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It's available from GNU, it can be used with C programs, Perl scripts, PHP, Python, etc. It's databasing at its simplest. I use it myself. It works well.

This would probably be a good point to provide a link to Richard Stallman's short story The Right to Read. Originally written in 1997, it's scarey how close it's getting to reality. If you haven't read it, please do so.

I know RMS was being an alarmist (as usual?) when he wrote it, but The Right to Read story sounds like the next step to that sort of thing. Good textbooks on subjects will server you long after college. If I hadn't needed the money for food so bad at points, I would have kept a few more of them.

However, I find the attitude of the BSD proponents on this subject somewhat strange. By choosing the BSD license, you are giving people the right to do whatever they want with their work. This means that company could take your code and include it in a proprietory app, without releasing improvements back to the community.

BSD licensed projects are often funded by loose consortiums of companies who want to able to build proprietary products on top of the open source project. One example that comes to mind is ACE and TAO which has many corporate sponsors and is incorporated into several products - both open source and proprietary. IIRC, Doug Schmidt, the project leader (and author of gperf - so he certainly understands both the GPL and BSD licenses), felt that a GPL license for ACE would have made it harder to attract corporate sponsors.

This means that company could take your code and include it in a proprietory app, without releasing improvements back to the community. By their decision to license under BSD, developers indicate that they are okay with this.

In practice, while consortium members or other users may want to use the BSD'd product in a proprietary product of their own, they still do not want the headache of maintaining a local fork of the BSD'd code. Most are more than happy to return bug fixes and enhancements back to the the BSD'd code maintainers even though they are not strictly required to.

[W]hy should it be GPL compatable[sic]?

It need not be, but the new license does allow sublicensing. Very few people ask for XFree86 to be GPL-compatible. So long as XFree86 is free software, it will continue to be a valuable contribution to the free software community.

If the GPL is unwilling to be compatable with anyone else, why should anyone be too worried about being compatable with the GPL.

When the GPL was written, apparently nobody else had the idea of preserving the freedoms of free software for derivative works by leveraging the power of copyright. Copylefting was not as popular as it is now and plenty of developers were content to contribute to corporations as if they were charities. Simply not contributing code without analyzing why this occurs is a remarkably shallow examination of the situation.

Remember. Open source =\= GPL.

Actually, the GPL is the most popular so-called "open source" license. But it's still far better to credit the GPL as a free software license because the open source movement had nothing to do with the creation of the GPL and the open source movement's philosophy is not the same as the philosophy behind the GPL. Merely placing a license on an approved list of licenses does not compare with writing a license.

By the way, before the XFree86 license switch, RMS encouraged people to contribute to the XFree86 project under the previous XFree86 license. He explained why a GPL fork of XFree86 would not be beneficial for GNU. I believe that his opinion was based on XFree86 being free software, not GPL-compatibility, so I expect he will continue to tell people to contribute to the project under its license rather than making another fork, so long as XFree86 remains free:

QUESTION: Yes, my question was, considering free but not copylefted software, since anybody can pick it up and make it proprietary, is it not possible also for someone to pick it up and make some changes and release the whole thing under the GPL?

STALLMAN: Yes, it is possible.

QUESTION: Then, that would make all future copies then be GPL'ed.

STALLMAN: From that branch. But here's why we don't do that.

QUESTION: Hmm?

STALLMAN: Here's why we don't generally do that. Let me explain.

QUESTION: OK, yes.

STALLMAN: We could, if we wanted to, take X Windows, and make a GPL-covered copy and make changes in that. But there's a much larger group of people working on improving X Windows and *not* GPL-ing it. So, if we did that, we would be forking from them. And that's not very nice treatment of them. And, they *are* a part of our community, contributing to our community.

Second, it would backfire against us, because they're doing a lot more work on X than we would be. So, our version would be inferior to theirs, and people wouldn't use it, which means, why go to the trouble at all?

QUESTION: Mmm hmm.

STALLMAN: So when a person has written some improvement to X Windows, what I say that person should do is cooperate with the X development team. Send it to them and let them use it their way. Because they are developing a very important piece of free software. It's good for us to cooperate with them.

QUESTION: Except, considering X, in particular, about two years ago, the X Consortium that was far into the nonfree open source...

STALLMAN: Well, actually it *wasn't* open sourced. It wasn't open sourced, either. They may have said it was. I can't remember if they said that or not. But it wasn't open source. It was restricted. You couldn't commercially distribute, I think. Or you couldn't commercially distribute a modified version, or something like that. There was a restriction that's considered una

[W]hy should it be GPL compatable[sic]?

It need not be, but the new license does allow sublicensing. Very few people ask for XFree86 to be GPL-compatible. So long as XFree86 is free software, it will continue to be a valuable contribution to the free software community.

If the GPL is unwilling to be compatable with anyone else, why should anyone be too worried about being compatable with the GPL.

When the GPL was written, apparently nobody else had the idea of preserving the freedoms of free software for derivative works by leveraging the power of copyright. Copylefting was not as popular as it is now and plenty of developers were content to contribute to corporations as if they were charities. Simply not contributing code without analyzing why this occurs is a remarkably shallow examination of the situation.

Remember. Open source =\= GPL.

Actually, the GPL is the most popular so-called "open source" license. But it's still far better to credit the GPL as a free software license because the open source movement had nothing to do with the creation of the GPL and the open source movement's philosophy is not the same as the philosophy behind the GPL. Merely placing a license on an approved list of licenses does not compare with writing a license.

By the way, before the XFree86 license switch, RMS encouraged people to contribute to the XFree86 project under the previous XFree86 license. He explained why a GPL fork of XFree86 would not be beneficial for GNU. I believe that his opinion was based on XFree86 being free software, not GPL-compatibility, so I expect he will continue to tell people to contribute to the project under its license rather than making another fork, so long as XFree86 remains free:

QUESTION: Yes, my question was, considering free but not copylefted software, since anybody can pick it up and make it proprietary, is it not possible also for someone to pick it up and make some changes and release the whole thing under the GPL?

STALLMAN: Yes, it is possible.

