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I know I'm going to get slapped with troll, but I am seriously "what did i miss?"

Anyone else notice that Star Office's Menus and Toolbars are strikingly close to MS Office 2003? Down to the names and order of icon placement in the toolbars. http://www.newsforge.com/blob.pl?id=a2c2239ed1854a a07adc092f578f95a3

I think the anti-ms crowd is intellectually dishonest not to point this out. If/whenever MS pulls something like that you guys scream from the roof tops. Why is it different when its done to MS? Is your argument principled or not? Or is it simply anything but MS? If that is the case, your stance takes us down a more dangerous road than only MS.

I know someone is going to scream its not the case. For those people, click on the above link and open Word 2k3. But if that's not enough then how about this for example; What happens if/when StarOffice 9.0 gets rid of the File menus and goes to the ribbon design model that MS is using with the next Office? Will that be acceptable too? I mean, I guess copying is the nicest form of flattery, but... well. go head, I'm bracing for the modding.

Each new version of StarOffice seems to have more dependencies on Sun's Java. This is not good for OpenOffice.

It's not Java, per se, that's the problem. It's the dependency of open source software on closed source software, the evil that Stallman always warns about. You don't want someone to be in a position where they can cut off your air supply.

The Linux kernel has not been quirky for me.Perhaps you should file a bug report, if you haven't already. FreeBSD 5.3 supposedly has stability problems of its own.

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/14/1 518217

Also according to Coverity source code analysis tools, Linux has less bugs detected per lines of code than FreeBSD. Ofcourse, this cannot detect every kind of bug, but it cannot be argued by a logical person that because FreeBSD has more bugs per lines of code, it is actually more stable.

http://www.coverity.com/news/news_06_27_05_story_9 .html

Shameless plug to my own collection: OOo is specifically mentioned here and here

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

I'm sure I remember a LUGRadio interview with someone from Xiph who said that DirectX (or was it Xbox Live, or both?) uses the Speex codec to compress voice data for in-game chat.

Oh, here we go: Halo 2 and Xbox Live use Ogg codecs.

Perhaps you need to pick up a dictionary and look up the term "DUPLICATE". You might be amazed at what you find. Sure, there has been alot of coverage on /. of Zeta, but no duplicates of this story. You posted articles with links to OSNews and NewsForge. The current Slashdot posting is linked to Mad Penguin. See what I'm getting at here? If you RTFA on any of them you'd know enough to realize none of them are dupes of the others. Enough said.

All to many posters are turning this /. posting into an open source v. m$ thing and thus evangelistically defending Firefox and condemning the original post and the article it refers to. How about considering Firefox in comparison to other open source browsers such as KDE Konqueror or the Mozilla browser. KDE Konqueror seems to be the best of the bunch

Also many of the replies to the original post have the earmark of the firefox and Mozilla crowd, which is to vehemently attack anyone or any magazine that criticizes Firefox or Mozilla. There are lots of problems with Firefox. And killing the messenger that points out the problems is not going to get the Firefox problems fixed.

Firefox is just another Mozilla browser. It has the same problems that Mozilla has and more. "When the Mozilla project started, it immediately became the number one poster child for Open Source software development. Now its luster is tarnished to the point where closed source advocates point to Mozilla as an example of how Open Source cannot compete one-on-one with proprietary software, in this case with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Is this true? Or was Mozilla's development process, not the fact that it was Open Source, to blame for its problems?" (Learning from Mozilla's mistakes )

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

No one has mentioned Loki because Loki went out of business three years ago, taking with them the meager royalty payments to a bunch of game companies (including mine) and hosing a whole bunch of employees. I'd like to tell you what I really think of the people who ran Loki (as opposed to the employees, who were by and large fantastic), but the guy has a tendency to sue people who say things he doesn't like. Loki was a special case of the general rule of porting Windows software to Linux: you won't make as much as you spend porting it.

The free version of what was formerly Tux Racer is now Planet Penguin Racer.
See this Newsforge article for more information.

Those terms relating to auditing have been in there for over a year, if you have Flash installed (and kept up to date) you've probably already agreed to auditing your use of the software and covering macromedia's costs.

