Slashdot Mirror

Also, LinuxGames did a retrospective article the night that the Loki news first broke. It covers history, achievements, difficulties, and the possible future of Loki. Read it here

Who's right?

IDC Survey Shows Linux Share of IT Budget Will Grow To 9 Percent In 2002

Today a new editor emerged at LT.   http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?lt sn=2001-08-09-007-20-OP Michael Hall contends he took over from Reichard weeks ago, and then goes into an elaborate lecture on how truth and honesty and impartiality must be toned by financial considerations. It's not enough. If he really had taken over weeks ago, he would have taken the reigns yesterday and exonerated Linux Today by putting distance between LT and Reichard. My take is he gave Reichard a last chance, who posted his lame insincere apology, posted a couple fake contributions on his own behalf, the readers saw through it, Hall noted the overwhelming opposition to Reichard at /. and everywhere, and today told him, "ok, that's it." What gripes me is that LT still believe in Reichard and keep him on, despite what he's done to harm these communities. And Hall's article today puts more weight on financial issues to the detriment of the ones readers there find important. Let's face it: there are no compromises in honest business. Either you can afford to do it right or you calmly tell your following you're going under and let it be at that. That's what any decent crowd of journalists would do. And I still would like to address the issue of Reichard's mole activities, which seem more or less proven by now, but we will leave that for another time. D

It takes a lot to admit this. I still dont believe astroturfing is anything to ruffle your feathers about, we all do it dont we? But I salute Kevin Reichard for taking this stance and explaining matters. This shows the maturity of Linux Today and the opensource nature of all their undertakings. Cheers

I dont believe Kevin should have been preassured into apologizing about this. As I understand this pressure came from an individual who was fired from LinuxToday. I felt that individual's articles were more revenge based than anything to expose ethics on astroturfing. Kevin is an excellent individual and his work on Linux Today is second to non. I hope everyone takes a deep breath and just think before posting anymore slashdot induced flames on Mr. Kevin Reichard

It takes a lot to admit this. I still dont believe astroturfing is anything to ruffle your feathers about, we all do it dont we? But I salute Kevin Reichard for taking this stance and explaining matters. This shows the maturity of Linux Today and the opensource nature of all their undertakings. Cheers

I dont believe Kevin should have been preassured into apologizing about this. As I understand this pressure came from an individual who was fired from LinuxToday. I felt that individual's articles were more revenge based than anything to expose ethics on astroturfing. Kevin is an excellent individual and his work on Linux Today is second to non. I hope everyone takes a deep breath and just think before posting anymore slashdot induced flames on Mr. Kevin Reichard

It takes a lot to admit this. I still dont believe astroturfing is anything to ruffle your feathers about, we all do it dont we? But I salute Kevin Reichard for taking this stance and explaining matters. This shows the maturity of Linux Today and the opensource nature of all their undertakings. Cheers

I dont believe Kevin should have been preassured into apologizing about this. As I understand this pressure came from an individual who was fired from LinuxToday. I felt that individual's articles were more revenge based than anything to expose ethics on astroturfing. Kevin is an excellent individual and his work on Linux Today is second to non. I hope everyone takes a deep breath and just think before posting anymore slashdot induced flames on Mr. Kevin Reichard

Please note: ESR had 150,000 shares of LNUX, and wrote this when LNUX was trading at $239 per share, as opposed to its current price of $2 per share.

I was once astroturfed by LinuxGram.

http://www.slashdot.org/articles/01/05/01/1936218. shtml

I was saying that LinuxGram sometimes posts a lot of Crap. Specifically an interview with Volker Wiegand by Maureen OGara where she took everything he said out of context and misquoted him in several places. I cant find the story on their site right now. But here is a summary from fairfax it.
http://it.mycareer.com.au/breaking/20010208/A20552 -2001Feb8.html

Here is a link with Volker Wiegands responce where he says that Maureen OGara deliberately misquoted him. http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-02 -08-002-20-NW-SS

When I posted the comment on Slashdot, two people created new Slashdot logins and replied. One was called SuSE_Rulez and the other was called ingenuity7. You can tell they were knew logins because they hadnt posted before or since. And Slashdot gives the UID numbers out consecutively and I checked to see what slashdot UID I would get on that day and it came right after theirs. Also look how ingenuity7 refers to LinuxGram as CSN which is its less well known parent company. To me he seems to know a lot more than normal people do about LinuxGram.

Of course, when I was astroturfed by LinuxGram I was hardly surprised but this story about LinuxToday is disapointing. Other journalists have replied to my face if I disagreed with them and thats the way it should be done.

Sorry, forgot to include the link

Eric S. Raymond: Remember Astroturfing? Now, Microsoft wraps itself in the flag

Funny thing is, that article is on Linux Today...

So did I. That's Slashdot for ya, fashionably late as always. Thats why I lurk at LinuxToday for recent Linux news.

I figured that no one would actually write 'but what part of "Linux wouldn't run on their hardware" did you not understand?' if they had actually read the article.

Since you say that you have read the article. This morning.

