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Instead, use bigloo, scheme48, or some other Scheme with a decent FFI. Then you can use the native Scheme calls.

An even-better alternative is to use SILK or KAWA, which are scheme systems that can interface with Java, thus using JDBC.

There's a great paper called "Java reflects easily through Scheme" which discusses SILK and extending Scheme to allow access to Java code.

Good luck -- but with Scheme, you won't need it. What a great language!


~wog

Pardon me while I shed crocodile tears. Maybe we should hold a bake sale for the poor, beleaguered proprietary software company. ApplixWare doesn't have a God-given right to my $99, $49, or $1.

The GNU project and the Linux community are "screwing" the proprietary Unix vendors.

GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition. ... If your business is selling an operating system, you will not like GNU, but that's tough on you.

--Richard Stallman, The GNU Manifesto

The GCC steering committee has stated in a formal disapproval of the Redhat compiler situation that not only is their compiler a pre-beta, it's not even a CVS snapshot (they don't even recognize it as _existing_). It is also not supported by the GCC team. Also, anything compiled with gcc-2.96 (which does not exist!) will not be portable to any other system.

Not backwards compatible, not sideways compatible, not forwards compatible. but who cares? These GUI config thingies are so great!

Obviously it depends on your personal preferences, but you could try:

the FSF: donate here
KDE: contacts here

other projects as you use them; e.g., netbsd, openbsd, Apache, XFree86.

Or just donate computers to Africa or somewhere.

To be a bit short, is Richard Stallman's The Right to Read not enough?

If anyone wants to know how bad this can get, have a read of Road to Tycho over at the GNU website.

It talks about how reading books that someone else owns would be illegal.

Of course, if the school ever found out that he had given Lissa his own password, it would be curtains for both of them as students, regardless of what she had used it for. School policy was that any interference with their means of monitoring students' computer use was grounds for disciplinary action. It didn't matter whether you did anything harmful--the offense was making it hard for the administrators to check on you. They assumed this meant you were doing something else forbidden, and they did not need to know what it was.

Cross-reference the right to read by the FSF.

Hi,

This message is rather long and involved. Brace yourselves.

I have been developing a piece of software that should make accessing our datatapes much easier, especially for those who don't program in Fortran. This software has been in the works for almost as long as I have worked here and it is starting to seem as though I should get it working and available for general use. The software will be custom taylored for our datatapes, but is also generally applicable to any type of database and could, in my opinion, be useful to people other than us.

I have one problem that needs to be resolved first. Who owns the copyright to this software? [My boss] has suggested that I pose this question to the members of this committee for comments. I have referred to the copyright section of my contract (that of a sessional academic) and will quote the following paragraph to you:

10.01 The University shall be owner of the copyright and of all copyright works produced by a staff member who has been engaged by the University to prepare such works for the University or part of whose normal responsibilities to the University is the preparation of such works.

I understand that the Fortran access routines and sample programs, along with their documentation I write is owned by the University. This is not in question.

The software in question has been developed by me both on my own time and on University time. I was never asked to develop this software. Until now, no one, except [a coworker], has known that I have been writing this software.

I believe that we all have the same copyright section in our contracts so if any of you wish to read the entire section, you should have it. If not, it is available online at:

[url to contract]

My interpretation of the contract is:

a) The University must retain the right to use, free of charge, the software in question.
b) If the software is to be sold, the value of the University resources consumed must be calculated and repaid on a fixed schedule.

The copyright I wish to apply to this software is the Free Software Foundation's General Public Licence (GPL). All the terms can be read at:

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html#S EC3

This licence essentially abandons ownership of the software and ensures that no one can take ownership and apply terms. Anyone can freely use, copy, and modify the software, including the University. My thought is that this licence should satisfy the 'spirit' of the copyright section of my contract. The University will not recieve any money to pay back the resources I have used, but would benifit from the use of the software.

I am concerned about the ramifications of simply going ahead and doing what I want to do. I suspect that I would be safer with some sort of written permission to do this. I wish to know what you think about this.

I actually don't care who holds the copyright as long as the terms are those I have stated above. I suspect it would be simpler if I hold the copyright, but recognizing the University in the copyright notice is fine by me.

Chris.

Please list one (just one) Open Source Software program that is not also a Free Software program.

Visit http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/li cen se-list.html for a list of licenses that are "Open Source" licenses but not Free Software (such as Sun's Community license, Apple's APSL, etc).

