Slashback: Buzzwords, Fruit, DIY

If you've tossed and turned wondering whether the Plan 9 License is Free or merely free, or tossed back the warm milk and cookies waiting for the first stabilizations for XFree86 4.0 to arrive, or counted sheep as you daydream about a cheap Linux-based terminal without monthly fees, or forced deep breathing exercises to get over the thought that perhaps you could doing something to stamp out discourteous Web page behavior ... relax. Go to sleep right after you read these updates.

How soon is now? Unlike a lot of cool-sounding soon-to-be-released, wouldn't-it-be-cool promiseware, it's interesting to see hardware that actually makes it to market before its underlying idea is doomed by advances sweeping past. Larry Ellison's $199 Linux box mentioned on Slashdot a while back appears to have reached that point. The NIC Web site has changed, and no longer is the only way to order one donating it to an underserved school.

Why don't you find out for yourself? jesser writes "Many slashdotters asked on the lock-in attack story whether/when mozilla would be safe from this type of attack. Here are some links to bugzilla bug entries in case any slashdotters would like to work on making mozilla more secure:

• bug 29346: Prevent repeating pop-up windows
• bug 33448: disable 'new window' when close box clicked
• bug 22049: javascript alert should not put up extermely modal dialog"

You've got everything now. Patrick Mullen writes "I just finished my review of XFree86 4.0.1. I've had a lot of requests to see a feature on this when it hit (apparently they liked the last article), and here it is. There's benchmarks, overview of the bug fixes, and new features. In addition to the review, I've also got the new NVidia 0.9-4 drivers which allow NVidia's line of cards to function correctly on XFree86 4.0.1 available on the website-and these are not available on even NVidia's website at the time."

That joke isn't funny any more. A number of readers wrote in with harsh words about the report that Apple forced the removal of rumors regarding an alleged next-generation translucent-cased machine.

Kaufmann, for instance, wrote: "Remember the whole story about MOSR's article regarding the new generation of Macs getting pulled at the request of Apple Legal? Well, an Alan Smithee is claiming that it's a hoax. To prove it, he's put up the very same article on the Personal Homepage service provided by Apple at Mac.com. Further investigation seems necessary." Note: not that putting an article on Apple's Personal Homepage service proves it's worthiness, but it does beg the question of Apple being quick to pounce on it. "Alan Smithee" doesn't exactly inspire confidence either, though -- that's the pseudonym directors traditionally use to distance themselves from films they consider too bad to bear their real names;)

Similarly, an unnamed correpsondent had this to say: "The Apple cube that has been talked about the past few days is a total hoax. Some guy sent an email with fake specs to MacOSRumors and they posted it. Kind of makes one question the credibility of Ryan Meader saying that Apple forced him to take it down. Anyways you can see the fake email at: [this link]."

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before ... QBasic_Dude writes "Richard Stallman wrote about the Problems of the Plan Nine License. Technocrat has a discussion about this, and so does Advogato."

Richard cites what he considers odious provisions in the putatively "open source" Plan 9 license (like this one: "You agree to provide the Original Contributor, at its request, with a copy of the complete Source Code version, Object Code version and related documentation for Modifications created or contributed to by You if used for any purpose.") and responds with typical Stallman pithiness, "This prohibits modifications for private use, denying the users a basic right." There's much more to read there, and worth your time. (As are the discussions at Advogato and Technocrat!)

Comments

Bug

[jreilly]

Interesting, Microsoft refers to bugs as features, and Mozilla refers to features as bugs.

He got what he wanted, didn't he?

[Kaufmann]

I mean, MOSR never had a real reputation to begin with. They knew nobody would really believe that ridiculous story. So they decided to blow it up, and make a nice mess while they're at it.

After this whole embarassing mess, they remain an untrustworthy rumour site - but now they're an untrustworthy site that's on Slashdot twice, an untrustworthy site that's got a lot of people talking about it, an untrustworthy site with a shitload of page views.

