Slashdot Mirror
Java Developer Says He Built, Launched Basic Open Source Office Suite In 30 Days
alphadogg writes "A freelance Java developer claims it took him only 30 days to build and launch a basic open source office suite that runs on multiple OSes. Called Joeffice, it works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux as well as in browsers, according to the developer, Anthony Goubard. It includes a very basic word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation program and database software, Goubard said. The office suite was built with NetBeans and uses many popular open source Java libraries. That allowed him to built the program in 30 days, he said, a process that he documented daily on YouTube (video). The suite was released as an alpha version, which means that not everything works yet. Goubard's Amsterdam company, Japplis, launched the suite, which is available under an Apache 2.0 license. This license allows companies to change and redistribute the code internally without having to share the new code publicly, he said."
But, he coded it in Java? Nooooooooo
Actually if he had bothered to read the GPL he would have notice that it too allows internal redistribution.
I built a video game in 48 hours. Well ok it is not a AAA title. It is a tron clone. But who cares, lets just not precise this and everybody will think that I rewrote Crysis 3.
Let me guess, Java vulns, not as good as MSOffice, all the usual crap.
That's proof he is lying. Even the developer's of netbeans don't use netbeans.
It took him a whole 30 days? Facebook was releaed in just two weeks.
respect on my behalf !
...another crap name.
#include
void main() {
printf("Basic office suite\n");
}
As you can see, it was possible to program this office suite so quickly because I used libraries. Note: this is an alpha release and some features aren't finished yet.
A freelance Java developer claims it took him only 30 days to build ... an alpha version, which means that not everything works yet.
Big fucking deal! I can do that in 5 seconds...
Nice work,
but any Open Source license allowing "companies to change and redistribute the code internally without having to share the new code publicly, he said." Even the GPL is allowing companies to change and redistribute the code internally.
But maybe his definition of "internally" and "publicly" is different then mine?
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
EA has been putting less than 30 days of work into its titles for years. At least, that's how they feel.
Life needs more saving throws.
Claims to have built an office suite in 30 days, but it is only an alpha and not everything works. Well how much is not everything? It is just a bunch of nice splash screens?
Like... Rust!
If you can get to 'alpha' stage in 30 days, how many years is that to a 1.0 release?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
He assembled components together in 30 days. He can't get from those components to a competitive product, he would need to rewrite each of those netbeans to bring the functionality up to the level of the competitors in order to actually make an Office Suite.
But as a way to show off Java as a development environment that's good.
But a Microsoft guy could do the same, dropping in a load of stock rich text edits and grid controls to product a very similar quickly.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main() {
printf("Basic office suite\n");
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
Thanks FSM for Free Software, otherwise I couldn't have fixed your bugs.
As you can see, it was possible to program this office suite so quickly because I used libraries. Note: this is an alpha release and some features aren't finished yet.
Can I join the developer team? Hopefully we can finish the program quicker, if we double the dev.-team.
This dude is just trying to get himself attention and Slashdot is obliging. I mean for one, building an "office suite" is not necessarily impressive. All that office suite actually means is a program that does word processing, spreadsheets, maybe presentations. Well, there can be a great range in that. High end office suites, like Microsoft Office, do a whole lot of complex shit and do it well, and has a bunch of well built tools (like a spell checker and so on). However a crap office suite might do little more than you'd get out of Wordpad and SSS.
Then there's the fact that "alpha" has traditionally meant in software "feature incomplete, still under heavy development." These days given that beta often seems to mean that (it used to mean feature complete, working on bugs) alpha might mean "Well, it complies now and runs sometimes!"
It would not be very hard to set a rather low goal for what constitutes an "office suite," bash the basis of that out, and then call it an alpha. I can't try it, since I do not care to install Java on my system, but looking at the screen shots, it looks like he did precisely that. It looks exceedingly simple, largely using a bunch of the built in Java controls. That's fine and all, but I don't find that really that impressive for 30 days of work. Part of the point of managed languages like Java, C#, that kind of thing it to be able to bash together something basic pretty quick.
So ya, I'm voting that he's just publicity whoring. If he wants to call us back when 1.0 comes out, then I'll have a look. Maybe then it'll be something cool, but I kinda doubt it. Personally I'd stick to MS Office, Google Docs, Libre Office, or whatever your current preferred suite is.
You needed 3 minutes to write that code?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Yes, too observe a lot of this kind of FUD. When I ask specific questions it turns out that actual knowledge is more-than-fuzzy.