QUESTION: Then, that would make all future copies then be GPL'ed.

STALLMAN: From that branch. But here's why we don't do that.

QUESTION: Hmm?

STALLMAN: Here's why we don't generally do that. Let me explain.

QUESTION: OK, yes.

STALLMAN: We could, if we wanted to, take X Windows, and make a GPL-covered copy and make changes in that. But there's a much larger group of people working on improving X Windows and *not* GPL-ing it. So, if we did that, we would be forking from them. And that's not very nice treatment of them. And, they *are* a part of our community, contributing to our community.

Second, it would backfire against us, because they're doing a lot more work on X than we would be. So, our version would be inferior to theirs, and people wouldn't use it, which means, why go to the trouble at all?

QUESTION: Mmm hmm.

STALLMAN: So when a person has written some improvement to X Windows, what I say that person should do is cooperate with the X development team. Send it to them and let them use it their way. Because they are developing a very important piece of free software. It's good for us to cooperate with them.

QUESTION: Except, considering X, in particular, about two years ago, the X Consortium that was far into the nonfree open source...

STALLMAN: Well, actually it *wasn't* open sourced. It wasn't open sourced, either. They may have said it was. I can't remember if they said that or not. But it wasn't open source. It was restricted. You couldn't commercially distribute, I think. Or you couldn't commercially distribute a modified version, or something like that. There was a restriction that's considered una

"So what?", I hear you ask again. This matters, because according to the FSF, linking against a library- even if the library is shared- creates a derived work. Not everyone shares this view- I certainly don't- but the FSF's published opinion on the license they wrote would probably weigh heavily in court. See this GPL FAQ and others for their stated opinion.

More specifically, this means you can't redistribute a program that uses both licenses, or has pieces of both XFree86 code (under the new license) and GPL'd code.

That's bad enough in itself, but if the FSF's interpretation of derived work is applied again, then this would mean you also couldn't use both an XFree86 library and a GPL'd library in your code, at the same time, no matter what your license was. That would effectively prohibit anyone from using Qt, for example, since it's GPL'd and uses Xlib.

The whole objective of GPL is deliberately and explicitly to prevent commercial exploitation. If you think differently then you have never met RMS in person and listened to him for more than 30 minutes.

Please don't use ``commercial'' as a synonym for ``non-free.'' That confuses two entirely different issues.

A program is commercial if it is developed as a business activity. A commercial program can be free or non-free, depending on its license. Likewise, a program developed by a school or an individual can be free or non-free, depending on its license. The two questions, what sort of entity developed the program and what freedom its users have, are independent.

In the first decade of the Free Software Movement, free software packages were almost always noncommercial; the components of the GNU/Linux operating system were developed by individuals or by nonprofit organizations such as the FSF and universities. But in the 90s, free commercial software started to appear.

Free commercial software is a contribution to our community, so we should encourage it. But people who think that ``commercial'' means ``non-free'' will tend to think that the ``free commercial'' combination is self-contradictory, and dismiss the possibility. Let's be careful not to use the word ``commercial'' in that way.

The whole objective of GPL is deliberately and explicitly to prevent commercial exploitation. If you think differently then you have never met RMS in person and listened to him for more than 30 minutes.

Please don't use ``commercial'' as a synonym for ``non-free.'' That confuses two entirely different issues.

A program is commercial if it is developed as a business activity. A commercial program can be free or non-free, depending on its license. Likewise, a program developed by a school or an individual can be free or non-free, depending on its license. The two questions, what sort of entity developed the program and what freedom its users have, are independent.

In the first decade of the Free Software Movement, free software packages were almost always noncommercial; the components of the GNU/Linux operating system were developed by individuals or by nonprofit organizations such as the FSF and universities. But in the 90s, free commercial software started to appear.

Free commercial software is a contribution to our community, so we should encourage it. But people who think that ``commercial'' means ``non-free'' will tend to think that the ``free commercial'' combination is self-contradictory, and dismiss the possibility. Let's be careful not to use the word ``commercial'' in that way.

Jesus Christ, could you GPL zealots be a little more melodramatic? An advertising clause is an annoyance, nothing more.

All these idiotic posts claiming that this will be the end of Xfree, or that for some inscrutible reason all of the GPLed libraries can no longer be used with it. What rubbish! We routinely use GPLed libraries on Macs or Windows PCs, are you guys really trying to tell me the Microsoft EULA is compatible with the GPL but this new X license isn't?

The dumbest part is you people apparently linked to your GNU philosophy page without actually reading it. While RMS appears to find the BSD-style licenses quite personally annoying, nowhere within does it call for a copyleftist jihad against them, or claim that they are incompatible with the GPL in any way.

In fact, a quick glance at the philosophy pages find that he appears equally unhappy with the old X license, calling it a trap.

Honestly, you act like people shouldn't be allowed to license their own software however they want, is that really what you're trying to say?

-----------

Karma is slightly below max, mostly for saying things like "Maybe you shouldn't kill innocent people" when those people really, really wanted to kill innocent people

im sorry, this is the guy who wants us to say 'GNU/Linux' but he doesnt want people to put their name on the software they write? what EXACTLY is the problem with putting your name on stuff? The quickly-displayed credits screen is only there for a half second on bootup.

Imagine if a software system required 75 different sentences, each one naming a different author or group of authors. To advertise that, you would need a full-page ad.

LGPL can be a good thing, but it's not good for all libraries, it can be useful for tactical purposes.

LGPL can be a good thing, but it's not good for all libraries, it can be useful for tactical purposes.

well, libraries usually realeased under the lgpl - which is designed to be less viral than the gpl. give the lgpl a read. it's a Good Thing for libraries.

Will this affect the popularity of the GPL? XFree86 is using a different license, as is Apache...

will this put off others using the GPL, and encourage them to use a license of their own creation that best suits their needs?

Hardly the turbulences in the XFree86-Lager grew silent, seem a further controversy from the fence to to break. As David Dawes of the XFree86-Projekt communicated, the XFree86-Projekt changes its license on a new version 1.1. A change of the license represents no point at issue in the reason still, became nevertheless already in the past restrictive licenses of liberals. This time the situation seems to be however more problematic, because XFree86 becomes more restrictive.

