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"... consider the great artists and artisans of medieval times, who didn't even sign their names to their work. To them, the name of the artist was not important. What mattered was that the work was done--and the purpose it would serve."

ESR didn't state as fact that Kuhn and RMS want other licenses to be made illegal; he openly asked the question, and challenged them to respond.

This is a master stroke. If they say no, then they pretty much have wiped out the basis of their whole attack on Tim O'Reilly; if they say yes, they have admitted that they are way out there on the fringe.

I predict they will refuse to answer either yes or no; any answer they give will be long and complicated.

Instead, they argue that choice of license is insufficiently free to be called free. [...] What's wrong with that?

Dude, the topic here is that Kuhn and RMS attacked Tim O'Reilly. In so many words, they said his idea of freedom was actually power over others.

He should call it "powerplay zero" in contrast with our "freedom zero".

ESR has posed a legitimate question.

By the way, RMS wrote, right in the GNU Manifesto, these words: "a person who enforces a copyright [on software] is harming society as a whole both materially and spiritually". He also proposed that a "software tax" could collected by government and used to support software development. Given what he wrote in the GNU Manifesto and in other places, I believe that if RMS had the chance to outlaw non-GPL licenses, he would do it.

steveha

The idea of a free (libre), Unix-oid system is and was the core of the GNU project. RMS was hacking on this before the Linux kernel was a gleam in Linus's eye - since 1984, for crying out loud.

Just because someone had an idea first, and started working on it first, does not necessarily mean they should get the credit for doing it first. GNU got most of the way there, but then dropped the ball on the kernel.

Linus didn't "borrow" from the GNU project. He fit the last piece into a puzzle that RMS and the GNU Project had been working on for over a decade. RMS would like this to be known and understood

The GNU project had a bunch of pieces of an OS lying around without a kernel. Linus (and the group that popped up around him), took those pieces, and combined them with a working kernel and a bunch of other software from other places to produce an actual functioning operating system. Many manufacturers take parts from many other sources and assemble them into products, but you don't see a IBM/Motorola/Power Mac G4. Apple gets to name the whole system, because Apple is the one that actually assembles everything into a working package. If you build your own x86 machine from parts, you can call it the Frobnitz if you want, and Intel isn't going to try to get you to call it the Intel/Frobnitz just because they made a few important pieces of it.

Either way, his request hardly makes his a raving loon.

I never said he was a raving loon, and at least on this issue, don't think he is (raving maybe, but not a loon). I just think his way of trying to get recognition for his work is clumsy, exclusionary, and ultimately too late. If RMS wanted people to think of Linux as being a kernel for the GNU project, rather than GNU being the support software for Linux, he should have acted sooner, and chosen a name that sounds better than 'guh-new lih-nucks' for the talking heads on CNBC to say.(Your pronunciation may vary)

And I would laugh if Linus sold the rights off to the kernel one day,

as Stallman would be very very screwed...

There`s always the Hurd...

The DMCA is soooo silly.

Of course, we have to fight it and the EFF is right. Also, folks like Aimster are proving that the DMCA can just as effectively be used to defend piracy. They assume that the "software publishers" will necesarily be large corporations. Thankfully, subversives can also publish software and manipulate the BS that is the DMCA.

Of course, folks like RMS might argue that this is so they can then pass new legislation to stop subversives from publishing software, as he describes in The Right to Read. This is why it's still totally necesary to fight these restrictions to our rights. Still. The DMCA is sooooo silly.

I agree with the general analogy, however you've missed one crucial point here. Your point is well made that the GNU project had the compiler, assembler, linker, C library, shell, etc but not a kernel. However, we've been waiting what, 10 years now for the kernel? I believe that credit is due in the appropriate places. With that said, Linus took the aforementioned tools and put the Linux kernel and several other important pieces (a good number of which were custom written) and produced an OS with it, which somewhat unwittingly spawned a world community and became at least the public spearhead of Open Source/Free Software/Whatever The Hell You Call It. The GNU project STILL has yet to produce a fully functional operating system of its own. In fact, if you go to the software list on www.gnu.org and look, the HURD isn't even listed in the list of GNU software packages. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to flame or knock anybody. Like I said, credit where credit is deserved. The GNU project has produced some really great stuff, used VERY widely on Linux (bite me you name nazis), Sun, BSD, HP/UX, even Windoze (I know a lot of NT sysadmins who use some GNU tools in their jobs). The Linux community has taken pieces of different GNU projects and put it together with a kernel and other stuff into a high quality, stable operating system. They all deserve credit, as well as all the people who don't fall under either community and just write code. So get off your damn high horse and get your ass down here in the mud with the rest of us. =D

it simply is not his project to name.