The whole thing is usually handled quite opportunistically, GNU/Linux deployments don't seem to be a problem, despite the kernel's and GNU libc's (and a ton of other userspace thing's) licenses.
Where does that stupidity stem from? I'd like to know.
Where does that stupidity stem from? I'd like to know.
The Open Source community. Apart from the enlightened few, it's long on zealots and short on knowledge
to write this reply and go to the shitter laughing all the way at /. "news that matter to the nerds"!
..and that is the problem. At least for me - I don't want java & flash & skype & windows & all the crap on my pc.
Calling exit instead of returning is just about the funniest thing I've seen in code lately, especially considering the fact that you forgot the params (int argc, char **argv). Thank you for this. I was amused.
"it took him only 30 days to build and launch a basic open source office" and "The suite was released as an alpha version" mean's he's got the 80 (visible) percent done that take 20 percent of the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
I wish people wouldn't get headlines with this sort of claim. It helps push the entire profession towards cutting corner in order to under bid each other, which does not speak well for the quality of future software.
Speak instead of prototyping. That's much closer to the truth.
mod parent up!
Because end users won't give a damn about how much time did it take to build, or whether it's opensource. The only thing that matters to them is whether it's better than the existing ones.
I was just thinking "Interesting, I'll download this just out of curiosity," then realised I'd uninstalled Java after warnings from practically every member of the software community....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Then it took 3 weeks to open the first hello world document.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
He did make it to the front page of Slashdot, which is a pretty cool achievement unto itself. I've only made the front page for a meteor shower...
And I don't think it's "whoring", it's self promotion, and hugely successful, at least from the perspective of a developer (front page of Slashdot). Self promotion is how one gets ahead in the world, combined with development skills.
The .Net distributed caching layer I'm working on isn't as visible as an office suite, although it is more marketable in the corporate sphere (as you mention, there are plentiful office suites). And I don't blog or post YouTube videos. 30 days isn't a lot of time if you follow a strict coding standard, document well, run style and static code analysis, and unit test everything to death. Shoot, just setting up my build system took almost a week, and I followed the standard I use at my day job so it was mostly configuration rather than learning.
In my experience, 30 days is about a proper amount of time for a rapid prototype to let the business types see what is possible (before funding). That also includes 2-3 user experience tests per week, with constant refactoring based on better understanding functional requirements and in response to the user tests. Production code takes a considerable amount of additional time for any non-trivial system.
I say congratulations to the guy. And now I'm going to RTFA...
BlameBillCosby.com
It will also breath fire and eat your children.
That would be awesome. My one year old just spent the night screaming. I'd code a dragon to eat her if I could... Sadly this cannot be done in C.
#include <cstdio>
#include <cstdint>
int32_t main()
{
std::printf("Basic office suite\n");
return 0;
}
should've used entities
Hey guys, I'm not quite sure what an "alpha" version is. The summary doesn't adequately explain it.
Even the article noted it doesn't work, being alpha code.
This is too much like all those crummy half-baked Kxxxx apps that come with KDE, and they're a huge waste of download time and disk-space too.
So can we just stop wasting our time with all this and ignore it until and unless there are some in-depth reviews that come up positive *and* that give a good reason to choose whatever this is over existing software?
Perhaps as an exercise if people think they can do better in other languages then by all means lets have a Slashdot "Office-A-Thon" of sorts to see who builds what in 30 days. Certainly beats sitting around a /. post grumbling at a guy who put some time and effort in his off time to do something and wither or not this is /. worthy.
/. set aside a section that lets you see a summary of people's progress on that challenge.
Get your nerd on and lets see other people build something better in 30 days solo. Be nice if
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
He's using autotools to build it.
Calling exit instead of returning is just about the funniest thing I've seen in code lately, especially considering the fact that you forgot the params (int argc, char **argv). Thank you for this. I was amused.
No arguments were forgotten, main is allowed to take 0, 2 or 3 arguments (the third one would be char **envp).
There ain't too many zealots that follow ESR. If you were talking about RMS, he'd take umbrage at your referring to his followers as the 'Open Source' community. Liberated software, or as they prefer it, libre-software, is more like it.