Like this?

I don't know anything about him, but a lot of these seem pretty inflammatory to me, too.

Nate

Tirebiter comments on Linux Today:

http://linuxtoday.com/search.php3?tbquery=Tirebite r

"Tire Biter" Hmmm...


- - - - -

- the software is available without registration, I just tried it.

- There is a trademark issue, but unless everyone on slashdot is a lawyer who has reviewed the agreements signed, why do they have all this "insight" into the situation. Let the courts determine if mysql.org is legal, that's what they are there for.

- Michael Widenius from MySQL AB claims "I want to stress that to date, NuSphere has contributed nothing, no money or source, to the development of the MySQL(tm) server." See the original statement here

- This is a direct contradition to NuSphere's claims of having paid some amount of money to MySQL AB. Hopefully someone somewhere has kept a copy of any checks written and we can figure out just exactly who the basterd liar is here and who is not. For open source, sometimes the truth can be damn elusive. Let's stick to FACTS instead of crazed hype on both sides of the issue. What we do with liar when we find them I leave to the masses :)

- While I'd initially side with the MySQL AB folks, their press release is rediculous, as is their followup. This is not life and death, if they think NuSphere is violating the GPL they should have the FSF sue, or sue themselves and set a good precedent. I hate open source projects that go ape-crap. Please, give us some credit for inteligence. Looks like a lot of hot air to me. Aside from the legit trademark issue where we don't know what agreements were signed, I see a bit of posturing here.

- the software provided is under the GPL, a good thing

- Nusphere doesn't want to sign copyright over to mysql when that would mean mysql could then sell closed source versions for closed source products. That's their right, who cares it's all open sourced.

- So before jumping around like chickens based an another overhyped press release, be it a corporation complaining about theft, or MySQL AB claiming all kinds of pretty serious stuff, let's let it simmer for a few weeks and then get involved.

I believe the FSF proposed something along these lines, but I can't find a link.

Richard Stallman -- The Microsoft Antitrust Trial and Free Software

---

quote: The FDL does preserve the "viral" nature of the GPL in a couple of ways.

GPL

quote: Tom Christiansen has noted the GPL could be called "viral".

is

quote: The way it does this is by insisting that the code and anything
derived from it is also released with the GPL licence. In some senses
it is 'viral' in nature and it is this that is central to many
people's objections.

Also, it's worth noting that the word 'derived' is a little too vague.
Does a library linked to a GPL'd program need to be GPL'd also? Does
a program running on a free operating system need to be GPL'd?

There's no clear, obvious answer for either of these with the current
version of the GPL. The new version (3) is intended to fix some of
these shortcomings, but it's viral nature will remain.

a

quote: Despite the meaning "virus" normally connotes, the viral aspect of the GNU General Public License -- known formally as "copyleft" -- is a tremendous benefit to free software developers and the community they support.

viral

quote: And the licence is "viral", preventing the combination of copyleft and proprietary code.

license!!!!!

quote: This is the 'viral clause' of GPL -- it compels anyone releasing software that incorporates copylefted code to use the GPL in their new release. The Free Software Foundation says: "you must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program [any program covered by this license] or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this license."16

Ok I found the Ken thompson link. I Also found an ESR reply and conversation with Ken Thompson. (Remember this was in ancient history, May 1999)

Link.

It's interesting to note that Ken Thompson admits that he isn't that well versed with current linux trends (being 1999 at the time), and clarifies that he was really only referring to the media attention paid to linux, not the developers of linux, when he said that linux exists as an anti-microsoft. That was how the media was portraying it at the time.

Ken Thompson also says that Computer Science is approaching maturity as a field and wont be seeing any great new advances. Well, all I ahve to say to Ken Thompson is look at Newton the advent of Physics. Newton thought that after Principia and his other venerable works, the field was dead, and any new advancements would be small and incremental. We shall see if ken is right.

Your points about BSD are well taken, but only in a historical sense do they really matter at all. Btw, the first VM system was developed on a Multics I beleive, which isn't unix. If linux isn't innovative, than neither is freebsd or solaris. Things like reiserfs, TUX (the web server), TUX2 (the new filesystem using phase trees and directory hashes), the inclusion of /proc and devfs, etc, all show that linux is still a fertile ground for new advancements, and that it doesn't have the ball and chain of unix around its neck as much as some might say. GNOME and KDE, while some might say are knock-offs of current gui designs, themselves contain many new innovations and advancements in the field. Innovation literally means "something new". I think it has been bastardized recently to mean "Invention" which it doesnt. Invention is something else altogether, and I think linux has a few original inventions as well, some already named.

Sucks though, when you install 2k, use all of the Microsoft drivers, install all of the critical (and most of the recommended) updates from the Windows Update site, and the damn thing still crashes running Microsoft software (Office2k), or sometimes even reboots itself in the middle of an application.

