Slashdot Mirror

Slashdot is composed largely of wankers prattling on about things they know nothing about.

BTW, I tried a tunnel to freenet6 (very simple interface) just now, and tested stuff like ipv6.chat.freenode.net, a few random ipv6 sites, and even an FM broadcasting site in mplayer. It all worked, but it was still way laggy as before... non-native (tunneled) ipv6 is just too slow. Other than the geek factor of being on freenode with an ipv6 address, I don't see the point just yet since 99.999% of the internet doesn't even support ipv6, and you have to hunt for sites that even support it (feels like the days of '94 when I used to comb geek magazines for cool sites to visit since there really wasn't much to see on the internet then).

Not just that, but 2.6.16 also broke LVM2 for every distribution that uses the 'stable' lvm2 toolchain. Basically, you can fix your vulnerability, or you can hose your machine every time you try to back up. Good job.

Linus Torvalds likes this one.

He said so.

Looks like the interface has changed already.

Look at Linus's post yesterday and you'll see that in his idea of how it would be used he specifically mentioned blocking.

He does read slashdot, as proven by this:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/4/21/247

"I also claim that Slashdot people usually are smelly and eat their boogers, and have an IQ slightly lower than my daughters pet hamster"

So there, it's official.

He did add though "And don't get me wrong - I follow slashdot too, exactly because it's fun to see people argue. I'm not complaining ;]" Hey, if it adds a little glitter in our beige lives, I'm all for it. (now that's insightful)

It is official -- Netcraft confirms: FSF is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered FSF community when IDC confirmed that the FSF's mindshare has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all computer users. Coming on the heels of a recent announcement from Linus Torvalds, which plainly states that the Linux kernel will NOT be moving to GPLv3, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The FSF is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by founder Richard Stallman's hairstyle and rambling GNU/Everything Communist anti-developers'-rights "I'm-right-and-you're-stupid" commentary.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict the FSF's future. The hand writing is on the wall: the FSF faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for the FSF because the FSF is dying. Things are looking very bad for the FSF. As many of us are already aware, the FSF continues to lose mindshare. In a recent poll on Slashdot, 97% of computer users preferred Microsoft to the FSF in terms of both ideals and the quality of their flagship products.

The GNU operating system is the most endangered of all the FSF's projects, having lost 93% of its core developers. Unable to convince users to use GNU's own "Hurd" kernel, the FSF has made several desperate attempts to capture mindshare by riding Linux's coattails. The aforementioned sudden (although not unexpected) denouncement of the GPLv3 by Linus Torvalds only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt, the FSF is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

FSF founder RMS states that there are almost 7000 remaining GNU users. How many of those use Emacs? Let's see. Consider the bell-shaped curve of an IQ distribution graph. At best, Emacs users universally score two standard deviations below the mean, which means that they make up approximately 2% of any given sample. Therefore, there are 140 Emacs users left in the world. A recent article showed that GCC usage is declining among truly free operating systems in favor of ICC or even SDCC. There's GNU and Emacs, what else does the FSF produce aside from hot air?

Due to the troubles of the GNU operating system, abysmal adoption rates and so on, the GNU folks gave up on improving their code and instead began to concentrate on marketing their beta-quality OS. Theirs is just another unfinished open source project with a poorly designed interface and a lot of ideological baggage. It's no wonder that more and more businesses are turning to Microsoft.

All major surveys show that the FSF has steadily declined in mindshare. The FSF is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If the FSF is to survive at all it will be among juvenile political dilettante dabblers. The FSF continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. People just don't want to hear their message anymore. For all practical purposes, the FSF is dead.

Fact: The FSF is dying

Before when ? He though they were "a major pain in the ass, and always horribly buggy" back in 2003. If he ever changed his mind, it certainly wasn't recently. I'd think the first day he came across a binary module he didn't like them (probably back around 1998, IIRC when binary modules first appeared), because he didn't have access to the code to fix bugs if he encountered them.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/4/24/19

The issue of private keys, DRM, code signing and the effect of GPL V3 has been in discussion for a long time. Linus has said he might in some circumstances sign binaries, in which case you would need the private key to regenerate the signed binary.

