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An important attribute to note which has led to volume drivers is the ease with which you can write drivers for linux, and the relatively powerful debugging infrastructure that linux has. Finding and installing the DDK, and trying to hook up the kernel debugger and do any sort of interaction with user-mode without tearing the NT system to bits is much more challenging than writing the simple device-drivers for linux. Any idiot could write a driver in 2 days with a book like "Linux Device Drivers" -- there is no such thing as a 2-day device-driver for NT

Maybe if MS would make life easier (livable?) for developers trying to write device drivers users of NT wouldn't have to be so carefull about picking the "right" hardware.

Wasn't it just a year ago that we were delighted to read this quote from an internal Microsoft document:

"Generally, Microsoft wins by attacking the core weaknesses of OSS projects.

De-commoditize protocols & applications

OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."

Sounds like this SOAP thing is just another Microsoft Trick; not a Treat...

Is technology suppose to make your life easier or harder? I sure hope those supra-geniuses can come up with stuff that us normal sub-par users can use to explain stuff to joe-blog consumers. The claim of getting $20K x 700K doctors = $14 B/year is a little optimistic. In my personal observation, for every $10 of IT money,

$1 = hardware
$2 = software
$3 = operations/maintenance
$4 = ongoing training and helpdesk

So while the company might be looking at the cream, the hospital system is probably having a hernia about feeding the whole cow. The bottom line is does the cost of technology (minus hype) less than the improvments in productivity/profitability? Otherwise it becomes a financial black-hole and adoption rates will be marginal after the early adopters get burnt. Peter Drucker (that famous management guru) once visited a hardware manufacturer which created handdrills - he spent the day listening to employees crowing that variable speed, multi-bit this, retractable cords, various do-dackys, etc. When asked for his opinion, he replied .... your customers are interested in holes not powertools.

The trap that too many smart people (and it appears the company is full of them) is that they assume everyone else around is them equally smart. Sure doctors may be, but only in their speciality. Unfortunately as the Holloween documents note, simplicity means low-entry barriers which destroys the value of software sold as a product. Hence the rather unconcious need to produce something too difficult for the competition to replicate.

Software development at this early life-form sorta reminds me of the oil-well discovery stage where the intent (and high payoffs) was the wildcat teams sinking and discovering the black gold. However, if you compare those cowboy days and today's modern energy infrastructure and distribution networks, there is an incredible difference. So before we sacrifice the sacred IPO cow on the altar of reality, I hope people, especially the new group of geeks keen to show off their prowess, keep in mind that if its something your mother can't use, then nobody will use it.

LL

O'Reilly has a good point. To a large degree the current KDE and Gnome efforts, and things like KOffice, AbiWord, etc are attempts to copy Microsoft, with much less focus on doing better than Microsoft (except in terms of code quality), or on focussing on the next generation of applications and standards.

While this (what MS referred to as "chasing taillights") is certainly necessary to capture mindshare and useful in terms of producing better apps and user interfaces for Linux, it's also a limited goal.

How about "embracing and extending" Microsoft apps? Sure, get the functionality down, the ability to read MS Office formats, etc. But take the apps (and the desktop) a few better than that.

Provide function (and not just bells'n'whistles, or feeping creatures) that goes beyond Microsoft's apps. (Themeability in a desktop is nice, but for most folks it's a "nice feature" rather than some critical function they'll learn they can't live without.) Find new app areas (so called "killer apps") that Microsoft hasn't even thought of yet. (Not that this is easy, but this is where the thousands of creative individuals of the bazaar can do better than the rigid structure of the cathedral. The trick is getting it to a point where it's useful before copy artists like MS can embrace and extend the new idea.)

Is this just to bash Microsoft? No. But O'Reilly has a point about what Microsoft, via its own products, is doing to the open protocols of the net. (Go back and re-read Halloween II to refresh your memory about MS targeting protocols.) If we want the net to remain open, if we want our open software to remain useful, we need to ensure that softare that embodies open protocols stays dominant -- which means being better than proprietary software that perverts those open protocols, whether that proprietary software is from Microsoft or anyone else. (It's just that Microsoft is the biggest, and admitted (via the Halloween docs) offender in this regard.)

(And if it means embracing and extending a proprietary protocol/format to do it -- hey, that's the risk you run with proprietary protocols.)

