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Interview With Andreas Pour of KDE
friedmud writes "I just read a great interview over at OPEN for Business. It is with KDE contributor Andreas Pour. He goes over many topics - not only including KDE. My favorite part: 'they are basically saying, if you stop obeying us, we will stop you from viewing the documents you and your friends created. Who are they to say where and when I read my documents? Now I need a monopolist's permission to view my own creations? The audacity is mind-boggling, and that the Justice Department is permitting it is simply astounding.' - Wow"
From the article "...I will be answering only as "Dre."
I'm just waiting for the release of Dre's "Keep their heads hackin'"
And the point is, humans have been allowed to patent standardized tools.
"Now I need a monopolist's permission to view my own creations? The audacity is mind-boggling, and that the Justice Department is permitting it is simply astounding."
This is something like patenting keys and locks. Obviously, if Microsoft ever tried to say something like: "No, you can't view your documents", I think the justice department would immediately step in and cry foul, much as if the person who invented the key demanded that all people who owned and used keys for operating locks pay him a surcharge or discontinue their use.
"But I can't get into my house!", people would cry. They'd use the key anyway, and popular demand would win; much the same in the Microsoft case. The point is: someone allowed Microsoft to patent a key and license it, and now they're trying to figure out ways around this.
Hm.
http://www.gummiclan.com/gib/rc/index.php?s=&act=S T&f=19&t=79&st=0&#entry941
Windows XP SP1 1102
Well instead of discussing the usability problems of KDE and the huge installation issues, he prefer to just go ahead and blame Microsoft. One reason I stick with GNOME is that it's easy to upgrade, I was never able to upgrade my KDE though. They have only themselves to blame for there lack of success.
I was making a bad pun, not insulting homosexuals or Polish people. If any homosexual Polish people are offended, I sincerely apologize. (serious)
Too bad I was moderated improperly, forcing me to apologize for something I didn't say.
PSst: It was OFF-TOPIC, not flamebait.
"Derp de derp."
Pouring over the Facts: Andreas Pour on KDE
August 21, 2002, 12:34:18 EDT
Andreas Pour is well known to most everyone in the K Desktop Environment (KDE) community. Considering that KDE is the leading desktop for Linux, if you are investigating GNU/Linux workstations, you are sure to run into Pour's work.
Mr. Pour, who is known to the community simply as "Dre," spends his time wearing a number of different hats at the KDE Project, the KDE League, Inc., and his own company - MieTerra. He graciously agreed to participate in a series of exclusive interviews with Open for Business' Timothy R. Butler.
Interview One: The K Desktop Environment
Open for Business: Let's start with an overview. It seems like you have your hand in a dizzying amount of things. What exactly are you involved in these days?
Andreas F. Pour: Well, quite a few different things. That's why I would like to say at the outset, Tim, that in this interview I will be answering only as "Dre", a long-time KDE supporter and contributor. And perhaps more importantly for what I write, a firm believer in the principles of freedom on which FS / OS - Free Software / Open Source - is based. As is generally the case, this means I speak only for myself, and in particular I do not in any way speak for the KDE Project or the KDE League.
OfB: KDE has become the most used Linux desktop, in fact OS News recently put the number at over 50% of the market. What do you think has been KDE's secret so far?
AFP: A great product with a solid foundation driven by an extremely talented, dedicated and hard-working community of contributors. And of course the financial support of companies and individuals has helped substantially. Particularly as it allows talented people such as Waldo Bastian, David Faure and Laurel Montel to dedicate their full attention to the project on an ongoing basis.
OfB: Do you see this method changing in the future?
AFP: I only see it as getting better, Tim. Many of the people who are central to KDE have been around for a long time, and with experience are becoming increasingly talented and knowledgeable and better able to act as mentors and provide guidance to new developers. The importance of this continuity is amplified as the complexity of the project grows, and a group of experienced developers with an overall understanding of the relationships between various pieces within the framework, as well as with the experience and discipline to know and meet the reasonable expectations of third-party developers, is necessary.
The K Development Environment keeps improving at break-neck speed, particularly in key components such as the core libraries (Qt and kdelibs), the development framework (KDevelop and Qt Designer) and technologies (KParts, DCOP, etc.), subsystems (printing, multimedia, communications, etc.) and translation and documentation tools (KBabel, docbook tools, etc.). And as sponsorship of KDE development increases, so does the number of people able to take on the role of full-time project maintainers.
In other areas, competition to place applications into the KDE base packages - office suite, PIM, networking, games, graphics, edutainment - is at an all-time high, with a very steady stream of proven talent learning to pool their ideas and work together. The translation and documentation teams too are stronger than ever, boasting an ever-growing number and richness of translations and manuals. And of course the new artwork - themes, icons, etc. - that will be released with KDE 3.1 is widely regarded as the highest quality for any open source project to date.
OfB: The KDE Project has received some criticism lately. It has been suggested that the developers are somewhat out-of-touch with the user base. Do you see any merit in this?
AFP: Sure, there is some merit to it - there is a "disconnect", so to speak, but I think the cause of it is widely misreported and hence misunderstood. Often it has been mischaracterized as some change in developer attitude, but, in reality, to a far greater extent it reflects changes in the KDE user base and, to some extent, parts of the so-called media.
First, and most significant, is that there are simply far more users. So the number of users a developer has to interact with becomes overwhelming. From personal mail, to bug reports, to development mailing lists, there is already a bundle to keep track of, especially for the great majority of developers who do this "on the side".
To manage the overload, developers to some extent are forced to retreat from direct user interaction, such as on the user mailing lists. You can characterize this pessimistically as paying less attention to users, or more realistically as an appropriate adjustment to changed circumstances. If a developer has 15-20 hours per week to devote to development, is it better to spend 10-15 of those hours reading the mailing lists - and I can assure you that is a conservative time estimate for keeping up with the main KDE lists - or spend more time developing? Personally I prefer a contributor focus on his or her strengths and interests.
The important point to bear in mind is that the development process remains extremely open - discussions occur on the public mailing lists, as always, and all development occurs through the public CVS tree, with all commits open to inspection. But I would rather the talented developers do what they are good at and what they enjoy than spend all day corresponding with users.
