Slashback: BitKeeper, Maine, Novell

Slashback is back, with a largish handful of updates and new information about previously run stories. Topics this go-round include Xbox sales in Australia, the Novell / MySQL connection, Adam Smith (no, not that Adam Smith)'s bizarre anti-GPL statement mentioned yesterday, and more. Read on for the details.

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."

Comments

Re:RMS is trolling!

[stratjakt]

> In Slashdot, he would be already at (-1, Offtopic)

Nah, if you haven't noticed, anything posted thats anti-bush, anti-america, anti-MSFT or anti-congress gets modded up to (+5 Insightful) even if the topic is "Ask Slashdot: Should I Spit or Swallow?"

Re:More on the Gates Foundation

[fifirebel]

Yeah, sure...

You've just sayed that it's all right to rob the public and behave in a monopolistic manner as long as you redistribute a tiny part of the profit as charity.

Or do a lot of bad things as long as you use some of the benefits to do good things.

With this logic, one can justify anything... Hey, you should do politics!

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Cowrad]

I don't understand why a question can't be insightful.

Please explain.

Re:Gates Foundation?

[rodgerd]

For all the faults I would lay at the feet of Microsoft - in terms of technical and business issues - Gates himself is quite a philanthropist, and deserves brownie points for spending some of his enourmous fortune on helping people out.

Melinda made Clippy (Rumor) MS makes money on appl

[aaron_pet]

I've heard that she made MS Bob... witch made that horrible resource hogg that, although is not on by default in Office Xp, shows up as a FREAKING DOG in my search window for WINDOWS.... heck, it was in the INSTALLER for windows XP. ... It's a cute idea yeah, but how much productivity have I lost because some stupid thing pops up and slows down my computer then takes 5 seconds to animate to disapear??!?!

(BTW, I don't know if she really did make MS BOB or not)

I actually like MS XP... after I turned off all the distracting glop...

anyway, I thought MS had some contracts with Apple... and at one time made more money on Apples than Apple did... heck, they're using IE...

I'm not sure I want Bill Gates being lord of the people because he is the best swindler.. (however... I would much rather smack the patent system etc...

If he could keep a monopoly not protected by copyright and patents... I'd almost bow to the man... But Illgotten goods (stealing from people because of copyright and patents) shouldn't be spread in a way that benefites the man who stole them.