The Linux kernel, sure. But the system as a whole?

The idea of a free (libre), Unix-oid system is and was the core of the GNU project. RMS was hacking on this before the Linux kernel was a gleam in Linus's eye - since 1984, for crying out loud.

Let's look at what RMS has to say:

The GNU Project's aim was to develop a complete free Unix-like system.

Many people have made major contributions to the free software in the system, and they all deserve credit. But the reason it is a system--and not just a collection of useful programs--is because the GNU Project set out to make it one. We made a list of the programs needed to make a complete free system, and we systematically found, wrote, or found people to write everything on the list. We wrote essential but unexciting major components, such as the assembler and linker, because you can't have a system without them. A complete system needs more than just programming tools; the Bourne Again SHell, the PostScript interpreter Ghostscript, and the GNU C library are just as important.

By the early 90s we had put together the whole system aside from the kernel (and we were also working on a kernel, the GNU Hurd, which runs on top of Mach). Developing this kernel has been a lot harder than we expected, and we are still working on finishing it.

Fortunately, you don't have to wait for it, because Linux is working now. When Linus Torvalds wrote Linux, he filled the last major gap. People could then put Linux together with the GNU system to make a complete free system: a Linux-based GNU system (or GNU/Linux system, for short).

...

We use Linux-based GNU systems today for most of our work, and we hope you use them too. But please don't confuse the public by using the name ``Linux'' ambiguously. Linux is the kernel, one of the essential major components of the system. The system as a whole is more or less the GNU system.

Linus didn't "borrow" from the GNU project. He fit the last piece into a puzzle that RMS and the GNU Project had been working on for over a decade. RMS would like this to be known and understood - perhaps for reasons of ego, perhaps for reasons of spreading the free software philosophy, perhaps both. Either way, his request hardly makes his a raving loon.

"Most of them are equivalent except for details of wording, but the license used for BSD until 1999 had a special problem: the ``obnoxious BSD advertising clause''. It said that every advertisement mentioning the software must include a particular sentence....To address this problem, in my ``spare time'' I talk with developers who have used BSD-style licenses, asking them if they would please remove the advertising clause."

There isn't any advertising clause in the GNU project software license. If Stallman feels the need to put one in, he's more than welcome.

Otherwise, he just should just learn to live with the consequences of "freedom".

From this report on C/Net, Richard Stallman, father of the GNU Free Software Project, was found dead, age 37 in his Liverpool apartment this morning. Cause of death is still unknown at this point but appears to have been massive coronary failure caused by obsesity and poor oral hygiene.

Sad news. :-( I'm only speculating here, but I wouldn't be surprised if stress didn't add to the conditions that killed him. I plan on getting away from my PC and getting in some exercise after reading this, however. Too many coders have been dying recently. ;-(

Linux is the flagship that carries that ideal. It doesn't matter what it's called, everyone associates Linux with free (as in beer), and therefore should be exactly what he needs.

Actually, a lot of people tend to associate linux with open source, which, as we all know if different than free software. RMS wants to GNU out front so that the distributions people use will be associated with freedom (as in speach not beer). That is his goal as I see it.

links describing linux and its relation to GNU:

• Why GNU/Linux by RMS if you only read one of these links, make it this one
• Linux and the GNU Project by RMS
• The Debian homepage, read the first paragraph
• The GNU Project, look about 3/4ths of the way down

Linux is the flagship that carries that ideal. It doesn't matter what it's called, everyone associates Linux with free (as in beer), and therefore should be exactly what he needs.