Open Source is just a marketing term for Free Software. Read the definition. In particular, if you can't modify and redistribute, maybe you can see the source but you sure don't have it.

Everyone has the same rights to use, modify, and distribute my GPL'd code. The fact RMS and the FSF wrote the GPL doesn't give them any special rights to my code, and it certainly doesn't give them the right to enforce my copyright - otherwise they wouldn't need to ask for copyright assignments for contributions to their projects!

I'm certainly not going to maintain Solaris if all I get out of it is being able to pay for a higher-quality Solaris. If I can't reuse their code, they can't reuse mine.

The short answer is that it is a better (faster, less buggy, more trustable) way to develop software. People can make money off of services, hardware, etc., rather than directly from sales of proprietary software, so they do that.

Bruce

The haloween documents (granted, just a study, not company policy) implied that FUD tactics wouldn't work against free software.

Halloween I, quote #4.

I guess that's not the official line?

This is the other meaning of the phrase "open source" mentioned on the opensource.org Web pages: in intelligence/surveillance circles, an "open source" is one openly available, like a newspaper or magazine you can just buy anywhere, as opposed to a source that's handing you information that not just anyone can get. The two communities may be closer than we'd guessed!
--

Maybe segfault's License Codes story might become ha-ha only serious. I doubt it though, as there is a strong tendency to reinvent the wheel when it comes to licenses. But who knows. Try proposing it on the license-discuss list (preferably with a concrete template).

Doesn't Sun's license conflict with the Open Source Definition?

ESR is a leading open source advocate. The Halloween Documents, internal memos from Microsoft about Linux, Open Source, and stuff, were leaked to him and he posted them at opensource.org. If you'd like to find about him and his views, probably reading his reaction to the Halloween Docs would do the job. Or, just go to his homepage and read about him.

Links to his essays

That would cover all I know about him, which really isn't all that much.

I ask this because most/all of the successful Open Source software (Linux, Sendmail, Apache) have been developed by individuals as a community projects, not by companies with profit as the objective. The companies have jumped on board later (Redhat, Sendmail Inc, etc) when the software has grown popular. Can it really be justified for a company that has spent millions of dollars on a software project to start giving their crown jewel away, especially as "Real Open Source" under the GPL license? Perhaps they could release the source code, just not under GPL, and retain the redistribution right themselves but I just don't see much good in doing that because then the bazaar effect would mostly be lost.

I just don't see any of the four methods, described on opensource.org ( Support Sellers, Loss Leader, Widget Frosting, Accessorizing ) as viable ways to get back the investment for already existing software products.

• Every company could undercut the original developer of the software in selling support, as the original developer would have to get their investment in product development back.
• Obviously the Loss Leader method hasn't worked very well for Netscape (probably because of lousy code and code not being Real Open Source).
• Accessorizing, Come on :)
• Perhaps the only real way, is Widget Frosting but that would only work for hardware companies and I don't see many hardware companies doing other software than OS'es.

I ask this because most/all of the successful Open Source software (Linux, Sendmail, Apache) have been developed by individuals as a community projects, not by companies with profit as the objective. The companies have jumped on board later (Redhat, Sendmail Inc, etc) when the software has grown popular. Can it really be justified for a company that has spent millions of dollars on a software project to start giving their crown jewel away, especially as "Real Open Source" under the GPL license? Perhaps they could release the source code, just not under GPL, and retain the redistribution right themselves but I just don't see much good in doing that because then the bazaar effect would mostly be lost.

I just don't see any of the four methods, described on opensource.org ( Support Sellers, Loss Leader, Widget Frosting, Accessorizing ) as viable ways to get back the investment for already existing software products.

• Every company could undercut the original developer of the software in selling support, as the original developer would have to get their investment in product development back.
• Obviously the Loss Leader method hasn't worked very well for Netscape (probably because of lousy code and code not being Real Open Source).
• Accessorizing, Come on :)
• Perhaps the only real way, is Widget Frosting but that would only work for hardware companies and I don't see many hardware companies doing other software than OS'es.

The real problem is that many Qt-using applications are licensed under the GPL and that the GPL and QPL interact badly. The KDE developers are migrating from the GPL to the Artistic license, which will end this problem.

