:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles
/2007/03/13/let_free_music_files_ring/

THE RECORD companies, seeking to bully people who share music, have demanded that colleges identify students who share (“Record firms crack down on campuses,” Business, March 8). They use smear terms such as “piracy” and “theft” that imply sharing is wrong. Don’t believe it. Sharing is friendship; to attack sharing is to attack the basis of society.

But how is the FSF acting if their copyright is infringed?

Well:

Under the license, if you distribute GPL software in a product, you must also distribute the software’s source code. And not just the GPL code, but also the code for any “derivative works” you’ve created–even if publishing that code means anyone can now make a knockoff of your product.

…..

And if they balk? Kuhn raises the threat of legal action. “We defend the rights protected by the GPL license,” he says. “We have legal teeth, so if someone does not share and share alike, we can make them obey the rules.”

….

In fact, the Free Software Foundation runs a lot of these “enforcement actions.” There are 30 to 40 going on right now, and there were 50 last year, Kuhn says. There have been hundreds since 1991, when the current version of the GPL was published, he says. Tracking down bad guys has become such a big operation that the Free Software Foundation has created a so-called Compliance Lab to snoop out violators and bust them.

Who pays for this? The 12-employee Free Software Foundation has limited resources. So it seeks donations. And sometimes it collects money from companies it has busted.

Last year, the foundation alleged that OpenTV, a San Francisco company that ships a set-top box containing Linux, was violating the GPL. The drama took months to resolve and ended with OpenTV writing a check for $65,000 to the Free Software Foundation. “They paid us a very substantial payment for our time and trouble,” Moglen says.

…

In some ways, these Free Software Foundation “enforcement actions” can be more dangerous than a typical copyright spat, because usually copyright holders seek money–say, royalties on the product that infringing companies are selling. But the Free Software Foundation doesn’t want royalties–it wants you to burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners.

Or maybe, as some suggest, the foundation wants GPL-covered code to creep into commercial products so it can use GPL to force open those products. Kuhn says that’s nuts–”pure propaganda rhetoric.” But he concedes that his foundation hates the way companies like Oracle and Microsoft generate billions of dollars by selling software licenses. “We’d like people to stop selling proprietary software. It’s bad for the world,” Kuhn says.

http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/14/cz_dl_1014linksys.html

This article is from 2003 but the situation today is basically the same

So, why is it moral for the FSF to enforce their copyright and immoral if others do it? Note that the FSF even encourages copyright infringement on their newspeak-page:

If you don’t believe that copying not approved by the publisher is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy” to describe it. Neutral terms such as “unauthorized copying” (or “prohibited copying” for the situation where it is illegal) are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as “sharing information with your neighbor.”

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy

The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. The same organization, who persecutes copyright violators, ENDORSES copyright violation (!) of others out of sheer antipathy to traditional copyright holders.

I would say the policies of the FSF are in some cases even less moral than those of the recording companies. If file sharers are persecuted, well, at least you can say that they got busted for violating something that was completeley not their own work. But, let’s say I would create out of Gnumeric a killer application that would even make Excel look like outdated trash. Under the GPL, I would need to give away my whole application, even if my work exceeeds the original work by far.

I am not, in general, opposed to the actions carried out by the FSF. If you want to use/extend GPL’ed software, then it’s your own choice and you should live with the implications and honor the license. The problem is, Stallman and his goonies don’t have the same respect for others.

Stallman brings forth some justifications for his hypocrisy:

To stop people from sharing goes against human nature, and the Orwellian propaganda that “sharing is theft” usually falls on deaf ears.

Well, making money is pretty much human nature, too. How would the FSF react, if I would encourage people to violate the GPL?

Accumulating wealth is human nature. That’s why you should be able to create closed source software out of existing FOSS products. Don’t use the term “GPL violation”, Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as “feeding your family”

Stallman: Sharing continues despite these measures; the human impulse to cooperate is strong

The human impulse for committing crimes is pretty strong, too. And crime never stopped. Is this an argument? He also somehow never sees that the main impetus for many people in this case is not really ”sharing”.

The real solution is to legalize sharing. This won’t affect the record companies much, but if they did go out of business, we could rejoice that they can no longer threaten anyone.