Second, the user base "experience" has changed dramatically over the course of the years. Many newcomers to the KDE community seem either not to realize that KDE is a cooperative community, or to comprehend what that really means. Rather, many take KDE as their entitlement, even to the point of viewing developers as having a duty to scratch their particular itch. If there is something they don't like, instead of asking "What can I do to improve it?", a common attitude in KDE's earlier days, the attitude now rather frequently is, "Damn it, why is this [ so or not like so ]? If you do not do as I say immediately, [ place a horrible here ]."
Many of the more vocal critics also do not seem to grasp the fact that different KDE contributors have different interests and skills. For example, there was a period not long ago where much ado was made about the incredible enhancements to the KDE themes and icons while the HTML rendering engine was not yet bug-free. It seems these critics truly did not understand that the contributors working on the themes and icons have no greater ability to improve the Konqueror browser than, say, the critic does. And of course there is no reason anyone should stop tending to her or his corner of KDE because another piece is not flawless. Beyond that the criticism was grossly unfair to the great work done by the theme designers as well as the work done by the KHTML designers which, viewed in proper context, is nothing short of astounding.
To reflect a theme by John F. Kennedy, to be an effective part of an Open Source community, "Ask not what the community can do for you, but what you can do for the community". KDE is a shared resource - the licensing and group nature of the project means that, for practical purposes, the developers have no more rights to KDE than anyone else. Nor do they assume extra duties by virtue of contributing to its improvement.
Now, often it is the case that a suggestion, idea or question is a valuable contribution in its own right. As in politics, constructive dialog is positive, and from my experience very much welcome. But demands, threats, putdowns, rudeness, bullying, etc. - all conduct which I witness far too often on the mailing lists - are not helpful. Instead of helping they hurt - morale, cohesiveness, and even user sympathy - so in the end responsiveness can only suffer.
If you cannot treat community contributors with respect, it is better for everyone that you not engage them; use KDE if you like it, use something else if you don't, but, in any event, to put it politely, be positive. You have no right to demand that others do what you prefer them to. If you want input into KDE development, there is one great way to do it: improve it yourself, either by rolling up your sleeves and getting involved or by entering into a voluntary arrangement (such as payment) with someone else to do it for you.
OfB: The GNOME Project recently released the second major version of its desktop. Have you had a chance to look at this desktop? Briefly, what are you thoughts on the other available GNU/Linux desktops?
AFP: Actually, Tim, I do not concern myself with using other FS / OS (Free Software / Open Source) desktops very much. This protects me from having to answer questions like this one that involve making comparisons . I can just honestly answer, "I don't know about XYZ," and leave it at that.
I don't see KDE as having competition with these desktops as a primary motivator or purpose. What KDE tries to do is to be the best it can be, and to provide a nice, easy-to-use alternative for others. The main interaction I see with other desktops centers around a mailing list and website established for discussing potential desktop standards.
That said, the reason I opted to get involved with KDE in the first place is that I felt it had the strongest foundations, not only technically but also in terms of organization and openness. The strong technical foundation is really the key, and its strength is demonstrated time and again. Compare, for example, the amount of resources invested in products like Nautilus and Mozilla, on the one hand, and Konqueror, on the other - I believe you will likely find several orders of magnitude of difference.
OfB: Lindows.com has been receiving a lot of attention lately with its claim to be an affordable Windows replacement. Wal-Mart has even started selling systems with Lindows pre-installed. What do you think of this concept of focusing a distribution on running non-native applications?
AFP: I think tools to help people transition to FS/OS are very important in the short- and medium-term. The fact is, Tim, that a lot of intellectual property - including users' own intellectual property, as well as what they may receive from others - is locking them into a "proprietary prison", if you will. However, I fear that this solution is not a long-term one.
Let me start first with the really troubling aspect of proprietary, and particularly patented, data formats.
We are steadily heading to a future in which the control of humanity's intellectual property - works of art, multimedia, ideas, writings, etc. - is so vested in software vendor(s) that it is fair to say that the average user of a proprietary desktop will eventually no longer "own", in the traditional sense of the word, his or her own electronic creations. In other words, the products of our creative minds, the very essence of our humanity, are being relentlessly stripped from us.
If you use a proprietary OS to make a video or audio track, or to write a research paper, and save it in one of the default proprietary electronic data formats, you might soon find yourself actually paying someone else run-time and/or license renewal fees just to access your own creations. Not to mention any charges that may apply to distributing copies to others (whether directly or because the recipient must also pay similar runtime or recurring fees to access the data). You tell me, when you have to pay one particular vendor money every time you or someone else views a movie you created, who owns the movie?
But it doesn't stop there. The vendor in this model might also have the ability to prevent you from accessing any of your creations at all. For example, perhaps your desktop software becomes disabled because you have not paid the requisite monthly fees on the software running your cell phone, and the same vendor controls the software on both systems (and if this vendor also controls the software running your car, home phone, television, radio, etc., the situation is only magnified).
Or perhaps the vendor wants to censor ideas critical of it or of some policy the vendor supports, or because the content violates the vendor's religious views. Even most "free" countries do not apply free speech and other human rights laws to private corporations.
Or the vendor may require you to assign rights in your creations - perhaps even the copyright itself - to it as a condition to accessing the data. If this requirement is imposed during a license renewal period, you will then face the Hobson's choice of assigning your rights, or losing the ability to access your own creation at all.
The same can be said even about data transmitted through proprietary networks or works created with proprietary tools, even if not saved in a proprietary format.
In fact, in recent times several instances occurred in which a noted software and Internet services vendor attempted to strip copyright from users of its network services, and even to use licensing renewal as a sledgehammer to extract extremely valuable and otherwise unavailable rights to the patent portfolios of some of the world's most powerful corporations.
OfB: So are you suggesting that this vendor lock-in, or as you put it, "proprietary prisons," serve a purpose beyond that of licensing revenue?
AFP: Tim, what the above examples illustrate to me is that proprietary prisons are so attractive to the monopolist not only because they enable the vendor to impose a "private" international tax of its arbitrary choosing - a feat which heretofore has escaped even the most expansive world empires - but also at the same time they provide a vehicle for imposing the vendor's brand of "private" international law, disguised as "licenses" and "contracts". This observation, incidentally, explains the poignant relevance of UCITA, a state law being advocated in the United State largely by software vendors under very controversial circumstances, which effectively is a grant of law-making powers to software vendors, at least to the extent they sell a product people need for normal participation in contemporary social life.