"And since I can imaging [sic] signing binaries myself, I don't feel that I can
disallow anybody else doing so."
Linus Torvalds, LKML April 2003

The guy that started the topic is the same !#@&% guy that offered to relicense the linux kernel for some $50,000 not some time ago.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/20/226

http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/23/186

The guy that started the topic is the same !#@&% guy that offered to relicense the linux kernel for some $50,000 not some time ago.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/20/226

http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/23/186

And even if it could, it doesn't neccesarily means that GPL v3 would be useful for the kernel. Let me quote a mail from Linus on the matter from a couple of hours ago:


> This means that when the code went GPL v1 -> GPL v2, the transition was
> permissible. Linux v1.0 shipped with the GPL v2. It did not ship with a
> separate clause specifying that "You may only use *this* version of the GPL"
> as it now does. (I haven't done any research to find out when this clause was
> added, but it was after the transition to v2).

Bzzt. Look closer.

The Linux kernel has _always_ been under the GPL v2. Nothing else has ever
been valid.

The "version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version"
language in the GPL copying file is not - and has never been - part of the
actual License itself. It's part of the _explanatory_ text that talks
about how to apply the license to your program, and it says that _if_ you
want to accept any later versions of the GPL, you can state so in your
source code.
The Linux kernel has never stated that in general. Some authors have
chosen to use the suggested FSF boilerplate (including the "any later
version" language), but the kernel in general never has.

In other words: the _default_ license strategy is always just the
particular version of the GPL that accompanies a project. If you want to
license a program under _any_ later version of the GPL, you have to state
so explicitly. Linux never did.

So: the extra blurb at the top of the COPYING file in the kernel source
tree was added not to _change_ the license, but to _clarify_ these points
so that there wouldn't be any confusion.

The Linux kernel is under the GPL version 2. Not anything else. Some
individual files are licenceable under v3, but not the kernel in general.

And quite frankly, I don't see that changing. I think it's insane to
require people to make their private signing keys available, for example.
I wouldn't do it. So I don't think the GPL v3 conversion is going to
happen for the kernel, since I personally don't want to convert any of my
code.

> If a migration to v3 were to occur, the only potential hairball I see is if
> someone objected on the grounds that they contributed code to a version of the
> kernel Linus had marked as "GPLv2 Only". IANAL.

No. You think "v2 or later" is the default. It's not. The _default_ is to
not allow conversion.

Conversion isn't going to happen.

                Linus

Jeff Garzik posted on LKML on January the 5th a lengthy article about the state of linux Wireless. See here.
John W. Linville claimed the responsibility for Wireless support in the kernel. The archive of the LKML thread is available here.
Hopefully is this going to improve things...

Curious - but why is this a problem?

The issue stems from the fact that the microcontroller for the wireless chip must be matched to the driver version. The firmware is considered part of the hardware and should not be scrutinized in the same way, as say the nVidia or ATI drivers. The design of the hardware does not allow for a flash or ROM of this firmware.

The firmware is redistributable and can be included in distributions, so it's not bad for the users.

One could write drivers for the firmware based on the open source drivers developed by Intel - unlike ATI or nVidia which does not openly provide documentation for their hardware.

Just my $ 0.02

I mean, okay, in theory it's off-topic to talk about something that isn't the article; but where else on Slashdot would one talk about Slashdot? All that really exists here is random articles and people commenting about them (yeah, yeah, there's diaries, but that's hardly where most of the talking goes on, and saying that people can complain there is like saying they can protest anywhere they want as long as it's in a designated protest area).

Take a wider view here. Slashdot has alot to say about Linux, really, all the time, and arguably Linus is the most important single person in that area. So mentioning something that he says about Slashdot itself is almost more on topic than a story could even be!

For the record, the page where he describes /. as a "big public wanking session" is here, interesting at least as context and certainly as far as seeing what The Big Guy In Open Source has to say about, well, what everyone is talking about in this thread.

Of course, go ahead and ignore what I say, since I guess (finally re-checking the RSS feed) that I was too late in writing this, and that there already is http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/10/144024 0&from=rss>a better story in which to post this stuff, but I figured I should post here since I was replying to the parent anyways. And screw it if it's off topic, he does reference an interesting post by Linus, and personally I'm quite okay with "off-topic" if it also means "nonetheless very interesting"! (But I have to say, CmdrTaco's post is somewhat convincing).