Sounds alot like stow. I haven't played around with it though, but it looks like its been around forever.

hurd-0.0.tar.gz 1142 Kb Tue Aug 6 00:00:00 1996
hurd-0.1.tar.gz 1171 Kb Sat Sep 7 00:00:00 1996
hurd-0.2.tar.gz 1343 Kb Thu Jun 12 00:00:00 1997

And extrapolate the curve ...
hurd-1.0.tar.gz is due on Sep 9 2001 !!!
I guess you just have to be a little bit more patient

And, let's figure, who doesn't?

Wasn't apple that company that bought rights to the one-click shopping "patent" from Amazon.com, and showed they were even proud of that? (Actually this is a rhetorical question, never bother replying "yes, they were".) So if you own anything of a Website with a shopping interface which is just a little bit too easy, you can't use Darwin. Sucks, right?

So I don't give for MacOS X, and I think that anyone who codes for MacOS X in his spare time isn't helping out anybody but Apple. Apple owns this code. No-one (and then again, everyone) owns Free Software.

If you think that the MacOS concepts are cool, you'd be glad to hear that they are modeled after the open OpenStep standard. And if you want to work on a Free OpenStep implementation, go work on GNUStep.

Yes, there are differences with MacOS X (and NextStep):

• Binary incompatibility (due to compiler issues and to undocumented resource file formats in the OpenStep specification)
• Works on top of the X Window System instead of its own graphics thingies
• Follows the NextStep look & feel
• Not Out Of Beta Yet (doh, the only NS implementation that
  • is
  Out Of Beta is Out Of Print as well ;-)

So if you want to develop a Free MacOS X, GNUStep is a really good place to start from. I simply hope that by the time MacOS X is released, the headlines will look like "GNUStep: a better MacOS X than MacOS X" :-)

It's... It's...

1. True, and so what? Most opensource programmers may well work as closedsource programmers during the day. That would only be a problem if you believed closedsource software was somehow evil.
2. Even if you did believe that closedsource software was evil, again, so what? Richard Stallman-- an opponent of closedsource-- said this in his seminal paper on the subject, The Gnu Manifesto :

   >"Won't programmers starve?"

   >I could answer that nobody is forced to be
   >a programmer. Most of us cannot manage to get
   >any money for standing on the street and making
   >faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to
   >spend our lives standing on the street making faces,
   >and starving. We do something else.

3. In any case, there is money to be made out of opensource-- in support, in distribution, in media. How else would RedHat and VA Linux (and so on and on) survive as commercial entities?

If you don't want that happening, please support the GCC/MingW/CygWin, ReactOS and WinE open source projects.

BSD is NOT open source. it doesn not meet the open-source license critera as designed by bruce perins.

But the BSD License, version 2.0, does meet Eric S. Raymond's Open Source Definition (the Debian free software guidelines are nearly identical) as well as being a non-copyle ft GPL-compatible free software license according to Richard M. "Goat ScanDisker" Stallman

If the media would give any attention to this issue at all, it could only help to further the spread of GPL'ed software.

GREAT WEBSITE>>>> www.thelinuxpimp.com

You should have asked your manager to buy the FSF Deluxe Distribution for $5000

Oops:

PHP Triad
Vim
Emacs

I just hope, for the sake of people who don't know any better than to use non-free software, that it doesn't turn out like this.

This is not the same thing. With a typical subscription model, you do get 'free' upgrades (not really free since they're all part of the subscription price). Under this model, if you choose to continue using the 'old' version of the software, you can - you've paid the licencing fees, the software does not self-destruct if you let the subscription run out.

The difference with Office 10 is that @ the end of the subscription period, the software becomes, IMO, crippled. From the press release:

If customers do not renew or install an upgrade product, they can still open, view and print their existing documents.

As is so often true with MS (or anyone's, for that matter) press releases, it's not what is said, but what is not said that is of issue. Note that in the above quote nothing is said about updating/saving current documents. Which, by extension, reasonably means that Office 10 (Office 2002, or whatever they call it) will be crippleware unless you pay the ransom^H^H^H^H^H^H subscription fees to continue working with your documents.

It's probably too early to say with any certainty whether this model will actually work. I suspect not, given the dismal failure other pay-for-play models have suffered (Divx comes to mind). Paranoid or not, RMS's Right to Read story serves as a cautionary tale. If you are unable to continue working with your documents because you haven't paid the fees, what other restrictions will they be willing to place on your use of your documents???