As license can be taken further very much from the liberal, can be changed, driven out and applied all programs under the "XFree86 License 1,1" without publication of the source code. Again was added however a clause, which means that each distribution and each product, which contain XFree86 must attach a note either in the documentation or in the application on XFree86 ("This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc. (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors"). That is problematic, as the Free software Foundation already meant in another case.

The organization had not GPL compatibly classified the first version of the BSD license in the past as and had expressed substantial doubts against a linking of GPL- and BSD applications. The famous "BSD advertising clause" does not make the license unfree, cause however practical problems, including an incompatibility with the GNU GPL, so the Foundation. In the past the Free software Foundation guessed/advised to use the straight XFree86-Lizenz because it was to a large extent with the BSD license compatible and the notorious clause does not contain. Thus conclusion might probably be, because a determination of the BSD clause as "GPL incompatible" makes automatically also the new XFree86-Lizenz for GPL applications "problematic".

Which follows from the earlier declaration of the BSD license, could extensive consequences both for the Distributoren as well as for other manufacturers have. Thus GPL applications may be linked against an GPL incompatible library, this require however a note in the source code - a condition, which will fulfill hardly an application. If this note is not contained, linking is not permitted.

Thus either if XFree86 should not change their license or the Free software Foundation their declaration, then the current version of XFree86 will be probably also last release delivered by the Distributoren. Because it is questionable whether Distributoren get involved in a "problematic" use. Options during a non--change might be eith

Hardly the turbulences in the XFree86-Lager grew silent, seem a further controversy from the fence to to break. As David Dawes of the XFree86-Projekt communicated, the XFree86-Projekt changes its license on a new version 1.1. A change of the license represents no point at issue in the reason still, became nevertheless already in the past restrictive licenses of liberals. This time the situation seems to be however more problematic, because XFree86 becomes more restrictive.

As license can be taken further very much from the liberal, can be changed, driven out and applied all programs under the "XFree86 License 1,1" without publication of the source code. Again was added however a clause, which means that each distribution and each product, which contain XFree86 must attach a note either in the documentation or in the application on XFree86 ("This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc. (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors"). That is problematic, as the Free software Foundation already meant in another case.

The organization had not GPL compatibly classified the first version of the BSD license in the past as and had expressed substantial doubts against a linking of GPL- and BSD applications. The famous "BSD advertising clause" does not make the license unfree, cause however practical problems, including an incompatibility with the GNU GPL, so the Foundation. In the past the Free software Foundation guessed/advised to use the straight XFree86-Lizenz because it was to a large extent with the BSD license compatible and the notorious clause does not contain. Thus conclusion might probably be, because a determination of the BSD clause as "GPL incompatible" makes automatically also the new XFree86-Lizenz for GPL applications "problematic".

Which follows from the earlier declaration of the BSD license, could extensive consequences both for the Distributoren as well as for other manufacturers have. Thus GPL applications may be linked against an GPL incompatible library, this require however a note in the source code - a condition, which will fulfill hardly an application. If this note is not contained, linking is not permitted.

Thus either if XFree86 should not change their license or the Free software Foundation their declaration, then the current version of XFree86 will be probably also last release delivered by the Distributoren. Because it is questionable whether Distributoren get involved in a "problematic" use. Options during a non--change might be eith

Hardly the turbulences in the XFree86-Lager grew silent, seem a further controversy from the fence to to break. As David Dawes of the XFree86-Projekt communicated, the XFree86-Projekt changes its license on a new version 1.1. A change of the license represents no point at issue in the reason still, became nevertheless already in the past restrictive licenses of liberals. This time the situation seems to be however more problematic, because XFree86 becomes more restrictive.

As license can be taken further very much from the liberal, can be changed, driven out and applied all programs under the "XFree86 License 1,1" without publication of the source code. Again was added however a clause, which means that each distribution and each product, which contain XFree86 must attach a note either in the documentation or in the application on XFree86 ("This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc. (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors"). That is problematic, as the Free software Foundation already meant in another case.

The organization had not GPL compatibly classified the first version of the BSD license in the past as and had expressed substantial doubts against a linking of GPL- and BSD applications. The famous "BSD advertising clause" does not make the license unfree, cause however practical problems, including an incompatibility with the GNU GPL, so the Foundation. In the past the Free software Foundation guessed/advised to use the straight XFree86-Lizenz because it was to a large extent with the BSD license compatible and the notorious clause does not contain. Thus conclusion might probably be, because a determination of the BSD clause as "GPL incompatible" makes automatically also the new XFree86-Lizenz for GPL applications "problematic".

Which follows from the earlier declaration of the BSD license, could extensive consequences both for the Distributoren as well as for other manufacturers have. Thus GPL applications may be linked against an GPL incompatible library, this require however a note in the source code - a condition, which will fulfill hardly an application. If this note is not contained, linking is not permitted.

Thus either if XFree86 should not change their license or the Free software Foundation their declaration, then the current version of XFree86 will be probably also last release delivered by the Distributoren. Because it is questionable whether Distributoren get involved in a "problematic" use. Options during a non--change might be eith

Hardly the turbulences in the XFree86-Lager grew silent, seem a further controversy from the fence to to break. As David Dawes of the XFree86-Projekt communicated, the XFree86-Projekt changes its license on a new version 1.1. A change of the license represents no point at issue in the reason still, became nevertheless already in the past restrictive licenses of liberals. This time the situation seems to be however more problematic, because XFree86 becomes more restrictive.

As license can be taken further very much from the liberal, can be changed, driven out and applied all programs under the "XFree86 License 1,1" without publication of the source code. Again was added however a clause, which means that each distribution and each product, which contain XFree86 must attach a note either in the documentation or in the application on XFree86 ("This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc. (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors"). That is problematic, as the Free software Foundation already meant in another case.