Newsforge article from a year ago
http://business.newsforge.com/business/04/06/04/16 43234.shtml

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

There was a recent article on newsforge about a new indie music store, that is similiar to iTunes.

http://business.newsforge.com/business/05/07/28/19 4238.shtml?tid=33&tid=113&tid=132

Is there any evidence that Linus requested this.

The Linux Mark Institute? Yes, he approved. See Linux Mark Institute: Protecting the Linux trademark (written by Jon "maddog" Hall in 2002) and a more recent comment by the same author.

Of course it is a bit strange to release some piece of software, tell everyone it's free, and then register a trademark with the name of the software and try to enforce it. Surely this was done with good intent, but it really hurts projects like Debian, which would have to buy trademark licenses for Linux, Mozilla, Bacula, and God knows what.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

"Linux is used for 100 percent of the work involved in the development of new processors at Intel, Fisher stated." (http://www.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=05/07/21/07 30239)

The Macintels are developed on Linux ;-)

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Posted by Hisham on 23:11 Saturday 23 July 2005
from the penguins-for-brains dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Linux technology drives a new fully-autonomous vehicle developed for a major U.S. competition. From the article: 'While enterprise and desktop discussions grab headlines, Linux is quietly infiltrating into much more mundane applications -- such as running the on-board computers of the University of Central Florida's entry for the DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous, unmanned vehicle competition. Prof. Kien Hua of the College of Engineering and Computer Science heads up the UCF program as team leader.'"

(Straight from the Bizarro World, where /. is still a Linux-oriented website.)

After the FSF call for volunteers, GNU Java compiler / VM has come of age. It was reported here, too. RedHat Fedora Core 4 even includes a native version (doesn't depend on JVM, but runs as a "normal" binary) of Eclipse, compiled with GCJ.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Here's an article about it I found. An excerpt:

Can I use my Office macros in OOo?

Unfortunately, OpenOffice.org uses a different version of Basic than Microsoft Office, so macros created in Office won't work in OOo. At this time, no mechanism exists for converting Office macros to OOo macros. There's some discussion of creating one, but due to the complexity of the task, it's not likely to happen any time soon.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Windows rapidly approaching desktop usability

Steady on there; there may be hope for Linuxfund yet.
This newsforge report on LInuxfund,
which I found via Linux Weekly News,
appears to be the most up-to-date report on the project.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

I will take you at your word that you are a decent guy and that your query was genuine. Can I dislike Microsoft while still liking individuals who work there or who work with their products? Sure. Just as I can criticize the actions of the government while being good friends with my neighbor Joe Civic Servant down the street. We are all familiar with how groups of decent individuals can come together in an organization that then causes them to act in ways that perpetuate the organization, even if those ways wind up being bad.

Has Microsoft changed? I don't see much of a change. Their attack on Linux hasn't gained much traction, so in recent months and years they have occasionally tried the carrot instead of the stick and said nice things about Open Source and Free Software. But since the GPL is antithetical to their business model, it seems to be just words. Their actions continue to show that they have not changed.

I spent 15 minutes with Google to come up with some recent relevant examples that show their current attitude. Is every story below accurate? Maybe not. But when there's that much smoke...

Ballmer: Linux violates patents; use it and you will be sued by somebody

MS Office XML Format licence is incompatible with the GPL

HP Memo: "Microsoft will soon be launching a patent-based legal offensive against Linux"

Microsoft using the WTO as a proxy to fight free software

Microsoft's antitrust offering 'blocks Samba'

Microsoft's New Monopoly

Microsoft remains unrepentant, says antitrust judge

Rivals Say Microsoft Flouts Antitrust Settlement

I will take you at your word that you are a decent guy and that your query was genuine. Can I dislike Microsoft while still liking individuals who work there or who work with their products? Sure. Just as I can criticize the actions of the government while being good friends with my neighbor Joe Civic Servant down the street. We are all familiar with how groups of decent individuals can come together in an organization that then causes them to act in ways that perpetuate the organization, even if those ways wind up being bad.