Actually, a lot of people tend to associate linux with open source, which, as we all know if different than free software. RMS wants to GNU out front so that the distributions people use will be associated with freedom (as in speach not beer). That is his goal as I see it.

links describing linux and its relation to GNU:

• Why GNU/Linux by RMS if you only read one of these links, make it this one
• Linux and the GNU Project by RMS
• The Debian homepage, read the first paragraph
• The GNU Project, look about 3/4ths of the way down

Stallman ask that copyright for programs be abolished, period.

Proprietary software developers use copyright to take away the users' freedom; we use copyright to guarantee their freedom. That's why we reverse the name, changing "copyright" into "copyleft."

Programmers can still do whatever they will, the state just won't help them enforce their copyright.

The article contains more untruths. One is, that the existence of proprietary software does not restrict user's freedom, beacause he does not have to use it. The fact is, that people are ordered to use software by their employer and thus bound by the licenses if they like it or not.

It's traditionally pronounced "guh-NEW". (This is straight from the front page of www.gnu.org.) So maybe it's 4 syllables. :-)

Release 2.2.4 of the GNU C library is now available at ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/glibc/releases
[end quote]

I can't make much out of Drepper's accusations. What exactly is supposed to have happened? And what is so different about the LGPL 2.1 that Drepper does not like?

LGPL 2.0 or LGPL 2.1

Both versions have the "any later version" clause. Is it only that ver. 2.1 mentions the term Gnu/Linux? But it's only used there as an example, nothing legaly requires you to follow that example. Does Drepper now wish that the GNU libc library could be re-named to the Linux libc library, or what? Why did he originally license it under a GNU license in the first place? Or did he? Who originally named it the Gnu libc? What is the history of glibc?

Has anyone seen or heard or read anything that backs up these claims?

Release 2.2.4 of the GNU C library is now available at ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/glibc/releases
[end quote]

I can't make much out of Drepper's accusations. What exactly is supposed to have happened? And what is so different about the LGPL 2.1 that Drepper does not like?

LGPL 2.0 or LGPL 2.1

Both versions have the "any later version" clause. Is it only that ver. 2.1 mentions the term Gnu/Linux? But it's only used there as an example, nothing legaly requires you to follow that example. Does Drepper now wish that the GNU libc library could be re-named to the Linux libc library, or what? Why did he originally license it under a GNU license in the first place? Or did he? Who originally named it the Gnu libc? What is the history of glibc?

Has anyone seen or heard or read anything that backs up these claims?

"People have asked my opinion, and I'll just leave it by saying I don't prefix "Linux" with those 3 little letters and a slash even tho I've been asked."

Never mind that when I purchase or download a Linux version 70% or more of the included software is GNU. Right?

Wow, Rob. Colour me surprised ... NOT .

If you want to boot to a good OS for free in all it's connotations try the Linux kernel. If you wish to also be productive, your almost certain to be using GNU software. And even if you aren't, chances are that your kernel was compiled by the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). Linux sans GNU ? Please at least try to be serious.

"People have asked my opinion, and I'll just leave it by saying I don't prefix "Linux" with those 3 little letters and a slash even tho I've been asked."

Never mind that when I purchase or download a Linux version 70% or more of the included software is GNU. Right?

Wow, Rob. Colour me surprised ... NOT .

If you want to boot to a good OS for free in all it's connotations try the Linux kernel. If you wish to also be productive, your almost certain to be using GNU software. And even if you aren't, chances are that your kernel was compiled by the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). Linux sans GNU ? Please at least try to be serious.

Wrong, you pay pennies on the dollar

"Pennies on the dollar" can mean 99 cents on the dollar.

for the production of the textbook, and the rest is royalties to the publisher and authors of the book.

You're assuming textbooks can't be released under the GNU Free Documentation License after their first printing. (Why use GNU FDL?) At least in the print industry, the publisher is less likely to take all rights from the author than it would in the record or movie industry.

If people realized that the abolition of copyright

I'm not necessarily for abolition of the copyright monopoly. I'm for restoring it to its original purpose: promoting the creation of new works. Retroactive copyright term extensions do NOT promote the creation of new works; most works make most of their money by far in the first 28 years. I'm also for full disclosure of the terms of any license (especially fair use restrictions) BEFORE the license is bought: "This DVD contains CSS encryption and may be played only on players licensed by DVD CCA. You may NOT copy the caption text. You may NOT grab frames. You may NOT back up the video or audio. You may NOT skip the Special Offers that precede the program."

removes or squeezes the profit motive out of [the entertainment industry], and that such action then reduces both the number of suppliers and the quality and quantity of what is produced, it no longer sounds like a Good Idea(TM)

Even if the monopoly were abolished, there would still be people who create for the fun of creating. The love of money should never be a fellow's primary motivation.