However, I do agree that 2k has been the nicest OS M$ has come up with. Widespread support, hardware and software compatibility, that's where Microsoft still holds the market; but stability is where Linux holds true. Props to JosefKerr's 306 day uptime and still running - which isn't even near a record; in December, Alan Cox posted this siting of a box that was up for over 500 days... is it still running I wonder? (try THAT, Windows!)

Surprised by wealth.

I wonder when we will get to read the second part of the saga "Surprised by sudden poverty".

"A few hours ago, I learned that I am now (at least in theory) absurdly broken.

I was at my machine, hacking, when I got email making fun of me on the situation of the VA Linux Systems IPO. I was working on my latest small project -- a compiler for a special-purpose language I've designed called Scriptable Network Graphics, or SNG. SNG is an editable representation of the chunk data in a PNG. What I'm writing is a compiler/decompiler pair, so you can dump PNGs in SNG, edit the SNG, then recompile to a PNG image".

Ah the irony, I guess you can imagine the rest.

There isn't any ethical or legal problem with this at all. Their products are proprietary add-ons and services, it's hardly different in kind to what RedHat does. When they modify GPL code, they are obliged to GPL the mods. When they write their own code from scratch, they are not. There is no requirement that proprietary programs be GPLd to run under a GPL OS (ever heard of Oracle?)

Bottom line, as long as they comply with the terms of the GPL when it comes to GPL code, they can put whatever license they want on their own. There might be a minor nitpick if their license doesn't make it clear that it only applies to their proprietary programs, not the OS as a whole, I'll grant, but if that is the case it will be easily fixed. There was a similar flap awhile back about Corel's license, and it didn't turn out to be any big deal, I recall.

I wonder when RMS will spout on this... IMO, this is FAR worse than the KDE/QT controversy, and it'd be hypocritical of him to not condemn it.

First off the KDE/QT deal was a totally different issue. KDE was making Free, not proprietary software, yet they were using a library with a license incompatible with the license of their own software. Much more serious problem. Fortunately that one got fixed, though it wasn't easy, and for all the flaming certain immature individuals gave RMS over it, they should be thanking him - if he hadn't raised a stink KDE might still be in a legal limbo, and QT unfree.

RMS is no fan of Caldera, in fact he has expressed what could only be termed contempt for CEO Ransom Love in particular. But I'll be surprised if he loses his objectivity on this issue. If they need to clarify the wording of their license, that's fine, that's not the end of the world, and the FSF has always worked to resolve these little bumps quickly and quietly in the past. The GPL is not, and was explicitly never intended to be, anti-business. It's designed to allow writers of Free Software to share code without fear of their code being proprietarised (the major weakness of the BSD license.)

See this entry in the GPL FAQ. Calderas proprietary products are aggregated, not integrated, and as long as that is so, they can license them under any terms they wish.

Although OpenLinux Workstation contains the Linux kernel and a variety of open source software, there are a wide variety of licenses, each with different distribution restrictions Additionally, Caldera includes some of its own proprietary software as well as other Copyrighted material." (Quoted from this on LinuxToday)

So what's it all mean? This shows pretty conclusively that you can indeed build a proprietary product on top of Linux. If they've done it right, they'll show that you can do it without getting tripped up the the GPL. Nyah nyah MS. Whether they can sell it is another question. I wish them luck.

I think that MS has pretty well made a fool of its collective self with the GPL=cancer nonsense. This kind of thing can only help point up the essential absurdity of that position.

You know, I still own lots of stock in overhyped companies, and when the dot-com crash happened, I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But I swear, it was worth it just to know that ESR's shit-eating grin has finally vanished -- you know, that one I imagine he had on while writing Surprised By Wealth, the most insanely arrogant, egotistical, boorish, and self-centered brag piece I have ever seen from someone who has money.

Fine, Eric. You made money. Great. Lots of people did. But most people don't go shouting from the rafters "Look at me! I have money! And you can't have any! And I will not give any to charity unless they grovel and beg, but don't do that because then I won't give any to you!"

Whoa, that rant has been building for a while.

I've said it before--I'll say it again. A boycott is going to have no other effect than to gratify your ego at the cost of missing out on all the movies the rest of geekdom are enjoying. The MPAA and movie studios aren't missing your money. They're not going to go bankrupt because you aren't buying anything from them. You would need to get a heck of a lot more people to join you in your boycott even to be noticeable over all the people who haven't yet gotten around to getting DVD, but plan to sooner or later. And in a world where only twenty people show up to a much-publicized anti-DMCA protest in Washington, and where DVDs and players are being bought so fast they've become one of the fastest-growing consumer technologies ever--I just don't see that happening.

If you want to make a difference, then do something active. Donate to the EFF, write letters, tell people about the evils of region-locking and CSS (if you can explain it in terms that keep them from staring glassy-eyed at you--it's harder than it sounds). And by all means, boycott, if you don't want your money going to the MPAA. It's your money, do what you want with it. But don't you even try to present that as the overall solution. Boycotts rarely work; boycotts of popular products by a handful of people don't do very much. (I'm "boycotting" Pearl Harbor--not out of moral principles or anything, but because it looks like a really bad movie. Somehow, I don't think that's doing very much good.)