They pay zero cents of your CD purchase price to musicians (except for superstars), so the absence of these companies would be no loss to society.

This is a problem between the artists and the companies. What has this to do with file sharing as such?  Illegal file sharing exists since well over a decade now, and it has not improved the situation of musicians. How does it help the artists in any way, if the companies completely vanish? They get little now, they will get nothing at the end.

We could support musical artists with public funds distributed directly to them in proportion to the cube root of their popularity. Using the cube root means that if superstar A is 1000 times as popular as skilled artist B, A will get 10 times as much of the tax funds as B. This way of dividing the money is an efficient way to promote a broad diversity of music.

These funds could come from the general budget, or from a special tax on something vaguely correlated with listening to music, such as blank disks or Internet connectivity. Either way would do the job.

Or we could just buy the stuff we want! Ah, wait..

It’s questionable whether that will flawlessly work. And I doubt whether the general public will readily accept, to subsidy basically all entertainment that can be digitized on such a large scale. Movies, ebooks and games can be file-shared too, and thus would fall under this tax. Essentially,  most of the entertainment industry would be quasi state-run.

And if all this would be indeed financed by the general budget, then Stallman’s endless ”ethical and moral” diatribes don’t hold water:

Buying entertainment products is entirely voluntary. You won’t get harmed in any way, if you don’t listen to the newest Britney Spears CD. We are not talking about food and medical drugs here.

Likewise, pirating them is entirely voluntary, too. No one is forcing you at knifepoint to do it.

So, financing pretty much the whole entertainment industry with taxes (take into account, how much modern games and movies cost to make ), just to legalize piracy, is not that ”ethical”. If you want to go that route, then these vast sums of money would be far better invested in true social programs, like health care, public transportation, support for the poor and the like.

But anyway, enough. This is not about the pros and cons of file sharing.  The FSF and Stallman invent pseudo-moralistic arguments to deny the very same right they use with a vengeance.

I don’t agree with the recording companies on many things, and I think fining teenagers thousands of dollars is ridiculous and not appropriate, but this doesn’t change the fact that Stallman and the FSF are hypocrites. If you say it’s OK to circumvent copyright, then it’s OK to circumvent copyright. End. I can invent tons of excuses to breach the GPL, too.

Stallman and the FSF act in the dangerous delusion that everything they say and do is genuinely good and moral. And that’s why certain laws should only work for them. No other mindset is more dangerous than this one.

About this medication alone, there are thousands upon thousands of similar stories. As far as I know, GSK tried to hide some unwelcome truths. (not warning doctors/patients about withdrawal symptoms until very recently) This, for example, would be a far more viable playing field for the tons of freetards. Far more worthwile than “raping Bill Gates”, the Satan incarnate.

Freetards are ultimately the product of decadence: Growing up in wealthy environments (you won’t find a freetard from the slum), most of them never experienced real hardships and real evil. Thus, in their warped world view, something like enforcing licensing contracts becomes evil and bundling a browser is on the scale of war crimes, since they have indeed never experienced something worse.

[Note: long time readers may notice that there was a posting on this blog that was very similar to this one. Explaination: I wanted to edit the old one and temporarily moved it to the trash folder. Unfortunately, I waited too long to restore and edit it, and the old post got deleted permanently]

See here:
http://penguinday.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/eating-cakes-
and-keeping-them/

Thom Holwerda of OSNews fame is a classical example. He seemingly went through multiple orgasms when he found a video where pop singer Joss Stone (never heard of her before) condones piracy:

http://www.osnews.com/story/24271
/Joss_Stone_on_Piracy_I_think_it_s_great_I_love_it_

Out of sheer joy, Thom lost his ability to write for a while but regained it soon after in the comments section. Along with several freetards (OSNews is overrun with them since years). And yes, not every freetard is a pirate.  But nowhere will you find so many apologies for copyright infringement than on places like slashdot and osnews.

Now, this blog is strictly about Linux and FOSS. But copyright is an essential part of FOSS politics and is either viciously guarded (when it’s about GPL violations) or thrown out of the window (when the freetards want something for free). So let’s dissect the comments from the OSNews thread:

Thom Holwerda:

It’s not just us. It’s this way in most of Europe – i.e., the parts of Europe that are not flat-broke and drowning in debt.  [he means in most EU countries it's legal to violate copyright]

Eh, Thom, no. Never heard of the European Directive On Copyright? Or the HADOPI law in France? (yeah, it passed)  I am not talking about the pros and cons of these laws. Just that they exist.

