Slashdot Mirror
Linuxworld Fun
The Linuxworld Expo is now in full swing, and there's a variety of news. The BBC has an overview. Microsoft has a booth at the Expo in the section intended for "new, up-and-coming companies". Sun is rolling out servers running Linux. And VA Software - Slashdot's owner - is moving Sourceforge.net to IBM's database software.
For those of you that use sourceforge for their free software projects, it looks like it's time to move to savannah.gnu.org.
In case you're wondering, the gnu.org in there does not imply that your project needs to be under the GPL/LGPL --- any Free Software projects are welcome.
Why would you want to move? Well, from what I hear, extracting some of your meta-data is already hard/imposible from Sourceforge --- this seems like a trend that is likely to continue, so perhaps you should get out while you still can.
At least you can be sure that the Free Software Foundation won't pull any similar tricks.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
Despite the immediate speed increase which could come from migrating to a real database which supports grown-up DB features like subselects, etc, I don't see it happening on Slashdot anytime soon.
Not to flamebait here, but if you've gone through Slashcode source, you know that it's a pile of spaghetti. It doesn't lend itself to a redesign of the database access methods to take advantage of an industry-quality DB's featureset, at least not without redesigning much of Slashcode itself.
The resulting weblog software could be really badass, but seeing as this site's gone since 1998 without a significant redesign (Slash 2 is Slash 1 with lipstick on), I don't see it suddenly happening now.
Microsoft's Services for UNIX allows you to recompile your Linux programs for Windows. Of course, you get to pay extra for this privilege, and your UNIX services will feel "bolted on." Besides, Linux and Windows already play pretty well (no thanks to Microsoft).
What Microsoft is trying to do with UNIX services for Windows is give UNIX users a way to migrate to Windows, pure and simple.
I agree with you that this is a perfectly fair way to play, and I also agree that it isn't likely to work. After all, who is going to take a working Linux application and move it to a Windows box? That makes no sense at all.