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The FSF is not about pleasing everyone. It is about solely furthering the goals of Free Software (not Open Source, not Linux). They will succeed in that.

We suggest that everywhere we as a culture have previously talked about "free software", the label should be changed to "open source". Open-source software. The open-source model. The open source culture. The Debian Open Source Guidelines. (In pitching this to the corporate world I'm also going to be invoking the idea of "peer review" a lot.)

This re-labeling has since attracted a lot of support (and some opposition) in the hacker culture. Supporters include Linus himself, John "maddog" Hall, Larry Augustin, Bruce Perens of Debian, Phil Hughes of Linux Journal. Opposers include Richard Stallman, who initially flirted with the idea but now thinks the term "open source" isn't pure enough

Here.

What amazing spin:

Microsoft is an amazingly transparent company.

People know about M$ because M$ has misbehaved not because M$ wants people to know things. M$ leaks like a sieve because their employees hate their company. This is how the rest of the world gets Halloween Documents, and other fun outside of lawsuits. Lawsuits are the result of everyone else's outrage and reveal even more. Calling that kind of hate and animosity "transparency" is a brazen lie. Actual disclosure will get you fired.

Have you read World Domination Plan 201? If you make it so Linux will run Windows programs, whats the point of developing for Linux exclusively? Companies will just make things Just Work on Windows, there will be no exclusive development happening for Linux.

Don't let this disturb you, the jargon is quite simple and you'll get accustomed to it. Besides, there's always google and let me point you to a famous site (mostly folklore/trivia, but it might light a bulb sometimes in reading mailing lists : the jargon file by eric s raymond : glossary is there : http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/go01.html )

How do you think new words happen? People define them. So, I took that authority.

Bruce, I'd like to pin down precisely when you claim you defined (some would say redefined) the meaning of the phrase "Open Source". I haven't found any information yet on when that supposedly occurred. I ask because of two pieces of data I have located. One of them is an october 1996 press release from Caldera in which the phrase "Open Source" is clearly used to describe the conditions of release for Caldera OpenDOS. ESR Claims that the term was invented in 1998. And in your own document entitled The Open Source Definition you state the following:

"The Open Source Definition started life as a policy document of the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution. Debian, an early Linux system and one still popular today, was built entirely of free software. However, since there were other licenses than the Copyleft that purported to be free, Debian had some problem defining what was free, and they had never made their free software policy clear to the rest of the world. I was the leader of the Debian project, at that time, and I addressed these problems by proposing a Debian Social Contract and a Debian Free Software Guidelines in July, 1997."

This leaves the question somewhat up in the air. If you first sought to define the term in the DSC and/or DFSG in 1997, then clearly you are a latecomer to the party. And if you did this thing in 1997, or even earlier, why does ESR claim it happened in 1998? Is it the truth, rivalry, or ignorance? I have no particular reason to believe ESR over yourself (and one or two reasons not to, but let us put those aside for the moment) and thus I am only seeking clarification.

ESR actually goes on to mention you in his document which places the event in 1998:

"Linus Torvalds endorsed the idea the day after that first meeting. We began acting on it within a few days after. Bruce Perens had the <opensource.org> domain registered and the first version of the Open Source website up within a week. He also suggested that the Debian Free Software Guidelines become the `Open Source Definition', and began the process of registering `Open Source' as a certification mark so that we could legally require people to use `Open Source' for products conforming to the OSD."

Would you please do us the courtesy of clarifying these issues? I realize that I may becoming across as rude or obsequious, but please believe that finding out the truth so that I can steer people correctly is more important to me than being right, or you being wrong.

It is not the same thing as Free Software, even if he DOES claim that, and I don't think he does (at least, he doesn't seem to have here on slashdot today.) It's vaguely similar, but that's as close as you get.

Amiga Persecution Complex

Signed,
idontgno
former Amiga fanboi

Their plan? They know the power of open-source software. They know how well it works together, and with proprietary software (I think you can even use a Samba server to be a PDC in a Windows domain). They just want to keep people using their software in some form, rather than not at all.

You were doing great until that last sentence. Microsoft wants everyone to use Microsoft software, everywhere and all the time. This latest round of manoeuvres on the patent front is simply one aspect of a concerted attempt to de-commodify software, standards and protocols.

This is not news. We've known since the Halloween Documents first appeared in 1998 that they might do this:

"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."