Star Office should be viewed as an 'intermediate' step - a usable, temporary solution until a more suitable true, GPL'ed Office suite is available.
There are some good starting points AbiWord and Gnumeric spring to mind. Thing is, it doesn't seem that most folk need all that software anyway - it seems they've been 'convinced' that they need it.
Yes, it is too early to speculate what (if any) changes Sun will make to Star's availability/terms of use, so we should wait and see. However, at a minimum (for me to use it on my home linux box anyway), the licensing must be compliant with the Open Source Definition. Sun doesn't like Linux - their membership in Linux International seems to be just to sell hardware. They want you to use Solaris, and pay them for their compilers and development licenses.

The GPL clearly states that when redistributing a binary resulting from GPL'd source code that either the source code or a written offer for providing the source code has to accompany the binary. So, does the Corel Linux CDs provide either the source code to all the GPL packages or a written offer? If they aren't then they are violating the terms of the General Public "License."

But, so what? Seriously... so what.

The Free Software Foundation gives a How-To Spot a GPL violation but it stops short, once you spot it then you simply contact the copyright holder. But...

• What if *YOU* are the copyright holder?
• Where is a Howto on GPL enforcement?
• Where is a FAQ on enforcing the GPL?
• What is the best way to serve and document that an offical request has been provided for a distributor to correct their business practices when distributing the GPL package?
• What do you do if your an individual developer and a distributor has ignored for over 2 years requests to follow the requirements listed in the GPL?
• What is a method accepted by the US Courts on putting a value on the package or a dollar amount on the "damages" due to GPL violation?
• What is the maxium amount of damages that can be claimed in small claims court?
• How do you go about filing a GPL violation in small claims court?

Myself--I'm going to publish future works under the latest BSD license. The BSD license "restrictions" are ones that I'm prepaired to enforce. I'm a programmer, not a lawyer and no one is giving me any law advice so I can be any different. The BSD license lets me be just a programmer without making any claims to how the package should be used that I'm not prepaired to back.

The point Corel's actions make is to let programmers be programmers and give up on getting them to enforce an ideology that they aren't prepair to back. Whinning about GPL violations is like crying about j-walkers. In the end, there is no point in continuing to publish code under the GPGFR joke (formally known as GPL).

I think they are. Check out this CERT advisory, as well as this page from the php manual. It's certainly possible to set up a host like this guy is suggesting.. but some care needs to be taken. I'm not familiar with IIS, so I can't comment on the availability of a chroot()-style environment.

Also, ODBC support is not new to PHP 4. It was in PHP 3 as well and it hasn't changed much.

Okay, you caught me on this one - I went back and looked, and there is indeed support for an ODBC driver manager in php3. :}

About your comment that php4 is open source... I quote the php4 License FAQ Second, the license prevents commercial use of the Zend library to build commercial applications. Correct me if I'm wrong.. but that sounds an aweful lot like a violation of OSD rule #1. See this link for the full monty.

--

Maybe the bandwagon has a few too many pick-pockets and thieves on board. I'm tired of hearing companies say "Open Source". I'm not listening. I wait a couple weeks and see how many people complain about the latest public embrace of "Open Source" by yet another big name company.

Honestly, once you expand beyond the bounds of GPL, BSD, and Artistic licenses... I don't really know whether it is open source or not. The Open Source Initiative has a pretty resonable definition of "Open Source". But what does it matter if everyone under the sun can chime in with the magic words "Open Source"... If there isn't a way to tell if they really are || aren't.

It'd be nice if "OSI Certified" takes off. Then someone could make a blacklist for everyone who claims to be Open Source, but isn't. Until someone does that... I'll remain dazed and confused by the plethora of licenses being used.

In the end, I don't really care what the hell you call the license. I just want to know whether it is open source or not. -And any license that is OSI compliant is going to be fairly decent at capturing the spirit of what exactly open source means (to me).

Public domain you lose all copyrights to it. Someone can do anything to it. The new BSD license requires that it
* Retain the copyright and the copyright notice
* Retain the BSD license
* Binary distributions must include the copyright notice
It also points out that the organization is not giving rights to use their name in product endorcements without separate permissions.

Since the GPL allows for the copyright notice restriction, this looks like it makes BSD completely GPL compatible, YAY!