Holwerda:

Th arrival of the web has shaken up the industry, and has pretty much taken out the need for the middle man (big content). What you are arguing for is that a law that was created to promote the arts and sciences is turned into a law that serves but one purpose: to sustain the outdated and failing business model of big content – no matter how many freedoms we have to give up to do so.

If cars running on fossil fuels ever become superseded by cleaner vehicles, do you also want the government to enact laws that forces us to keep buying petrol so the poor oil companies who didn’t adapt to this change don’t suffer too many losses? Markets change, and if a company or even an entire industry doesn’t adapt, they die.

But the truth is, there are NO cleaner vehicles! in fact, cars running on fossil fuel are in greater demand than ever.

What are pirates downloading? Creative Commons licensed masterpieces, made by Aunt Lizzy in her garage? No, just take a look at the torrent tracker sites. The top 100 lists on these sites are filled by evil corporate products from Paramount Pictures, Sony and EA!

Here’s the current top 5 from the “Total Top 100″ on Pirate Bay:

1. The Green Hornet
2. Desperate Housewives
3. Megamind
4. The King’s Speech
5. Family Guy

Hey, dammit, where’s the deeply insightful independent stuff? And let me assure you, the most downloaded software products aren’t Linux distributions either. So, hypocrites, stop lying through your teeth. Everyone wants fossil fuel. But not everyone wants to pay for it.

Some chap on OSNews writes:

Why should an artist get paid if they aren’t actively creating? Thats one thing I never understood

Why not? What’s the actual problem? Is your life threatened by it? Jealousy? No one is forcing you buy it! If you don’t like it, don’t buy it and don’t download it. See it that way: Maybe you will write a bestseller some day and you will get filthy rich. And if you want to “stick it to the man” – that signal would be much stronger if Pirate Bay would be indeed filled with Creative Commons material. The actual reality shows only one thing: I want it, but I am a cheapskate.

Look, I know you hate big media corps and all the  artists are too rich or too poor or whatever. But can’t you see that Pirate Bay and the like send a completely wrong signal? Imagine how powerless the media companies would be, if only legal material would be shared! They would have no arguments whatsoever anymore. Now, they just have to show a politician a torrent tracker site and say: “See, people want our products. If we just make file sharing harder for them, they will buy again”.

If you really hate them, then don’t download their stuff. That way, you would truly weaken their power.

Another cheapskate writes:

Abolishing copyright laws does not prevent artists from profiting from their work. Copyright laws do however prevent people from making a profit from their work. If I create a derivative of Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” I’m not allowed to profit from that derivative, despite the derivative being my work.

First of all, why I am entitled to profit from the work of somebody else? And the good news: His scenario is legally possible! Ever heard of “cover versions”? You can profit, you just have to give away a certain percentage to the current copyright holder (a severe problem when you’re freetarded).

Frankly, I think most of today’s movies are pretty sub par and the music is even worse, and I don’t even care for that topic that much, but this is not the point. I am just sick and tired when freetards beat the war drum when ever they find supposed GPL violations, how minor they may be AND invent at the same time piss-poor excuses to circumvent the copyright of others.

You can’t have it both ways. The same Thom Holwerda who had the best 15 seconds in his life due to Joss Stone’s video covered multiple GPL violations on OSNews without a hitch.

I am not for copyright nazism (unlike the GPL violation hunters): If you download two-three movies .. well, nothing to be proud of, but you shouldn’t be fined with thousands of dollars for it. Downloading a game that you have already bought but you can’t play anymore, because the DVD is damaged, is fine by me. Furthermore, downloading very old games, that are truly “abandoned”, should harm no one. I can also understand if genuine poor people download illegally something. But, what seriously gets on my nerves are the antics of wanna-be freetards who have the money and despite this not only pirate so much, that they can fill thirty blu-ray discs every month, but even boast about it in about every forum that they can find and spam the whole internet with their lame justifications and “we’re rebels” bullshit.