The organization had not GPL compatibly classified the first version of the BSD license in the past as and had expressed substantial doubts against a linking of GPL- and BSD applications. The famous "BSD advertising clause" does not make the license unfree, cause however practical problems, including an incompatibility with the GNU GPL, so the Foundation. In the past the Free software Foundation guessed/advised to use the straight XFree86-Lizenz because it was to a large extent with the BSD license compatible and the notorious clause does not contain. Thus conclusion might probably be, because a determination of the BSD clause as "GPL incompatible" makes automatically also the new XFree86-Lizenz for GPL applications "problematic".

Which follows from the earlier declaration of the BSD license, could extensive consequences both for the Distributoren as well as for other manufacturers have. Thus GPL applications may be linked against an GPL incompatible library, this require however a note in the source code - a condition, which will fulfill hardly an application. If this note is not contained, linking is not permitted.

Thus either if XFree86 should not change their license or the Free software Foundation their declaration, then the current version of XFree86 will be probably also last release delivered by the Distributoren. Because it is questionable whether Distributoren get involved in a "problematic" use. Options during a non--change might be eith

Hardly the turbulences in the XFree86-Lager grew silent, seem a further controversy from the fence to to break. As David Dawes of the XFree86-Projekt communicated, the XFree86-Projekt changes its license on a new version 1.1. A change of the license represents no point at issue in the reason still, became nevertheless already in the past restrictive licenses of liberals. This time the situation seems to be however more problematic, because XFree86 becomes more restrictive.

As license can be taken further very much from the liberal, can be changed, driven out and applied all programs under the "XFree86 License 1,1" without publication of the source code. Again was added however a clause, which means that each distribution and each product, which contain XFree86 must attach a note either in the documentation or in the application on XFree86 ("This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc. (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors"). That is problematic, as the Free software Foundation already meant in another case.

The organization had not GPL compatibly classified the first version of the BSD license in the past as and had expressed substantial doubts against a linking of GPL- and BSD applications. The famous "BSD advertising clause" does not make the license unfree, cause however practical problems, including an incompatibility with the GNU GPL, so the Foundation. In the past the Free software Foundation guessed/advised to use the straight XFree86-Lizenz because it was to a large extent with the BSD license compatible and the notorious clause does not contain. Thus conclusion might probably be, because a determination of the BSD clause as "GPL incompatible" makes automatically also the new XFree86-Lizenz for GPL applications "problematic".

Which follows from the earlier declaration of the BSD license, could extensive consequences both for the Distributoren as well as for other manufacturers have. Thus GPL applications may be linked against an GPL incompatible library, this require however a note in the source code - a condition, which will fulfill hardly an application. If this note is not contained, linking is not permitted.

Thus either if XFree86 should not change their license or the Free software Foundation their declaration, then the current version of XFree86 will be probably also last release delivered by the Distributoren. Because it is questionable whether Distributoren get involved in a "problematic" use. Options during a non--change might be eith

Hardly the turbulences in the XFree86-Lager grew silent, seem a further controversy from the fence to to break. As David Dawes of the XFree86-Projekt communicated, the XFree86-Projekt changes its license on a new version 1.1. A change of the license represents no point at issue in the reason still, became nevertheless already in the past restrictive licenses of liberals. This time the situation seems to be however more problematic, because XFree86 becomes more restrictive.

As license can be taken further very much from the liberal, can be changed, driven out and applied all programs under the "XFree86 License 1,1" without publication of the source code. Again was added however a clause, which means that each distribution and each product, which contain XFree86 must attach a note either in the documentation or in the application on XFree86 ("This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc. (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors"). That is problematic, as the Free software Foundation already meant in another case.

The organization had not GPL compatibly classified the first version of the BSD license in the past as and had expressed substantial doubts against a linking of GPL- and BSD applications. The famous "BSD advertising clause" does not make the license unfree, cause however practical problems, including an incompatibility with the GNU GPL, so the Foundation. In the past the Free software Foundation guessed/advised to use the straight XFree86-Lizenz because it was to a large extent with the BSD license compatible and the notorious clause does not contain. Thus conclusion might probably be, because a determination of the BSD clause as "GPL incompatible" makes automatically also the new XFree86-Lizenz for GPL applications "problematic".

Which follows from the earlier declaration of the BSD license, could extensive consequences both for the Distributoren as well as for other manufacturers have. Thus GPL applications may be linked against an GPL incompatible library, this require however a note in the source code - a condition, which will fulfill hardly an application. If this note is not contained, linking is not permitted.

Thus either if XFree86 should not change their license or the Free software Foundation their declaration, then the current version of XFree86 will be probably also last release delivered by the Distributoren. Because it is questionable whether Distributoren get involved in a "problematic" use. Options during a non--change might be eith

Hardly the turbulences in the XFree86-Lager grew silent, seem a further controversy from the fence to to break. As David Dawes of the XFree86-Projekt communicated, the XFree86-Projekt changes its license on a new version 1.1. A change of the license represents no point at issue in the reason still, became nevertheless already in the past restrictive licenses of liberals. This time the situation seems to be however more problematic, because XFree86 becomes more restrictive.

As license can be taken further very much from the liberal, can be changed, driven out and applied all programs under the "XFree86 License 1,1" without publication of the source code. Again was added however a clause, which means that each distribution and each product, which contain XFree86 must attach a note either in the documentation or in the application on XFree86 ("This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc. (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors"). That is problematic, as the Free software Foundation already meant in another case.

The organization had not GPL compatibly classified the first version of the BSD license in the past as and had expressed substantial doubts against a linking of GPL- and BSD applications. The famous "BSD advertising clause" does not make the license unfree, cause however practical problems, including an incompatibility with the GNU GPL, so the Foundation. In the past the Free software Foundation guessed/advised to use the straight XFree86-Lizenz because it was to a large extent with the BSD license compatible and the notorious clause does not contain. Thus conclusion might probably be, because a determination of the BSD clause as "GPL incompatible" makes automatically also the new XFree86-Lizenz for GPL applications "problematic".

Which follows from the earlier declaration of the BSD license, could extensive consequences both for the Distributoren as well as for other manufacturers have. Thus GPL applications may be linked against an GPL incompatible library, this require however a note in the source code - a condition, which will fulfill hardly an application. If this note is not contained, linking is not permitted.