Whether it's true or not, Ryan Meader can only win from this. Evidently, he did.

(Makes me wonder about the Alan Smithee who allegedly denounced him... if Ryan can make up the story, he can sure call himself a liar and put it up for display on homepage.mac.com.)

Re:Speaking of licensing issues, here's mine.

[Phallus]

I think the poster means that if you alter gcc, compile a program with it, and distribute the binary of that program, you don't have to distribute your modified version of gcc, or the source of the program you compiled using your modified gcc.

tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose

More 3D cards supported.

[Black Parrot]

It looks like the 3D acceleration support is expanding. For instance, 4.0 accelerated the G400 but not the G200, but now the G200 has been added to the list.

For the current status of your favorite 3D acceleration card, visit the DRI User's Guide at SourceForge.

Caveat: Before you rush out to upgrade, notice that some of the cards require recent 2.3.* kernels. (Of course, kernel testers are needed too!)

--

Re:Actually,

[Black Parrot]

> I'm tired of duel booting

Is that where you try to boot to two OSes on the same machine at the same time, and the one quickest at the draw wins?

--

Speaking of licensing issues, here's mine.

[dragonfly_blue]

Speaking of licensing issues, my web site was put together using a GPL'ed PHP package. The collection of scripts, as well as PHP, the dev language, fall under Open Source licenses. I installed the software about a week ago.

Since installing the package and configuring it, I have already had visitors ask me for the source, which I gladly provided of course. However, I provided them the source to the original package, --not-- the altered PHP scripts (which incidentally contain sensitive information such as my MySQL database name and password.)

My main concern is this; if I use this software to create a web site, and it is GPL'ed, I do not want to redistribute the exact files that are in my HTML directory, for obvious reasons. Am I in violation of the GPL, if someone decides they want to enforce it? Are they subsequently entitled to a tarball of my web site root directory? If they are, there is no possible way I can continue using this package, and therefore could not continue to support Open Source for this project. :-(

I have already find a few minor bugs and have been submitting them back into the CVS tree, so I'm still contributing to the development of the package; however, some people are now talking about the GPL being modified to encompass web sites being made with Open Source tools. If the GPL is changed to encompass web sites as opposed to binary distributions, could mean some serious problems for me.

Any advice that anyone has about this matter would definitely be something I would appreciate. Thanks!

Re:Speaking of licensing issues, here's mine.

[Denor]

I, and you'll never see this coming, am not a lawyer. In other words, I have no idea what I'm talking about :) That said:
In this case, I think you're fine.
You only are required to give away source if you distribute your application. Since PHP does all it's work on the server-side, and all the user sees are the results, you're probably okay in this respect.
Now, if you want to redistribute your work, but don't want to send back the exact files for whatever reason (i.e. database passwords in the .php3 file that you don't want to give out), you could separate site-specific parts out into a configuration file, let people know the file format (perhaps with an example file) and distribute that. I'm planning to write an application this way in the future, so hopefully it works in practice :)

Bugzilla.

[jelwell]

It's really helpful if you actually try to write some code for mozilla to help fix those bugs. Posting comments like "please fix this" is only going to make the bug harder to read. Although adding yourself to the cc: and voting on the bug are both really good methods of advocating for those not skilled enough, or not free enough to actually write the code themselves. Also, don't forget that everyone can help out at http://www.mozilla.org/get-involved.html

I personally believe that the best way to help mozilla is to use it daily. Report bugs when you can, and try hanging out in #mozillazine on irc.mozilla.org on a regular basis. #mozillazine is a really good way to get started, although if you want to code #mozilla can be more educational.

Joseph Elwell.

Correct version

[MostlyHarmless]

Slashdot does NOT use doubleclick.net for any of its ads. Apparently you are unware that there are other ways to put images on pages for revenue -- ways that don't involve leaving cookies or tracking you as you surf. This article explains AndOver.Net's ad delivery system, which incidentally is an open-source project hosted on Sourceforge. As a matter of fact, /. only sets one cookie, which contains your login information.