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Being Free is Hard to Do
ValourX writes "What is more important to you -- the four freedoms of Free Software, or the ability to maximize the value of your computer? It's a question that comes up on Slashdot often, but rarely is it so well argued as it is in this NewsForge article. How important are the FSF's four freedoms to you? What are you willing to sacrifice for those freedoms?" NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
kernel developers intentionally and frequently break API/ABI compatibility between minor releases so as to "encourage" vendors to release drivers under non-proprietary licenses.
People keep saying that, but I have yet to see just a single case where it happened. Kernel interfaces do change, and they change for the better. But I have never seen a change, which happened just to encourage rease of driver sources.
Right now I can remember a single change between minor releases, somewhere in the 2.4 kernels the up_and_exit function was removed, and a new complete_and_exit was introduced. I don't know how many drivers where affected by that, but at least the USB driver had to be changed. Of course the change didn't happen to break compatibility. The purpose of up_and_exit was to avoid a race condition when removing a module which had a kernel thread running that needed to be stopped before removing the module. If the module had just called up to signal it was terminated, and afterwards called exit, the module code might have been removed before the up call returned and caused a kernel crash as it returned to an undefined address. Having the up_and_exit function solved that problem. But it turned out there was still a race condition. Though no code was accessed inside the module, the sempahore itself would be a part of the module, and it could be removed before up had finished accessing it. This is why completions were introduced, they are different from semaphores, and are designed exactly to avoid this problem. So every user of up_and_exit had to be changed to use complete_and_exit instead. Nothing would have prevented leaving up_and_exit in the kernel, but any user was known to have a race condition. Had the function been left in the kernel, a lot of those buggy users of it might not have been noticed. By removing up_and_exit all instances of the bug would be revealed, and could easilly be fixed.
This was just one example, there might be more. The point here, is that the change did not happen to intentionally break binary compatibility. The change happened to fix a problem. And while you might think it broke the compatibility, it really just revealed all the modules, that were already broken. And kernel developers frequently make changes to make debuging easier, that is part of the reason the code is of such a good quality.
The kernel developers don't intentionally break binary only modules, in fact it seems they ignore binary drivers as much as possible. If a change can improve the kernel, it happens. In stable branches such changes only happen if they are necesarry to fix a bug, or if they don't cause major breaking. If all drivers in the kernel can trivially be updated to the new interface, there is no reason not to make the change.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
a frind of mine would say that if you need more then a ascii text editor and a graphics app to make a webpage then your in deep trouble. but then he makes the pages useing php and a database for the backend and dynamicly changeing html and css for the frontend. no flash, no other stuff that needs a plugin, and those sites are damn nice ;)
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
So far, I've found free alternatives for almost everything I do with my computers at home:
1. Web Browsing? Mozilla/Firefox
2. E-mail? Thunderbird or Evolution
3. Group Calendaring? Mozilla Sunbird + Apache/SSL/WebDAV + iCal
4. Audio CD Archiving? Grip + Ogg Vorbis
5. Advanced Media Player? Xine or MPlayer
6. Audio Streaming of Archived CDs? Icecast + Ices
7. Recording of online streams for archival purposes? ALSA + ALSA Utils + Ogg Vorbis + Any required media player format in Xine or MPlayer
8. Firewall? Linux Kernel + iptables
9. Office Functionality? OpenOffice.org
10. Digital Image Editing? GIMP
11. IM Client? GAIM
12. IM Server? Jabberd
13. File sharing? NFS
14. Sane storage management? LVM
15. File compression? BZip2, GZip, or 7Zip also File Roller if you really need a GUI
16. Digital Photo Management? Gthumb or Nautilus
17. PVR? Mythtv.org
18. Video streaming? VLC (Video LAN Client)
19. X10 Home Automation? Bottlerocket
20. Remote desktop/application serving? VNC 4
21. Remote assistance? x0vncserver or the vnc extension for Xorg
22. VPN/Tunneling? OpenVPN or OpenSSH with TCP port forwarding
23. Web Serving? Apache
24. Mail Serving? Courier
25. Server Based Spam Filtering? ASSP
26. Client Based Spam Filtering? Thunderbird
27. Image Scanning? SANE
28. Audio Editing? Rezound or Audacity
29. Multitrack Audio? Ardour
30. MIDI Sequencing? Rosegarden
31. CD Burning (Data and Audio)? cdrecord + various GUI frontends
32. Simple PC Based Puzzle Games? Too many to list from both the GNOME and KDE projects
33. SpyWare/Malware Prevention Removal? None at this point since I don't use the internet via Windows
If I wanted to do all of this with a Windows based home network do you have any idea how much money I'd have to spend to buy commercial software? Sure it's not as easy to set this stuff up as it is in Windows, but that's the price I pay to get this stuf gratis. On the other hand, setting this stuff up in Linux isn't that hard either if you are determined to do it. I would have to say there are plenty of free alternatives and the list above is just a sampling. The only area where I don't find alternatives is games. But I don't play games that much, so it's not much of a deterrent. And *IF* the U.S. ever does outlaw free software, then I guess I'm headed for a life of crime. Crazy that I would even have to think that, isn't it? After all, it's not illegal to own and use a hammer, saw, wood or nails? Just equate your computer hardware with those tools open source code files with the wood and you will see why the concept of trying to outlaw free software is ridiculous.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
All these but mplayer were rpm installs, so it's pretty easy. Mplayer is also not too hard to compile but takes time on a slow machine, plus takes another chunk of time to re-configure prelinking, so Windows media plays nicely.