If region-encoding is going to fall, it's going to fall not because of an American geek boycott, it's going to happen because of the efforts of governments and commissions in places like Britain and Australia that are starting to get fed up by being ghettoized by the trade-restraining system imposed on them by the corporations. In the stories /.'s run over the last week or so, I can see that starting to happen. The boulder is wobbling on its perch, and sooner or later it will start rolling downhill.
--

Since the Ganymede site is /.ed, LinuxToday has short article that offers a bit more information.

This is the proper link to my LinuxToday post. I blew it the first time.

Hi.

I happen to be Mark Bialkowski, the guy who made a very similar comment to LinuxToday. You don't read LT, do you?

Nice modifications to the comment. I specifically ignored w3m, because last time I used it, I thought it was ass. I suppose I should try it again, though.

Since I was specifically referring to Linux users who bemoan a lack of "good" (re: IE) browsers, I also ignored K-Meleon, though that's a good example of Gecko's cross-platform advantage.

I appreciate the sentiment, though I'm a bit perturbed by your lack of originality. Looking at it another way...were my words that good?:)

http://slashdot .org/article.pl?sid=00/04/27/0858200&mode=thre ad
http://linuxtoday.com/stories/17660.html
http://www.geeknews.org/news/fe b00/newsitem090.html
http://www.palmstation.com/ view_article.py?article=1786
http://www.pdabuzz.com/Features/Yopy.html
http://slashdot .org/article.pl?sid=00/02/27/1027237&mode=thre ad
http://www.pcworld.com /pcwtoday/article/0,1510,15486,00.html
http://www.ch ip.de/PC2D/PC2DB/PC2DBA/pc2dba.htm?id=323&ress ort=20 (German)
http://www.twomobile.com/new_032200_y opy.html (obviously they didn't credit the source of the pictures and video footage!)
http://ore illy.linux.com/pub/a/network/2000/05/05/magazine/L inuxPDA.html
http://www.handheldmed.com/code/news /yopi1.htm
http://www.gnn.de/0005/7603.html (German)
http://www.p cwelt.de/content/news/newprodukte/2000/05/xn090500 003.html (German)

http://www.sem.samsung.co.kr/ eng/product/digital/pda/
http://www.gmate.co.kr

http://www.palmtopmagazin.de/board/linux Discussion about Linux-PDAs (German)
http://www.palmtopmagazin.de/news/linux Linux-PDA news (German)
http://www.theyopy.de German Yopy fan site
http://www.handhelds.org Linux-Development for Compaq iPaq
http://www.yopy.org Another Yopy fan site

• 2) This isn't 'hidden', it's linked off the Microsoft Research IPv6 homepage, which in turn is linked off of the Current Research page (Although they want you to register if you go in that way).

RE: I'm not sure what law prevents you from reverse engineering a file format!

UCITA has another indirect consequence that would hamstring free software development in the long term -- it gives proprietary software developers the power to prohibit reverse engineering. This would make it easy for them to establish secret file formats and protocols, which there would be no lawful way for us to figure out.

RE: I'm not sure what law prevents you from reverse engineering a file format!

UCITA has another indirect consequence that would hamstring free software development in the long term -- it gives proprietary software developers the power to prohibit reverse engineering. This would make it easy for them to establish secret file formats and protocols, which there would be no lawful way for us to figure out.

In my extensive experience with Microsoft, since the days before PCs existed and we had the CP/M OS, Microsoft has only answered one question correctly. That was a question about a C compiler problem.

Obviously, part of the reason my friends and I don't get help from Microsoft is that we don't call to ask easy questions. No doubt Microsoft provides help to many of its customers who are novices.

I have called Microsoft technical support about operating system problems many many times, and they have NEVER been able to solve the problems, although once a technical support representative and I worked out a solution together, after 4 difficult hours.

Once about four years ago I talked to a friendly Microsoft technical support representative. He was very knowledgeable. I had a written list of questions about Windows. He was able to give me no answers. He just laughed at some of them and said he wouldn't know how to begin finding the solution. He did, however, provide me with some very useful information concerning problems I wasn't currently having. I remember this representative so clearly because I called expecting the usual Microsoft roughness, and he was friendly.

I liked the article published by the Boston Mac User's Group (BMUG) titled: Microsoft Technical Support vs. The Psychic Friends Network: Which Provides Better Support for Microsoft Products?

Look at the problems mentioned in the BMUG article. They seem to me to have a typical quality to them. To me it seems that many of the most difficult problems with Microsoft products are ones that come from programmers who just don't care about doing a good job.

Neither Microsoft Technical Support nor The Psychic Friends Network were able to answer any of the questions, but the BMUG article says: "... the Psychic Friends Network has a distinct edge over Microsoft in the areas of courtesy, response time, and cost of support ..." I liked this article because it is the only one I've read which exactly mirrors my experience with Microsoft.

I think I would find the BMUG article more humorous if it weren't about such a painful subject.