----

ESR's papers explain the business model. In short, it is very hard/impossible to make money selling open source software. So don't even try.

Open source software does not exist in the marketplace as a product; it exists mostly as a marketing "ploy". Remember, if you are making open source software, you are the resident expert. In today's market, such expertise is the product. Take Perl, written by Larry Wall, paid by O'Reilly books. Perl itself is free. O'Reilly's books aren't. And O'Reilly's books Perl books sell for two big reasons:

1) Since Perl is so effective, everybody wants to use it, thus to learn it.

2) Since Wall writes books for O'Reilly, they make much better Perl books than anybody else.

Currently, you can still make money "selling" open source Linux. That is, you sell the CDs, so that people don't have to spend hours downloading it via FTP (and blowing up the net connection halfway through...). Red Hat realizes that this will not last forever; they expect the download speed to increase faster than the code base, and thus the value of the CD is plummeting.

Red Hat's new business model is consulting and support. They box Linux, thus they have some serious expertise, and can land some big name consulting accounts.

We will win the browser war. Even if we have to give away Internet Explorer we will crush Netscape.

it's in the MS "people"'s best interest to attack their own box

But the same goes for the linux guys...

I honestly believe the Linux box is being battered by people using linux.

First of all I know more about linux and *nix in general than about NT. The linuxbox makes a more attractive target that way. That argument probably goes for many of the linux people.
Why would I try to break an os I don't use? Just to prove it's unstable? I'm not that kind of guy and frankly, I don't really care.

Yes, I am a bit biased... so I'd rather see the linux ppc being really put to the test.

I believe ESR wrote something open source worked because people were "scratching personal itches".

Linux security is *my* personal itch, Windows security is someone else's.

I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine...
The Halloween documents may be a clear indication that MS is not about to scratch Linux' back.

But on the distribution of attacks:
I expect the D.O.S. attacks being mostly cross-platform (linux kiddies trying to nuke win2k and windows kiddies trying to nuke linuxppc), while the cluefull attacks are being done by people who know a bit about the os they're trying to get into.

I don't think the situation WRT Linux and mainstream users is as hopeless as you make it out to be. Here's why:

Most end users when they get their PC don't want to have to have to learn commands, figure out short cuts. Then want to take it out of the box, plug it in and have it run.

True, to a point. However, I think you've bought excessively into the myth of Positive Windows(tm) OOBE (Out-Of-Box-Experience). Linux installation is not that much harder than Windows installation -- it's just that 99.44% of computer users get Windows pre-installed. A pre-installed (or friend-installed) Linux would avoid that same pain. And have you actually watched somebody with no computing experience (or even no WIMP-GUI experience) sit down in front of a Windows computer for the first time? People have to actually (gasp!) read the "Getting Started" documentation, or else have personal handholding, or it just doesn't make sense the first time staring at the Start button.

Also, in my experience, after initial familiarity is gained, many people start to graduate into the "power user" category. At which point, they end up delving into topics such as the Windows Registry, DLL incompatibilities, and the various "power user" tips and tricks of Windows. All of which constitute a formidible body of arcana, which is not made magically easier by the fact that it comes from Redmond, WA. Yet normal end-users tackle it anyway.

You just point, click, and the application runs, you don't have to compile applications and then compile it.

Funny, I just point, click, and the application runs, once it's been installed, under Linux as well. Just like in Windows. Except without the BSOD. :^) Surely you're familiar with the existance of GNOME, KDE, AfterStep, Window Maker, CDE, etc.?

As for compiling, end users don't have to do that with Linux either. That's the whole point of Caldera, Red Hat, the Debian project, etc. Of course, if you want to, you can, but it's hardly required, unless you want to live at the bleeding edge of progress.

"One smaller motivation which, in part, stems from altruism is Microsoft-bashing." -- Vinod Valloppillil (Microsoft), Halloween Document I

Somehow an archive of open source thoughts seems to make more sense on a seperate site or at least seperate section.

Are there any open source FAQ's other than this one on www.opensource.org?

Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software Voice 570-992-8824
The Reuse Rocket: Efficient awareness for software reuse: Free WWW site
lists over 6000 of the most popular open source libraries, functions, and applications.