Granted, I had all updates, additional rpms and tarballs ready on a home server but that's what any Linux junky would do, isn't it?
Ah, yes, takes single mouse click and about 5 seconds to play DVD.
So you want to take my GPL software, incorporate it into your closed source project and sell it back to me ?
And because you can't to this you are complaing that the GPL is your enemy ?
well thank fuck for the GPL !!!!!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Music - XMMS (WinAMP on Windows), is there even a comparison to Windows Media Player here?
WinAMP ist not FOSS. It's a free (beer) closed source app.
Both are just a joke comparing to iTunes.
Video - MPlayer, it even runs without X Window. Can Windows Media Player run video in MS-DOS?
What kind of argument is this? Who cares about DOS? WMP is OK when you install the missing codecs. (I prefer VLC though)
Web Browser - Mozilla FireFox. Internet Exploder doesn't even compare.
And Opera? Firefox is also my favourite browser, but Opera has many interesting features that you can't find anywhere else. Opera is commercial or free (beer) software, but not FOSS.
File Browsing - Nautilus, Konqueror. They crash 100% less of the time that Windows Explorer crashes.
What are you doing with Explorer? I didn't see it crash the last couple of... er... years.
And no annoyingly built-in Internet Explorer that's available even if I denied access to iexplore.exe (which I do on spyware-infested clients' computers).
How about blocking Explorer.exe and deleting iexplore.exe? (That's what I do when I have do mess with Windows.)
And let's not mention the horrid Mac OS X versions of MS Office.
Yeah, MS Office:mac is sooo bad when compared against GNUmeric and OpenOffice. OK, GNUmeric and OpenOffice only run in an X-Window, don't support drag&drop, looks ugly-as-hell, etc. while MS Office supports all that stuff. Wow, GNUmeric and OpenOffice are soooo superior.....
(BTW: Yes, I know about NeoOffice/J - it's my main Office suite. But NeoOffice is != OpenOffice)
Abiword compares to Wordpad, not Word (or OpenOffice Writer).
Instant Messenger - Well, GAIM may be missing some features of proprietary AOL AIM, but one of those features missing is the spyware.
Trillian? How about that?
Programming - Do I even need to compare the long list of free, open-source and standardized Unix/Linux tools to the not-quite-as-affordable MS Visual Studio??
A lot of developers say that VisualStudio is the best programming environment. Others say it's Xcode. Both aren't FOSS.
PS: No, I'n not bashing FOSS. Most apps I use are FOSS like Firefox, Thunderbird, or Fire Messenger, but theres more closed source software that's better than it's FOSS counterparts than just Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Opera is cool. Trillian is cool. MS Office:mac, Explorer (not IE), or Windows Media Player not so bad either.
Summary: "You think you want a stable kernel interface, but you really do not, and you don't even know it. What you want is a stable running driver, and you get that only if your driver is in the main kernel tree. You also get lots of other good benefits if your driver is in the main kernel tree, all of which has made Linux into such a strong, stable, and mature operating system which is the reason you are using it in the first place. "
.sig it up, fuckers!
I use Windows as my primary desktop machine. I've been using windows as my primary desktop for about 10 years now, and in all those years I have never once had it corrupt drives, catch a virus or become infested. Why? Because I know how to use it.
By contrast, I have twice screwed my Red Hat linux box which I use for testing and development because I am unfamiliar with the system. This, coupled with the fact that I am unfamiliar with the install, means it takes about 10 hours to get it back to a useful state. By contrast, I can rebuild my entire XP box in about 3 hours.
I take usability and convenience any day. Don't get me wrong, half the apps on my PC are FOSS, but only because it was more convenient to me to download, install and learn those than to go out, buy, install and learn a propriatary software.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
The NewsMonster project on Freshmeat lists burtonator as the lead developer.
Gee, I love Google :)