Microsoft's Flawed Business Model -- The Microsoft business model is extremely flawed because it is heavily influenced by conflict of interest. It is in Microsoft's financial interest NEVER to deliver a good operating system. If they deliver a good operating system, that will be the last operating system most of its customers will buy.

Microsoft is a huge company, much bigger than most of the retail customers they might serve. If you have a problem, chances are they are too large to care.

Microsoft's Abusiveness -- Microsoft has a history of being abusive. The U.S. Justice Department court case pending against Microsoft found that Microsoft was extremely abusive. This document is titled Court's Findings of Fact. What surprised me about the 207 pages of descriptions of abuses was that it didn't mention the abuses that I thought were most important. The U.S. Justice Department mostly focused on Microsoft's mistreatment of large companies. But Microsoft's mistreatment of small users is more destructive, in my opinion.

No one, apparently, has gathered all the abuses in one place. If that were done, we would have an important way to show why Open Source/GNU is better.

Abusiveness is one of the biggest reasons to stay away from Microsoft. Stay away from habitual abusers if you don't want to be abused. Even if Microsoft technical support could answer my questions, I don't like their arrogant manner. I don't want to have to accept abuse to get something I want.

Contrast Microsoft's abusiveness with the friendliness of the Open Source/GNU community. One Sunday about 8 AM, I sent an e-mail message to an important person in the community, requesting information for an article I was writing. I was surprised to get a complete answer less than 3 hours later. It is possible that you have a problem that people in the Open Source/GNU community cannot answer, but they will usually be extemely friendly while they are discussing it.

Closed source software is like sausage. -- Closed source software is like sausage. You don't know what's in it. If you did know what was in it, maybe you wouldn't want it. Has the U.S. government forced Microsoft to put back doors into its software, so that the U.s. can more easily spy? You don't know and you may never know.

Disclaimer Nonsense -- The Microsoft document gives importance to Red Hat's 10-Q disclaimer. But look at Microsoft's disclaimer at the end of the article. It is much more sweeping: MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT. Basically, this disclaimer says that Microsoft does not have to be honest.

Microsoft Windows Encourages Playing. -- A huge problem with Microsoft's operating systems in a retail environment is that there are large numbers of minimum wage workers who like to play with the OS. Sometimes I have arrived to do system maintenance and found that the cursor has become a spider. Sometimes I have found systems that have been re-configured to allow exploits. Microsoft Windows 2000 may have a lot of security features, but it has no defense against someone who knows the passwords. If you know retail environments, you know that there will be times that the passwords are compromised. It is much better to have an OS that does not look familiar and does not invite playing.

Here is a typical scenario. Joe and John are night shift workers at a fast food restaurant. Joe is senior at 23. He makes $8.50 per hour. John is 19 and makes $7.65 per hour. They often find themselves bored when business is slow.

One night they find that the store manager has left his desk open. In his desk they find a list of passwords.

Joe and John have both had computers since the early years of high school. They decide to try to load a game one of them has at home. But Windows 2000 doesn't work well with some games. The game doesn't run, but they leave the system in an unstable state.

Retail hardware is very standard and conservative. -- In a retail environment, you want a fixed solution. You buy the hardware and software, and the two work together as a unit until you buy new hardware and software. Once you make it work, chances are there will be no need for big changes. In a retail environment, you try to buy very standard hardware.

Usually this hardware interacts in a manner that is well behind the frontiers of technology. For example, receipt printers use very standard interfaces. Yes, Microsoft has more drivers, but in a retail environment you won't need to support the latest game.

This is just a short list. -- This is just a very short list of answers to Microsoft's article. I would like to see a comprehensive list. If we can get a team together to write one, I will help.

If I were Red Hat's marketing manager, I would have no trouble selling against Microsoft. Unfortunately, Red Hat does not have a strong marketing department.

Microsoft receives little effective criticism. -- People who write comments on Slashdot often complain about Microsoft. But, since the complaints are usually brief and not well documented, the aggregate result is that Microsoft receives little effective criticism.

Michael Jennings
Futurepower Computer Systems
P.O. Box 14491
Portland, OR 97293-0491
U.S.A.

Tel: (503) 233-7820
Fax: (419) 781-4606

E-Mail: mikejen@hevanet.com
E-Mail: Futurepower@MailAndNews.com
Futurepower is a registered trademark.
Copyright 2001 by Michael Jennings.

The article states that they can't bundle Netscape 6.0. They don't feel the least bit obligated to bundle it, in fact. They also mention that they're open to bundling any browser that has the required capabilities.

Linux Today has a slightly more in depth article that discusses their plans:


http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001- 05 -10-010-20-NW-RH-SW

Open Source Advocate Has Yet To Rebut Craig Mundie

Jeff Parns considers himself a model for free software advocacy: helping out at installfests, answering questions on the Central Kansas Free Unix User's Group mailing list, working in his spare time on a user-friendly graphical interface to cron. Why, then, has he yet to write a long-winded essay rebutting Microsoft exec Craig Mundie's recent remarks about open source?