Wrong, you pay pennies on the dollar

"Pennies on the dollar" can mean 99 cents on the dollar.

for the production of the textbook, and the rest is royalties to the publisher and authors of the book.

You're assuming textbooks can't be released under the GNU Free Documentation License after their first printing. (Why use GNU FDL?) At least in the print industry, the publisher is less likely to take all rights from the author than it would in the record or movie industry.

If people realized that the abolition of copyright

I'm not necessarily for abolition of the copyright monopoly. I'm for restoring it to its original purpose: promoting the creation of new works. Retroactive copyright term extensions do NOT promote the creation of new works; most works make most of their money by far in the first 28 years. I'm also for full disclosure of the terms of any license (especially fair use restrictions) BEFORE the license is bought: "This DVD contains CSS encryption and may be played only on players licensed by DVD CCA. You may NOT copy the caption text. You may NOT grab frames. You may NOT back up the video or audio. You may NOT skip the Special Offers that precede the program."

removes or squeezes the profit motive out of [the entertainment industry], and that such action then reduces both the number of suppliers and the quality and quantity of what is produced, it no longer sounds like a Good Idea(TM)

Even if the monopoly were abolished, there would still be people who create for the fun of creating. The love of money should never be a fellow's primary motivation.

Far from being crazy, the argument for GNU/Linux sounds pretty damn good to me.

I agree too. However, the main reason nobody calls it GNU is because GNU is such a retarded name. First, they pick a word with the almost unique property that it starts with a silent G; a word so obscure that no average person really knows what it is. And then they go that one extra uber-geek step and insist that you pronounce the "G":

To avoid horrible confusion, please pronounce the `G' in the word `GNU' when it is the name of this project.-- The GNU Manifesto

"Linux" isn't all that much better, since it's also not pronounced as it's written in English, but there's a key factor that makes the name more acceptable: is has an "X" in it. That makes it instantly cool in the computer world.

Stallman has already answered this point himself (look under the 24th paragraph or so, or search for "personal information".

From the GNU Manifesto
---------------
All sorts of development can be funded with a Software Tax:

Suppose everyone who buys a computer has to pay x percent of the price as a software tax. The government gives this to an agency like the NSF to spend on software development.

But if the computer buyer makes a donation to software development himself, he can take a credit against the tax. He can donate to the project of his own choosing--often, chosen because he hopes to use the results when it is done. He can take a credit for any amount of donation up to the total tax he had to pay.

The total tax rate could be decided by a vote of the payers of the tax, weighted according to the amount they will be taxed on.

The consequences:

The computer-using community supports software development. This community decides what level of support is needed. Users who care which projects their share is spent on can choose this for themselves

-----------------and------

What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned.

-I added the bold-

I can legally take a piece of BSD software, make binaries of it, and share the binaries with my neighbors.

I can legally take a piece of GPL software, make binaries of it, and share the binaries with my neighbors, offering in the README to sell them a CD of the source code for the price of media, duplication, and postage (GNU GPL section 3b).

What do you have to hide today?

Yes, it should be.

I think lots of slashdotters are really keen on making fun of this, particularly when they think there are a few quick karma points to grab, but not many have read it straight from the source.

Rather than listening to a bunch of slashdotters make fun of things, why not read what the FSF has to say about it. Far from being crazy, the argument for GNU/Linux sounds pretty damn good to me. People scream about not getting credit for their code, they scream about free software or "open-source" not getting recognition for the fact that it acts as the internet infrastructure, but they don't particularly feel like giving credit to the foundation of their own system. And we're not talking about ticker tape parades - we're talking about 3 letters and a slash.

For those who want to call it Linux, I'd just suggest this: try running your favorite distro after subtracting all of the GNU system. Have fun.