Everyone knows where to find the news they're interested in, and blogs are only read by people who blog themselves, i.e. a *very small* percentage of internet users. Noone else finds blogs important; bloggers hyping blogging is just one big circle jerk.

Let the giant slashdot FOSS wanking session begin!

</Obligatory Linus Torvalds Reference>

I'm not wrong at all.

Linus calling Slashdot a "public wanking session" on the LKML:

"Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own 'insightful' comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not."

Yeah, Linus has an account. So do a lot of other people who now despise this place.

If Linus talks down to other developers that contribute to Linux in such a primitive way, he shouldn't complain about Slashdot, as he did here: http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95. Quote:

        Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not.

Congratulations! We have a winner! The 3rd Annual Slashdot unintentional irony award goes to titwurstman!

He beat all comers this year due to his use of a quote suggesting that people on Slashdot comment on things they know nothing about, to support his Slashdot comment on something he knows nothing about!

The Slashdot editors have now permanently closed the competition, as it is widely agreed that nobody will ever top this year's winner!

If Linus talks down to other developers that contribute to Linux in such a primitive way, he shouldn't complain about Slashdot, as he did here: http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95.

Well said, fellow slashdot user teewurstmann of id 755953! With that post, you certainly took Linus Torvalds to task for daring to belittle the collective intelligentsia that is SLASHDOT! As a mere senior kernel developer, founder of the Linux kernel project and leader of the mainline kernel development process certainly he needs to be shown his place by our community of insightful commentators. From mom's basement I stab at thee!

Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not.

This is like not being allowed to put a custom engine in your car unless it's approved by your auto maker according to their standards.

http://lkml.org/lkml/1999/2/8/13

Linus's frank point is that having to support binary drivers ties his hands.

I can argue till I'm blue in the face that it's all about ideology, because it is for me and those crazy "wackos" who wrote the GPL, and push the F/OSS community towards Freedom.

Many consumers of Linux just care about the free as in beer, and not about the Free as in speech. I personally find that sad.

In article ,
H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>
>* Linus Torvalds has no interest whatsoever in developing such a
> plug-in ABI. Someone else is welcome to do it.

No, it's even more than that.

I _refuse_ to even consider tying my hands over some binary-only module.

Hannu Savolainen tried to add some layering to make the sound modules
more "portable" among Linux kernel versions, and I disliked it for two
reasons:

  - extra layers decrease readability, and sometimes make for performance
      problems. The readability thing is actually the larger beef I had
      with this: I just don't want to see drivers start using some strange
      wrapper format that has absolutely nothing to do with how they work.

  - I _want_ people to expect that interfaces change. I _want_ people to
      know that binary-only modules cannot be used from release to release.
      I want people to be really really REALLY aware of the fact that when
      they use a binary-only module, they tie their hands.

Note that the second point is mainly psychological, but it's by far the
most important one.

Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules,
it's THEIR problem. I want people to know that in their bones, and I
want it shouted out from the rooftops. I want people to wake up in a
cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules.

Why? Because I'm a prick, and I want people to suffer? No.

Because I _know_ that I will eventually make changes that break modules.
And I want people to expect them, and I never EVER want to see an email
in my mailbox that says "Damn you, Linus, I used this binary module for
over two years, and it worked perfectly across 150 kernel releases, and
Linux-5.6.71 broke it, and you had better fix your kernel".

See?

I refuse to be at the mercy of any binary-only module. And that's why I
refuse to care about them - not because of any really technical reasons,
not because I'm a callous bastard, but because I refuse to tie my hands
behind my back and hear somebody say "Bend Over, Boy, Because You Have
It Coming To You".

I allow binary-only modules, but I want people to know that they are
_only_ ever expected to work on the one version of the kernel that they
were compiled for. Anything else is just a very nice unexpected bonus if
it happens to work.

And THAT, my friend, is why when somebody complains about AFS, I tell
them to go screw themselves, and not come complaining to me but complain
to the AFS buys and girls. And why I'm not very interested in changing
that.

I've never been talking out of my butt. These are the real positions held by the people in charge of this stuff. To argue that my ideas are stupid, are to argue their ideas are stupid.

I think Linus makes a good case here why he doesn't want binary drivers, and in many ways, Linux is his kernel, and if you don't like it that way, then you're free to develop Samrobbix... You can even start from Linux, he won't mind.