Our crack interviewing team cornerned Parns in his home, where he was conspicuously not combing through the text of Mundie's remarks, just as he had not been in attendance at NYU's Stern School of Business on May 3 to hear Mundie speak. What justified this weird behavior?

"I really think there are enough rebuttals already, " said Parns. "I mean, have you even read all those things? "

Eric S. Raymond, whose two preemptive rebuttals sparked the craze, was pessimistic about the chances for a Parns rebuttal in the future. "Obviously, we can't force him to write a rebuttal to Mundie's wrong-headed remarks about open source," said Raymond. "However, it's possible that my new paper, 'How I Rebutted Craig Mundie's Wrong-Headed Remarks About Open Source In Copious Detail--And How You Can Too' will give him some ideas. In fact, there's sort of a little form rebuttal in Appendix C which he can sign his name to and get it linked from Linux Today."

"As a full-time programmer, my day is pretty busy," said Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Software Foundation, whose anti-Mundie remarks were picked up by Infoworld. "Yet even I managed to stop by Mundie's speech and make a few remarks to the press. I don't think this Parns is even trying. I mean, even Steve Ballmer published a 3000-word Mundie rebuttal. Sic transit gloria Mundie, I guess."

Even Parns' neighbors have begun to notice this gap in the open source ranks. "The way he helped me with my Red Hat install, I was sure he was some sort of hot-shot free software advocate," said Millie Leman, a local dominatrix and mother of two. "But I haven't heard one word from him about this Mundie thing. It makes a person wonder."

"Look, it's spring, my son's about to graduate from junior high, I'm trying to get KCron to 1.0," said Parns, shooing this reporter out his front door. "Just leave me alone."

Will Parns rebut? Already, rebuttals with his name on them have begun showing up, though he denies authorship. Watch for the rebuttal signed with Parns' Gnu Privacy Guard key, and keep reading Segfault.org for complete coverage of every Mundie rebuttal ever written.

Tomorrow: An in-depth look at the rebuttal that Mark Billings of London saved to ~mark/mundie.txt, but never showed to anybody.

(This 'story' was first shown at Segfault.org here, and was written by Leonard Richardson)

Open Source Advocate Has Yet To Rebut Craig Mundie

Jeff Parns considers himself a model for free software advocacy: helping out at installfests, answering questions on the Central Kansas Free Unix User's Group mailing list, working in his spare time on a user-friendly graphical interface to cron. Why, then, has he yet to write a long-winded essay rebutting Microsoft exec Craig Mundie's recent remarks about open source?

Our crack interviewing team cornerned Parns in his home, where he was conspicuously not combing through the text of Mundie's remarks, just as he had not been in attendance at NYU's Stern School of Business on May 3 to hear Mundie speak. What justified this weird behavior?

"I really think there are enough rebuttals already, " said Parns. "I mean, have you even read all those things? "

Eric S. Raymond, whose two preemptive rebuttals sparked the craze, was pessimistic about the chances for a Parns rebuttal in the future. "Obviously, we can't force him to write a rebuttal to Mundie's wrong-headed remarks about open source," said Raymond. "However, it's possible that my new paper, 'How I Rebutted Craig Mundie's Wrong-Headed Remarks About Open Source In Copious Detail--And How You Can Too' will give him some ideas. In fact, there's sort of a little form rebuttal in Appendix C which he can sign his name to and get it linked from Linux Today."

"As a full-time programmer, my day is pretty busy," said Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Software Foundation, whose anti-Mundie remarks were picked up by Infoworld. "Yet even I managed to stop by Mundie's speech and make a few remarks to the press. I don't think this Parns is even trying. I mean, even Steve Ballmer published a 3000-word Mundie rebuttal. Sic transit gloria Mundie, I guess."

Even Parns' neighbors have begun to notice this gap in the open source ranks. "The way he helped me with my Red Hat install, I was sure he was some sort of hot-shot free software advocate," said Millie Leman, a local dominatrix and mother of two. "But I haven't heard one word from him about this Mundie thing. It makes a person wonder."

"Look, it's spring, my son's about to graduate from junior high, I'm trying to get KCron to 1.0," said Parns, shooing this reporter out his front door. "Just leave me alone."

Will Parns rebut? Already, rebuttals with his name on them have begun showing up, though he denies authorship. Watch for the rebuttal signed with Parns' Gnu Privacy Guard key, and keep reading Segfault.org for complete coverage of every Mundie rebuttal ever written.

Tomorrow: An in-depth look at the rebuttal that Mark Billings of London saved to ~mark/mundie.txt, but never showed to anybody.

(This 'story' was first shown at Segfault.org here, and was written by Leonard Richardson)

Open Source Advocate Has Yet To Rebut Craig Mundie

Jeff Parns considers himself a model for free software advocacy: helping out at installfests, answering questions on the Central Kansas Free Unix User's Group mailing list, working in his spare time on a user-friendly graphical interface to cron. Why, then, has he yet to write a long-winded essay rebutting Microsoft exec Craig Mundie's recent remarks about open source?