Me? I'll continue to use AbiWord/StarOffice, thanks.

As a user, I might not care. I want good software. I like Free Software for well discussed reasons (see gnu.org), but I wont get into that now.

Now, consider being a developer. I want to write applications which need more power than a Palm offers me. Alternatives I can buy: devices with Epoc or Windows CE. Let's concentrate on Windows.

Development tools for Windows CE are, hm, not cheap, it's costly to get information about the system, the API is different to everything I know from before. This even counts for Windows for Desktop developers, to a certain degree.

I can use PersonalJava. This might work, but there might be application-specific reasons for not using Java.

Alternative: I can put Linux on my iPAQ. Whow, what opportunities does that offer: I can use plain X. I can use PocketLinux with Microwindows and Java. I can use embedded Qt.

Every of these possibilities has counterparts on Desktops. I have access to documentation. I can use tools I know from before. So it's easier to write applications.

Wait a minute. Applications. Wasn't that the user cares about?

I just bought me an iPAQ, and I'm looking forward to putting Linux on it. This Windows CE stuff is so closed, I can't even sync the build-in calendars with my Linux-system (why use a standard format, when you can use outlook). The Palm is much more open here.

To put it very easy: Linux on iPAQ = Openness of PalmOS + Power of a "Windows powered" device.

That didn't happen in the Linux downloader. Wonder if they are targeting ads only at the windoze community?


"The only difference between Surak of Vulcan and RMS, is: Surak of Vulcan doesn't think he is RMS."
This quote is covered under the GFDL

Read through the list of their software. See Linux? No? Check the list of other software covered by the GPL. Linux is there. Linux is not GNU, dammit! >:( If I compile and use GNU utils on Cygwin, does that give me GNU/Windows? Of course not. GNU/Solaris anyone? Linux could not be the phenomenon it is today without GNU...but Linux is not GNU.

&gtWell, since the FSF doesn't recognize Qt as free software
Qt is free software in the eyes of the FSF since the QPL (Qt 2.0.0). I can prove it by providing this link. Texto: "This is a non-copyleft free software license which is incompatible with the GNU GPL." This means:

1. Qt is free software; and
2. Compatibility with GPL is not derogatory for a Free Software License.

And furthermore Qt is available on a closed-source license for proprietary development, QPL and GPL, at the most convenient option, for open-source development.

>then it could be argued that Kylix no longer depends on Qt
"Kylix" does depends on Qt. Borland announced that Kylix will support GNOME, not that Kylix will be recoded from scratch to be GNOME-based.

besides that we have the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation, Software in the Public Interest, Apache Software Foundation, and i am sure a few more...

greetings, eMBee.
--

Perhaps the GNU Free Documentation License at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html/A& gt; would suit your needs for a copyleft license.

I originally started programming in BASIC many years ago (possibly when I was 13, too). Today, I work with C++ at a large corporation, and as best as I can determine, I'm considered rather competent.

Admittedly, BASIC sucks, but it provides an okay start. Ultimately, what's really important isn't necessarily the language as much as the drive and desire to learn the fundamentals of programming.

For me, I found it fun to delve into some of the deeper, darker aspects of the system; I used to use the poke/peek statements to bit-twiddle, and I even took the time to learn a little Z-80 assembly so I could do scary neat tricks (this is in my mid-teens, mind you). By sheer experimentation, I eventually developed better techniques that were portable to other languages.

I could just as easily have started with PASCAL, batch files, LISP, ALGOL, PL1, Smalltalk or (god forbid) Perl. It doesn't matter... my own interest in programming drew me to learn whatever languages I wanted to learn.

If I had to do everything all over again, though, I would wish that I had Smalltalk available to me as a kid. Smalltalk is a relatively easy language to learn (in my humble opinion). It also (more importantly) provides a strong object-oriented environment that helps get you thinking about how objects work together. Too often, someone starts out with C or BASIC or some other procedural language, and then finds they have to go through some kind of 'paradigm shift' to adjust to a radically different way of programming with objects.

This 'shift' provided the greatest challange to me as a programmer. I had to learn how to get away from looking at things in terms of process, to see things in terms of interrelationships. Smalltalk makes this relatively easy to see because it's already a fairly robust system of objects communicating with each other.

