[geeks] OSX Server

[Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> It is bloody stupid for a program which sends a few bytes of command
> information to a mixer device to need 24MB of code + libraries to do
> that job.

I was never denying that... just trying to understand how much of that
size was the applet itself, vs. whatever is shared. On top of that Linux
has at some point done some really retarded things regarding memory
allocation to boot. :)

> Also, when you have huge shared libraries that every program you run
> needs, it puts excessive pressure on the VM subsystem.
> It either can't find opportunities to page them out, or it can't do so
> long enough to avoid performance problems.

Hum, I do not see it that way.... the VM only sees pages, so one the parts
of the shared library that have low usage statistics will be swapped out.
If anything shared libraries help reduce the pressure in the VM in the
sense that they actually reduce the overall memory footprint in some
instances... and reduce the amount of swapping needed in some very harsh
context switch scenarios. At least that is where a lot of the literature
regarding shared vs. non-shared libs tends to point towards.

> But I have paid for it indirectly.  Open source development is funded by
> governments and corporations, has been for decades (open source is not a
> 90s invention).

Well, some of the code in the OSS has been sponsored and payed for by
foreign governments, so it did cost me a song really :)

> The cost of open source is not free, never has been.  Somebody is paying
> for it, somewhere.

My understanding in free software was that the "free" referred mostly as
in speech not in beer :). The overall cost for me, as direct hit to my
pocket at time of adoption at least (and perception is a very important
part of the equation) is very minimal. Sure there are the hidden costs of
downloading, and installation, and configuration, and... but I would like
to pretend that if I pay for an actual boxed product from a vendor (boxed
product as in propietary solution) that my set of expectations are far
higher and usually directly proportional to what I just spent in
purchashin that box directly.

> If you could actually calculate your costs for open source, whether you
> use it or not, you might be surprised how much you have paid for it.

I really do not know, and I doubt there is a specific metric to track
down. As I said, free as in speech is what usually open and free software
tends to refer to. But I guess that statement is true for any product
really, in fact you may end up paying twice or trice for a commercial
product really. :)

> I think though, that Apple has done a better job of separating things.
> For example, it seems that the "link everything" problem doesn't exist
> there.  I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and check libraries, but
> what I did look at didn't seem as bad as Gnome to me.

OSX had some serious growing pains. Still does some retarded things, but
their APIs are light years ahead of GNOME that is for sure. OSX also does
things like prebinding and whatnot, that really put a large price tag on
memory resources it may need.

I tend to put GNOME in its real context, as a project sometimes it annoys
the F out of me how they do things. And looking at some of the code, I was
actually appalled. The good thing is that some people can try to fix that
if they so chose (good luck), they seem to have some talented people...
but the overall design is just monstruous IMHO. But it is always nice to
have a choice I guess. There is GNOME, KDE, WxWindows (which I actually
prefer as my target for gui stuff), GNUStep, heck even xlib :), you also
get your cocoa, or Win32...

> It's funny... it doesn't seem all that long ago I stopped using xterm
> because it was using way too much memory, and I found Motif was the
> biggest UI pig I'd ever seen.

Motif just like GNOME is what happens when you have something designed by
a commitee :).

> > The price of progress I guess :)
>
> Unnecessary bloat and avoidable bugs isn't progress though.

What I see as progress is that one can develop rather complex gui
applications relatively quickly, vs. the old ways. It is not efficient nor
pretty I guess. But the point of progress is usually to move from point a
to point b, whether or not the path taken is the most elegant/efficient
sadly it is not usually a metric for the forward motion IMHO.

Sure, there is bloat (I don't know about hte avoidable bugs), but memory
densities get higher, and so do processor speeds. So when designers are
faced with spending time squeezing performance vs. time to market or
development time, well... one has to ride the technology curve I guess.