Our crack interviewing team cornerned Parns in his home, where he was conspicuously not combing through the text of Mundie's remarks, just as he had not been in attendance at NYU's Stern School of Business on May 3 to hear Mundie speak. What justified this weird behavior?

"I really think there are enough rebuttals already, " said Parns. "I mean, have you even read all those things? "

Eric S. Raymond, whose two preemptive rebuttals sparked the craze, was pessimistic about the chances for a Parns rebuttal in the future. "Obviously, we can't force him to write a rebuttal to Mundie's wrong-headed remarks about open source," said Raymond. "However, it's possible that my new paper, 'How I Rebutted Craig Mundie's Wrong-Headed Remarks About Open Source In Copious Detail--And How You Can Too' will give him some ideas. In fact, there's sort of a little form rebuttal in Appendix C which he can sign his name to and get it linked from Linux Today."

"As a full-time programmer, my day is pretty busy," said Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Software Foundation, whose anti-Mundie remarks were picked up by Infoworld. "Yet even I managed to stop by Mundie's speech and make a few remarks to the press. I don't think this Parns is even trying. I mean, even Steve Ballmer published a 3000-word Mundie rebuttal. Sic transit gloria Mundie, I guess."

Even Parns' neighbors have begun to notice this gap in the open source ranks. "The way he helped me with my Red Hat install, I was sure he was some sort of hot-shot free software advocate," said Millie Leman, a local dominatrix and mother of two. "But I haven't heard one word from him about this Mundie thing. It makes a person wonder."

"Look, it's spring, my son's about to graduate from junior high, I'm trying to get KCron to 1.0," said Parns, shooing this reporter out his front door. "Just leave me alone."

Will Parns rebut? Already, rebuttals with his name on them have begun showing up, though he denies authorship. Watch for the rebuttal signed with Parns' Gnu Privacy Guard key, and keep reading Segfault.org for complete coverage of every Mundie rebuttal ever written.

Tomorrow: An in-depth look at the rebuttal that Mark Billings of London saved to ~mark/mundie.txt, but never showed to anybody.

(This 'story' was first shown at Segfault.org here, and was written by Leonard Richardson)

Open Source Advocate Has Yet To Rebut Craig Mundie

Jeff Parns considers himself a model for free software advocacy: helping out at installfests, answering questions on the Central Kansas Free Unix User's Group mailing list, working in his spare time on a user-friendly graphical interface to cron. Why, then, has he yet to write a long-winded essay rebutting Microsoft exec Craig Mundie's recent remarks about open source?

Our crack interviewing team cornerned Parns in his home, where he was conspicuously not combing through the text of Mundie's remarks, just as he had not been in attendance at NYU's Stern School of Business on May 3 to hear Mundie speak. What justified this weird behavior?

"I really think there are enough rebuttals already, " said Parns. "I mean, have you even read all those things? "

Eric S. Raymond, whose two preemptive rebuttals sparked the craze, was pessimistic about the chances for a Parns rebuttal in the future. "Obviously, we can't force him to write a rebuttal to Mundie's wrong-headed remarks about open source," said Raymond. "However, it's possible that my new paper, 'How I Rebutted Craig Mundie's Wrong-Headed Remarks About Open Source In Copious Detail--And How You Can Too' will give him some ideas. In fact, there's sort of a little form rebuttal in Appendix C which he can sign his name to and get it linked from Linux Today."

"As a full-time programmer, my day is pretty busy," said Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Software Foundation, whose anti-Mundie remarks were picked up by Infoworld. "Yet even I managed to stop by Mundie's speech and make a few remarks to the press. I don't think this Parns is even trying. I mean, even Steve Ballmer published a 3000-word Mundie rebuttal. Sic transit gloria Mundie, I guess."

Even Parns' neighbors have begun to notice this gap in the open source ranks. "The way he helped me with my Red Hat install, I was sure he was some sort of hot-shot free software advocate," said Millie Leman, a local dominatrix and mother of two. "But I haven't heard one word from him about this Mundie thing. It makes a person wonder."

"Look, it's spring, my son's about to graduate from junior high, I'm trying to get KCron to 1.0," said Parns, shooing this reporter out his front door. "Just leave me alone."

Will Parns rebut? Already, rebuttals with his name on them have begun showing up, though he denies authorship. Watch for the rebuttal signed with Parns' Gnu Privacy Guard key, and keep reading Segfault.org for complete coverage of every Mundie rebuttal ever written.

Tomorrow: An in-depth look at the rebuttal that Mark Billings of London saved to ~mark/mundie.txt, but never showed to anybody.

(This 'story' was first shown at Segfault.org here, and was written by Leonard Richardson)

try building one yourself then.

Your link is broken because of the space /. puts in there. Here is the correct one.

18 April of this year the Oregon State Judiciary Committe held a hearing about UCITA (HB 3910) which I attended.

I've published the details elsewhere on the Web. See the PLUG mailing list or here for details.