Because I _know_ that I will eventually make changes that break modules. And I want people to expect them, and I never EVER want to see an email
in my mailbox that says "Damn you, Linus, I used this binary module for over two years, and it worked perfectly across 150 kernel releases, and Linux-5.6.71 broke it, and you had better fix your kernel".

You'll gladly start mocking Linus? Looks like he beat you to the punch... http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95

The question isn't should it, but why isn't it already?

Castle Technology the owners of RiscOS are the company that were caught violating the GPL by including Linux Kernel source in....wait for it.....RiscOS!

http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/2/7/55
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/07/ 2225224&tid=117&tid=106
http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact556.html
http://www.iconbar.com/Castle_break_GPL/news295.ht ml

How are they still selling this without having released the source?
Is this a case that proves that the GPL really has no teeth?

"Is this how he wants it used?"
He also said we are all wankers on /.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95

Linus calls Slashdot a "big public wanking session".

Linus calls Slashdot a big public wanking session on the kernel mailing list.

If you call your distro "Swaziland Linux", you need to buy a license.

As I understand it, that is not quite right. If you want to call your distro "Swaziland Linux" _AND_ you want to register "Swaziland Linux" as a trademark itself, then you have to licence the "Linux" part.

If you don't care about trademark protection then you don't have to pay.

At least, thats what Torvalds seems to be saying about the Linux trademark here

Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not.

" the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not."

- Linus Torvalds, 20 Aug 2005

http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95

To prevent more FUD being spread, please read

http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95

If you want linux support, you do _not_ want Nvidiot, they only have binary drivers and nvidia has never shared any documentation with open source developers.

The best card to use if you run an open source system(*BSD, Linix, Plan 9, ...) is Radeon 9200, which was the last card for which ATI released any docs.

Nvidia used to make good hardware, this days they only make junk and they refuse to release any docs for it, latest news is that Nforce4 SATA controller will _never_ be supported in Linux, not even thru binary drivers, and all we get is a promise that "in the future they will try to do better":

http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/10/169

If you care for Linux and Open Source, never buy Nvidia.

Also consider the size of their contributions to those projects and how important stuff like OpenOffice.org is. Then you have Sun's history of supporting open standards and publishing a lot of their research like their Sparc cpu which allowed others to build sparc cpu's and systems (while IBM was trying to close off their pc architecture with things like MBus to prevent OEMs), their work with xml including sponsoring the working group that created it, publishing reasearch like on The Slab Allocator which was used in Linux, even OpenSolaris has been helpful to Linux Kernel developers, and there's more I don't have the time or energy to search for.

I think you hit the nail on the head.

Looks like it started on day one

" Yes, Linux is such a "mess" that Sun have been _forced_ to copy it !" Actually, it looks like the reverse is already starting to happen. And in the past the linux kernel guys were able to get info from solaris and solaris engineers. here Some comments are negative some are positive but Solaris is mentioned the most by far out of any of the commercial Unixes. I can't find the link right now but I remember someone saying that back in the day Sun was a lot more open with it's technology. Sun engineers would publish info about their hardware and software. Especially when someone was having some sort of trouble. Then they got a little more closed down. Probably when they were making a ton of money. Sounds like Scott McNealy recognizes that and wants Sun to go back to being more open.

They already have.
One of the more interesting posts: http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/5/13/218
Arnd Bergmann works for IBM, btw.

Already done! Linux supports Cell processor since May 13.

The kernel developers don't seem to agree on the right way to fix this, whether at the kernel level or in userspace. However, it may affect the performance of the kernel if it's done in kernelspace, and it is impractical to have everyone rewrite their userland software, as someone else pointed out. The "patch" which is available for FreeBSD to fix this problem only disables hyperthreading and does not provide a real fix.

The kernel developers don't seem to agree on the right way to fix this, whether at the kernel level or in userspace. However, it may affect the performance of the kernel if it's done in kernelspace, and it is impractical to have everyone rewrite their userland software, as someone else pointed out. The "patch" which is available for FreeBSD to fix this problem only disables hyperthreading and does not provide a real fix.