• gcc 2.96 is actually more standards compliant than any other version
  of gcc released at the time Red Hat made this decision (3.0 is even more compliant, but not as stable) yet).
  It may not be "standards compliant" as in "what most others
  are shipping", but 2.96 is almost fully ISO C99 and ISO C++ 98
  compliant, unlike any previous version of gcc.
• gcc 2.96 has more complete support for C++. Older versions of gcc could
  handle only a very limited subset of C++.
  Earlier versions of g++ often had problems with templates and other
  valid C++ constructs.
• gcc 2.96 generates better, more optimized code.
• gcc 2.96 supports all architectures Red Hat is currently supporting,
  including ia64. No other compiler can do this. Having to maintain different
  compilers for every different architecture is a development (find a bug, then
  fix it 4 times), QA and support nightmare.
• The binary incompatibility issues are not as bad as some people and
  companies make you believe.
  First of all, they affect dynamically linked C++ code only.
  If you don't use C++, you aren't affected. If you use C++ and link statically,
  you aren't affected.
  If you don't mind depending on a current glibc, you might also want to
  link statically to c++ libraries while linking dynamically to glibc and other
  C libraries you're using:
  g++ -o test test.cc -Wl,-Bstatic -lstdc++ -Wl,-Bdynamic
  (Thanks to Pavel Roskin for pointing this
  out)
  Second, the same issues appear with every major release of gcc
  so far. gcc 2.7.x C++ is not binary compatible with gcc 2.8.x. gcc 2.8.x C++
  is not binary compatible with egcs 1.0.x. egcs 1.0.x C++ is not binary
  compatible with egcs 1.1.x. egcs 1.1.x C++ is not binary compatible with
  gcc 2.95. gcc 2.95 C++ is not binary compatible with gcc 3.0.
  Besides, it can easily be circumvented. Either link statically, or
  simply distribute libstdc++ with your program and install it if necessary.
  Since it has a different soname, it can coexist with other libstdc++ versions
  without causing any problems.
  Red Hat Linux 7 also happens to be the first Linux distributions using
  the current version of glibc, 2.2.x. This update is not binary compatible with
  older distributions either (unless you update glibc - there's nothing that
  prevents you from updating libstdc++ at the same time), so complaining about
  gcc's new C++ ABI breaking binary compatibility is pointless. If you want
  to distribute something binary-only, link it statically and it will run
  everywhere.
  Someone has to be the first to take a step like this. If nobody dared
  to make a change because nobody else is doing it, we'd all still be using
  gcc 1.0, COBOL or ALGOL. No wait, all of those were new at some point...
  
• Most of gcc 2.96's perceived "bugs" are actually broken code
  that older gccs accepted because they were not standards compliant - or, using
  an alternative term to express the same thing, buggy.
  A C or C++ compiler that doesn't speak the standardized C language is
  a bug, not a feature.
  In the initial version of gcc 2.96, there were a couple of other bugs.
  All known ones have been fixed in the version from updates - and the version
  that is in the current beta version of Red Hat Linux. The bugs in the initial
  version don't make the whole compiler broken, though. There has never been
  a 100% bug free compiler, or any other 100% bug free non-trivial program.
  The current version can be downloaded
  here.
• gcc 3.0, the current "stable" release (released quite some time
  after Red Hat released gcc 2.96-RH), fixes some problems, but introduces many
  others - for example, gcc 3.0 can't compile KDE 2.2 beta 1 correctly.
  Until the first set of 3.0 updates is released, I still claim 2.96 is
  the best compiler yet.

Their list of free-as-in-speech books is pretty short. A much bigger catalog is here

I haven't tried GCJ yet, but I don't see why it can't have include files, pre-processing, and make files. This is probably going to be the way I head into Java, because it will allow me to be productive.

Read the article and see where to grab the source yourself.

By using java in this election thing, the people running the vote can have it run in a sandbox to help keep hackers out. By using the java security model to impose policy restrictions on code at run-time, it keeps results from being tampered with or viewed before the ballot is complete.

By using java in this election thing, the people running the vote can have it run in a sandbox to help keep hackers out. By using the java security model to impose policy restrictions on code at run-time, it keeps results from being tampered with or viewed before the ballot is complete.

Java is so slow.