In a nutshell, corporate users of software came out strongly against this bill, & the sponsor of the bill was nowhere to be seen. Only three people spoke for it -- Ray Nimmer, who helped write the bill, John Woodard an Intel lawyer, & Jim Craven of the Americna Electronics Association -- & they appeared to be going thru the motions.

I would guess that the best the backers of UCITA in Oregon can hope for is that the bill dies in committee, people forget about it, so they can reitnroduce the bill in 2003. But with other corporations aware of this grab at their own profit margins, I doubt it will pass even in then.

Geoff

And ,from the Times, this story. Favorite quote, on the "threat" of the GPL:"an I.B.M. vice president, said, "If we thought this was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as you know, we have a lot of lawyers.""

There's KIllustrator (photo-editing), Konqueror and Mozilla (web browsing, HTML editing etc), and again a good many others.

Oh, and anti-aliased fonts are very very nice, but that's just a bonus of a superior toolkit...

Maureen O'Gara lost all creditability with me when she wrote the article about her interview with the Suse guy.

It was completely lies...

Since then it has been removed from linuxgram but you can still see parts of it and other maureen o'gara articles on linuxtoday.com

http://linuxtoday.com/search.php3?negate=&news_src -range=on&advquery=Maureen+O%27Gara&andorbox=OFF&a dvquery2=

I have not read this slashdot article and I don't plan to. As far as I'm concerned Maureen O'Gara is lying scum and I have no reason to read anything she writes.

Eric S. Raymond has decided to include this event into The Jargon File version 4.3.0. He salutes the RFC fetishists of BLUG and calls them "wonderfully insane hackers", in addition to describing the event as "what may just be the funniest, cleverest hack of the last fifteen years" in a Linux Today article.

The Jargon entry can be found here.

"REDMOND, Wash. -- Oct. 18, 2000 -- Microsoft Corp. today announced income before accounting change of $2.58 billion for the quarter ended Sept. 30, an 18 percent increase over the $2.19 billion reported last year. Revenue totaled $5.80 billion and diluted earnings per share before accounting change were $0.46. Diluted earnings per share for the Sept. 2000 quarter were $0.40 after including the required adoption of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 133 "\

Microsoft's Earnings

Or...

"RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.--March 22, 2001-- Red Hat, Inc., the leader in in developing, deploying and managing open source solutions, today reported revenue of $27 million for the fourth quarter ended February 28, 2001, an increase of 106% versus the $13.1 million reported for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2000 and an increase of 20% over the third quarter of fiscal 2001"
Red Hat
You Decide....

I disagree with this. Students should be taught basic skills that can be applied to any new situation or language. Trying to only teach what is "relevant" is a mistake, because it presumes that we know what will be useful in the future. Martin Vermeer has written a number of convincing reasons why everyone, not just CS majors, should learn unix. He says:

The basics to be taught -- presumably on the secondary school level -- would include: using vi (probably the only modal editor anybody will ever see!), using the command line, file system directory structure, mounting, finding and understanding configuration files, writing simple programs (such as "hello world") in C, shell or perl, regular expressions, basic networking (ping, traceroute etc), ftp, email, usenet, mark-up languages, overview of the way standards are created, e.g., in the Internet Engineering Task Force, and other essentials.

You may notice that these are precisely the "tough" things you will never learn by just clicking around, but which kids will pick up almost in play if made to -- after all, this is nothing but language learning. Few people would ever learn Spanish or Russian if not in school! And some of these skills will be immediately useful, like "regular expressions", that will immediately give a better basic understanding of how to effectively use search engines on the World Wide Web. Or mark-up languages such as HTML/XML, offering a glimpse of a better world in which documents can be freely transferred, without risk of illegibility, to someone using an ever-so slightly different system -- or even to yourself, after a system upgrade.

One argument must immediately be put to sleep: that because Windows is the dominant operating system in the world today, one should teach that and not some esoteric alternative. The answer to this is plain and simple. The task of education is to instill generalist abilities and not the skill of "operating" one product. Someone who has acquired the skill of reading books will easily absorb also comic strips, but the reverse is not true... similarly, someone versed in Unix will feel right at home in many other environments including Windows. And for children, learning Unix is not that hard, as experience has shown, due perhaps to its internal consistency and logic.

For five years, I've read the same articles over and over again. "Linux needs to be simpler to install, and there needs to be more documentation, or it won't survive."

Yet it's still the fastest-growing OS in the world. I don't get it. Have the installs gotten simpler? Well, okay, maybe. Has the documentation gotten better or easier?

Okay, maybe.

But Linux is still going to die! Trust me.

I goofed. the correct link for the forum is here.

LinuxToday has a link to a C|Net article which says the same thing (verbatim).
The discussion in the LinuxToday forum has probably everything that'll be said here.
One item that stuck out was that MS would not be charging for client licenses. As Tim Wasson pointed out, client licenses are a good revenue source, and MS probably cut a deal with Maxtor so that MS could say "Hey, even with Linux/BSD available, major companies are still choosing our software."
Looks like MS has realized (on some level) that they can't get away with their current pricing scheme.