Alpha's Going Going Gone

WildCode writes "Get your Alphas now cause HP is releasing the last of the Alphas (the final one expected to be released in 2004), and there will be no more." I was already under the mistaken impression that Alpha was dead, so this story is rather bittersweet for me. Still, as far as architectures go, Alpha will probably be among my favorites. It was once vastly ahead of its time, if not severely cost-prohibitive.

Comments

Re:GPL Problems

[cpuffer_hammer]

Please, DO NOT SPREAD FUD!
IANAL( and guess you should be getting more knowledgeable lawyers soon ), but:

- Modifications to Linux's (the kernel) source code are to be openly available if you are to distribute it. For your own use, you already have it :)

- Code compiled with GCC is as free or as propietary as you want.

- Code linked against libraries covered by LGPL (GNU's Lesser Public License) can be closed source. You only need to make it open if you link against GPL-only libs.

- Having software covered by the GPL (except for the Kernel work, none of your code needs to be put under the GPL) does not spoil your chances of making money from it, it just makes you rethink a bit your bussiness model ( read: get paid for services and support not for the program itself )

Hmm... "Shared Source" fair?? Does M$ Corp have you in their payroll? Go away!

Re:GPL Problems

[rnturn]

As much as I hate feeding trolls, I wanted to thank you for your clueless post. It made my morning.

``(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system)''

What's the deal with Window's people always defragging disks. It's an utter waste of time. A day later the disks are fragmented again. Hell, I gave up that fruitless exercise over a dozen years ago. And Linux filesystems don't require defragmentation. At least that's my experience in the 8-9 years I've been running Linux. I've never encountered a filesystem whose performance seemed to be improved by more that a couple of percent following a backup/delete/restore. (One exception was a MUMPS database that had some files scattered across nearly 6000 extents -- a condition caused by a spectacularly uninformed system manager who thought that breaking and reestablishing mirrors (for nightly backups) automatically defragmented disks.) Have you really seen e2fsck report more than a tiny percentage of files being fragmented? Save yourself the time. Unless you like bilking your clients by billing them for some ``defragmentation service''.

And token ring? The world was giving up on token ring about the same time 8-inch floppies were going by the wayside. If you're looking to increase your consulting firm's revenues and get your client out of the paleolithic age of networking, advise them to begin replacing that and begin using commodity networking gear. Unless, of course, you prefer holding your client(s) back by using a technology that fewer and fewer consulting firms will have any expertise in. Is this your company's way of holding clients captive? And there is token ring support in Linux. If you'd bothered to look. (Hint: check the files under /usr/src/linux*/Documentation/networking.)

``So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use.''

``Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released.''

The above comments point out a major, major problem: You need to get new lawyers. There is nothing in the GPL that forces you to release source code if you are not distributing the code outside the company as you stated:

``Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code.''

Finally, I'd like to thank you for the following:

``After my experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source".''

Again, thanks. I had a really tough day at work yesterday and was afraid that my spirits would still be down today. But your post made me laugh so hard that now my sides hurt.

Oh how I wish you'd had the guts to include your name and the name of the so-called consulting company that you work for. That way others would know to keep you off their preferred vendor lists.