Since generally speaking, and particularly in the United States, private corporations are not subject to constitutional restrictions on the exercise of their powers - such as due process requirements before terminating rights or the trouble of having to face public election - and since currently no software monopolist is subject or proposed to be subject to regulation as a public utility, which might also impose some measure of popular control over the exercise of power, the reference to "proprietary prison" is indeed a very much apropos one.
For people caught in the proprietary quagmire - that is to say, for the vast majority of people - it is of course far easier to escape this situation and join our free and open society if they possess the tools to access the electronic data they have already created, as well as the creations of their associates who remain locked in proprietary prisons.
Nobody is more aware of this, it seems, than the world's largest creator and enforcer of proprietary prisons. It realizes, of course, that economically uncompetitive measures will not vanquish free software as it has vanquished business competitors in the past. And surely it is also aware that it is only a matter of some short time before free software provides sufficient quality for a large number of its subjects to escape.
The response, clever in its audacity, is to complement the previous anticompetitive strategy, documented so well in Judge Jackson's Findings of Face, of employing the financial largesse acquired through its "private" international computer taxation powers to "dump" product on the market for free (but only in terms of immediate financial cost, of course).
It surely looks like it is moving to fight freedoms with legal restrictions - laws which curtail choice, privacy and freedoms - won through its international private, and perhaps even public, law-making powers. The restrictions seem rather clearly designed to preserve and enhance its dominance by making Free Software either illegal or at least extremely disadvantageous.
The first manifestation of this private law strategy seemed to be in the addition of certain provisions to developer API and other documentation, which was soon followed by changes to EULAs as well. In both cases, the "private" law specifically prohibits use of imprisoning technologies in conjunction with free software. This obviously has the effect of making it more costly for users to migrate to other OSes of their free choice - they are basically saying, if you stop obeying us, we will stop you from viewing the documents you and your friends created. Who are they to say where and when I read my documents? Now I need a monopolist's permission to view my own creations? The audacity is mind-boggling, and that the Justice Department is permiting it simply astounding.
In other words, a monopolist, currently involved in anti-trust proceedings because of its anticompetitive conduct in precisely the market at issue with the current crop of license restrictions - Intel-based desktop systems - is openly employing legal measures - private law, if you will - to stop consumers from being able to use competing products. It is also during these very proceedings that the 'blackmail' licensing provisions were apparently "proposed" as non-negotiable to many of the world's most powerful corporations, causing one to apply to the Justice Department and courts for relief. Fortunately for it, the "Proposed Settlement" has not yet been approved and it could seek redress in a court of law, rather than be relegated to completing a complaint form on the offendor's website.
But watch out, when the proceedings come to their end. I can only imagine the stream of gates that will descend upon us from the West. I can only hope that in the meantime enough people come to realize the immense dangers of international monopoly-operated proprietary prisons and aware of the many benefits of an open and free technological infrastructure. That, like those who have come before us and who have struggled through war and other great hardships to provide us, their children, with a free world, we will endure the relatively painless inconvenience of "retraining costs" to prevent what will most surely become one of the most powerful empires ever.
OfB: In an interview on Linux and Main, Rasterman, the founder of the Enlightenment window manager stated that he thought GNU/Linux on the desktop has no future. He certainly is not alone in saying this, yet we also have seen a number of impressive GNU/Linux desktop deployments in the last year. What is your take this?
AFP: In my estimation, KGX (KDE / GNU / Linux) in particular will enjoy a great future on the desktop. That is mainly for the same reasons why FS / OS is such a resounding success in the server sphere: quality, efficiency, cost, flexibility and freedom. But we need to remember that the FS / OS desktops and related technologies are still relatively immature compared to their server counterparts, and that the technological demands for desktop systems are in many ways different.
KDE, for example, got its start in 1996, many years after Linux, which itself started many years after the other components required by server systems (the many BSD and GNU projects) had already matured.
In addition, the server space has long been the focus of UNIX and compatible systems. Networking, and particularly the Internet, were built on such systems. Little wonder, then, that outstanding support for server technologies exists.
However, historically UNIX systems have not been strong desktop contenders, and hence all the technical achievements in the last 20 years on the desktop - such as word processing, multimedia, printing, etc. - were essentially missing when KDE was started (there were some proprietary solutions then, and with OS X there are many more now, but nothing of the openness and quality of the *BSDs or Linux). And that is why we see so many open standards and technical implementations for network technologies but not for desktop technologies.
OfB: What challenges do you see remaining for mass adoption of "KGX" systems?
AFP: I see five major challenges to widespread adoption of KGX or other FS / OS desktop solutions, Tim, most of which are being readily quickly addressed: hardware support; a sound and stable desktop technology framework; RAD development tools; the quality and breadth of applications; and, as already suggested in an earlier response, law. KDE is leading the charge in all but the first and last challenge areas.
With regard to hardware, Linux is quickly providing support for the latest technologies, from USB2 to "WinModems" to 802.b11. In fact Linux support for next-generation 64-bit chips is substantially more advanced than the current dominant desktop. Hardware manufacturers are beginning to pay serious attention to Linux, and the community of developers, including corporate users, has grown broad enough to assure this will continue.
On the desktop technology front, the KDE libraries and desktop frameworks are also reaching maturity. In the past, KDE has been criticized for incompatible releases, but these growing pains are a consequence of the relative immaturity of desktop technologies and the FS / OS philosophy of "release early, release often". Had KDE waited for the desktop technologies to stabilize before any public releases, well, I think we can all agree that its progress to date would have been substantially retarded - if in fact the project were still active.
Today, from the underlying libraries toolkits - KDE libs and Qt - to object embedding (KParts), IPC (DCOP), scripting (DCOP, Python), printing (KPrinter) and multimedia (aRts) to a much-needed overhaul of the X Server (anti-aliased fonts, work on alpha-blending, improved hardware acceleration) and the growing maturity of display alternatives such as the Linux framebuffer (which KDE is excellently poised to use), KDE provides a vastly friendlier, complete and stable development and desktop environment than was available even a few years ago.
On the development tools side, KDevelop, together with the components it uses (such as Qt Designer), has greatly simplified and expedited application development. Looking forward, Gideon, the "next" generation of KDevelop currently under heavy development, promises to be far superior still. In addition, Borland has released its advanced Delphi and C++ development environments for the Linux platform.