To answer the GP, part of the reason is around GPL3. Linux is well understood to be GPL2, so while GPL2 was the norm, it wasn't a major showstopper. But once GPL3 came along, w/ its patent termination clauses, its 'anti-Tivoization' clauses and so on, it was rightly perceived as being hostile to business. So guess what, businesses became more hostile to it. Also, enough lawyers have come to a consensus that using GPL3 would open a can of worms as far as company practices go, and hence the ban on GPL software in offices.
Abies above hit the nail right on the head. There is always a chance that one may want to give some variation of the software to a client/subsidiary, and that's where the differences b/w copyleft licenses and others kick in. With BSD, they wouldn't need to bother about any implied obligations incurred as a result of the redistribution. With GPL, they absolutely would. The reason not too many worry about Linux is that not many, aside from say router designers would worry about tampering w/ that code. But any application software that is GPL is another story altogether.
Sure, its not 'feature complete' yet, nor is he claiming it is. What the hell is with all the bashing? Lets see what *you* have done for the community lately, instead of complain and attack.. Put up or shut up.
> > Where does that stupidity stem from? I'd like to know.
> The Open Source community. Apart from the enlightened few, it's long on zealots and short on knowledge
Not convinced. Last time I asked someone (a company working for my company as a sub-contractor) they quoted "some attorney" who prepared a talk on that topic for them. Hardly any "Open Source community zealot". I asked for more details -- I'll keep pursuing that.
Doesn't Open Office service this purpose?
If your requirement for an office suite is compatibility with all Word version document formats (an related), you can kiss your life goodbye. If your requirement for an office suite is something which nobody can use because it's not interoperable, yes, you can do it in even less time.
It's quite simple really.
1) FSF's position on dynamic linking is retarded
2) A large corporation consists of multiple legal entities. It's not difficult to trigger "distribution".
3) If any "distribution" doesn't abide by the terms of the GPL, even when to a wholly-owned subsidiary, the organization could lose all rights under the GPL.
4) Therefore it may have to "include" source code for an entire application + vendor libraries
5) It literally won't be able to, since it may not own all of them, or some may be extremely commercially sensitive.
6) an individual developer, manager or department head can't just decide to commit a large corporation - that's why they have legal
7) Whatever a dev know about licenses won't accurately transmit to legal anyway
8) None of this stuff has been tested in court. "Making sense" or "I think" isn't enough.
Linux won't count for primarily three reasons
9) vendor distributions - if there's a problem with closed source binary drivers, practically speaking they'd have to take out Oracle, RH, SUSE first
10) the GPL specifically excludes use of e.g. common OS APIs in dynamic linking, so applications a firm distributes internally can stay closed, as long as they don't add anything GPL that is NOT part of the OS
11) There's probably nothing of real value that they add to e.g. Linux anyway. Do you want to see thousands of poxy scripts added to configure up the HTTP proxy and new hostname generation in every large enterprise?
It uses Java, I'm pretty certain, there's at least one 0-day exploit for every line of code written there.
He is considered the fastest chizzler in his circles, uses a bleeding stone age technology, applying appropriate amount of force by his mallet to his chisel to carve the zeros and ones into a stone tablet and then run it through a special punch card reader to produce C code. Wait, that's not chizzler, that's wanker. He wanks the chizzle, not the chisel.
You can't handle the truth.
Software development times are extremely variable. It all depends on how much good quality reusable existing code and tools were found or known about beforehand.
How long it would take to write an Office Suite using no tools, environments, or libraries newer than what we had in 1984? No Linux, no Windows, no MacIntosh, just one of the many DOSes. Probably have to be C, Pascal, or some kind of BASIC, and that only if performance wasn't an issue. Otherwise, it would have to be assembler. C++ existed then, but was too new to have much support. No mouse either. It would run on an 80x25 text screen, unless the developer had the time and energy to make a graphical interface.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
If you'd actually listen to those warnings, you'd realise they're against Java browser plugin, not JRE or Java itself.
I think it depends on your lawyer, and your company. As far as I can tell from conversations with *my* lawyers over the years, GPL is actually a Good Idea, most of the time.
If you're going to be playing fast and loose with the ethics, trying to cut every corner you can, the GPL is not for you.
However, many organizations have an implicit or explicit code of ethics. If you have a code of ethics anyway, then adhering to the GPLs ethics as well is usually just a small step; especially (though not necessarily) if those ethics are already much in line with those of your organization anyway.
The first 90% of any project only takes 30 days. Its the last 10% that takes years.
Seriously, there's no support for basic formats like plain text or openoffice formats.
However there is support for the pseudo-standard MSO formats.