And.. lucky you.. Smalltalk is freely available these days. You might try GNU Smalltalk..

Ultimately, though, if you simply listen to your child, and see if there's any interest in programming at all, the tike will take to it without much prompting.

The Open Publication License 1.0 covering this book can be ./configured as a free or non-free license. The base Open Publication License 1.0 is free; the OPL with either of the Section VI options is not free.

Umm... how do you do graphical debugging as opposed to text-based?

Go to line of code.
Insert breakpoint (rightmouse in border/hit toolbar/hit F8 - take your pick).

Hit Go (F5)

Mouse over variable. Hey! It's the value of the variable.

Open the callstack! Hey! It's onscreen with my code.

Open the register list -- hey they're onscreen too!

Look at the disassembly -- with source in the window next to it.

Add a watch... hey! I've got this tree of the objects in the structure I'm looking at, and I can expand the bits that I need/close the bits I don't.

It's the difference between this:
KDBG screenshot, and this:
a sample GDB session

Simon

I am starting to think that RMS wasn't all that far off

"Debian is a free, or Open Source, operating system (OS) for your computer." (http://www.debian.org/intro/about) Debian takes no position. But they call their distro "Debian GNU/Linux, and are developing a Hurd distro.

There are plenty of packages in Debian that are non-GPL.

There are plenty of packages adopted by the FSF for GNU which are non-GPL. (http :// www.gnu.org/software/software.html#DescriptionsOfO therNonGPLSoftware. So? The FSF may prefer that software be copylefted, but they happily use any free software.

But *all* of them must conform to Debian's guidelines, which basically coincide with the Open Source definition.

Now you make it sound as if the DFSG were based in the OSD. But it is the other way around-- the OSD was based on the DFSG. The DFSG was around long before the term Open Source or the OSF existed.

I would say that Debian, as a whole, shares more ideology with ESR than with RMS.

I already uncovered the huge distortion of the matter present here. ESR took the definition of Open Source from Debian, and woefully misapplied it (used it as a guide for corporations to write new licenses, instead of what it was meant for-- a guide for the Debian project to evaluate existing licenses.

In fact, Debian works a lot with the FSF, and SPI (Debian's parent nonprofit) had a legal fight with the OSF over the ownership of the now-defunct "Open Source" trademark.

Wow! Who'd'a'thunk it???

I think in todays modern climate a business model (For the artist themselves, kinda like patronage) could evolve that had a fairly broad range.

The problem with copyright is that it can be transferred, leading to things like Britney Spears getting backing. Do you think that someone rich enough to actually pay a significant enough amount of money to support an artist would support her as an artist??? Is it right that because a large amount of people don't actually find it toooooo offensive her record company should become rich, while someone who would produce something that would be adored by a smaller number, for a far longer time has to become a car mechanic?

I mean, come on people, go read the documents on GNU about how much programmers/techies get paid and why it's wrong.

An artist deserves a good living, and a good artist would have it without copyright. A bad artist could practice the phrase "Want fries with that"

Slime-ball record execs and RIAA lawyers don't deserve a better living than good artists who produce truly good, long lasting music just because 12 year olds haven't yet evolved a sense of taste.

Software patents enable Compuserve, for example, to patent a compression algorithm or a program that reads or writes a specific file format.

[href:Why there are no GIF files on GNU web pages] Both Unisys and IBM have the LZW patent. CS didn't do their homework, and Unisys didn't bother anyone until 1995 (8 years after the creation of the GIF format) when it was thoroughly entrenched. This is Patenting Done Wrong: the _end result_ was patented.

Then there's PKZIP: the actual implementation was patented. Other software can't use PKWare source code, but they (WinZip, WinRar, others) can create the ZIP file format without infringing on the PK patent. Patenting Done Right: the _implementation_ was patented.

There's always another way to do something (ask Rube Goldberg)... end-result patents are the only bad ones. Copyrights, well... I'm commenting on patents.

-- LoonXTall

It seems that copyright is designed to promote progress - it does this by offering creators control and private ownership over their work, so they may use their intellectual work to reward themselves. Therefore, if copyright went away, the main loss would be 'revenue' from charging people money for access to the work.

What really needs to go is money, because that's how many people see reward (although that's not always the case). Money is just an advancement of bartering, because people are fickle and want to make sure 'they got the best deal' - they can't accept that whatever they do in their community is OK. Similarly, politics and people having control over others had to be invented because people were afraid of anarchy.