Has Microsoft changed? I don't see much of a change. Their attack on Linux hasn't gained much traction, so in recent months and years they have occasionally tried the carrot instead of the stick and said nice things about Open Source and Free Software. But since the GPL is antithetical to their business model, it seems to be just words. Their actions continue to show that they have not changed.

I spent 15 minutes with Google to come up with some recent relevant examples that show their current attitude. Is every story below accurate? Maybe not. But when there's that much smoke...

Ballmer: Linux violates patents; use it and you will be sued by somebody

MS Office XML Format licence is incompatible with the GPL

HP Memo: "Microsoft will soon be launching a patent-based legal offensive against Linux"

Microsoft using the WTO as a proxy to fight free software

Microsoft's antitrust offering 'blocks Samba'

Microsoft's New Monopoly

Microsoft remains unrepentant, says antitrust judge

Rivals Say Microsoft Flouts Antitrust Settlement

What about the other side? http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/05/18/20 33216

Btw, GP is a blatantly obvious troll, i don't get how moderators can't see that. The "nothing works on linux" and "i returned to windows $someversion after $while" are dead giveaways.

There is another distro more "political" than Debian. It's Ututo-e. Is the only one sponsored by FSF. Acording to RMS, Debian is not kasher enought for him.
Here is a review.

Given that Sun Microsystems is a large part of the "OSS community" (see the "share" marketing campaign going on atm), that you accuse of pissing off Sun, you make it sound as if that they have done a lot of bad things to themselves. Have they, really? I'd find that odd.

Hardly. Sun has attempted to *enter* the OSS community time and time again, but they are consistently rebuffed and have to work on their own. They are even persecuted for their kindness! In general, IBM has done far less, but they get a free ride. Why is that?

Yes, I've looked at the new JRL, and unfortunately it's not as simple as the FAQs say. See http://www.mail-archive.com/classpath@gnu.org/msg0 9825.html for details.

Yes, I've seen your analysis. I find it overly critical, but I'm afraid I can do nothing to change that. Sun could probably sue you for hundreds of little infractions that the law may or may provide them with relief for. But they don't, because they are attempting to play nice. Sun may not have the motto, "do no evil", but their actions generally speak to it.

For how bad things can go with Sun and open source projects not paying respect to Sun's licenses, see Lutris' Enhydra (open source application server from a few years ago, killed by its authors because of alleged SCSL violations),

As I remember the situation, Sun never threatened legal action. Rather, Enhydra felt that they needed the Java Logo, and was going through the long process of obtaining the logo. Nor did that kill Enhydra. After the release of J2EE, lack of interest in their existing platform managed that. (Anyone remember ExoOffice?)

JBoss (open source application server, had to fork over a certain, large amount of dollars to reach license peace with Sun)

Sun made the TCK available to OSS projects, but JBoss is a commercial entity. In any case, things were always complicated there. (Never did get the full story behind why Rickard left.)

On a side note, I plan to work with Sun's legal to see if their standard tainting clause could not be clarified, eventually, but don't count on it: I don't write Sun's licenses, Sun does.

That's good news. :-)

Regarding missing documentation, well here is one for you: javax.swing.text.html.HTMLEditorKit: can you tell which HTML 4.0 tags are supported and which are not supported, precisely, from the API specification alone? :)

No, but I would take one of two tacks:

1. Just support common tags and hope you're compatible enough. (This isn't as bad of an option as it may seem at first. Even if you get a few details wrong, bug reports will help you sort things out later.)

2. Test the existing Java binaries for what they are and are not compatible for.

NewsForge link is currently running an article on Ukraine taking a similar path, although based on a slightly different motivation.. 90% av all computers run pirated software. And in an effort to become acceptable for the European Union, introducing legal computer systems will be far to expensive with proprietary software. Still it remains to see if Ukraine is making a serious step towards open source and more important open standards, or just using it to negotiate "low" prices on Microsoft products

Linux's code is much newer [than BSD] and it keeps constantly being re-factored [...] but stability is suffering [in relation to BSD]

We can change interfaces as we want to. We can move quickly [in relation to Linux]. Sometimes changes are even made which break previous executables [IE: sacrifice stability for flexibility, AKA re-factoring]

Link is already dead..