Thus either if XFree86 should not change their license or the Free software Foundation their declaration, then the current version of XFree86 will be probably also last release delivered by the Distributoren. Because it is questionable whether Distributoren get involved in a "problematic" use. Options during a non--change might be eith

You what? Have you read this? Microsoft are using patents - and even the claim that they might have patents - to prevent Open Source software maintaining file compatibilty with MS Office.

(Standard disclaimer first -- long-time Linux enthusiast, make my living writing Linux software, Bill Gates is the anti-christ of the computing world, Tux is way cuter than Clippy, etc etc etc. ;-)

Unless I'm misreading things, the Office 2003 XML Reference Schema Patent License you linked to does not prevent OSS projects from maintaining file compatability, but instead explicitly grants a royalty-free license for projects to use the Office 2003 schema, provided that:

• you place a prominent license notice in the associated source code and documentation, acknowledging that the software incorporates this patented schema
• you do not distribute your code under a license which contradicts Microsoft's license.

IANAL (should've put that in the disclaimer section ;-), but which part of Microsoft's license terms would completely preclude an OSS project from supporting the Office 2003 XML Schema?

Since the MS license is royalty-free, I don't see how this would prohibit a project from including schema support while using, for example, a GPL license. (Certainly if the MS license were not royalty-free, then you wouldn't be able to use a GPL license for the project. The GPL is quite clear about non-royalty-free licenses -- see Section 7.)

I'm definitely not familiar with the other OSS licenses like BSD/MIT, and how they handle patent licensing. Rather than blindly guessing, I'll ask that someone more familiar with other licenses discuss how these work (or don't work) with the MS license terms.

In any case, I'm not trying to claim that the MS license is compatible with all OSS licenses, just that I believe it isn't incompatible with at least one OSS license.

Of course, if someone could point out where the GPL would be incompatible with MS's license terms, I'd also be interested in learning where my understanding is erroneous.

Go down to your local Fry's and buy a nice shiny computer. Use the computer to visit the GNU website and take a look at the projects that look like they need some help. Download the code and start working on it using Cygwin tools or Linux, if you've installed it.

Forget about making money in the industry, you're much better off getting a degree in plumbing, the pay is better and the hours are better.

You're not quite correct. Like I said, this was due to a troubleshooting problem. Your assertion is proven false simply because I had to learn this stuff to troubleshoot a problem with shared library compatibility problems.

The rest of the *NIX development world would be much nicer if they adopted a similar scheme.

Standard shared object libraries in OS X are just that, and are subject to all the pitfalls normally found... ohh.. except one. Since Apple uses a two-level namespace scheme, you see name collisions less. Oh, and they do prebinding very aggressively.

It's pretty much a superior setup to the average linux world. But then, we paid for something besides just iCandy, right?

Show me an operating system that *doesn't* have ldd as a utility. Other than MacOS X. I know AIX, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX support that utility. I'm not sure about Tru64, but I'm pretty sure that it does, too. MacOS was the only operating system I had problems with with regards to troubleshooting "ldd" problems.

Show me a reason why OS X should have ldd when the superior otool exists. C'mon! To make you feel more comfortable? To make you feel more loved?

Dude, if you're a developer doing cross platform development, then turn around and complain how annoyed you were at not finding ldd, discontinue cross-platform development. If you can't even be bothered to check the unix rosetta stone for something that simple, then you're not the kind of battle-hardened, talented person that is required to do real cross-platform development.

Perhaps you were just porting? Still no sympathy. Learn your target platform. It's not even like it's hard anymore! You have libtool, autoconf and automake these days. Cross platform development is actually feasible these days, albeit difficult!

Well, that is in fact what I call good security. It's hard to break into a door when the door doesn't exist in the first place.

You're not quite correct. Like I said, this was due to a troubleshooting problem. Your assertion is proven false simply because I had to learn this stuff to troubleshoot a problem with shared library compatibility problems.

The rest of the *NIX development world would be much nicer if they adopted a similar scheme.

Standard shared object libraries in OS X are just that, and are subject to all the pitfalls normally found... ohh.. except one. Since Apple uses a two-level namespace scheme, you see name collisions less. Oh, and they do prebinding very aggressively.

It's pretty much a superior setup to the average linux world. But then, we paid for something besides just iCandy, right?

Show me an operating system that *doesn't* have ldd as a utility. Other than MacOS X. I know AIX, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX support that utility. I'm not sure about Tru64, but I'm pretty sure that it does, too. MacOS was the only operating system I had problems with with regards to troubleshooting "ldd" problems.

Show me a reason why OS X should have ldd when the superior otool exists. C'mon! To make you feel more comfortable? To make you feel more loved?

Dude, if you're a developer doing cross platform development, then turn around and complain how annoyed you were at not finding ldd, discontinue cross-platform development. If you can't even be bothered to check the unix rosetta stone for something that simple, then you're not the kind of battle-hardened, talented person that is required to do real cross-platform development.

Perhaps you were just porting? Still no sympathy. Learn your target platform. It's not even like it's hard anymore! You have libtool, autoconf and automake these days. Cross platform development is actually feasible these days, albeit difficult!

Well, that is in fact what I call good security. It's hard to break into a door when the door doesn't exist in the first place.

You're not quite correct. Like I said, this was due to a troubleshooting problem. Your assertion is proven false simply because I had to learn this stuff to troubleshoot a problem with shared library compatibility problems.

The rest of the *NIX development world would be much nicer if they adopted a similar scheme.

Standard shared object libraries in OS X are just that, and are subject to all the pitfalls normally found... ohh.. except one. Since Apple uses a two-level namespace scheme, you see name collisions less. Oh, and they do prebinding very aggressively.

It's pretty much a superior setup to the average linux world. But then, we paid for something besides just iCandy, right?

Show me an operating system that *doesn't* have ldd as a utility. Other than MacOS X. I know AIX, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX support that utility. I'm not sure about Tru64, but I'm pretty sure that it does, too. MacOS was the only operating system I had problems with with regards to troubleshooting "ldd" problems.

Show me a reason why OS X should have ldd when the superior otool exists. C'mon! To make you feel more comfortable? To make you feel more loved?