If you download stuff, be at least quiet about it, just like in the good old days. You aren’t modern day Robin Hoods just because you downloaded kesha_tik_tok.mp3 and watch Seth MacFarlane cartoons for free.

You aren’t heroes and you never will be. Shut up.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced today that it has published an initial set of criteria for endorsing computers and other devices. The FSF seeks both to obtain feedback on the criteria, and raise interest in the program among hardware manufacturers. Ultimately, the FSF plans to promote an endorsement mark to be carried on products that meet the criteria: respects your freedom.
http://www.fsf.org/news/endorsement-criteria

Well, nothing bad here. The problem, as often, lies in the details:

http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Hardware/Endorsement_criteria

Incompatible endorsements

Any product-related materials that mention the FSF endorsement must not also carry endorsements or badges related to proprietary software, such as “Works with Windows” or “Made for Mac” badges, because these would give an appearance of legitimacy to those products, and may make users think the product requires them. However, we don’t object to clear factual statements informing the user that the product also works with specific proprietary operating systems.

Who made the FSF king? These products are of course legal.
Stallman has already indirectly compared proprietary programmers to murderers:

I grew up in a community whose other members sometimes committed crimes as serious as murder … Despite these prevalent evils, never in my life have I seen anyone try to condemn all New Yorkers on the basis of the wrongs that only some have committed. I have not seen anyone assume that all the citizens of New York are guilty of murder, violence, robbery, perjury, or writing proprietary software

The FSF still can’t get over the fact that proprietary software is legal. Well, after more than 25 years it’s time to accept it! That they still try to insert the notion that non-FOSS software is somehow unjustified, shows, that the FSF is mostly still living in its own world.

Dear FSF cronies, it’s time to stop the brainwashing of innocent interns and hardware vendors.

Cooperation with FSF and GNU public relations

The seller must use FSF approved terminology for the FSF’s activities and work, in all statements and publications relating to the product. This includes product packaging, and manuals, web pages, marketing materials, and interviews about the product. Specifically, the seller must use the term “GNU/Linux” for any reference to an entire operating system which includes GNU and Linux, and not mislead with “Linux” or “Linux-based system” or “a system with the Linux kernel.” And the seller must talk about “free software” more prominently than “open source.”

Freetard – nothing describes the FSF more aptly than this word.
The above requirements are more strict than the rules for embedded journalists!

Essentially, the FSF expects that hardware makers will distribute FSF propaganda.

The seller must use FSF approved terminology
Have fun! FSF terminology is the newspeak of the computer age:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html

The page is titled “words to avoid”, but they want to redefine long existing and accepted terms, so that they will be more compatible with their ideology.

Examples:

“Creator”

The term “creator” as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (“the creator”). The term is used by publishers to elevate authors’ moral standing above that of ordinary people in order to justify giving them increased copyright power, which the publishers can then exercise in their name. We recommend saying “author” instead. However, in many cases “copyright holder” is what you really mean.

Ridiculous. The term “creator” was used long before computers were invented for “creators” of things. Just type “the creator of” into a search engine, you will see it applies to everything – from creators of comic books to creators of specific cars.

“Photoshop”

Please avoid using the term “photoshop” as a verb, meaning any kind of photo manipulation or image editing in general. Photoshop is just the name of one particular image editing program, which should be avoided since it is proprietary. There are plenty of free alternatives, such as GIMP.

Yes, while we’re at it, avoid the verbs “to xerox” and “to hoover”, too. Why stop at software?

The “words to avoid” page lists many words that entered “naturally” into the vocabulary of computer users, and they should be “avoided” just because they don’t fit into the desired FSF world view.

So, have fun with using “FSF terminology”.  You should bookmark Stallman’s page though, it’s only a matter of time before he will add more words “to avoid” (when will the page “words to use” show up?)

Let’s proceed with the requirements for the hardware endorsement:

Specifically, the seller must use the term “GNU/Linux” for any reference to an entire operating system which includes GNU and Linux

And what has this to do with “freedom”?

And the seller must talk about “free software” more prominently than “open source

And again, what the heck has this to do with freedom? Nothing. As it stands now, the endorsement seal is not about “freedom”, but about the FSF. If you carry that seal, then you’re an official FSF mouthpiece, congratulations!

