Slashdot Mirror

I don't know about lawsuits, but this article touches upon the cease and desist letters they sent out. Such a move *could* have killed MP3s, except that Thomson's licensing is very reasonable.

For one, you don't need a license for "private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with an annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00."

Beyond that, their royalty rates are as little as $0.75 per copy, or a one time fee of $50-60K.

And if you want some free music - as in free free free go here. This site is a bit wacko jacko but some half decent music.

It's a poor platform for a desktop OS, plain and simple

I'd be interested to hear in which way. If you put the gaming market aside, it is a very competitive desktop OS (and a significant number of administrations, offices and other organisms selected it as their main work desktop platform). Applications ? It has. Stability and efficience at managing resources ? It has. Connectivity ? It has.

and the efforts to turn it into a good desktop OS are too splintered and half-assed.

I suspect that you think so because there's no unique initiative towards a friendly Linux desktop environment - you have a several distributions, toolkits, or desktop environments to choose from, which can be quite intimidating at first. But there are Linux distributions specifically aiming at providing an out-of-the-box, easy-to-use desktop environment smoothly integrating everything you may want. Knoppix or Ubuntu are just two popular examples of that trend - trying to provide something coherent without too many compromises.

Each little distro can then focus on the hardware it's designed for, and the task it's meant to do, rather than trying to cram every OSS project under the sun onto 6 DVD's and calling it a "Windows Killer".

The goal of the distributions isn't to cram "every OSS project" on its CDs. Generalist distributions like Debian, SuSE or Fedora try to encompass most of what you can expect to do with a computer in the easiest way possible. And that's why things like package managers or networked installer CDs were invented: to make your life easier. Linux isn't a "geek-only" system anymore.

Finally, when speaking about "Joe Sixpack's exposure" to Linux and his possible reactions to it, you may want to give a try at this article (English version here ), where the author compared the ease of installation and use of Linux Mandrake 9.2 and Windows 2000 by letting his unexperimented wife handle it by herself. The result demonstrates that (at least for her) Linux was easier to install and use for her daily tasks.

A common mistake is to point at the case of people used to Windows attempting to use Linux and being "lost" in an alien environment. The only valuable point to take into account is how people who never used a computer before can find their marks under Linux. That's two pretty different things to consider, I'd say.

What is the goal of open source software? Is it to drag users away from proprietary solutions, or is there a grander purpose to the open source movement?

Depends on who you ask. As the story goes, RMS started the GNU project with the intent of dragging users from proprietary, closed-source programs. But that's Free Software, and you asked about Open Source. Open Source, of course, is all about a superior development model.

Why do you release your code? What is your motivation?

When I started working on pyAlarm, I felt that releasing the code was the right thing to do for many reasons. In fact, I wrote an article about it.

I think that many of the reasons I made pyAlarm open source apply as a general case to pretty much all other software. But to really understand why I do it, you'll have to read that article.

Has the OS movement's hatred for Microsoft overwhelmed their perceived goals?

No. The movement, by and large, doesn't hate Microsoft specifically. Many individuals do, but the community doesn't. If we hate Microsoft, how are we going to welcome them when they finally embrace open source software? It is something of an inevitability, you know. Basic survival and all that.

But you're not *required* to receive those services. You can be poor as dirt in the desert and you don't have to give up your ID to the government. But when you go ask them to help out, *then* you have to prove who you are, and not only that, but why you think you should be *given* money for nothing.

I believe in the original intended purpose of social security, welfare, etc. I think it's a fair trade that you have to give up certain information in order to receive those services. Without that information, how the hell is the government supposed to figure out who qualifies for the service and who doesn't?

But that's not what the GP said, is it. ;) The GP said "But I in *NO* way believe that they gov't should be able to demand my papers in any situation." I grokked that as "I don't think the government can demand my ID arbitrarily". As in, they have to have a good reason. The cop that stops me for speeding (a law I oppose, btw) has to see my ID so he can write me the ticket. I can refuse to give up the ID. He can also arrest me so I can serve my fine in jail instead, along with interfering with justice or whatever it's called. But a cop that just sees me in a store, I don't think he should be able to ask my ID on "suspicion that I will commit theft in that store".

For example, I don't think this should have happened at all. However, in that situation, the cop had all the power, so I tried my best to accomodate him without getting into trouble. As for my rights? You don't claim those when the cop starts looking for you. You claim those in a court of law. They *can* hold you for too long, in violation of due process. And then you can claim your rights in the matter, have the charges dismissed, and sue the piss out of them for fucking you over. But if they just lock you up and throw away the key, what are you going to do? Can't Do Shit. Not unless someone outside knows what's going on and can go claim your rights for you.

I always get a kick when a guy has to identify himself as being some sort of big-time developer on the project he's pimping (or the project the article's about).

That said, Kpilot works great! KDE's PIM software is really coming along nicely, and KPilot works well with all of them. Furthermore, I've been reading all about the API for writing new conduits for KPilot, and it's awesome. Just override two methods and that's it, it'll just work. (Three if you *really* want an about dialog) According to the posting, at least, I think KPilot + KDE will satisfy the Ask Slashdot question with only one minor caveat. Doesn't run on Windows. But that's *not* my problem at all. ;)

I have an unrelated question for you. If you look at my website, you'll see in the left-hand a big tree navigation menu. That tree is generated from php and a mysql database, of course. Does the milonic menu on your jsyncmanager website work well with tree data from MySQL? (Mine's a very basic tree, even using recursion to walk the tree it's so damn basic)

When I compared Windows and Linux, using my wife as a test user, I was very specific in the requirements, and the rules. I was only comparing installers, and at that I was comparing how easy it was to install one vs the other by an average idiot user. And it was only Mandrake 9.2, not "all Linux distributions".

Thing is, to properly review an entire distribution really would take days for each distribution, weeks even. I haven't given a hard look at distrowatch, but with them as a possible exception, I've never read a review of a distribution that I'd consider complete. There's too much information to review, too much software to look at, too many issues to consider just for the market you've chosen to review for. I estimate that you should spend a week, at least 2 hours a day, for one distribution in one market. So if I'm going to review Mandrake Linux 9.2 for, say, CAD workers, that's one week, at least two hours a day. Now I want to review the *same* distribution for, hmm, how about people that make guitar strings? Ok. That's another week, at least two hours a day.

In the old days, computers weren't as specialized as they are today, and it wasn't necessary to review for a lot of specific markets. At that, there were a lot of markets who couldn't find reviews that suited them for the uses they needed to put the computers. But this 'old school' style of review doesn't cut it, anymore. I agree with the article poster on this one. ;)

I actually put this to the test. Did you, or are you just blowing smoke?

This is completely off-topic, but here's a link to an article that resulted from a previous discussion we had.

Windows vs Linux, which is easier to Install?

I'm not ready for a slashdotting, so please, nobody submit this unless you can get it mirrored on a big site that can take the slashdotting.