... and I mean this in the best possible way. Hasn't anyone else read ESR's interview at linux.com where he talks about calibrating for media interest? The media are pathetically poor at reporting subtle (or even not-so-subtle) philosophical nuances. The media are great at reporting conflict and personality clashes -- it's their bread and butter. So, if RMS and ESR let their subtle (though not necessarily unimportant) clash over strategy and tactics into the media, they sustain interest in both "free" and "open source" software, and more folks end up actually reading the GNU Manifesto and the Open Source Definition.

I would also like to note that part of the "clash" between RMS and ESR probably relates to the fact that RMS is an ethicist and a philosopher, and ESR is an aikidoka. RMS is concerned that the ethical imperitive and philosophical underpinnings of free software are not lost in the new emphasis on "open source" as a marketing strategy. ESR is a student of Aikido. In Aikido, you don't confront your opponent with force-vs-force, but you redirect your opponent's engergy in a less destructive way. Also, it is believed that simply doing Aikido is the primary way to absorb and begin to practice the philosophy of peaceableness, rather than beginning by studying the writings of O-Sensei.

So, RMS is trying intellectual and moral persuasion in order to promote free software. ESR is trying to get more corporations to do free software, and trusting that the philosophy will follow. Both approaches are complementary, not contradictory. I'm glad we have both RMS and ESR.

Source has to be made available, though it does not have to actually be distributed with the product.

-snip-
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
-snip-

So if you go to one of these sites and someone's griping about how much "OSI sucks," you'll know they're not talking about this OSI.

So did I use enough link references?

J.

Yes, it would exclude BSD. As it should, because BSD is not guaranteed free.

Quoting http://www.opensource.org/products.html :

If you use the MIT license, or GPL, or Artistic License, or BSD license, or any of the other example licenses listed in OSD clause 10, then your software is Open Source and you may use the Open Source mark without asking.

I would assume that they will apply similar clauses on the "OSI Certified" mark.

Mike
--

You mean, like the OSD?

Sorry, but you're inventing a wheel.
-russ

I basically agree with this. I haven't paid for a copy of Linux yet--my current distribution is RH 5.1 [boo hiss, I know] installed from a friend's CD, and before that I actually installed Slackware 2.0 via FTP over modem and SLS [remember that?] from about 30 floppies.

But....

Do the business models for open source really work, especially the first, most-cited one, selling support? Cygnus isn't just selling support, they're selling stuff you don't get by going with gcc alone (read their FAQ, particularly the last question).

And while it's true that there will be people who will buy Red Hat just for the technical support, ultimately will there be enough--can there be enough? One of the arguments for Linux has been the "you can get technical support in a newsgroup for free immediately" shtick. And whether or not it's politically correct, for a lot of people the "free beer" part is just as important as free speech. Even if I do pay Red Hat directly for my copy of Red Hat 6.0, if I then put it on 100 machines their profit has effectively evaporated.

No one can (or at least no one should) argue that open source doesn't produce high-quality software and doesn't have the potential for dazzling development speed, and it can certainly have a place at commercial software companies. But if you can buy my products for a thirtieth what I charge you for and you have no reason to buy my support because you can get equivalent support for free, isn't it only a matter of time before I go out of business?

I don't believe "open source" implies "give away source".

The accepted definition of Open Source is the same as 'free software'. That is, you can use, share and change the software without having to pay licence fees.

Unfortunately, the term Open Source can be misinterpreted as meaning 'you can get the source code' - this is one of the reasons I would have preferred to stick with 'free software'.

Posted by Hank Shiffman:

Just one correction (as the guy from SGI who was quoted by Linux World): XFS is a 64 bit file system, meaning that it uses 64 bit offsets everywhere to allow lots of space for files. It does not require a 64 bit OS; XFS is supported on our O2 systems which run a 32 bit version of IRIX. Oh, and as I read the terms of Open Source licenses it's clear that we don't get to decide that XFS is only for Linux. Not that we would want to discriminate against FreeBSDers or other deserving souls. Heck, if Sun wants to GPL Solaris we might even enjoy having them use it!

• "Open Source" is too descriptive.
• SPI has no legal right to Open Source, since they've never certified anything as Open Source. OSI has always done that.
• The trademark application was in Bruce Perens name, not SPI's name.
• The trademark examiner rejected the application and returned it for clarification to Bruce, and he never responded because he insisted on doing so as an SPI officer and SPI wouldn't allow him to.
• The trademark application has expired, so SPI's sole claim to fame has faded in the west.