And the FOSS community is the best example. Though, sometimes the villian  is not evil enough, so you have to spice up the truth.

And like in primitive societies, where no one is able to read and write, and stories had to be passed orally (and so losing details), so is the FOSS community passing its stories from generation to generation – but in opposite to the ancient past, they omit details on purpose.

Thanks to the story tellers, all freetards know about the story how the evil Microsoft destroyed Netscape just by bundling Internet Explorer (evil POS of course) with Windows 98.

Unfortunately, the truth is a bit more complicated:

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-203884.html

Published: October 3, 1997 5:00 PM PDT

“Microsoft (MSFT) said today that more than 1 million copies of its
Internet Explorer 4.0 Web browser have been downloaded since it was
released Tuesday night.

The company said that number  set a record demand for any Microsoft
product in this amount of time. The figure does not include downloads
from 20 partner sites that also offer IE 4.0, the company added.

The more than 1 million downloads amounted to at least six copies per
second.

Traffic to Microsoft’s Web site had been surging as the
much-anticipated release date neared. On September 30 alone, the
company recorded 1.5 million visits to the site. Microsoft also
reiterated that 200,000 people had ordered IE 4.0 on CD-ROM.

Although Microsoft said it has increased the capacity of its Web
servers, users have complained about congestion and busy signals at
the Web site. The company boosted its site’s download capacity to 6.1
terabytes, which would allow about 450,000 browser downloads a day, a
spokeswoman said. However, throughout this week, the site was jammed
with traffic from users looking for the software, many unable to get
in.

Internet Explorer 4.0, released Tuesday after five months of beta
testing, is Microsoft’s attempt to make the browser wars irrelevant.
By building IE 4.0 into Windows, Microsoft hopes to make the browser
just another utility that comes with the operating system. That
integration won’t truly happen until Microsoft ships Windows 98 next
year, but the release of IE 4.0 for Windows 95 is a major step in
that direction.

Netscape Communications dominates the browser market, but Microsoft
thinks IE 4.0 will give it more than a 50 percent market share.

A survey of 279 corporate users released earlier this week by Zona
Research shows Netscape’s Navigator remains the leading browser with
a 62 percent share, compared with a 36 percent share for Microsoft’s
IE. Explorer’s share has risen to 36 percent from 3 percent in the
past 18 months, the survey shows.

——

http://web.archive.org/web/20010622043005/http://content.techweb.com/wire/news/1997/10/1003downloads.html

“IE 4: One Million Downloads On Day 1

(10/03/97; 5:00 p.m. EDT)

REDMOND, Wash. – Microsofts Internet Explorer 4.0 is off to a huge
start. In the first 24 hours of availability, the company reports
more than one million copies have been downloaded from its home page,
an average of one download every 6 seconds.
The numbers are all the more remarkable given IE 4.0s size. The
browser-only version is 13 megabytes (MB), the standard version,
which offers the desktop integration, is 16 MB, and the full version
is 25 MB. With a modem speed of 28.8 kilobytes per second, the
standard for home users, the Web-only download can take 1.5 hours,
and the full version can take more than 3 hours. Partly for that
reason, perhaps, more than 200,000 people have preordered the CD for
$4.95. Microsoft began shipping the CDs this week.

The one-million-downloads figure covers only copies downloaded from
Microsoft.com. It does not include downloads from the more than 20
mirror sites or the preordered CDs. To prepare for the flood,
Microsoft had to arrange for several terabytes of download bandwidth,
according to a Microsoft official at the San Francisco launch on
Tuesday night.

More than 10 terabytes of data have been sent out from the Microsoft
domain, according to Kevin Unangst, product manager for Internet
Explorer at Microsoft. The downloads are a mixture of browser-only,
standard, and full-install, according to Unangst. Microsoft has not
recorded whether the downloads are by corporate users or home users
and won’t know until more analysis of its logs, probably some time
next week.

Microsoft capped off its launch on Tuesday with a little prank. A
10-by-12 foot rendering of the ”e” logo in Internet Explorer –
prominently placed on the floor of the warehouse during the launch –
was left at the front door of arch-nemesis Netscape Communications,
in Mountain View, Calif. A group of people were seen dropping off the
prop around 1:30 in the morning, according to a Netscape
spokesperson. A card on the giant ”e” read, ”From the IE team.”