Protocols are by their nature immune to copyright protection, but not to patents. It seems clear that Microsoft sees patents as a necessary weapon in their fight against open standards. I think they're right. Software patents are anathema to open standards, and that's why software patents have to be stopped.

For my part I find it a little disturbing that people who've been in the FOSS game for this long should so easily forget this. Microsoft's take on the patent issue seems to be that they're big enough to cope with the madness of patent litigation. They'll take some hits in the short term, but ultimately, they'll end up holding enough of the patent pie that they'll be unassailable.

FOSS, however, suffers far more than Microsoft ever could. Even today, the presence of sharks in the patent waters might be enough to stop the next Linus Torvalds from sitting down and writing the Next Big Thing, or perhaps to convince the next Richard Stallman that the battle is already lost. The more they drive developers into the embrace of large corporations, the more they can influence - if not dictate - the directions software development takes.

Get me rewrite! We'll use your scene, but have ESR parachuting in, guns blazing!

That would work even better! Pleasure working with you, your check's in the mail, see you at the premiere....

You're supposed to put periods inside quotation marks, not outside.

bullshit.

This should fix your problem. ;-)

if(hot_gurl) {
RingBell();
}

I believe you have your bells and whistles mixed up.

System of Systems is a philosophy that should look a helluva lot like the Unix Philosophy because... it is the same philosophy... and people do write code for these environments. If you want Parallel Programming to succeed make it work as systems of systems interacting to create a complex whole. Create environments where independent "objects" or code units can interact with each other asynchronously.

Otherwise, as discussed in TFA there are certain problems that just don't parallelize. However, there are whole classes of algorithms that aren't developed in modern Computer Science because such stuff is too radical a departure from classical mathematics. Consider HTA as a computing model. It is just too far away from traditional programming.

Parallel programing is just alien to traditional procedural declarative programming models. One solution is to abandon traditional programming languages and/or models as inadequate to represent more complex parallel problems. Another is to isolate procedural code to message each other asynchronously. Another is to create a system of systems... or combinations of both.

If there is a limitation it is in the declarative sequential paradigm and that limitation is partially addressed by all the latest work in asynchronous 'net technologies. These distributed paradigms still haven't filtered through the whole industry.

We've been in various stages of Imminent Death of the Net Predicted for at least 25 years. Y2K was merely the last version, and running out of IPv4 is merely the current version.

Just wait until we abandon CSS in order to ensure that an entire page can be rendered by through a single TCP/IPv6 connection. Domain names with vowels! HTML with serifed fonts! Imminent Death of Web 2.0 predicted!

I didn't disagree. You simply have to create enough universes to get all possible results, then use an algorithm similar to the one in the second paragraph.

I don't care how much junk software they add, so long as Micheal Dell has read "World Domination 201" and decides to offer for sale a disk full of licensed codecs. Dell has the clout to put such a disk together, faster than Linspire.

Insightful? My God

relax, the mod system still works. i am routinely modded insightful by people who get my jokes, and modded a troll or flamebait by people who don't get my jokes... or worse, i get called stupid or crazy when people don't get them. in the great karmic scheme of things, it all balances out.

How about you earn those mod points and detail how much each politician got from RIAA members?

how about you learn a little bit about humor?. i don't have to list the precise number of lion-related zebra deaths last year in order for the statement "lions eat zebras" to hold a shred of truth.

things are often funny because they are true. things are rarely true because they are funny.

Ahh if I'd have mod points they'd be yours. Seriously I expect this as first post come on people what's wrong with you!! http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/blinkenligh ts.html

So relaxen, und vatchen das blinkenlights.

The best (biased) M$->SCO analysis. Pins Mike Anderer directly on the donkey...

http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween10.htm l

XHTML version
postscript version
docbook xml version

all of those found here

ESR bay have become an asshole or whatever the slashdot crowd thinks about him nowadays (I honestly don't know him so I couldn't really say), but CatB is still a good reading.

XHTML version
postscript version
docbook xml version

all of those found here

ESR bay have become an asshole or whatever the slashdot crowd thinks about him nowadays (I honestly don't know him so I couldn't really say), but CatB is still a good reading.

XHTML version
postscript version
docbook xml version

all of those found here

ESR bay have become an asshole or whatever the slashdot crowd thinks about him nowadays (I honestly don't know him so I couldn't really say), but CatB is still a good reading.