Dude, if you're a developer doing cross platform development, then turn around and complain how annoyed you were at not finding ldd, discontinue cross-platform development. If you can't even be bothered to check the unix rosetta stone for something that simple, then you're not the kind of battle-hardened, talented person that is required to do real cross-platform development.

Perhaps you were just porting? Still no sympathy. Learn your target platform. It's not even like it's hard anymore! You have libtool, autoconf and automake these days. Cross platform development is actually feasible these days, albeit difficult!

Well, that is in fact what I call good security. It's hard to break into a door when the door doesn't exist in the first place.

If you comment to this guy, make sure that you emphasize the need for a Linux port of ForceWare. This is (IMHO) the closest thing to a TiVo competitor for the PC world. Right now, it is Windows-only.

If you're like the current pool of moderators and some of the posters on this thread, perhaps you'll give nVidia your money in the hopes that they'll do the right thing with it. Why not? It's just a small hop from giving your money to become dependent on them. Treating corporations like charities is a sure-fire way to make you their friend.

If it weren't for the GPL and the non-binary rule [...]

In other words, if the preeminent license of the free software community were rewritten to flush all our software freedom down the toilet, we would gain...what? What could possibly be so compelling that we should be willing to trash 20 years of giving all computer users software freedom?

To NVidia's credit, they seem to be somewhat serious about supporting Linux in a somewhat timely manner.

I'm reminded of the following FSF essay when I read your popularity-based definition of "support":

At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as `` Linux'', the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company's decision to ``support'' that system. Unfortunately, their form of ``support'' consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system--in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it.

This sort of allusion won't be a great incentive for other hardware vendors to support Linux at all, they'll just think "whatever we do to be nice to them, those Linux folks will always have something to complain about".

No they won't, they'll recognize that we're willing to stand up for ourselves and not capitulate to someone offering the latest temptation away from freedom. You don't bargain with someone by giving them everything they want on their terms. Since when is it our job to welcome any proprietor that comes down the block? When nVidia is willing to deal with me in terms of software freedom, I'll be happy to recommend their hardware. I'm sure lots of other free software users would too. We can have popularity too, but it's better to have popularity on the basis of software freedom.

Freedom-talk won't dissuade nVidia or any other proprietor. Software proprietors want your money and they want to control how you can use your computer. As long as you are willing to surrender these things you will be quite popular with them.

When Linux has 80% marketshare and is a true force to be reckoned with, then perhaps the community will be able to afford sarcasm and get away with it, but in the meantime, there must be other, more constructive ways to entice vendors to embrace open-source.

This is the real problem--you have hit the nail on the head here: you are chasing mere popularity. The GNU system was started in the pursuit of freedom. When you placate proprietors you might become more popular but you will never get freedom.

I could not care less if nVidia "embrace[s] open-source" because I want software freedom, something the open source movement doesn't value. Reading the next few paragraphs of that same FSF essay is instructive.

He said, ``There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it `internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.'' (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)

People in the audience afterward told me, ``He just doesn't get the point.'' But is that so? Which point did he not get?

He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.

The point that he missed is the point that ``open source'' was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom.

To NVidia's credit, they seem to be somewhat serious about supporting Linux in a somewhat timely manner.

I'm reminded of the following FSF essay when I read your popularity-based definition of "support":

At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as `` Linux'', the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company's decision to ``support'' that system. Unfortunately, their form of ``support'' consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system--in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it.

This sort of allusion won't be a great incentive for other hardware vendors to support Linux at all, they'll just think "whatever we do to be nice to them, those Linux folks will always have something to complain about".

No they won't, they'll recognize that we're willing to stand up for ourselves and not capitulate to someone offering the latest temptation away from freedom. You don't bargain with someone by giving them everything they want on their terms. Since when is it our job to welcome any proprietor that comes down the block? When nVidia is willing to deal with me in terms of software freedom, I'll be happy to recommend their hardware. I'm sure lots of other free software users would too. We can have popularity too, but it's better to have popularity on the basis of software freedom.

Freedom-talk won't dissuade nVidia or any other proprietor. Software proprietors want your money and they want to control how you can use your computer. As long as you are willing to surrender these things you will be quite popular with them.

When Linux has 80% marketshare and is a true force to be reckoned with, then perhaps the community will be able to afford sarcasm and get away with it, but in the meantime, there must be other, more constructive ways to entice vendors to embrace open-source.

This is the real problem--you have hit the nail on the head here: you are chasing mere popularity. The GNU system was started in the pursuit of freedom. When you placate proprietors you might become more popular but you will never get freedom.

I could not care less if nVidia "embrace[s] open-source" because I want software freedom, something the open source movement doesn't value. Reading the next few paragraphs of that same FSF essay is instructive.

He said, ``There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it `internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.'' (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)

People in the audience afterward told me, ``He just doesn't get the point.'' But is that so? Which point did he not get?

He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.

The point that he missed is the point that ``open source'' was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom.

http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/tree-ssa/
http://people.redhat.com/dnovillo/pub/tree-ssa/sna pshot/
http://people.redhat.com/dnovillo/pub/tree-ssa/sna pshot/gcc-ssa-3.5ssa-0.20040129.snapshot.src.rpm (24.4M)
http://people.redhat.com/dnovillo/pub/tree-ssa/pap ers/
http://people.redhat.com/dnovillo/pub/tree-ssa/pap ers/gccsummit-2003-proceedings.pdf (1'383'108 bytes)
== http://www.linux.org.uk/~ajh/gcc/gccsummit-2003-pr oceedings.pdf (1'383'108 bytes)
http://people.redhat.com/dnovillo/pub/tree-ssa/pap ers/nordu2003-slides.pdf (102'895 bytes)
http://people.redhat.com/dnovillo/pub/tree-ssa/pap ers/nordu2003.pdf (153'101 bytes)
http://people.redhat.com/dnovillo/pub/tree-ssa/pap ers/tree-ssa-gccs03-slides.pdf (90'925 bytes)
http://people.redhat.com/dnovillo/pub/tree-ssa/pap ers/tree-ssa-gccs03.pdf (87'507 bytes)

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/devel/binutils/binu tils-2.14.90.0.8.tar.bz2 (11'015'696 bytes)

open4free

Using DEPRECATED compilers is just as stupid as using DEPRECATED kernels(2.4, just to name one), use GCC-CVS if you want some real performance. Just check out the current changes towards 3.4.