What does this mean? It means that Microsoft can call Windows 2000 "Open Source" if they want to. But not if we don't let them!. Boycott any product that claims to be Open Source but doesn't meet the Open Source Definition. Tell everyone you know what Open Source really means. It's our only hope.

The "Open Source" term was registered as a service mark to bring a little sanity to the advertisement of free software. If a company advertises a product as "Open Source," those viewing the advertisement can be confident (theoretically) that the program's license allows free redistribution and modification. If it doesn't, then the owner of the "Open Source" mark can bring legal action against the offender; therefore, the mark is a clear sign that you're getting free software.

Unfortunately, there's a deadly flaw waiting in the wings. Since the ownership of the mark is in dispute, if either organization ( OSI or SPI) takes legal action, the offending software company will argue that the mark belongs to the other organization.

This will have the effect of playing the two organizations off each other, and ultimately destroying the effectiveness and purity of the "Open Source" term. That would be a blow to our movement, since "Open Source" has become, in the past few months, the term under which many of us identify it.

The ownership of the mark must be resolved, soon, before it has to come before a court. I personally don't care which of the two feuding organizations ends up with it; I trust both to use their best judgement to administer the mark. But it has to belong to only one of them.

Eric, Bruce: one of you must display maturity and selflessness and give up your claim on the mark, before you pull it apart like two children in a tug-of-war that ultimately breaks the toy in dispute.

If there's ever been a time for the open source community to make itself known, this is it. Now, more than ever, we have proof of the damage to the consumer that intellectual property concerns can do. Apparently, if we give our legislators enough rope, they will gleefully hang themselves.

Here's what you can do:

- Talk to management. Get them to see what intellectual property concerns will do to their bottom line. Then suggest the alternative: open source.

- Support things like Consumer Reports, and the Better Business Bureau.

- Inform would-be software buyers of the tradeoffs to buying proprietary software.

It's a decidedly different tact. If you're on the open-source train, I'd have a good laugh right now, because these people are putting the nails in their own coffin, free of charge -- The ultimate compliment to the OSS movement.



--

If there's ever been a time for the open source community to make itself known, this is it. Now, more than ever, we have proof of the damage to the consumer that intellectual property concerns can do. Apparently, if we give our legislators enough rope, they will gleefully hang themselves.

Here's what you can do:

- Talk to management. Get them to see what intellectual property concerns will do to their bottom line. Then suggest the alternative: open source.

- Support things like Consumer Reports, and the Better Business Bureau.

- Inform would-be software buyers of the tradeoffs to buying proprietary software.

It's a decidedly different tact. If you're on the open-source train, I'd have a good laugh right now, because these people are putting the nails in their own coffin, free of charge -- The ultimate compliment to the OSS movement.



--

I'm sorry. I find your argument somewhat shallow and obtuse. Saying that Bill Gates is a businessman hardly excuses him for violating federal anti-trust laws, no matter how vague you might think they are. I'll leave it to those more knowledgable of the law to argue the issue. Here's a couple of links which put Microsoft's actions in perspective of the law.

• ProCompetition
• Daily Wrap and Flow
• Consumer Project on Technology

May I give you one rhetorical question to ponder?

If Windows were really the most technically advanced and innovative operating system on the planet, would Microsoft be in court against the DOJ at this time? Somehow, I doubt it.

It's the fact that monopolies stifle innovation as well as competition which has brought these issues to the forefront. This is why Microsoft has to resort to proprietorization of protocols--what Bill Gates calls innovation--to assure that their monopoly survives. See the oft-quoted Halloween Document for clear evidence of Microsoft intentions. See any account of the Sun/Java Case for an example where Microsoft exercised these proprietorization techniques.

I find the DOJ evidence against Microsoft compelling. Even Microsoft's own defense was a great embarassment. Don't take my word for it. Look for yourself. There are sufficient sites on the Web covering the trial. Check out CNN, ZDNet, Business Week, InfoWorld, etc.

Bork 'em, Danno.

Arne W. Flones Long Ship Software

Pay no mind to the chaos you are seeing. It is merely the shifting of paradigms.