- Newsforge

- ADDICT3D

Linspire, Inc. and TransGaming Technologies today announced the release of Cedega for the Linspire desktop Linux operating system, allowing Linspire users to play hundreds of popular Windows-format games right out of the box. TransGaming's innovative Cedega portability technology, combined with the Point2Play graphical front end, offers equivalent game-play experience and performance, making it possible for avid Linux gamers to play titles like Half-Life 2, World of WarCraft and Battlefield 1942 on their machines. The product, which can be downloaded and installed through Linspire's CNR (click and run) software library for $44.95 USD, includes one year of access to Cedega plus regular software updates and membership to TransGaming. For more information or to purchase Cedega for Linspire, please visit www.linspire.com/Cedega.

When we find that a change must be made to the system (security or otherwise) we can therefore force such a change into the system by changing it all the way from userland through the libraries down to the kernel. We can change interfaces as we want to. We can move quickly. Sometimes changes are even made which break previous executables; but if we need to, we can choose to make such decisions.

This gives us great flexibility to move forward fast. If something is designed wrong, and the fix depends on changes in more than just the kernel, we can fix it by. We change all the required pieces in the right places. We don't need hacks in the wrong place to fix a problem.

-- Theo de Raadt

Linux's code is much newer and it keeps constantly being re-factored. This has the nice side effect of keeping the code simple and readable (at the base system layers such as VM and FS), but stability is suffering.

-- Christos Zoulas

Exactly, just like OOo and Azereus... they all pretty cleanly integrate into the OS, and users don't seem to have much problems installing it - so what's all the fuzz about ? You just need to make sure you have a good installer application, but hey, you should have that as a requirement anyway...

Saudi Arabia's government uses Linux, some say that is shameful and shouldn't be encouraged. I think it's good to know that free software doesn't discriminate against anyone.

Also, I don't think there is any point in blaming the corporations for enabling these opressive governments either. Corporations aren't beholden to anyone but their shareholders. We give them their power, and don't govern their morality.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

How much quicker could we have had NeoOffice on MacOS if it were written in an easily-ported language like Java?

The name calling that goes on in the software world comes from both sides. I try to stay out of it as much as possible. I admit that sometimes I too fall victim to the hysteria. I also try to take Theo's comments lightly. He believes what he does (and very strongly it seems). There is a very interesting interview on Newsforge with Theo de Raadt, and Christos Zoulas. You contrast the answers given by Theo against those of Christos, and its pretty humorous. I find it strange how Theo talks about OpenBSD's 'flexibility to move forward fast', compared with Christos comment 'Linux's code is much newer and it keeps constantly being re-factored'. They're both talking about BSD. The lesson for me is, name calling doesn't help to gain respect whatsoever, and that even when we believe something as a matter of principle it always helps to try and really understand the other perspective to make sure we aren't fooling ourselves.

I don't think its fair to say that the relationship of Open Source to Unix, is entirely one of Linux/FreeSoftware/OpenSource inheriting ideas and concepts from proprietary Unix. The Free and Open movements have their roots in that world too. There was a time before the era of Microsoft, where proprietary software as we know it today was somewhat of a fringe thing. There was a lot of code transfer both ways as was made evident during the USL lawsuit as well. If it helps any, props to AT&T, and everyone else involved. It was a very open environment that Unix evolved in, and the Free Software movement thanks you for the great idea. Now watch as we take it to a whole other level.

"It sounds like you're doing more integration rather than innovation and I don't mean that in a bad way."

What attracts me to Unix is the way we piece small bits of software together in creative ways to acheive some goal, that's a lot of fun. Maybe it doesn't fit some definitions of innovation, but it certainly does fit mine. I love to code too, the fact that I can make a living doing it I am very greatful for, but I would be doing it anyway. That's where innovation comes from in the free software world. It's the same reason musicians write music, even though most of them do it for very little money. And especially these days, I find a lot of great music in the Indie scene, the commercial stuff is very same old, same old.

"Who is going to do the boring work that comes with software development?"