If I can't open any of the files on my PC, what's the motivation to use this?
Also, enough lawyers have come to a consensus that using GPL3 would open a can of worms as far as company practices go, and hence the ban on GPL software in offices.
This is the key element in regards to the business decision. The Lawyers are advising against it due to potential legal issues. Hell I've asked a local lawyer about GPL and Open Source and was advised not to create any internal software using it due to the potential and from the SoHo/Small business owner perspective, it's simply not worth the potential legal issues. Stick with the BSD/Apache license and you're fine.
IAMNAL and this isn't legal advice. That's to see a lawyer and pay for his advice. Don't believe everything you see online.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
You created a meteor shower? Dude, that is totally impressive. Do it again!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
First of all congratulations on the achievement. However it doesn't quite have a practical use. I mean office software in general is fairly useless, you type a document, you print it, maybe you export it to PDF, but that's just about it. It's a slightly smarter typewriter. Spreadsheet software seems interesting at first sight, until you realize that having more than a screen full of cells makes it harder than just writing a little program to solve your problem.
That is the one post to remember from this thread.
... The suite was released as an alpha version, which means that not everything works yet....
It it is not working yet, it has not been built.
with my open source light saber
at the Bohemian Grove the Reptilians got together and, in between sacrificing children and LSD orgies, they plot to destroy the free software movement by banning GPL from their companies.
if you have the top 50 of the fortune 500, thats probably millions of employees in the most influential organizations on earth.
And as of C99 no return is necessary.
You needed 3 minutes to write that code?
He included the time it took him to pour a cup of coffee. Everyone knows that coders cant write without caffeine.... (grin)
Don't believe everything you see online
...and don't believe everything some one tells you a lawyer has told him/her.
I remember something very similar being done with VB controls in the 1990s. I bought a package at Books-A-Million that was just a wrapper around a full-functional spreadsheet control implemented as a VBX. I wish I could remember the name of it! I can see it on a sale table with a lot of other software. Those were the good old days.
If it "uses many popular open source Java libraries" it would be easy to put them together. I know there are classes that read and write Excel files and probably others. I guess there are spreadsheet controls, rich text controls, etc. Good example of MVC component use. Use a component to read file into M, and use components as V, leaving C to basically direct traffic. So component software is a reality, especially in Java where you don't have inter-language barriers.
A big win for code reuse. Probably zero people care about this suite, but a lot of people want to have Excel versions of data in your model and you can throw it in easily.
You are correct in all your points.
You are, however, missing one: The philosophy of the FSF.
These guys are about software freedom, not about having the largest possible market share. They literally don't care if an important part of the license is problematic for large corporations. As a metaphor, I'm sure you can easily adapt your list to the issue of slavery/emancipation. That wasn't a reason to not do it.
I'm with the FSF on that issue. Large corporations can get something worth many thousands EUR/US$ for free if and only if they are willing to accept the responsibilities that come with it. If they don't like it, they can buy or write their own software.
These are not very high barriers. Many corporations, including most of the Fortune 500, do use Free Software extensively. Quite frankly, most of the team it's just legal being conservative (I don't blame them, it's practically part of their job description to be that way) and not wanting to get into all the tricky details of what that means and how it changes the contracts with, say, the contractors that work on it.
I don't think the goal of Free Software should be to move aside and make commercial compatability be a driving force. That's one of the moves that I dislike about the Open Source rebranding. Freedom and capitalism have a tricky relationship, and they are as much enemies as they are friends. The relationship is only positive for the freedom part if you keep a careful distance - not too far away, but not too close, either.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Don't like it? Don't use someone else's work, write or buy your own.
This sounds like an ideal case to use python, and possibly also the programming language.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
And I don't think it's "whoring", it's self promotion, and hugely successful, at least from the perspective of a developer (front page of Slashdot). Self promotion is how one gets ahead in the world, combined with development skills.
Agreed not Whoring... but for a different reason... the whole point of this guy's effort was to do it using the NetBeans Platform so as to make Office type activity including MS Office document compatibility available to NetBeans Platform apps. Nobody here seems to have caught that part and its very important because the NB Platform is becoming very pervasive in environments where Web workflows are not feasible.
In the NetBeans Platform community we've known about his work for a while now and only recently has his progress been shared with "others",
So you're saying that if someone discovers that has used a GPL'ed library to build that neither the FSF nor any of the contributors to that library would sue to enforce the GPL rights? And the corporation knows that won't happen because of "philosophy"?