XHTML version
postscript version
docbook xml version

all of those found here

ESR bay have become an asshole or whatever the slashdot crowd thinks about him nowadays (I honestly don't know him so I couldn't really say), but CatB is still a good reading.

Here's the Molly guard story - although the term is pretty much self explanatory.

(And while we're at it, BRS.) "It is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually fired a non-conducting bolt into the main power feed."

Here's the Molly guard story - although the term is pretty much self explanatory.

(And while we're at it, BRS.) "It is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually fired a non-conducting bolt into the main power feed."

Who wants to hold their arm out, hovering over the keyboard,...

A telling observation, since it was gorilla arm that pretty much killed the touchscreen as a primary input device (except for applications where the user only spends a short time using the device, such as ATM screens).

Yes, an age old problem that's been recognised since touchscreens were touted as the panacea to all usability woes.

Have you ever heard the term "copycenter"? As in, "I don't care, just take it down to the copy center and make as many copies as you want."

Just read this if you were in any doubt about what a fscking idiot the man is.

I don't understand.

they're good friends

Maybe you shouldn't pay so much attention to the show they put on for the geeks.

Uh, plural for virus is viruses. It'd have to be virius to pluralize to virii. But yeah doesn't "boxen" go back to the old hackers? Boxen and unices (instead of unixes). Boxen is in the Jargon File / Hacker Dictionary: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/boxen.html

Dear Sirs,

I'm very disappointed with your actions and claims this summer by attacking Linux and also GPL in the farsighted way you are doing.

The only logical conclusion I can make from this is that you have decided to kill your own product, UnixWare.

Whether you win this case or not is not important from that point of view. You have harmed your own business for all future. UnixWare is dead. If you win this case, the freedom in this world is gone. You are creating anarchy, worse than the US patent system causes due to it's unlimited patentability on software and business methods.

I don't expect an explanation back from you.

Sincerely yours
myname
mycompany

I actually recieved an answer containing:

SCO is not trying to destroy UnixWare, we are only trying to protect our
intellectual property. I'm sorry that this runs contrary to your
thinking, but when a company's intellectual property is being
threatened, it has to take action.

My immediate conspiratory consideration then was that Microsoft gladly supported the trial as it had potential to harm both UnixWare and the Linux kernel, both competitors to MS.

At that time the Microsoft mix into this were merely rumours but last year their support were more or less proven

I wish you hadn't posted anonymously, so I would mod you informative. Here are, however, a couple of links (secretly hoping to get modded informative myself) about creeping [by our favourite OSS writer] featuritis. Might as well post about second-system effect, but it would be modded offtopic, even though it isn't, if we assume that Linux 2.6 is a second system if compared to Linux 2.x where x = 4.

Wasn't that ESR's analysis of the Halloween documents, not RMS? Give credit where credit is due.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/

So, unless I'm an insensitive clod and you only have one finger... of course, then a two button mouse wouldn't work anyway.

...I'm a bit addicted to LOTRO (their acronym, not mine). I've never played WoW or EverQuest, so I can't compare it to them. But I like the sense of freedom on a known (Middle Earth) map.

I haven't seen LOTRO, but I have been playing WoW for the last year. There are two main reasons why I could see someone might play LOTRO in preference to WoW:-

1) The backstory. WoW's lore is the proverbial mulligan stew; a whole heap of disparate elements thrown together. This is reflected in the number of retcons Blizzard have had to perform in order to get it to fit together. Although it's difficult to put my finger on exactly what I mean here, WoW is not a virtual world in the same sense Ultima Online was. It's a lot closer to being an online form of Disneyland with the lore bolted on. You can especially see that by looking at how clearly petitioned off from each other each geographical zone in the game is. Blizz would probably argue that they needed to do that in order to make the game mainstream, and I'd agree with them. However, in gaining mainstream appeal, it also loses the sense of being as organic as UO was.

2) The elves. If I was going to write this anywhere else, people would call me a freak for caring, but seeing as this is Slashdot and I'm among other such freaks, I can do so with impunity. ;-)
I've read a number of other depictions of elves besides Tolkien, (Dragonlance, AD&D, Shadowrun, and Feist also mentions them at times in passing) and I've always felt that Tolkien was the only author who ever truly grokked the elves. WoW is no exception, although I think in WoW's case this is a problem of taking about the single most non-mainstream element of fantasy in existence and trying to render it mainstream. Peter Jackson more or less managed to pull it off, but I haven't seen anyone else who has.