On the applications front, both in terms of native capabilities and the capacity to unlock the data formats which encode so much of the world's electronic data, we come face-to-face with the ultimate test of any platform. All of the technological trends noted above make it far easier, quicker and cheaper for developers to create great new applications for, or port existing applications to, KGX systems.
You need only look around APPS.KDE.com to see how already there is a great variety of applications, both works in progress and with stable releases. Contrary to speculation to the contrary, the site's statistics show that third-party KDE development is at an all-time high, and the number of applications available for KDE 3 is far greater than what was available for KDE 2 one year following its release.
OfB: Now, you listed one more challenge - the law. Perhaps you could explain how you see this as a hurdle?
AFP: Tim, I see this by far the greatest challenge. The simple fact is that in a free market - and by free here I mean the ideal forms of capitalism propounded in the Wealth of Nations, the lowest cost-provider wins. Now as it turns out this type of capitalism is not what we see in the software industry. And in the long term those with the current monopoly cannot compete with Free Software on price or quality. So the monopolist must resort to other means - it must prevent the market from being free, because a free market means it loses its vast and expanding powers.
I went over some of the monopolist's current free-market destroying behavior earlier in context of the Linux transition technologies and the use of "private" law to lock users into paying a perpetual tax to the monopolist. But in other areas, be it software patents, software reverse engineering (e.g., DCMA), digital rights management (DRM), or other initiatives, a rather broader array of forces are aligning to challenge our cherished freedoms on a wide variety of fronts. Unlike for the vested software monopolist, for these other interests the choice of one OS over another shouldn't actually matter.
Typically legislative sponsors are oligarchies and monopolies in various "markets" where the company's value is largely based on intellectual "property". And the protagonists echo a refrain dating back millenia: their particular property rights are more important than everyone else's human, moral and property rights.
For example, because it is possible that I may behave criminally and watch a video without paying fees for it, an infringement of the property rights of some powerful interests to be sure, some important figures in the entertainment industry would like to impose draconian regulations which in one incarnation or another would:
(1) Violate my property rights in my computer equipment by authorizing a "virtual", private police force to disable my computer in the event they believe an infraction of someone's rights has occurred. It is important to keep in mind here that the infringement of my property rights occurs even if the computer is never in fact disabled: the mere fact of requiring me to provide the necessary access to enable the police action violates my property rights. An analogy would be mandating that a home owner provide a key and right of entry to a private police force so that these individuals may disable use of the home whenever it believes unlawful activity is occurring within. The grant infringes the essential property right of exclusive control.
(2) Violate my human right to be protected against unreasonable searches and seizure, to be deemed and treated as innocent until proven guilty in a court of law by a jury of my peers, and to privacy by authorizing the constant monitoring of my activity in my home, as noted above.
(3) Violate my human right of exercising my free speech by subjecting me to constant surveillance by third parties in the privacy of my home.
(4) Violate my human right of free speech by controlling which software I may use to run machines which have a profound impact on my life.
(5) Violate my property right to deploy the software of my choice on my personal property, irrespective of whether that software serves the perceived needs of unrelated third parties.
(6) Violate my human right not to live in a police state.
All of the above assume that the private police force posted in point (1) never actually disable my computer. However, should they do so, the following additional rights would possibly (and at course possible abuse is what this invasive legislation is directed against, so presumably that means we should take these extremely seriously as well, since, just as I may watch a movie unlawfully, the private police may exercise their powers unlawfully):
(a) Violate my property rights by effectively destroying my computer equipment.
(b) Violate my property rights in my contractual and legal rights. This part is a bit trickier to grasp. In essence, private individuals will be granted the unilateral right of unreasonable interference with my contractual obligations and other legal rights. For example, I may be employed in a manner requiring the use of the Internet, or my pension benefits may be collected through the Internet. By disabling my means of livelihood and/our communication, these individuals have stripped me of the ability to exercise legal rights which can be exercised only through the use of the disabled technology.
(c) Violate my human right to be deemed and treated as innocent until proven guilty by a jury of my peers in a court of law by authorizing an invasive and punitive self-help remedy.
(d) Violate my human right to due process by enabling a self-help remedy without independent judicial review.
Unfortunately even worse is possible: these forces may be effective in enabling legislation which either specifically makes FS / OS unlawful, at least on the desktop and other user-level devices, or to make the transition to freedom so expensive or disruptive that few will make the transition before the exit doors to the proprietary prison are hopelessly sealed off.
OfB: That is quite a depressing picture you paint. Is there a good side to all of this?
AFP: Yes, there is a bright side, a very bright one indeed. Government is a two-edged sword. At once it appears to be the biggest threat to free software, at the same time it also appears that by living up to the historic obligation to provide for the common good of its citizens, Government may be the biggest hope for a rapid and steady advance in free software quality and use.
If you will, you can liken a desktop infrastructure as society's infrastructure, not so different from roads, schools, universities and emergency services. These types of infrastructure are inherently monopolistic since economic (development cost, transaction costs, return on investment, etc.) and "moral" factors (freedom, equality, etc.) are such that the use of taxes for creating and maintaining them is universal.
The most difficult challenge to obtaining substantial financial contributions for FS / OS projects is that the person making the contribution does not, in general, obtain a proportionately larger benefit. So currently financial contributions (including hiring developers or releasing proprietary code to the FS / OS communities) are made mainly when the cost to the bottom line is reasonable (e.g., a company may conclude that releasing a product which it was already distributing for free would reduce its development costs without impacting its revenues, and perhaps also increase market share for the proprietary enhancements). But it is far less likely that a company will on its own fund the development of a widely-used product with no particular benefit to it.
As with roads and schools, however, Governments need not concern themselves with questions of direct returns on investment. Improvements in the general welfare alone justify public expenditures. Rather than seek to reap profits for some relatively small set of owners, the purpose of Government spending is to improve the quality of life for all their citizens. Moreover, a large part of the Government's historic economic role was to spread costs among its citizens where the benefits would be shared largely by all and the economics of development made other forms of construction less practical. Finally, Governments of free nations dedicated to the principles of freedom, democracy and choice have traditionally allocated resources to important public projects that promote or preserve these essential human rights.