Usability of the profile feedback and coverage testing has been improved.

I'm quite interested in this profiling optimization, it's already in 3.3.2, ne?

I should check it out some time, it does seem very interesting, especially for benchmarks where you can optimize the executable just for the current test.

Another reason they should have used the current version is this:

Experiments made on i386 hardware showed an 11% speedup on -O0 and a 7.5% speedup on -O2

Eat that, GCC-deprecated and child-labor SUN!

• There is a new version numbering scheme.
  
  What used to be the first version number, which was 1, has been discarded since it does not seem that I need three levels of version number.
  
  However, a new third version number has been added to represent changes by user sites. This number will always be zero in Emacs when I distribute it; it will be incremented each time Emacs is built at another site.
  
  

I moved my scanner to my linux server and installed "sane". I installed "sane-twain" (free/OSS software) on my XP box, and it then accessed the scanner on the linux box quite happily. Some of the icons weren't as pretty as the windows driver, but all the same stuff was there.

Later I installed a dual-boot setup on my workstation. I used XP less and less because it was so SLOW and getting slower - I don't install much new software once i get set up either - and yes, I ran AdAware and anti-virus software.

Eventually, I only ever fired up windows to run Quickbooks. Now that I have Crossover Office installed, I don't even do that (crossover runs the native windows quickbooks just fine).

A few weeks ago I used Partition Magic to downsize my XP partition (which I had done once before) to make more room for linux. My XP partition was 15GB with about 3GB spare, while Linux was 8GB with no spare.

(un)fortunately, Partition magic trashed my XP partition..... so what did I do? stress? no... I just said "well, I don't use it, so why recover/re-install it? Partition Magic then proceeded to do a wonderful job deleting the XP partition and moving/resizing the Linux Ext3 partition. I now have a lovely 23GB linux partition with loads of free space. GNU parted provides similar capabilities on linux, though I have yet to check it out in person.

The best thing, is that I have a WinRadio card. Winradio stopped developing their linux drivers shortly after releasing a working open-source driver a few years back. Someone started a sourceforge page and updated the original driver. They haven't done any work on it for almost a year, but i was still able to download it and with about a day's work yesterday, I have my winradio card working on kernel 2.6. (yes, I have contacted the sourceforge page owner about sending the updates so everyone can use it).

Someone is going to say "but i can't write software so what good does that do me". My answer is that I don't write 99% of the software on my linux box. I just contribute where i can because i want to - it doesn't matter if I draw a few graphics, write code, make a web page, or do nothing at all, I can still use the work of people like myself.

The best part is that I don't have to start from scratch - I don't have to start writing the driver all over again just because Winradio don't want to update the drivers for my old card, and won't give me the source code. (although to their credit winradio do provide a windows driver for XP, even for this, their oldest card) Another example is the NVidia drivers - the official ones don't support Kernel 2.6 yet, but due to the open source component (the core of the driver and GL code is closed source), I can get a 2.6 driver from a third party, who, just like myself, did it for himself and released the result to the public.

Right now I have ALL my hardware working quickly and well, even though some of it is 5 or 6 years old, and ALL of it is 3+ years old, and I'm running the latest version of the OS.

I just can't get that anywhere else.

You're about to say "but I can't get drivers for the latest gadget". Well if the vendors followed the Winradio and NVidia examples, by releasing a linux driver, you wouldn't have that problem.

I'm aware of projects such as The Hurd -- this seems to follow closely the unix philosophy, but it's a ways off from general usability. Others have noted that it's usually easier to debug a monolithic program than to debug communication problems between small unixy programs. (Maybe there is some way to make a communications chart of said small programs, so that it looks like monolithic code? )

Discuss.

How can people say BSD is dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Did anybody else notice how Linus never uses the term "intellectual property"? Everytime it appears in the interview it is in square brackets, meaning the editor replaced such coneceptually hard words as "source code" by "intellectual property". Darl OTOH employs this stupid term several times throughout his interview. Maybe he and the editors should try to understand this.

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Why GNU + Linux

BSD License change info

IBM holds zillions of patents they don't enforce.

According to Roger Smith, IBM Assistant General Counsel in "Think" magazine #5, 1990:

"You get value from patents in two ways," says Roger Smith, IBM Assistant General Counsel, intellectual property law. "Through fees, and through licensing negotiations that give IBM access to other patents.

"The IBM patent portfolio gains us the freedom to do what we need to do through cross-licensing--it gives us access to the inventions of others that are the key to rapid innovation. Access is far more valuable to IBM than the fees it receives from its 9,000 active patents. There's no direct calculation of this value, but it's many times larger than the fee income, perhaps an order of magnitude larger."

This article has the appropriate take on this point:

This article should dispell the idea that the patent system will "protect" a small software developer from competition from IBM. IBM can always find patents in its collection which the small developer is infringing, and thus obtain a cross-license.

The real value in patents isn't in collecting license fees, it's in cross-licensing. RMS has talked about this before with his usually astute analysis that is well worth hearing. He too explains, in detail, the real value of amassing a huge library of patents.

My favorite download manager is wget (if RMS is reading this, I really meant to say GNU wget). Thankfully, I don't have a DirecWay connection, but if I did, I'd make use of the --limit-rate option.

Wget has been ported to Windows, too.

You could try using Ratpoison and screen. Of course, there are a number of projects that seek to change the way various information is handled/presented/etc. See, for example, Chandler, Haystack,Gnome Storage, and WinFS. These all seem to be addressing the fundamental problem of managing ever growing amounts of information on personal computers.