If I was the lawyer representing , I'd never take that bet - all it takes is one contributor suing to make life miserable.
I need to install a Java Developer Suite for an office suite? (JDK 6) Just asking. Its not like I'm going to develop Java programs with the office suite.
I was responding to someone asking -why- large corporations are not keen to use GPL. This doesn't reflect what I think -should be-, only what -is-.
However FWIW we can weight parts of the software tree that need to be free (including hardware drivers, development tools, protocols, client libraries) - the types of software that are not only reused, but worthwhile reusing. The crap - not so much. There seems to be no reason at all that the FSF -or anyone else- should be unhappy that proprietary development happens, uses free parts of the tree (and helps their adoption) so long as it doesn't end up in distributed software products that can bring the tree into a closed form.
To that extent, the GPL is working well, but the main barrier is "dynamic linking" seems not only unnecessary, but goes against most developer's notions that dynamically linking to a library doesn't form a combined single product (hence the vague twaddle about "common OS components", not least since the GNU project couldn't have got started if that had been imposed by the then UNIX vendors).
Anyway believe me, you wouldn't _want_ the code for most enterprise apps :-)
Discussing why x might/might not want to do y does not automatically mean you are/agree with x and will do y regardless of legality.
You can talk about it with your school friends on Monday.
Just make sure you make **zero** modifications to the LGPL'd stuff, or you're going to be in a **world** of hurt, as modifying its code transmogrifies it into the GPL (no, seriously).
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
C is perfect for making daemons though.
I don't see what the "philosophy of the FSF" has to do with it. What matters is what the license says and the extent that it's enforceable with copyright law (many parts are not, dynamic linking, AGPL in particular, sorry FSF, but "conveyance" is not a legal term with any meaning, copyright law only cares about "distribution" which is very well defined in statute).
Much of the software (and entertainment) industry wouldn't operate like they do without the current patent, copyright law that we have -- not capitalism. The crony capitalism of the copyright, patent-based industries spawned the equally crony capitalism of the copyleft "free" licenses (not actually free by any definition, it's still restrictive and subjects you to lawsuits for failing to do any number of things).
Wonder what the public key field is for?
So you're saying that if someone discovers that has used a GPL'ed library to build that neither the FSF nor any of the contributors to that library would sue to enforce the GPL rights?
I don't see how anything I wrote can be misread to say anything even remotely close to that. You're going off on a very remote tangent there, and quite a distance.
Please re-read what I wrote.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
To that extent, the GPL is working well, but the main barrier is "dynamic linking" seems not only unnecessary, but goes against most developer's notions that dynamically linking to a library doesn't form a combined single product (hence the vague twaddle about "common OS components", not least since the GNU project couldn't have got started if that had been imposed by the then UNIX vendors).
Well, they created the LGPL to cover that angle, and the developer can decide if his work should carry the GPL or the LGPL, so I don't see what all the fuss is about. If I write a library and pick the GPL as its license, than I'm making a clear statement that I don't want my lib to be part of any non-GPL distributed code.
If you don't like it, nobody forces you to use my code. :-)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
FUD, FUD everywhere. Mod parent into oblivion.
So if I understand you right:
first, without widely accepted metrics on what a good office is to diff people, what gives you the right to tell other people what they should or should ot think about office.
Second, if you do anything more then write letters with all defaults office 2007, the latest i know of, is way way way...way better then office 2000, and lightyears ahead of earlier versions.
yeah, there are a lot of realy really stupid annoying things, but on avg, it is much better
and, i would add, i'm one of those people who really bitc** about the ribbon
but i got use to it, and it is better.
end of story
excpet, if something else works for you, fie, just don't be an intolerant religious fanatic
LOL
Whereby "restrictive" means "forced to respect the rights of end users" and where "lawsuits" means "usually settle once the license is complied with."
Of course, people releasing Free Software should just expect to have their license violated while proprietary software vendors shouldn't, right?
and your 'int main()' takes an unspecified amount of arguments. to specify 0 you'd do 'int main(void)'.
Of course you'd know that if you hadn't learned C through internet tutorials...
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
You don't need a license to be "forced to respect the rights of end users". If you want to respect the rights of end users, then, you know, don't include a licensing agreement. It's not as if the GPL has a legal monopoly on this paradigm. (An even better idea is not make that crap enforceable in courts, it's not). It's not that hard and you don't need a copyright license to do it.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Whereby "restrictive" means "d to respect the rights of end users" and where "lawsuits" means "usually settle once the license is complied with."