We have copyright and money and other materialistic concerns because we're not societally advanced enough to do without them. That's my humble opinion.

For embedded work, there's ECOS already.

between ECOS, GNU HURD, RTEMS and others, there is a plethora of open-source hard real-time and microkernel systems available to the open-source hacker. closed source systems may be slick, but you will always be at the mercy of the closed-source owners.

You wrote: Remember RMS's reply to Jorrit, regarding an LGPLed "open source" 3D engine: "I don't support the Open Source Movement,so I can't have a discussion with you in the name of open source."

I say: Here's the text on "Open Source" at the GNU site:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-fr eedom.html.

Linux pre-empted HURD by a good 5 years, and it has (Quiet rightly) become a mainstream Operating System

The HURD pre-empted Linux, it was started in 1990 and Linux was not released at that point.

For more information on why it was started: http://www.gnu.org/software /hu rd/hurd-and-linux.html.

sorry, my bad. It is free, but incompatible with the GPL.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/li cen se-list.html
---

But he both relies on the notion of intellectual property to prevent the theft of that freedom and respects the rights of others to restrict their intellectual property.

Go read "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" and "Why Software Should Be Free". RMS does not believe in intellectual property. He doesn't think creators deserve any more control over their creations than anyone else. He uses IP laws only when it suits his purposes.

But he both relies on the notion of intellectual property to prevent the theft of that freedom and respects the rights of others to restrict their intellectual property.

Go read "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" and "Why Software Should Be Free". RMS does not believe in intellectual property. He doesn't think creators deserve any more control over their creations than anyone else. He uses IP laws only when it suits his purposes.

What about Japhar and Classpath? Or SableVM, ORP,...

GCC 2.96 is an ALPHA compiler. They shouldn't have used it in their distribution - ther are too many bugs in it.
Look at gcc.gnu.org for more info.

Rob, if you're going to use the GNU icon, please make the headline match the philosophy behind the GNU icon ("Free Software" instead of "Open Source"). RMS gets kind of ticked when the two movements are confused.

Rob, if you're going to use the GNU icon, please make the headline match the philosophy behind the GNU icon ("Free Software" instead of "Open Source"). RMS gets kind of ticked when the two movements are confused.

Tell me you're joking, Eric. These requirements are implicit. However, if you want them to be explicit, look no further than "What is Free Software?":

You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.
...
In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be irrevocable as long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the software has the power to revoke the license, even though you have not given cause, the software is not free.

Your diatribes about the "general public virus" notwithstanding, RMS has always been candid about the different kinds of free software. Even as the community was in an uproar over the QPL "open patch" fiasco, RMS pronounced it a free software license.

Tell me you're joking, Eric. These requirements are implicit. However, if you want them to be explicit, look no further than "What is Free Software?":

You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.
...
In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be irrevocable as long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the software has the power to revoke the license, even though you have not given cause, the software is not free.

Your diatribes about the "general public virus" notwithstanding, RMS has always been candid about the different kinds of free software. Even as the community was in an uproar over the QPL "open patch" fiasco, RMS pronounced it a free software license.

"adj, (freer, freest) not under the control or power of another; having social and political liberty; independent; able to move in any direction; not burdened by obligations; not conformed to the usual rules; not exact; generous; frank; with no cost or charge; exempt from taxes, duties, etc; clear of obstruction; not fastened"

"adj, (freer, freest) not under the control or power of another; having social and political liberty; independent; able to move in any direction; not burdened by obligations; not conformed to the usual rules; not exact; generous; frank; with no cost or charge; exempt from taxes, duties, etc; clear of obstruction; not fastened"

An ode to Freeness from the sultan of source!

--

First, I don't think it was childish that he would not respond to the term Open Source. There has been a bitter feud between the two, and a lot of people (as he stated) thinks he supports the Open Source Movement. He supports the "Free Software Movement" where it may seem similar to you, he wants the world to know that it is not and that he disagrees with the other. The only way to accomplish that is that he has to act (as you say) "childish". It's not childish to me, just "loud".

One wonders how he reconciles this with writing a gcc that supports closed source operating systems.

Please read why not to use the LGPL. He talks about this. It is also in line with the answer he gave at the end of this story. "If it will hurt Sony (for being closed source) than it may be of some use".

Steven Rostedt