Viewed in this light, FS / OS desktops present a perfect match for Government investment. Free desktops provide a boundless, publically-available resource which results not only in large financial savings to its citizens, but also protects and enhances citizen privacy, freedom and choice. Moreover, because Government investment in free software development can be made locally, such support stimulates the nation's or locality's technology sector. In the longer-term view, such investment eventually operates to sizably reduce the outflow of hard currency to other countries, something especially critical for developing nations but also a factor no Government cannot seriously consider. What responsible Government would prefer its citizens pay a large international tax to a foreign corporation over creating high-tech jobs in its local economy?
Governments, of course, need also worry about national security, and it is hard to see how they can be fulfilling their obligations with reliance on a monopolist's proprietary computers and networks. Being totally dependant on one vendors' systems - systems which can be disabled remotely or possibly simply by the absence of remote commands - is a most serious national security threat. Listening to reports that some are claiming that Linux is a tool terrorists can exploit is nothing short of Orwellian. The plain truth of the matter is that proprietary systems, particularly ones emerging under the new "licensing" / private law schemes, provide a far better weapon for terrorists, national enemies and the economically greedy.
This is due not just to the fact that system homogeny inherently makes widespread attacks more feasible and effective (if you find a way to compromise one system, you can compromise them all). Even more troubling is the fact that the new "licensing" schemes notoriously provide ever-more ways to access - and control - your system remotely, including the ability to disable and control functionality, update software, etc. These capabilities provide a beautifully-fashioned weapon to "terrorists" and other enemies of state to attack and disable a nation's infrastructure and computer systems.
As suggested earlier, the threat of proprietary software to Governments and nations does not stop with traditional terrorism and war. Indeed, it threatens to unleash a new breed of terrorism, one which by straddling the boundaries of legitimacy could prove more difficult to combat, and hence all the more effective. The future may find a Government faced with the inability or the unwillingness to pay, or permit some foreign entity to require its citizens to pay, what I have characterized in an earlier response as a "private" international tax - a set of mandatory, recurring fees due by virtually everyone in society for a service which by all rights should, and quite easily could, be free. Or, that Government may be unwilling to agree to, or permit a foreign entity to requires its citizens to agree to, what I have characterized in an earlier response as "private" international law - licensing terms and conditions which impose legal obligations on, in effect, everyone, without, in effect, anyone but the monopolist having a word in the terms.
This Government may find that, faced with opposition, the software vendor threatens to resort to self-help by disabling the vast majority of the nation's computers if its demands, however unreasonable and illegitimate from the Government's perspective, are not met. In short, the vendor threatens to shut down the nation's infrastructure and businesses, grinding the economy to a virtual halt. The Government, not having invested in alternative software systems, would face an indeterminate future in which a large proportion of the nation's workers would simply be idle. Faced with this Hobson's choice, what country could afford to risk non-compliance then? Faced with this threat to its security, what responsible Government will not act now to prevent an unaccountable, foreign, private entity from wielding this terrible weapon over the nation's collective head?
Another factor pertaining to national security is military, political and industrial espionage. Without access to the source code for a system, there can be no reasonable confidence that secure communications are not being monitored or forged, whether through access to a user's account on the desktop side or through exploitation of a known weakness in the secure library implementation, on the network.
Moreover, without access to full source code, no Government should feel confident in its ability to thwart terrorist, hacker or other attacks against the nation's infrastructure, as any solution requires the assistance and cooperation of a third party outside the Government's control - potentially even under the control of the forces involved in the hostilities being waged against the Government. Obviously being provided "some" source code, which may or not be the source code actually running the computers of the world, does not guard against these national security vulnerabilities, since in the first case any code enabling unauthorized monitoring or access would doubtlessly be removed prior to circulation and in the second case not enough is provided to fix the problem locally and recompile the systems. The only reasonable method to check source code for "Trojans" is to compile what has been reviewed, and the only reasonable method to be self-reliant in responding to infrastructure attacks is to possess the complete source code to the entire system, or at a minimum the particular components being attacked.
So it is not surprising that we see more and more responsible Governments act to save their taxpayers substantial costs, stimulate their local economies, safeguard their sovereignty and national security, enhance their citizens' liberty, freedom, privacy and choice, and strengthen their nation's computer infrastructure, all of which can be accomplished simply by providing financial, logistical and moral support FS / OS systems.
Obviously, the great majority of the advantages of FS / OS which accrue to Governments and users applies to enterprises as well. I rather suspect no large corporation desires to repeat the trail to Washington undertaken last year by one of the world's most powerful industrial and entertainment companies faced with an obscenely inappropriate set of "private laws" in its licensing terms. Particularly since once the proceedings end, there may no longer be anyone to hear complaints.
I thus expect to witness more and more private companies contributing to OS / FS desktop system development. And I am also optimistic that a suitable infrastructure to enable enterprises to contribute to such efforts in a painless and cost-effective manner will emerge at the proper time.
OfB: So you see a future for the Linux desktop, but do you think that may include large scale enterprise usage? Could it be that Linux's future may be more in the budget PC market like those Lindows desktops mentioned above or the Mandrake Linux ones Wal-Mart has also started offering?
AFP: I fully agree with your implication that at this juncture the enterprise and the low-budget markets provide the best scenarios for widespread deployment of KGX systems, Tim.
The enterprise market is easier because (1) the software requirements are generally more specialized; (2) enterprises have a technical support team which can handle some user interface issues which have not been fully ironed out (though the overall technical support costs should diminish substantially); and (3) they have the capability, and quite frequently the financial incentive, to port any specialized application to KGX systems.
Regarding application requirements, most office workers need maybe an office suite, a browser, an email / groupware client and perhaps some specialty application. Excellent solutions for the three generic applications are rapidly evolving, and as they continue to improve, the number of enterprises which can migrate some or all users to KGX systems will increase. As to specialty software, the rapid improvements in the development environments I observed earlier, and for many enterprises particularly the availability of Borland products for Linux, as well as advances in WINE, which provides a set of Win32-compatible APIs, make porting specialty applications to, or simply using them with, KGX systems easier. Eventually KGX will reach the point where it can no longer be simply ignored, and once is is carefully scrutinized, the advantages of migration will, in my opinion, increasingly prevail.