Yet no one here ever complains about the slowness of PHP, Python, bash, etc. -- scripting languages that are almost by definition slower than Java in most circumstances. Why does the speed complaint only get leveled against Java?

The point is that, much like PHP, Java is plenty fast enough for what people use it for. I use it for web application development, and the performance is more that just acceptable. It's lightning fast. I think this perception is fostered by the ancient JVMs that ship with Windows and IE, which are major releases behind the current state of the art.

No one uses Java for GUI app development.

LimeWire, which IMHO is the best Gnutella client out there, is pure Java. It's very responsive, feature rich, stable, and less than 1MB, about the same size as XMMS. Hardly what you'd call slow bloatware, which is the usual complaint.

Sun owns Java. Java isn't free.

I could mention Tomcat, which is open source and which we use in production where I work. But then someone could complain that the JVM we're running it on is still proprietary to Sun...

Haven't any of you heard of Kaffe, GCJ, or GNU CLASSPATH? None of these things are what I would consider production-grade yet, but the point is, Java is only as closed as people want it to be. If you don't like the fact that the best JVMs are all proprietary, then by all means, contribute to one of the many free Java projects out there!

Get past the myths. Java won't solve every programming problem, but if you don't like it, at least complain about the parts that *do* suck (like java.io.* :)

Q

Java is so slow.

Yet no one here ever complains about the slowness of PHP, Python, bash, etc. -- scripting languages that are almost by definition slower than Java in most circumstances. Why does the speed complaint only get leveled against Java?

The point is that, much like PHP, Java is plenty fast enough for what people use it for. I use it for web application development, and the performance is more that just acceptable. It's lightning fast. I think this perception is fostered by the ancient JVMs that ship with Windows and IE, which are major releases behind the current state of the art.

No one uses Java for GUI app development.

LimeWire, which IMHO is the best Gnutella client out there, is pure Java. It's very responsive, feature rich, stable, and less than 1MB, about the same size as XMMS. Hardly what you'd call slow bloatware, which is the usual complaint.

Sun owns Java. Java isn't free.

I could mention Tomcat, which is open source and which we use in production where I work. But then someone could complain that the JVM we're running it on is still proprietary to Sun...

Haven't any of you heard of Kaffe, GCJ, or GNU CLASSPATH? None of these things are what I would consider production-grade yet, but the point is, Java is only as closed as people want it to be. If you don't like the fact that the best JVMs are all proprietary, then by all means, contribute to one of the many free Java projects out there!

Get past the myths. Java won't solve every programming problem, but if you don't like it, at least complain about the parts that *do* suck (like java.io.* :)

Q

Yes, you missed the point. First, the VM based versions of Java (using adaptive compilation as opposed to simple interpretation) are now very competitive with C++ speedwise. Sometimes slower, sometimes faster with usually a fairly small delta.

C is generally more efficient, but you lose object orientation.

Finally, there are traditional ahead-of-time compilers for Java like gcj (which shipped with gcc 3.0).

Java is well suited to a large percentage of programming tasks. For those areas where its not appropriate it can (fairly;) easily call C/C++.

Java is open, productive, fast, cross-platform, widely taught, supported by every significant software company, and somewhat future-proof. What other language/platform comes close?

The real proof will be forthcoming - when many anti-Java Luddites are in the unemployment lines, still complaining about it... ;-)

186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

So, I had a look at your page. While it's nice that you are doing this, won't you end up with this when you are done? I kinda missed the why bit.

o Single inheritance only
o All memory access through references
o Garbage collected
o No templates
o No operator overloading
o No preprocessor

Differences between D and Java:

o Unicode supported in source code
o No religion (ROFL)

Walter seems to be confused about some things. First, Java doesn't require a VM. See gcj for instance (there are also other traditional Java compilers, such as Transvirtual).

Also, Walter seems to not understand the value of operator overloading in a very large problem domain - mathematics. This is especially sad given Unicode source code, meaning real math symbols could be used.

Overall, if I had to grade this language design, I'd have to give it a "D". ;-) It is a very minor knockoff of Java.

I seriously doubt this language will become popular. If you like it, learn Java...the "Java is slow" mantra is just plain wrong these days.

186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

If he would invent something really new I would not argue. What he offers is another facelift to C++ which was extention of C. He offers it in a way very similar to Java.

