Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: BitKeeper, Maine, Novell
I thought Adam Smith was in favor of free markets and the exchange of ideas. mrjive writes "The plot thickens. In response to yesterday's story, it turns out that the attack on the free software movement was attached to the end of the letter in question by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash, who happens to have Microsoft as his biggest beneficiary. The original authors of the letter have sent an angry response for essentially twisting its original purpose. Read the full scoop here."
For the even-fuller scoop, see Roblimo's article on NewsForge.
Not bottling it up inside of himself. An anonymous reader writes "Richard M. Stallman has responded to comments made a week ago in response to his own Linux kernel mailing list post about the BitKeeper controversy. 'A technical issue or project sometimes raises ethical issues,' Stallman began. He did not stop there. More on the (newly cached and therefore a little bit Slashdot-immune) Linux and Main . Be gentle."
Free knowledge for sale for free, etc. OverCode@work writes "The complete LaTeX source to Loki Software's game programming book, Programming Linux Games, is now available on the author's site. This book was reviewed here a while back. Mad props to the publisher for letting this happen."
Everybody'sSQL haggar writes "MySQL (commercial license) will be shipped as standard with NetWare according to this announcement. I consider it a follow-up to the Slashdot story about the PostgreSQL port for NetWare. Apparently, the options for NetWare users are widening, thanks to open-source products!"
An iBook in every (lobster)pot! Call Me Black Cloud writes "Some time ago Maine awarded a contract to Apple for laptops for school kids. MacCentral has an interview with Maine governor Angus King where he discusses the success of the program. Despite the Maine state legislature's attempts to kill the program, it continues on. Why? Well, a $1M grant from the Gates Foundation certainly helped. Over the summer Apple delivered 18,000 iBooks and installed 239 wireless networks in 239 schools."
So long as they're not mandatory. Polo writes "I noticed that the Garmin Rino 110 and 120 are shipping. If you don't remember, these are FRS/GMRS Radios with integrated GPS. You can transmit your position to other units so they can hear you and see where you are. Pretty cool. This is a follow-up to an older story"
What the market will bear. His Nastiness writes "Just a follow-up that I ran across that indicates that Steve Ballmer may have just been blowing hot air on not selling the XBox in Austrailia anymore. See the previous thread here."
Why is the Gates Foundation sponsoring a campaign to buy Apple laptops? Not a troll, just wondering.
... itturns out that the attack on the free software movement was attached to the end of the letter in question by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash, who happens to have Microsoft as his biggest beneficiary.
No surprise -- Microsoft is a huge contributor to both parties, including the Democrats -- whom some believe are supposed to be our saviors from the "evil, corporate Republicans." They're not -- they're on the inside what Republicans are on the outside.
If you really want a change, don't vote for either party -- vote Libertarian if you're on the right, Green Party if you're on the left, and independant otherwise. Both parties are in the pockets of big business, and that's bad both for those who advocate freedom from the government as well as those who despise deregulation.
The more we have third party, the closer we get to fairer, European-style representation.
It is a stretch to conclude anything about the general attitude or character of a person from one action, so I would not say the people who distribute non-free software are "evil people" in a general sense. I will say they have done one thing that is evil: distributing a non-free program.
Evil \E"vil\ ([=e]"v'l) n.
- Anything which impairs the happiness of a being or
deprives a being of any good; anything which causes
suffering of any kind to sentient beings; injury;
mischief; harm; -- opposed to good.
The only one being impaired of happiness. or suffering is Richard Stallman. Methinks someone is a little too big for his britches.Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Why is the Gates Foundation sponsoring a campaign to buy Apple laptops?
For one thing, the Gates Foundation and Microsoft Corporation are completely separate bodies; GF might have simply chosen what computer would benefit students the most. For another, MS Office and MS IE run on Macintosh computers.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Our forefathers fought long and hard to rid ourselves of the savagery of the multiparty system that plagued Europe during the Middle Ages through the 18th century and continues to plague it more today than ever. It may have been Providence that allowed them to see the wisdom of a bicameral system wherein the parties would gain support by absorbing competing ideas from the general populace.
In a multi-party (and by multi, I mean more than two) political system, the ideas and concepts are fractured and you end up with "Single Issue" parties. This is great, so long as the candidates of those parties are not also single-issue dullards, but as history as shown throughout Europe and also, but to a limited extent, in the US, dullards are pretty much all extra-mainstream parties offer.