Still, Netscape had the last laugh. Company employees put their
12-foot mascot Mozilla, a green Godzilla-like foam creature on top of
the prop with a card that read ”Netscape 72, Microsoft 18″ – a
reference to recent market share numbers. But Netscape’s
counter-pranksters must not have seen the recent numbers from Zona
Research, in Redwood City, Calif., which said Navigator has 62
percent of the market to IEs 36 percent share. ”

Indeed, Internet Explorer was rising steadily long before Microsoft included it with Windows 98. Internet Explorer 4 was one of the most awaited software products in its day. It was way more standards compliant than Netscape, faster and had less bugs. Anyone remember the JS script that Dreamweaver included at wish, that fixed the resize bug in Netscape? There was a reason why Netscape’s nickname at that time was “Netscrap”.

Here’s a typical site of of the “Netscrap” period :

http://guymcarthur.com/resources/articles/netscapesucks.xml

And you can’t say that Netscape critics were Microsoft lovers, on the same site the author is proclaiming the end of Windows (didn’t work out, huh?):
http://guymcarthur.com/resources/articles/linux99.xml

CSS handling in NS4:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.netscape.sucks/search?hl=en&group=alt.netscape.sucks&q=css

As the quoted articles say, IE 4 was downloaded one million times in one day from the MS site alone in 1997. That’s enormous;  take into account the fact, that far less people were online back then and almost all of them were on slow dial-up connections. It’s far more impressive than Firefox’ download record of 8 million in 2008. And yes, many or most (in the US at least) OEMs pre-installed IE, but at that time Netscape was often pre-installed too, and  the download numbers show, that this was by far not the only reason for IE’s spread.

So, the decline of Netscape was on its way, long before Windows 98 appeared (in the 90s, one year in the internet business was like 3 years today).

Some more information about the standards compliancy of IE 4 and Netscape Navigator 4:

http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/webprog/jscript/ch18_04.htm

DHTML in Internet Explorer 4
As we saw in Chapter 17, IE 4 does not support the document.getElementById( ) method, nor does it support an API for dynamically creating new nodes and inserting them into a document. Instead, it provides the document.all[] array as a way of locating arbitrary elements of the document and allows document content to be altered with the innerHTML property of document elements. IE 4 does not conform to the standards here, but it provides adequate alternatives.

DHTML in Netscape 4
Creating DHTML effects with Netscape 4 is a more complicated affair. Netscape 4 does not support a full object model, so it does not allow JavaScript programs to refer to arbitrary HTML elements. It cannot, therefore, allow access to the inline styles of arbitrary elements. Instead, it defines a special Layer object.[68] Any element that is absolutely positioned (that is, any element that has its position style set to absolute) is placed in a separate layer from the rest of the document. This layer can be independently positioned, hidden, shown, lowered below or raised above other layers, and so on. The Layer API was proposed to the W3C for standardization but was never standardized..

……

http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/webprog/jscript/ch17_03.htm

DOM Compatibility with Internet Explorer 4

Although IE 4 is not DOM-compliant, it has features that are similar to the core DOM APIs. These features are not part of the DOM standard and are not compatible with Netscape, but they are compatible with later versions of IE. The features are summarized here; consult the client-side reference section of this book for more details.

http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/webprog/jscript/ch17_04.htm

DOM Compatibility with Netscape 4

Netscape 4 does not even come close to implementing the DOM standard. In particular, Netscape 4 provides no way to access or set attributes on arbitrary elements of a document. Netscape 4 supports the Level 0 DOM API, of course, so elements such as forms and links can be accessed through the forms[] and links[] arrays, but there is no general way to traverse the children of these elements or set arbitrary attributes on them. Furthermore, Netscape 4 does not have the ability to “reflow” document content in response to changes in element size.

These quotes are from the book “JavaScript, the definitive guide, fourth edition (2002)” from O’Reilly:

http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/webprog/jscript/index.htm

Many HTML and Javascript books from the end of the 90s to the beginning of the 2000s mention the better standard compliance of IE 4 compared to NS 4.
While neither browser was fully compliant, IE was far better in that regard.