For fresh approach to OO languages take a look at
OZ. I wish I had more time to play with it. Looks quite interesting.

I really get disappointed when people invent pet language for their project when there are thousands of other lanugages which you could use. For my projects I am using
GUILE.

Check out The Free Software Definition over at gnu.org. sro

from the overview page...

• compile/link/debug development model
• Exception handling
• Runtime Type Identification
• link compatibility with the C calling conventions

All except the last is contained in Java.

• C source code compatibility
• Link compatibility with C++
• Multiple inheritance
• Templates
• Namespaces
• Include files
• Creating object instances on the stack. In D, all objects are by reference.
• Trigraphs and digraphs
• Preprocessor
• Operator overloading
• Object oriented gradualism
• Bit fields of arbitrary size
• Support for 16 bit computers

This seems to be precisely the parts of C++ that Java also does away with. Furthermore, the C preprocessor is not strictly part of the C language and in fact many other programming projects use cpp for simple cut and paste includes of their favorite language. When I first read about trigraphs, I couldn't wait to try them out to make some extra obfuscated code, but alas the C compiler I was using didn't support them. In fact the lack of standards compliance is one of the main drawbacks to programming in C++ and C. If my Java code compiles on sun's compiler, then I can be assured that it will also compile on any other compiler claiming to compile Java code.

The author also mentions that D will not have any bytecodes. From a strict perspective, the Java programming language and the Java VM are two different standards and just because you typically compile Java code into (confusingly named) Java byte codes, doesn't mean you can't use one without the other. For example, anyone (who is insane) can pick up a copy of the Java Virtual Machine Specification and a hex editor and make some syntactiacally correct class files. More realistically though, java bytecodes are often targets for compiler construction classes. Also, if you use the GNU Java Compiler you can compile programs written in the Java programming language directly into machine code.

While 90% of the description of this language screams Java, there seem to be some of the more useful features of C++ thrown in (typedefs, scope operator, etc.). The only way for this to be successful, is to finish standardizing the language as soon as possible and get a reference compiler for it so it leaves the realm of theoretical vaporware. Perhaps Java might have looked more like this if the language design was revisited. However, Java has lots compilers which are much much more likely to conform to the standard than the C++ equivalents.

My feeling is that a dedicated group of Java fans needs to get involved in Mono, and promote Java as a first class citizen alongside C#. Heck, the open source community already has a Java compiler that's miles ahead of the Mono C#/CLR combo. It shipped as part of gcc 3.0.

While Java was not submitted to ECMA, Sun has stated that anyone is free to implement it based on the open specification as long as the "Java" brand isn't mentioned. This is quite similar to the Mesa 3D library vis a vis OpenGL, and Mesa has been quite successful. Further, Sun and IBM have both provided high quality VMs and development kits for Linux.

Java (despite all of Microsoft's spin to the contrary) is still growing in popularity, and is the dominant technology in several important areas. Over 100 million Java enabled phones should ship this year, for instance. Java is also dominant in the application server arena. Sun is still investing heavily in desktop Java (most of the 1.4 release is aimed at an improved client side experience), and MacOS X proves that Java on the client can be very nice. In fact, another area that could really use work is simply better integrating Swing applications into the Gnome/Ximian desktop.

As a final point, Sun has stated that it has no problem open sourcing Java at some point...when it is clear that Microsoft won't co-opt the platform with it's famous 'embrace and extend' tactics. C# is the latest (weak) attempt to do so. The best thing you can do to prevent .NET (.NOT!) from taking over e-commerce is to learn Java, and leverage the tremendous amount of high quality Java code out there to write great cross-platform web applications.

Extra credit for client side development...check out the Grand Canyon Demo for inspiration...it is pretty awesome!

186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Don't you know that you are supposed to be tithing to the FSF and/or Software in the Public Interest? That's right. Ten percent of your pre-tax income. Now just head on over to the FSF or SPI and follow the directions. Not only is it tax deductible, it will help save your computer's soul from the Devil and the resulting torment in eternal Hell!

And for your donation, you will get your name put on their web site, a news letter or two, and a New Year's card.