So with the bicameral system, we have two parties who can represent broad views across the spectrum on all sort of issues because of each party's ability to absorb issues from concered third parties. Perhaps this is where the benefit of extra-mainstream parties can be felt, in offering up ideas for the mainstream parties to make their own.
The only one being impaired of happiness. or suffering is Richard Stallman.
Or anybody who wants to work on both the Linux kernel and revision control software. Even if working on Linux and working on Subversion are separate jobs, the restrictions of the Bitkeeper license apply to the person and thus cross from one job to the other, as I mentioned in my other comment.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Whichever way you cut it. Activism doesn't belong in a technical list, even if he says that it's an ethical discusion. In Slashdot, he would be already at (-1, Offtopic). (Well, he wouldn't, but he should).
The Gates foundation is a charitable orginization. It has nothing to do with Microsoft except that the MS founder started it.
General Mills pumps a ton of charity dollars into various anti-hunger orginizations. But they don't force the charities to spend it on Lucky Charms.
So save the moronic MSFT-centric conspiracy theories until MSFT hands out iBooks to its employees.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
>> vote Libertarian if you're on the right, Green
>> Party if you're on the left
> What are you supposed to vote in the middle?
The previous post was wrong - vote Libertarian if you're in the middle. What was that Ross Perot party called again? Are they still around? THAT would be the one to vote for if you're on the 'Right'.
I have a close friend who works for a medical research institution here in Chile. They research contraceptives and provide free reproductive health care for extremely poor people. They are supported, to a large extent, by grants from the Gates Foundation. Think what you may about Microsoft, I think Mr. Gates has done some really good things through the Foundation.
AFAIK, the Gates Foundation is also responsible for vaccines for millions of African kids, in places where the government can't or won't do it.
No
Mod me down if you like, I'll admit, this will sound like some sort of psuedo-troll. But the question must be asked. Microsoft is a corporation that grew up in North America. It is a corporation that grew and thrived only because of the country in which it was established, the United States.
So.. South America gets the gift of life, while our downtrodden get free iMacs. That's great, you know?
Contrary to the widely-held belief of the rest of the world, everyone living in the United States isn't the owner of a Rolls Royce, nor do they routinely sport top hats and monocles. We've enough poor to kill our surplus of food that's sitting around spoiling. We've enough people with STDs and other diseases to fill beds in hospital upon hospital.
It's nice of Mr. Gates to give a big middle finger to the country that is the reason he has his millions, eh?
Sure, it's all nice and humanitarian that the Foundation is helping the poor of the world, but don't think it's out of some actual desire to see the poor given quality care and such. See it for what it is. A way for Mr. Gates to point out, "I'm rich, and I can eradicate diseases as I choose. I have power, I have money and you, you do not."
So it was with oil, steel and other barons with the past. So it stands today. The rich don't give a shit about the poor, they care about the bragging rights from throwing millions and billions about.
Seems the major problem open source developers are having with the BitKeeper license is that it places a certain requirement on them, just like the GPL. The GPL community response to criticism has always been, "don't use GPL code if you don't like the license." Seems perfectly reasonable. If you don't like the BitKeeper license, then don't use BitKeeper. When you get down to the basics, it's the same damn issue.
-- Will program for bandwidth
If you really believed in freedom then the GPL would just be the same as the public domain. That's freedom. The BSD license is far closer to a truly free license, the GPL isn't even remotely close to a free license.
Or so says Larry McVoy.
The freedom to take someone else's freedom away does not equate to "more freedom". When one individual gains a priviledge, while many others lose priviledges, the world is not "more free".
Poor Larry's plaintiff wail in defense of true freedom rings hollow the minute you realize the only freedoms he really cares about are his own.
Yes, Larry, in defense of freedom, the GPL places restrictions on what you can do with code. That's the way it works. The GPL restricts you from taking away other people's freedoms.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Please. The amount he gives away is like me giving a nickel to charity. Showing me xx percentage numbers is nothing. If you have 100 billion dollars, giving away 10 billion would not affect your lifestyle.
The moderators.
You have a two party system because it's modeled on Westminster.
We do not have a two party system, it is just that currently (and usually) only two of the parties are able to garner enough votes to even be considered.
The current system has virtually no input from the population and is becoming more and more like the royal courts of Europe used to be. A quick example is the number of career politicans and the number of Father/Son teams. Republican = Democrat there is so little difference as to be insulting.
The system has virtually no input because virtually nobody votes. It is rare to even get a 20% turnout. There are major differences between the parties, it is just that they are rarely talked about on political TV ads. Instead, the ads state:
You can stick your head in the sand and trot out the party line about democracy, freedom, liberty etc but please do not try and use examples to back you up that you obiuosly have not researched.