The second easier market is of course the low-budget market. Obviously a large number of such markets exist. For the desktop, this mainly means industrializing countries. Take, for example, Peru, whose Government has been seriously contemplating official FS / OS support, at least until Microsoft made some large public payments followed by a "private" meeting with Peru's President. Peru's average annual income is apparently under $2,400, with half of the population earning far less. For many of them, the availability of FS / OS will simply make the difference between owning a computer, or not.
But there are numerous other low-budget markets. PDAs, cell phones and similar "convergence" appliances come to mind. Many large and small companies, whom experience has taught that reliance on a monopoly vendor is even worse than its cracked up to be, are looking to FS/ OS to provide superior, cost-effective and flexible solutions for emerging technologies.
OfB: Thank-you Andreas, your remarks were very insightful.
AFP: My pleasure. Thank you very much for your time, Tim.
Mr. Pour's responses above are Copyright (c) 2002, Andreas F. Pour. All rights reserved.
...to use software based on political reasons.
Linux support for 802.b11? Finally, we'll be the first to support the latest bass ackwards wireless communication protocol!
Not so, with all the Apple Power PC's with OS X loaded it may be the fastest growing OS. Of course this probably only clouds your reality.
What a wierd submission though.
Greg
OfB: KDE has become the most used Linux desktop, in fact OS News recently put the number at over 50% of the market. What do you think has been KDE's secret so far?
buh?
All your base are belong to us.
To manage the overload, developers to some extent are forced to retreat from direct user interaction, such as on the user mailing lists. You can characterize this pessimistically as paying less attention to users, or more realistically as an appropriate adjustment to changed circumstances.
... but dear God people ... if you're a KDE developer, and you have half the people yelling "Make it more like Windows" and the other half yelling "Make it less like Windows", you'd get pissed off to. It's like this in all OSS projects. Who else cheers for Branden when he flames some jerk off that wants XFree4.2 in Debian "just because"?
... "Is it me, or are these people getting stupider?"
I'm glad they retreat. I think there's more to this than simple overload - I think alot of OSS devs are probably sick of backseat drivers trying to dictate features and direction of something they're doing for free anyway. The more OSS project mailing lists and forums I read, the more I am glad that developers choose to ignore more and more user requests. Everyone is quick to point out how "developers don't know what users need" and how "difficult" certain OSS developers are when dealing with users.
I for one am glad when developers choose to ignore some users and just go away and code. If you're ever bored, go check out the INVALID or WONTFIX bugs in Mozilla, for example. I swear, the next moron that wants mozilla to render ALT tags as popups, or ask for colored scrollbars should get drawn and quartered. We're screaming for standards and these guys think its their right to dictate what Mozilla should be doing.
We, as users, should take a step back and trust the developers for a bit. There are certain things in KDE that I feel are totally wrong, and there are certain things in there that I'm glad someone figured out for me. There's nothing wrong with giving constructive criticism
Mayor Quimby said it best when the citizens wanted a Bear patrol but wouldn't accept higher taxes
slashdotted, ne1 have a mirror?
I've never liked KDE...Always thought it felt too unprofessional. I prefer GNOME over KDE, but I haven't tried KDE 3 yet. GNOME 2 is sleek and friendly. Ease of installation doesn't come in to account because of Debian's package management, so at least installation doesn't leave a sour taste in my mouth...Time to go try KDE 3.
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
Quote : OfB: Thank-you Andreas, your remarks were very insightful.
----- One piece short of Legoland
When all else fails, run.
Just be sure to remember to save it to one of the lossy non-secret formats before your word processor locks you out.
KDE GNOME, OSX?
Yeah, yeah, here's some flame bait for you:
.txt or .rtf file can't give you what you want, .htm/l/ or .pdf can.
Um, don't save your creations in the proprietary format created and maintained by a convicted felon. If a
And speaking of arbitrary, pointless and otherwise unnecessary divisions in the electronic desk-space, Gnome AND KDE both suck monkey nuts. Developers set up app installs to favor one over the other. The only way to effectively get around on the desktop is using something like Enlightenment or Ice for the default load. Then there's navigating the pointless folder nesting...
Oh I know, burn time tweaking the installs. Sorry, I'm now old enough to drive. I have to go earn a living.
Mike Nomad
There once was a channel called #FreeBSD on Efnet. A powerful FreeBSD Core developer, Mike Smith, used to reside there. One day an annoying troll entered the channel and pissed off Mike Smith and left. Mike Smith took it in stride and blocked his subnet from ever accessing FreeBSD's CVS repository again. It was quite hilarious (a true story, I would provide the logs if I could remember the date). The moral of the story, don't piss off developers.. they have more power than you think.
The amount of @sskissing required to get +5 for a seemingly pro-Microsoft comment is mind-boggling. (For those who don't get it - the problem it with the site, not with the author of the comment).
Something everybody should keep in mind when dealing with other members of the open source community and/or world...
"For example, there was a period not long ago where much ado was made about the incredible enhancements to the KDE themes and icons while the HTML rendering engine was not yet bug-free. It seems these critics truly did not understand that the contributors working on the themes and icons have no greater ability to improve the Konqueror browser than, say, the critic does."
It's all about even distribution off talent...
the difference is quite simply this: instead of dealing with the ONE case that covers them all, m$ decides to take a select few that will PROBABLY be used, and perfect those. many products do this. this leads to bloat. i have used kde and found it clunky as well. i don't use kde. i am perfectly happy using any window manager on *nix that supports multiple desktops (addict, i know).
the point is this: it is very easy to create unmaintainable code that covers a few basic cases (ala m$) and forget about the rest. it works, sure, but is unstable. in most *nix systems, the mentality is quite the opposite, and despite lots of market pressure, it still hasn't died. sure, some users don't care about ALL cases, and just those select few, but the thing is that eventually, the generic case that covers them all WILL work correctly, and then death to m$ is unavoidable.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
..if you had any sense you wouldn't use a media format that is controled by someone else, the os has nothing to do with this and this article is nothing more than an indirect bash at microsoft..
Can you say 'Microsoft'? I knew you could.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
When you paste text in an Office XP application, a small Paste Option smart tag icon appears near (but not in the way of) the pasted item.
Hover over it, and it gives you quick access to change the formatting, such as:
- keep source formatting
- match destination formatting
- keep text only
- apply style or formatting
Match destination formatting would have changed the pasted item's text to look like the current style at the insertion point.
It's a smart (and dare I say, innovative) way of solving the problem.