Ogg Vorbis is an open standard. I like open standards. Now sing with me, or just download the Ogg Vorbis file:

Join us now and share the software...

djb fixed all the BIND security flaws long ago. It is called djbdns.

According to http://cr.yp.to/distributors.html, the djbdns license does NOT allow modification of the source code (even when the product is released under a different name) and therefore breaks freedom 1. Besides, BIND 9, despite the name, is not based on the BIND codebase at all; it's a complete rewrite and shouldn't have the same security holes.

You only have to make the source available to the person you send the binaries.

And if Sony is releasing a DVD containing a Linux kernel and GNU operating environment, it is releasing binaries to everybody who buys the Linux kit, must release source code for all GPL covered software on that DVD, and must make it available for the cost of duplication + S&H to all persons who have received Sony's binaries (GNU GPL, section 3b). In fact, Sony included the source tarballs on the Linux DVD.

This, however, doesn't stop Sony from putting every single driver into proprietary kernel modules, which are treated as "mere aggregation"[?] under the GPL.

For the other kinds of stuff Purify does (aside from memory leaks), look at Greg McGary's bounded pointer work.

Bad news: You'll have to build your own gcc (Greg's changes haven't yet been accepted in to the gcc trunk), and all your libraries (just as Purify re-writes all your libraries).

Good news: The resulting code is much faster than Purify'ed code, and finds some problems Purify doesn't. I know of a major software development effort (hundreds of developers, millions of lines of code; sorry, can't give details) that uses bounded pointers to great advantage.

Other tools: GNU Checker, dbmalloc, Bruce Perens' Electric Fence, MemProf, mpatrol, and Mprof; Google searches will turn them all up.

Try Checker I think AX.25 pointed to some relevant information, but was moded has redundant for some odd reason.

• I can't flip through it.
• I can't dog-ear it, or use my bookmark collection.
• Books smell good and feel good (okay, this is nostalgia).
• Screens hurt my eyes, paper works fine.
• eBooks run out of power, books don't.
• eBooks might have access control, books don't.
• I own a book, not a license to it.
• Books are cheap - I can forget one at the beach and not lose too much cash on it.
• I'm unlikely to be mugged for a book, even on the NYC subway.
• Reading in bed doesn't get in the way of hot sex.
  (Hold on honey, let me unplug my eBoo - bzzzzzzzzt aaaaaagh!)
• And finally, with a book, no one can take away my right to read.

Just my experience with CL 7.0:

Now, what makes Linux difficult? First, there is partitioning your hard drive and installing file systems in preparation for the install.
Conectiva had work with Andrew Clausen, parted Author to make repartitioning and automatic repartitioning in the Installation really clean for the new user.

While I'm rambling on, let me tell you where I see *real* problems with Linux. The problem is with user interface consistency.
Some distributions try to force the user into one or too GUI (usually kde and gnome).
Conectiva has created the xscripts interface. A really simple interface that let any window manager (I did it for staroffice without a wm too) to be shown in the KDM login screen or be called from the console. So the user has a choice from KDE, gnome, enlightenment, windowmaker, blackbox, xfce, sawmill, qvwm, ...
But that as it was commented above, this might make the user feel lost. quite right. But Debian has developed a MENU system. This let all aplications in one interface see the same applications over the wms menu system across them all.
I have noted that the window user likes to start with qvwm before going to KDE, gnome, ... This let he finds all applications he needs in any place. Also qvwm is one of the fastest wm around, so a user who has a poor hardware configuration would enjoy it too ( I would prefer myself blackbox ;).

Another great thing Conectiva is doing is in Linuxconf development. Conectiva has a full team of developers developing Linuxconf, creating modules, finding bugs and helping improving it. So, you can do almost anything from it.

Check out stories on the Hague Convention. Something horribly similar to what you describe is already in the works. Especially read RMS's essay linked in the second story listed there.

>Someone will have to source a decent GPL spellchecker library or write one and a dictionary before Mozilla will have anything similar.

This was done before Linux even existed (I believe I read about ispell in a book that was printed before the Linux "revolution").

Newer stuff like aspell and pspell would be well suited to Mozilla. It should be in there, and I'd help do it, but my skillset is currently limited to simple TurboC, Assembly, Turing, and Visual Basic (and another language I won't speak of). :-/