Whoever needs the boring work done. That's the beauty of it, if it's really helpful it happens. Otherwise it doesn't. Software development doesn't require a huge ammount of R&D, because it evolves in an open environment. When a need arrises someone fills it, or finds a way around it.

"PBS wouldn't be around without gov't funding as well as corporate and private donations."

PBS takes a lot of money to operate though. Software development doesn't today, its the 1,000,000 monkeys effect that the Internet provides for. (I'm willing to portray myself as a monkey for the sake of the argument, I have big ears too if it helps the imagery ;) There is a lot of money to be made selling services on the free software stack which will continue to evolve with or without me, and that's just the reality I'm prepared to live with. I'd rather be in the know with Free Software technologies. I believe the method they come about through, is superior to the proprietary method and this ensures their success.

"Kaffee and GNU Classpath have been around a long long time and are still not complete. That's what I was trying to say."

I realized that. My point was that they aren't going away, they will continue to evolve, and they are increasingly becoming useful for a great many tasks. Sun's Java does fit my definition of Open Source currently, It's not "Free" though, and I just don't think

I don't know, ask Microsoft why they hired the founder of Gentoo. You might also want to ask the guys at Nokia why they hired this guy http://mobile.newsforge.com/mobility/05/06/08/1948 202.shtml?tid=97&tid=2 . You might also want to find out why Red Hat develops Free Software actively.

You're free to disagree, but you're ignoring the evidence which directely contradicts your point.

People who disagree with me are by definition crazy. (Until I change my mind, when they can suddenly become upstanding citizens. I'm flexible, and not black-and-white.)
- Linus Torvalds

From TFA:

"It's terrible," De Raadt says. "Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'"

2 Days ago in interview with News Forge

NF: The BSDs are still considered by some to be more technically correct than the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds has said in the past that it's not all about technology. Do you think the BSD project you work on is better technically for some or all uses than GNU/Linux (in general)?

Theo de Raadt: I don't know. I have never run Linux.

He sure learned linux fast!

Here are Theo's comments on Linux from the past few weeks of interviews:

Interview 1: ( http://kerneltrap.org/node/6 )

JA: What advantages does OpenBSD offer over Linux?
Theo de Raadt: I don't use Linux, so I do not really know how to answer this.

Interview 2: (http://www.tuxjournal.net/intervista3-en.html )

Q: Do you like GNU/Linux ? Yes/No, why? Do you use it sometimes?
A: I have never used it.

Interview 3 (http://os.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=05/06/09/213 2233 )

NF: The BSDs are still considered by some to be more technically correct than the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds has said in the past that it's not all about technology. Do you think the BSD project you work on is better technically for some or all uses than GNU/Linux (in general)?
Theo de Raadt: I don't know. I have never run Linux.

it seems that the interview itself is not linked :
http://os.newsforge.com/os/05/06/09/2132233.shtml? tid=152&tid=8&tid=2

while reading it, it seems so strange how polite both linus (in previous interview) and Christos Zoulas (netbsd) can be - especially in contrast to raadt.

well, there are some poeple in companies that are never ever again allowed to speak publicly after a single sentence - not so if you own the company, i suppose ;)

In a NewsForge interview a couple of days ago de Raadt was asked about technical comparisons between Linux and BSD and replied, "I don't know. I have never run Linux."

http://os.newsforge.com/os/05/06/09/2132233.shtml? tid=152&tid=8&tid=2

Suddenly, he's an expert on how bad Linux is?

The funny thing is he has never run Linux. Quoting this interview:

Theo de Raadt: I don't know. I have never run Linux.

According to docs at the Lycoris site, they used to be called "Redmond Linux" and News Forge has a late 2001 review of a beta of Redmond Linux. Founded as Redmond Linux in 2000, they changed their name to Lycoris in January 2002.

Couldn't find a history to see what distro it might have originally forked from.

Greg

According to docs at the Lycoris site, they used to be called "Redmond Linux" and News Forge has a late 2001 review of a beta of Redmond Linux. Founded as Redmond Linux in 2000, they changed their name to Lycoris in January 2002.

Couldn't find a history to see what distro it might have originally forked from.

Greg