... Pour me a brew will ya!
Viewed in this light, FS / OS desktops present a perfect match for Government investment. Free desktops provide a boundless, publically-available resource which results not only in large financial savings to its citizens, but also protects and enhances citizen privacy, freedom and choice. Moreover, because Government investment in free software development can be made locally, such support stimulates the nation's or locality's technology sector. In the longer-term view, such investment eventually operates to sizably reduce the outflow of hard currency to other countries, something especially critical for developing nations but also a factor no Government cannot seriously consider. What responsible Government would prefer its citizens pay a large international tax to a foreign corporation over creating high-tech jobs in its local economy?
Folks, this meme has been in the Free Software community from the earliest days of the FSF. Just read some of RMS's early essays and you'll see the same ideas. It's bunk. They just want us to exchange a private monopoly for a government monopoly. Private monopolies can be defeated when customers become so disatisfied that they choose alternatives. Private monopolies can be defunded because when customers stop buying they lose money. Public monopolies are much harder to defeat because they just confiscate money in the form of taxes. Almost all products produced by governments are inferior. This long-winded interview is just loaded with Leftist scare tactics. MSFT is not capable of preventing you from viewing your own creations unless you are stupid enough to let them. Don't let the government take care of you--do it yourself. You'll be much better off in the long run.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
people that rely on proprietary software are going to find themselves locked in a "proprietary prison" cell, if they don't wake up soon. Monopolists will abuse their power to the point that their victims will start to scream and the government will hear their cries and bring the hammer of justice down and crush the monopolists.
-amen
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Look, Government produced software should be GPL'd - otherwise you, as a citizen, are paying for it once through your taxes, and _again_ when you buy an embraced-and-extended version from Microsoft (who are jammy tax dodgers...)
We still do get it, do we? The point is america NEEDS a monopolist because ONLY a MONOPOLIST can be an effective cyber-cop of media content.
If you have diversity and competition, you can't control data. And that's what media/content resellers are asking the goverment to do.
On the one hand you have the citizens not knowing MS is getting ready to be the cyber-cop for a huge profit. On the other hand you have entire industries crying for a solution that involves allowing a Monopoly to solve all their problems.
(sorry for the caps)
unfinished: (adj.)
The following attitude does not promote the merger of Gnome and Linux, which I think should be a long term goal. Let Gnome 3.0 and KDE 4.0 be the same!
"OfB: The GNOME Project recently released the second major version of its desktop. Have you had a chance to look at this desktop? Briefly, what are you thoughts on the other available GNU/Linux desktops?
AFP: Actually, Tim, I do not concern myself with using other FS / OS (Free Software / Open Source) desktops very much. This protects me from having to answer questions like this one that involve making comparisons . I can just honestly answer, "I don't know about XYZ," and leave it at that."
Announcement: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.1beta1 .html
Download: http://download.kde.org/unstable/kde-3.1-beta1/
... allowed to be heard.
Just after I read your post mozilla crashed on me again, so I am going to respond.
I submitted one of those WONTFIX bugs, and I stand by my suggestion still today. I recommended that an unstripped nightly or a linux talkback nightly build be distributed ( either one ), just as talkback nightlies for windows are distributed. The sad thing is the suggestion is simple. They would have to *not* strip a binary before inclusion on the mozilla ftp server. This would require no code changes and only a minor build change.
I'm not just bitching about not being able to run nightlies under a debugger without building from scratch. I'm complaining about not being able to provide any reasonable information to the developers for those random crashes. And thus having to live with those crashes.
I'm complaining about being shut out of this "mozilla community" I keep hearing about.
Mozilla and other large OSS projects are turning their backs on one of the most important advantages of OSS, user feedback. As more and more of the decisions go corporate and behind closed doors, these projects will appeal less and less to many users.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Just be sure to remember to save it to one of the lossy non-secret formats before your word processor locks you out.
Can you please explain to me this magic way that Microsoft is going to change my WP binaries to stop them opening my documents?
Also, the fact the parent post, by a contributer with a good record of quality posts, gets modded down to troll simply because he disagrees with slashthink, illustrates exactly what is wrongwith this site and the majority of its audience.
Do you get the feeling that people missed the point of why Rasterman and others (such as myself) say the Linux desktop has no future?
I am very confident that Linux will enjoy success on the desktop, enough perhaps to eliminate the Microsoft monopoly. But the question is not if the Linux desktop is dead - it's whether the desktop itself is dead.
I have posted about this once before. Embedded devices will integrate computing into the house. Average people don't like computers, they just use them. When they can do all computer related tasks through devices that integrate seamlessly into their life, the computer and the desktop will die.
Consider also a project like the OEone desktop - the beginning of blurring the line between oS. These are all signs of a new future of computing. Embedded devices are the future, not the desktop. So winning the desktop is like winning a battle, but not the war.
I can understand why they might not want an un-stripped Mozilla available for download. Depending on which compiler is used and which compiler debug-options specified at compile time, a binary can easily add 50% if not a lot more. I've seen many c++ binaries compiled with gcc 3.x with -g3 double or more in size (unstripped).
The second the US gives up trying to use the courts to keep MS in check, it'll simply nationalize MS. It'll certainly do this the moment it perceives a conflict of interest. It may neuter it (like IBM), but it will probably nationalize it given widespread reliance on it.
There is of course the small chance that MS will become the ascendant (espicially with a tad of infiltration in congress, etc.), and the US will become the United States of Microsoft.
When more taxes get spent on IT infrastructure than anything else, they'll be the de facto government anyway.
So, there's a choice: Software Dictatorship or Software Democracy. Run by an individual from taxation, or run by the people by community sponsorship.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with making money out of software, but it's not a good idea to have a government start enshrining the interests of commercial organisations in law at the expense of peoples constitutional rights.
I think I'll have to give *BSD a try.
That way I can call my system KGB instead.
I have a general rule of thumb for sane reasonable behaviour. Imagine if the government did the same, and blocked many more people than the one who did it. It's not reasonable, it's not funny, it's dumb.
Wow. KGX! That actually sounds good. I've often thought that the name "Linux" (no offense intended Mr. T) sounded kind of... um... I don't quite know how to say it? Prissy? Weak? Some of you must understand what I mean.
Even I was a little hesitant at first, geeky as I am because of the name. It probably only sounds that way to a native English speaker though.