Yes but they are not giving away the guaranteed I/O rate part of it. At least not according to this link though I can't find any mention of that in the news story or the SGI press release.

I haven't seen what EXT3 promises,

It will add journalling (see the white paper Stephen wrote), and probably extent based block lists and btrees by Ted Ts'o will be in there too.

Linux does need a journaling FS and XFS may be the best bet, but it won't happen quickly unless SGI puts some serious resources behind it.

SGI are employing kernel hackers and you can start to see some of the stuff they are getting up to

Also, just who has the resources to test large production systems (4+ CPUs) on an OS under test? Corporates, that's who. And they'll contribute their code to Open Source, right? Because...?

Hell, we've got MS helping us by looking for performance bottlenecks for us and that is already starting to bear fruit (I can't seem to link to that article right. Check out the article "Re:Thank you Microsoft!" by petchema. You will need Alt-F to find it.)

Personally, I think ext3 will rock. This isn't Stephen's first file system by a long chalk.

may have a price current purists will not like but will have to accept (ie less than Open Source code licenses

We can't succeed by destroying ourselves, and I don't think the Linux community will try. If XFS weren't Open Source then it would fail to gain any market share against ext3. But it will be Open Source, so it's a moot point.

That's right! Not only must they learn how to write cleanly optomized code, they should learn the art of GUI design (e.g. -- human factor engineering).

"New at Microsoft today: People simply want a platform that does the job and is reliable!"
When you think about money all the time, you lose track of the bigger picture: programming for enjoyment. There's nothing like pouring over a couple of routines for weeks, thinking every possibility through....until one day, the "eureka! factor" hits you. You solve the problem -- and those feelings can only be expressed if you have ever experienced such a problem.

Open Source ( n):

• see The Open Source Definition (Version 1.4) at
• http://www.opensource.org/osd.html

I'm sorry -- but no one wants to dig through any Microsoft code, other than to laugh at some of the awful programming techniques.
This guy has no more clue about coding than any other typical president at a typical software company...it's really beginning to show now, though.

Oh wonderful!! I'll be able to view how ODBC works under-the-hood.
How much do you want to bet that those same "developers" find Unix or GNU programming tools "complicated and difficult to understand" -- well, that's because they haven't taken the time to fully understand the code (maybe a "kernal hacking for dummies" needs to be released!).

Doesn't this remind you of one of those Halloween documents?

Halloween IV: When Software Things Were Rotten


I had assumed it was just a joke, not a real 'leak'. Clearly I was wrong. ;)

Second, this story has grown 'legs'. The huge response against the results was something journalists could write about!

Third, there were extra bits to sniff out. Most people looked at the Mindcraft with Netscape or IE and missed the very tiny text saying "Test performed for Microsoft" at first. (Lynx-users, of course, saw it full-sized :)). The media enjoy a story where they can start digging, and the attempts to downplay MS involvement were just enough to interest the journos, who then learnt about Mindsoft's past benchmarking weirdness.

So there's one reason why this story is still going on: it could be milked!

One repeated comment you'll have seen is "it depends what you want to measure". Various alternative results have been posted both before and after (the difficulty is getting companies to provide numbers: most of us will know someone who said, "Well, internally, we found..." and then added, "But no, I can't say that, I'd need permission"). What you do hear, time and time again, is that for real "low end" machines, such as 386s and 486s, you can install Linux and it will _zoom_ along doing its job (webserving or email, often). You can't test _that_ versus NT cos you can't get NT onto the typical 386 or 486. So on those machines Linux is indeed incontrovertibly faster and won't crash.

You'll notice that MS's idea of "low end" is beyond what you'll usually find in the company closet, In fact, Halloween 1 (scroll down a page or two from that anchor) explicitly mentions its use in this respect as a big problem for MS. On that note, if you're new to the more political issues surrounding Linux, check out the Halloween documents (so-called due to their leak date). They're internal MS assessments of Linux and free software. They're now well-read by Linux and free software people (you can tell how well-read by the fact that "OSS" for open-source software comes from those documents and everyone knows that abbreviation now! One thing that caught particular attention was the sections on "How MS should combat Linux", with such delightful admissions that FUD won't work. He didn't even have to explain what he meant by it, it was assumed that all MS types would know what it was... People have been expecting MS to try _something_ since then (and before). Other tactics for your viewing edification are legal threats (!) and "embrace and extend" open protocols, ie make MS the standard and everything else measure up to it. Actually, there's a flavour of that to this affair: suddenly "low end" becomes that ridiculous machine, and anyone who wants to use MS had better have that or buy a new one.