Let’s look at the report: (the PDF is downloadable on the linked site)

The Linux Foundation, in partnership with Yeoman Technology Group, recently conducted a survey of 1,948 Linux users. This invitation-only survey pool was comprised of The Linux Foundation End User
Council as well as other companies, organizations and government agencies selected by The Linux Foundation and Yeoman.

So, only 1,948 businesses and organizations were contacted. And those businesses were not randomly chosen  but  are either members of an organization that is run by the Linux Foundation or were handpicked by Yeoman. And it’s not stated, how many belong to the first group.

So, it’s biased from the get-go.

This paper reports on the findings of that survey, with a focus on the 387 respondents who represent the largest enterprise companies and government agencies, identified as organizations with $500 million or more a year in revenues or greater than 500 employees. The results tell us
where Linux is growing and why, as well as where opportunities exist and challenges remain.

It gets even worse! From the 1,948 contacted businesses, only 387 are used for the report. That’s around 19.87%

387 is such a pitiful number for a survey, because there are so many businesses:

America’s 9.1 million women-owned businesses employ 27.5 million people and contribute $3.6 trillion to the economy
http://web.sba.gov/faqs/

And as the quote says. that is just the number of companies owned by women.

“More than 500 employees” means very little actually . The United States Small Business Administration lists in some cirumstances firms with more than 500 employees as “Small businesses”:

http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/serv_sstd_tablepdf.pdf

So the claim that only the ” largest enterprise companies” are used is missleading.

Let’s recap: 1,948 handpicked businesses were contacted, some of them are members of an organization that is run by the Linux foundation. The answers of less than 20% are used. What’s the point? This is biased beyond belief.

In short, the survey found that Linux is poised for growth in the coming years; 76.4% of companies are planning to add more Linux servers in the next twelve months. In contrast, only 41.2% of respondents are planning to add Windows servers in the next year, while 43.6% say they will be decreasing or maintaining the number of Windows servers in their organizations over the same time period.

And even in such a biased group, the Linux numbers aren’t that phenomenal. So, 41.2% are planning to add Windows servers? Don’t forget: We’re talking about handpicked, filtered companies, some are even members of Linux organizations! The 43.6% number is tricky. Decreasing and maintaining are not the same thing. The study omits how many of these companies are really decreasing their Windows servers.

For migrations to Linux from other platforms, we were surprised to find that migrations from Windows (36.6%) are surpassing the number of migrations from Unix (31.4%), even though this information runs counter to much of the data released in the market.

Well, if you take into account how they selected the companies, then it’s not surprising, that this information is countering most of the other data in the market.

Of those who selected other reasons for adoption, some of the comments include:

“Linux is the only real choice for high performance computing at the current time. Although other operating systems have products available for high performance computing, they just don’t measure up.”

“Freedom, I like to modify and customize my own system and programs.”

“The super flexibility of Linux tells it all.”

“Stability, no viruses.”

“Low cost hardware, security from virus or hacking.”

“Reliability – most of our heavy duty production Linux servers have an uptime approaching 1500 days.”

What? Is this Slashdot? What kind of enterprises have they contacted? One has to wonder: What IT professional from a large enterprise would in this day and age boast about uptime?

“I like to modify and customize my own system and programs” – sounds like a Slashdot post, and not like an answer from a CTO.

The results of this survey were based on responses from 387 IT professionals from organizations with $500m or more a year in revenues or 500+ employees…

This survey was conducted with members of The Linux Foundation’s End User Council, as well as other end users identified by The Linux Foundation and Yeoman Technologies. This report is  being published at The Linux Foundation End User Summit, where many respondents will be in attendance. These companies include Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Bristol-Myers Squibb, NTT, Deutsche Bank, Dreamworks, ADP, McKinsey and Company, Bank of New York, Barclays Capital, AIG, the US Department of Defense, MetLife, CME Group, NASDAQ QMX, the New York Stock Exchange, Goodrich, and many more.

Big names at the end, known 18 organizations. But it’s not clear how many of those talked positively about Linux, and it’s not clear how many of the other 369 are unknowns.

387 IT professionals from organizations
Who exactly partipated in the survey? 387 organizations or 387 “professionals”? Was it possible, that several people from one organization responded?

As it stands now, the survey is worthless. So yeah, another Victory for the Linux community.