As an example of such un-researched examples:
Research how closely related by blood American politicans are to European. Then go on to research where your current politicans were educated? Then see if you can guess why the population of America has virtually no say in their goverment or laws?
How many people reading this are American citizens of age 18 or over who are not voting? I think that I can guess why they have virtually no say in their government and its laws.
The two part system gives the illusion of a democracy when in reality all we do is change dictators.
The are four main political views in America today. They are Libertarianism, Conservativism, Liberalism, and Socialism. The Libertarians and Conservatives have generally resided in the Republican party, although some conservatives are in the Democratic Party. Liberals and Socialists (the mainstream ones at least) are generally Democrats. The Libertarians and the Socialists have recently been splitting off as there own parties, the Libertarian and the Green parties. Neither of them will ever amount to much on any presidental election (lets hope) since they are to exteme for most people, and too extreme for comprimise.
The problem with the Libertarians is that they fail to realise that we actually do need a government, even a federal government, and we always will. They mainly only side with Conservatives because they aren't Democrats, who generally think that the solution to anything is a large government program.
The problem with the Greens/Socialists is that they want to replace the system of primarily corporate development and activity, which, while it has problem, actually works, with a system that has been demonstrated to not work on several occasions, all for the benefit of spotted tree frogs and the like. They will never get anywhere, because the American public likes their SUV's, McDonald's, non-fair-trade coffee, and cheap sweatshop clothing, and don't want to be told to change, and definitely not that they are evil.
Best Slashdot comment ever
Sorry, I cannot agree with this position. I am a strong supporter of OpenSource and Public Domain Software, however, I do not like the GPL. Why?
;-)
Because it is not really free. You put the restriction on it, that it may only be used in a certain way (distribute source, make your changes available again). Furthermore, I detest the virus-like effect the GPL has. For example, someone can just insert a snippet of GPLd code into your code (this person doesn't need to necessarily know about that), you don't realize it and keep improving your code - and after some years some retarded guys come and think they can bash at you if you (and the other persons who worked on the code) decide to make it closed source (which is the right of the coders to decide, IMHO).
Think about bzip2 - the guy wanted his code to be actually usable by companies in their closed-source apps so that the best possible compression technique can be used more widely. But initially - without really understanding what GPL really meant - he barred that way. When he changed the license to BSD/OpenSource (which is also my favourite) he got flamed over and over.
So if you want to make something truly free, if you are really ready to give up all your rights on it, the GPL is not the right license.
Just my opinion - you don't need to agree on it, but think about it for a moment, ok?
P.S.: Wonder if I will get flamed, troll-modded... for this?
Microsoft != Bill Gates.
That's right, Microsoft actually has less cash on hand than would be necessary to buy all of Bill Gates' shares, which, as of Oct 21 2002, are worth 59 billion dollars. Microsoft only has $40 billion in cash on hand, so the $2 billion/year interest figure is actually a conservative estimate.
Keep in mind, Microsoft also hasn't paid dividends to its shareholders in over ten years, and given that Bill Gates is a 12% shareholder, that amounts to a hefty amount of taxes that he's not paying. By not paying dividends, he avoids paying the top marginal tax rate of 39.6 percent that would apply to income distributed as dividends. By taking earnings entirely through stock sales, he lowers his tax rate to the maximum 20 percent that applies to capital gains. According to the most recent SEC reports on insider trades, Mr Gates sold more than $2.9 billion in Microsoft stock in 2001, benefiting enormously from the lower tax rate that applies to stock sales.
So, as I was saying... If Gates really was such a great individual, he would have donated more, and wouldn't be dodging federal tax laws (while simultaneously screwing smaller Microsoft shareholders).
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
"Please moderate down the parent comment."
Never tell anybody else what to moderate!
And again and again and again, the point is not if the restriction is in there or not, if you need to pay or not, the point is that they can put any restriction in there any time they like (free or forpay version). And suddendly the linux kernel is dependant on the goodwill of Bitmover, thats all what RMS is saying, if you make (important) free software on the back of properitary products you're not free anymore.
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
It comes down to this; you CANNOT overspend on education. That combination of words has no place in America; or shouldn't, at any rate.
The question is not on HOW MUCH is spent on education, it's HOW money is spent on education.
Would the money spent to get a computer for every student have been better spent on buying updated textbooks, ergonomic desks, art supplies, or on repairing instruments for the school band? Given the price tags on each of those items, my guess would be that the tools of traditional education would end up of more value to the students.