This turned a bit long, but I hope it helped!

The author of this article didn't seem to do much research. There are several mailing lists and public editorials available on the subject of the GPL - specifically debian-legal and license-discuss.

My gripe is the same with most postings on linux - the reporters need to do research - ie look before you leap. It's not like we're hiding all this information from you - we make everything public, source included! :)

On the article's points:

- "Portions" The GPL makes this quite clear. ANY amount of source you pull from a GPL'd program, and you /must/ redistribute your work under GPL. the LGPL is different - use that if this is your concern.
- "watering down" of the GPL further down the chain. Regardless of how many programs "down the chain" reuse the code.. it must be made available with all the provisions of the GPL intact. Other licenses may not be so restrictive, but this one is. Of course, nothing prevents you from making a more specific license and redistributing your code under /that/. ie. "Source must be distributed seperately from binary". Nothing in the GPL prohibits this.. it simply requires it be available publicily should it be requested.




--

It looks like the FSF thinks everyone uses their terminology. Bzzzzzt. Of the millions of people relatively new to the 'Net and its culture (through the emergence of the Web and ISPs), I suspect that many think "free software" means "something I can download off the 'Net without having to pay." Which includes things like binary-only games, lobotomised demo packages of tools, and Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Ask the being-in-the-thoroughfare, "Is Internet Explorer free software?" If you think the answer will universally be 'no,' I think you're mistaken. And no, you can't prime it with definitions. :-)

The survey authors are talking about exactly what they say they are: software for which the source code is freely available. Notwithstanding what various groups may think, there is no lock on these terms, no one 'correct' definition -- regardless of the degree of militancy any particular group may have concerning their particular interpretation. Each of the terms means different things to different sets of people, so we were careful to define our usage explicitly, using a non-overloaded and uncontroversial term, to avoid confusion.

It's not a matter of not understanding the concepts or the terminology. It's a matter of recognising that the terminology is multi-valued and describes different concepts to different people. Please re-read the free-source definition page on the site, after putting yourself into the shoes of (say) a hardcore Microsoft developer, or script-kiddie, or suit, or anyone who has not lived and breathed the FSF for years.

The OSI tweaked us when we naïvely used "open source" in the survey, because they claim they own the definition. So we changed the offending text, and now someone is tweaking us because we didn't use their preferred phrase. {Sigh} Please, can we just deal with the thing itself ("software for which the source is freely available") without arguing over what to call it?

#kenP-)}

Ken Coar

The butt hinge? From one of my home pages:

Microsoft has recently innovated and patented the door hinge as part of its runnaway embrace and extend strategy. This is no joke! One step closer towards Gates' promised and detailed World Domination.

But they do make decent mice. Software, on the other hand...

As noted above, one has to wonder exactly what license Apple's leaning toward. I noticed that the article says "open source" as opposed to "Open Source," implying (to me, at least) that they're not going to strictly follow the Open Source Definition--though the media's never been sensitive to such nuances before.

All the discussion about whether or not the codecs will be released may end up being moot if Apple decides to ignore Bruce Perens' definition in favor of, say, Al Gore's definition. An overly restrictive license could discourage application development on traditionally "open" platforms, such as Linux...

Though one might argue that any source is better than no source at all. :)

I'd rather have a candidate who said nothing than one who tried to misappropriate our language for his own political ends.

• They propose the Clipper chip & key escrow to ensure that government can expand its ability to spy on its own citizens
• They vigorously oppose even moderately strong crypto products
• The Gore 2000 campaign (at least we think algore2000.com is legit) is willfully abusing the Open Source legal requirements

The US Republican party has its flaws, too. In particular, the GOP has been silent about consumer protection from database aggregators, etc. But the GOP has stronly supported giving citizens the strong crypto they need to ensure their privacy in our wired world, while the Dems have actively pursued measuers that would reduce citizen privacy, like the universal medical identification number.

Gore doesn't care about technology, tech workers, intellectual property, and definitely not individual rights and privacy.