But KGX? KGX sounds kick *ss! It somehow conveys high tech-ness, polish, trendyness, etc.
I can see how Joe-sixpack would shy away from "Linux" on his PC, but really have an urge to try the coolness that is "KGX."
Since I myself run KDE3.0.3 over Gentoo, I think from now on I'm gonna start saying, when folks ask me what kind of computer I have, that I have a "KGX machine."
Announcement: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.1beta1 .html
Download: http://download.kde.org/unstable/kde-3.1-beta1/
This gentleman refers to them by their stock ticker symbol, MSFT. The "use Open Source" solution is a threat to the great Ponzi scheme. Personally, I have worked in developing countries and can say sure, we give them a World Bank loan for a hundred copies of XP, but where are they going to money for their licence renewals/update fees?
Government led OS initiatives do not mean a Government monopoly. The Govt is a useful first-mover and because of open-source, anyone can compete for the provision of support services, even local companies in developing countries.
Seems like a reasonable request, especially since they can probably just have the compile farm do it. I also understand the size issue. You are arguably already providing a service to the developers \ running their binaries. However, please tell us Slashdot readers this:
What is stopping you from compiling your own binary?
I beg to differ. All the industry is begging for is standards. We have already done that many, many times as a community. It's not the MS Wide Web, IIRC. If we need a monopoly to hold our hand to encode all of our images or documents, explain how in a few years we as a community got hundreds of millions of radically different computers connected on fiber and copper heterogenous networks, all talking in one set of protocols? Pardon me if I think that that's a more noteworthy goal that's been achieved. You and I are both typing this thanks to open and collaborative protocols that have been developed with no surcharges attached. All we need is a way of standardizing a particular media format, and documenting and opening its standard, not a Big Brother to force feed it to us.
--- What
Unless you enjoy crashes and lockups, don't bother. This release sucks the big one. I don't know what has happened to the quality control, but it ain't anywhere to be found in this godawful release. Wait until the major bugs are shaken out before wasting you time on this lemon.
The day a developer stops listening to user requests directly or indirectly and starts to do whatever he likes most (in their free or payed time) is the day I'll want to switch to something else (personal choice here).
Which is why just about every OSS project (KDE included) that is large enough to use a bug-tracking system has a 'wishlist' category in the bug-tracker.
Just about every OSS project I know would LOVE to hear about new ideas and ways to improve the software - but PLEASE report these ideas in the appropriate place, which is in the bug-tracking system. If you post your ideas to a mailing list, then not only are your proposals far more likely to get lost in the noise of other posts, you are also creating extra work for the developers who have to wade through tons of feature requests, often for identical things, before they can use the mailing list for what it was designed for - which is communicating with each other. If the idea is in the bug tracking system, it is recorded for eternity, indexed and can be searched and reviewed by developers easily when they run out of pressing bugs to fix.
To repeat: if you have a killer idea, post it to the bug-tracking system, with a 'wishlist' category! Although you may not get an immediate response, my experience is that you have a far far better chance of seeing your idea implemented in the future than if you pollute project mailing lists.
Now, if you're prepared to implement your idea yourself, then by all means post to the mailing lists when you need help - that is what they're there for - but if you aren't, leave it to the bug tracking system.
What a surprise, he's afraid that software vendors are going to own his thoughts. "In other words, the products of our creative minds, the very essence of our humanity, are being relentlessly stripped from us."
Hey, KDE is very good and all, and yes, there are some real serious issues about proprietary document formats. But anytime somebody starts into this sort of extremist scare-mongering, even if I basically agree with them, I just tune it out. Most people who use such exaggeration aren't capable of thinking through the issue clearly. It's become far too common these days to make some trivial cause into something of earth-shattering importance. Spare me.
OfB: The GNOME Project recently released the second major version of its desktop. Have you had a chance to look at this desktop? Briefly, what are you thoughts on the other available GNU/Linux desktops?
AFP: Actually, Tim, I do not concern myself with using other FS / OS (Free Software / Open Source) desktops very much. This protects me from having to answer questions like this one that involve making comparisons . I can just honestly answer, "I don't know about XYZ," and leave it at that.
I don't see KDE as having competition with these desktops as a primary motivator or purpose. What KDE tries to do is to be the best it can be, and to provide a nice, easy-to-use alternative for others. The main interaction I see with other desktops centers around a mailing list and website established for discussing potential desktop standards.
How do you intend to provide a nice, easy-to-use alternative for others if you avoid making comparisons ?
Less is more !
is a paid announcement from Bill Gates and Microsoft:
ALL YOUR GOVERNMENT ARE BELONG TO US....
YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE... MAKE YOUR TIME
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
Nope, no sig
And should every user that wants to give crash data ( from a core file or talkback ) from linux have to build their own?
/
it takes 3 hours and 1Gig of drive space on a P450. I did build my own for a while and I contributed a few bug fixes in that time as well. But I can't have such a huge build running everyday on my desktop.
Also, the unstripped binary would be in *addition* to the stripped and can clearly be labelled as such. eg. mozilla-linux-i686-unstripped.tar.gz, along with the others in ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/lastest
But this is only an example, my point is that it is getting increasing difficult to give feedback in the larger OSS projects nowadays.
PS. This is meant as serious argument I've observed, not a troll ( as my previous post has seemed to be labelled )
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
1. The DMCA specifically allows reverse engineering software for compatibility with other software.
2. Your data is yours, whatever format it is in.
Therefore, there is no issue here. You are allowed to view your own data using your own methods.
They've already done this. Anyone else remember the hoo-ha early last year when the passport T&C's quoted that M$ had rights to any data passed across passport based services (Register Article)
They got a lot of stick then, but with the EULA creep we're getting now (think about the win2k SP3 EULA) it can't be too long before it's tried again.
Pipsqueak
Looking through the interview, I noticed that Andreas actually said "Microsoft" once.
Whenever he discussed them, it was always
When did "Microsoft" become one of the Seven Dirty Words???
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
7 + 1 = 8
> KDE will never make any progress with its lack of UNIX-like philosophy. With gnome it is small programs to get the job done
Like Evolution? *lol*
This is not new. It began as soon as the first (evolved) Macintosh machine came up with this message:
ÂThe file cannot be found because the program that created it is not available.Â
Bill Gates merely latched on.