The kernel developers don't seem to agree on the right way to fix this, whether at the kernel level or in userspace. However, it may affect the performance of the kernel if it's done in kernelspace, and it is impractical to have everyone rewrite their userland software, as someone else pointed out. The "patch" which is available for FreeBSD to fix this problem only disables hyperthreading and does not provide a real fix.

Date Tue, 22 Feb 2005 08:13:44 +0100
From Jens Axboe <>
Subject Re: [PATCH] scsi/sata write barrier support

On Mon, Feb 21 2005, Greg Stark wrote:
>
> Jens Axboe <axboe@suse.de> writes:
>
> > For the longest time, only the old PATA drivers supported barrier writes
> > with journalled file systems.
>
> What about for fsync(2)? One of the most frequent sources of data loss on the
> postgres mailing list has to do with users with IDE drives where fsync returns
> even though the data hasn't actually reached the disk. A power outage can
> cause lost data or a corrupted database.
>
> Is there any progress getting fsync to use this new infrastructure so it can
> actually satisfy its contract?

fsync has been working all along, since the initial barrier support for
ide. only ext3 and reiserfs support it.

Any pointers to better keyphrases and/or the patches in question? Thanks.

Let's see what Alan Cox had to say about the 2.6 Kernel Development cycle.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/1/3/216 After 2.6.9-ac its clear that the long 2.6.9 process worked very badly. While 2.6.10 is looking much better its long period meant the allegedly "official" base kernel was a complete pile of insecure donkey turd for months. That doesn't hurt most vendor users but it does hurt those trying to do stuff on the base kernels very badly.

Alan

Thankfully, there are better alternatives to the insecure donkey turd that is Linux.

I believe darcs ended up being slower than arch on a tree the size of the kernel. See LKML SCM thread and reply messages for some concerns about darcs.

Kernel SCM saga...

Hmm, I think I'll go with Linus on this. He says

In fact, one impact BK ha shad is to very fundamentally make us (and me in particular) change how we do things. That ranges from the fine-grained changeset tracking to just how I ended up trusting submaintainers with much bigger things, and not having to work on a patch-by-patch basis any more. So the three years with BK are definitely not wasted: I'm convinced it caused us to do things in better ways, and one of the things I'm looking at is to make sure that those things continue to work. So I just wanted to say that I'm personally very happy with BK, and with Larry. It didn't work out, but it sure as hell made a big difference to kernel development. And we'll work out the temporary problem of having to figure out a set of tools to allow us to continue to do the things that BK allowed us to do.

The cost [to transition to a new source management system] will not be minute, I assure you. Yes, it *might* have been worthwile, but I have problems with this 'might' because it is largely based on speculation. If it really is all that much beneficial, he (Linus) would obviuosly chose another technological superior, yet proprietary system. I doubt that he will, however. Well, we'll see.

God, this is funny. First, no, the "might" is not based on speculation, it is based on the direct testimony of Linus Torvalds (which I quoted above). You are going to need some strong evidence so convince me or any other rational person that Linus is wrong on this.
And for one so concerned with speculation, you might want to take note that you have no idea what the transition cost will be. It likely won't be insignificant, but source management isn't a huge part of a programmers day (except for Linus and a few others), so it isn't like switching to a new operating system or anything. But we really won't know at all until Linus decides on an alternative.
And your logic is seriously, fatally flawed in the last two lines I quoted from you. First, you falsely assume that the best technological choice must be proprietary. The technologically superior system this time might be open source. Second, and even worse, you assert that if choosing a proprietary system was a good decision this time, than it has to be a good decision this time. This is foolish. The largest benefit in choosing a proprietary system last time was the structural changes it made to the development process. According to Linus, it made them much more productive and it is very unlikely that *any* source management system, whether proprietary or not, will be able to produce a similar gain in efficiency. What Linus chooses this time in no way affects whether what he chose last time was the right decision.

Yes, but then again, I would have been surprised if Linus would have said something else, because after all, he was the dude that made the decision, despite opposition, and he stuck to it for 3 years. If he really thinks it was worth the trouble, he will chose another proprietary system which is technically superior. I do not think he will, hence, there can be some doubt about how beneficial it all has been.

Stop impugning Linus' objectivity unless you have some evidence that can demonstrate his bias. Otherwise, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. And again you make your false assertion. What Linus chooses going forward proves nothing.

Linus says Linus will change, moron!
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/4/6/121