I realise with the above two points that I'm talking about some very slippery, subjective intangibles; but to me that's also the point. Tolkien's material (to me anywayz) had a very distinctive vibe, and despite some valiant efforts at times I haven't seen anyone who's been able to entirely reproduce that.

I play WoW purely for action. It's a game (think an expanded/more complex version of Diablo 2, for the most part) first and foremost, and any consideration of it as either a virtual or fictional environment comes a fairly distant second. I was actually starting to feel somewhat differently just before the release of the expansion, but with the expansion I feel that Blizzard have wanted to put the "game" element firmly back as the main focus, and so I've done the same.

Some have accused Blizzard of outright McDonaldisation with WoW. I feel that to a degree that is unfair, in that even though they've certainly done that to an extent, it's not so blatant that it prevent genuine enjoyment of the game.

Don't forget Microsoft's mantra: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Let's try not to underestimate their ability to succeed. They've got a pretty impressive track record, after all.

Don't forget usenet. And before asking questions on any forum, read this.

Care to back that up with an actual reference for those of us in the uninformed masses?

Have a look at the Halloween documents. They're leaked memos from Microsoft, I think you'll find all the evidence you need in there. Here's a good quote:

OSS poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft, particularly in server space. Additionally, the intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in OSS has benefits that are not replicable with our current licensing model and therefore present a long term developer mindshare threat.

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

YKYBNerdingTLW you know this is a Usenet reference. Oh, and don't forget Kibo.

Check the Jargon file

The Internet Security Alliance has been talking openly about an overhaul of core protocols since 2004.

People have been talking about this since 1998. On Halloween of that year, Eric Raymond had several Microsoft internal emails forwarded anonymously to him. They outlined how Microsoft could respond to the Open Source Threat. The single most telling quote runs like this:

"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."

At the World Wide Web conference in Amsterdam In 2000, Lawrence Lessig spoke clearly about the threat to the principle of the 'end to end' network (i.e. the Internet as designed). At that time he was speaking about the intent of the telcos to subvert it through WAP, but the prophetic nature of his comments are made visible by endeavours such as these.

Make no mistake, folks: the shiny new future that's being laid out for us here will have none of the freedoms that we enjoy today, where access to information is concerned. This is something that needs to be opposed early, loudly and without compromise.

The Internet Security Alliance has been talking openly about an overhaul of core protocols since 2004.

People have been talking about this since 1998. On Halloween of that year, Eric Raymond had several Microsoft internal emails forwarded anonymously to him. They outlined how Microsoft could respond to the Open Source Threat. The single most telling quote runs like this:

"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."

At the World Wide Web conference in Amsterdam In 2000, Lawrence Lessig spoke clearly about the threat to the principle of the 'end to end' network (i.e. the Internet as designed). At that time he was speaking about the intent of the telcos to subvert it through WAP, but the prophetic nature of his comments are made visible by endeavours such as these.

Make no mistake, folks: the shiny new future that's being laid out for us here will have none of the freedoms that we enjoy today, where access to information is concerned. This is something that needs to be opposed early, loudly and without compromise.

Nagios is just not that hard to configure. If you had a web front end, then every time a change to the capabilities was made you'd have to go back through and update the front end to make it support it, which means more time between releases, longer turnarounds for new features, and likely less flexibility in the system in general.

You'd better tell the developers who are sat next to me that one. They think they're using a toolkit which practically gives them a web-based interface for free when they develop the command-line interface.

No, it's not. And why? Because you simply can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want flexibility and power you're going to have complexity.

You know, rather than just tell me that I'm asking for the moon, you could try ZenOSS. You get a heck of a lot of flexibility and power with substantially less complexity.

There seems to be a certain idea in the Linux community that just because "it's a community-developed Unix" it has to be bloody awkward to get basic things to work. Eric Raymond has already pointed out that this makes no sense at all:

    http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html

The only way I can make any sense of this opinion persisting is that most of the Linux developers are secretly into S&M and when they shut the computer down for the night, they wander into their dungeon for some light whipping and flaggelation.

The battle for the 64-bit OS will be decided by 2008.

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/wor ld-domination-201.html

By the way, if anyone didn't catch parent's drift with "it's september all the time nowadays", please read "September that never ended" in the Jargon File:

http://catb.org/jargon/html/S/September-that-never -ended.html

So much for the history lesson ;)