Intel's idea for this Centrino software and nVidia's binary-only driver delivers dependence, not software freedom. So long as you focus on "open source" you are choosing a philosophy that stresses picking technically better software and eschewing software freedom. This means when there is a proprietary program that is better than the "open source" equivalent, you have no reason to reject the proprietary program. So the open source movement actually does a good job of giving you reasons to reject the software they are endorsing. But don't take my word for it:

"At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as ``Linux'', the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company's decision to ``support'' that system. Unfortunately, their form of ``support'' consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system--in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it.

He said, ``There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it `internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.'' (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)

People in the audience afterward told me, ``He just doesn't get the point.'' But is that so? Which point did he not get?

He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.

The point that he missed is the point that ``open source'' was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom."

David Kastrup posted an insightful addition to this point--depending on the program we're talking about, there might not be an "open source" equivalent at all. In a recent thread on gnu.misc.discuss, I summarized some of the differences between the free software and open source movements and how the open source movement has a built-in problem that the free software movement doesn't have (namely, that pitching practical advantage isn't always telling the truth). Kastrup followed up to my post noting the following here:

"It [the Open Source movement's philosophy] also takes away initial motivation. Open Source touts the benefits of Free Software in the terms of technical superiority. But that would give no motivation whatsoever to use or develop Free Software when technically superior proprietary alternatives exist. The Open Source philosophy offers little motivation for getting Free Software off the ground."

I strongly encourage you to include support from free software as a criterion for choosing hardware. There are plenty of perfectly fine video cards and wireless devices that can be operated completely with free software. If you haven't already, I also encourage you to reevaluate siding with a movement that discourages paying attention to software freedom.

Intel's idea for this Centrino software and nVidia's binary-only driver delivers dependence, not software freedom. So long as you focus on "open source" you are choosing a philosophy that stresses picking technically better software and eschewing software freedom. This means when there is a proprietary program that is better than the "open source" equivalent, you have no reason to reject the proprietary program. So the open source movement actually does a good job of giving you reasons to reject the software they are endorsing. But don't take my word for it:

"At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as ``Linux'', the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company's decision to ``support'' that system. Unfortunately, their form of ``support'' consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system--in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it.

He said, ``There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it `internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.'' (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)

People in the audience afterward told me, ``He just doesn't get the point.'' But is that so? Which point did he not get?

He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.

The point that he missed is the point that ``open source'' was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom."

David Kastrup posted an insightful addition to this point--depending on the program we're talking about, there might not be an "open source" equivalent at all. In a recent thread on gnu.misc.discuss, I summarized some of the differences between the free software and open source movements and how the open source movement has a built-in problem that the free software movement doesn't have (namely, that pitching practical advantage isn't always telling the truth). Kastrup followed up to my post noting the following here:

"It [the Open Source movement's philosophy] also takes away initial motivation. Open Source touts the benefits of Free Software in the terms of technical superiority. But that would give no motivation whatsoever to use or develop Free Software when technically superior proprietary alternatives exist. The Open Source philosophy offers little motivation for getting Free Software off the ground."

I strongly encourage you to include support from free software as a criterion for choosing hardware. There are plenty of perfectly fine video cards and wireless devices that can be operated completely with free software. If you haven't already, I also encourage you to reevaluate siding with a movement that discourages paying attention to software freedom.

Maybe they don't want people to have access to it because the hardware could be used for other things than just wireless LAN.

Depending on the hardware, who knows maybe someone could even implement GSM/PCS on it. Whatever may be the case, having access to hardware like this would allow people to play around with it.

What is SDR?
GNU SDR implementation

I could easily imagine a productive environment based around GNU screen and a terminal-based editor, mail client, news client, and IM client. Throw in something like w3m, and other for images, its good.

Yup, that's pretty close to the way I've worked for most of the last year or two. For me it's screen, of course, along with:

• editor - vim,
• mail client - mutt,
• news client - tin,
• web client(s) - a combination of w3m, lynx, and wget for most downloading tasks,
• spreadsheet - sc, which is surprisingly useful,
• P2P client - mutella, though I think there are console options for other protocols,
• IM/IRC client - irssi along with the fantastic bitlbee (and if you haven't heard of bitlbee before, take a look).

...and then I use good 'ol ratpoison for my window manager in X for the occasions that I need graphics (ie. some web browsing, viewing PDFs, playing graphical games).

Strike that. In most cases, multi-tasking can be very counterproductive. Shell escapes and $EDITOR_OF_CHOICE is good enough.

It varies :-), though I agree generally speaking. I'm using KDE3.2beta at the moment for a bit of a change, though most of the action is still inside my screen(1) terminal(s). You do tend to (or at least I tend to) find yourself more productive when you don't have stray graphical bits and pieces around the place to distract you.

Of course if you need the GUI for your normal working environment (ie. you're developing a GUI app), then, well there's not much you can do but live with it. :)

I could easily imagine a productive environment based around GNU screen and a terminal-based editor, mail client, news client, and IM client. Throw in something like w3m, and other for images, its good.

Yup, that's pretty close to the way I've worked for most of the last year or two. For me it's screen, of course, along with:

• editor - vim,
• mail client - mutt,
• news client - tin,
• web client(s) - a combination of w3m, lynx, and wget for most downloading tasks,
• spreadsheet - sc, which is surprisingly useful,
• P2P client - mutella, though I think there are console options for other protocols,
• IM/IRC client - irssi along with the fantastic bitlbee (and if you haven't heard of bitlbee before, take a look).

...and then I use good 'ol ratpoison for my window manager in X for the occasions that I need graphics (ie. some web browsing, viewing PDFs, playing graphical games).

Strike that. In most cases, multi-tasking can be very counterproductive. Shell escapes and $EDITOR_OF_CHOICE is good enough.

It varies :-), though I agree generally speaking. I'm using KDE3.2beta at the moment for a bit of a change, though most of the action is still inside my screen(1) terminal(s). You do tend to (or at least I tend to) find yourself more productive when you don't have stray graphical bits and pieces around the place to distract you.

Of course if you need the GUI for your normal working environment (ie. you're developing a GUI app), then, well there's not much you can do but live with it. :)

How can people say BSD is dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

(Texinfo is several years older than either PDF or HTML. If web browsers had already existed the GNU project probably wouldn't have invented info browsers.)