Let's be clear - GPL, BSD, and Apache are based on copyright which is an artificial monopoly granted by a government. If all else fails, men with guns will come and kill those who violate your license (the same end-game of every government threat). That outcome is unlikely, but a built-in possibility with copyright-enforceed licenses.
Devs who aren't OK with that should use something like WTFPL and understand that the possibility exists that some people will disrespect their wishes without the "intellectual property" construct in play (though oddly enough that happens with licenses too). It's funny - sometimes you'll see a post here where the author is both against imaginary property and pro-GPL. Their hearts are in the right place, but they really don't understand what they're saying. It gives opponents something to latch onto as well.
Of course, people releasing Free Software should just expect to have their license violated while proprietary software vendors shouldn't, right?
From the above perspective, the two-wrongs-don't-make-a-right fallacy comes into play here.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What? If you don't include a license then no one can do anything with it.
The GPL is the only one (off the top of my head) that prevents a middleman from stepping in and closing the sources on its way to the end user.
What exactly are you getting at?
I'm talking about an EULA, not a copyright license. An EULA is supposed to restrict what the end-user is legally allowed to do with their own program on their own computer (but they're not making any agreement in return, it's only a promise, and should be legally unenforceable). A copyright license is legally incapable of restricting what an end-user is doing, it can only permit (re)distribution, nothing more.
You don't just "close off the sources", once you've published source code, it's like, always out there. It's kind of hard to scrub stuff off the Internet, I hope you realize.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
What point are you trying to make?
> If you don't like it, nobody forces you to use my code. :-)
Well, naturally I wouldn't, so it always feels vaguely insulting to be told this just because we are discussing the GPL... I'm sure that's not your intention.
And this is relevant how?
Correct, but relevant how?
Except if a middleman comes through, changes it, and gives the binaries to other people. That code is not out there. And it's that sort of action that the GPL pushes back against.
Relevant because the claim "it protects the end-user" is bunk. The exclusive job of a copyright license is to permit distribution. Well, distribution isn't something that end-users do, it's something that developers do. Therefore if you're license doesn't permit distribution in some cases, you're only restricting the freedoms of developers. This is, by definition, non-free.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
it took him only 30 days to build... a very basic word processor
Lame. I could write an even more basic word processor in 30 minutes!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Nonsense.
Yes...
A developer can be an end user. An end user may wish to have a developer make changes for them. They may even wish to redistribute it. Your definition of "end user" is excessively narrow.
Read what I wrote above, and realize that what you say is completely wrong.
No. NO. The GPL guarantees that no middleman can take the sources, add something to it, and give only binaries to the end user. It ensures the freedom of the recipient to do as they wish with the software. It prevents you from intervening and stopping them.
I see this same, terrible argument so often. I'm sure there's a nice rebuke of it somewhere on the FSF/GNU project's website.
Ah. Now I feel rather stupid. It's going to take me a long time to redownload stuff on this connection. On the other hand, the reduction in Java autoupdates has been welcome.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
If "freedom" to duplicate someone elses stuff isn't a grab for market share, I don't know what is.
Why does that top the list of OSI and GPL "freedoms" above you know, things that let you do what you want with the code in your hands, as in USING it. Tell why giving away is such a core freedom, and not a grab for mindshare, PLEASE.
Seriously? When you start with NetBeans as your base platform, you've already got a word processor built in. You've already done most of the work, for the presentation and spreadsheet apps as well, controls built in for displaying database data.
Seriously, you're building word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation apps on ... a word processing, spreadsheet capable database app. It probably does presentations too.
Guess what I can do! In 20 minutes I can make a complete IDE. I'll just start off with NetBeans RCP! https://netbeans.org/features/platform/
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
**cough** bittorrent **cough**
You're missing the most important reason "Linux won't count":
It's far cheaper than commercial unixes used to be.
When the price of commercial software is sufficiently high, OSS is worth the "risk" to a corporation.
Furthermore, most companies are not modifying software like Linux -- they're just running it. That's why they don't care.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
... this is exactly why GPL doesn't have many friends.
As a proponent of microstates (ala Snow Crash / The Diamond Age), I **heartily** encourage you to try to start such a community!
However, as a fervent disliker of the GPL, LGPL, and FSF (to mention nothing of the horrors of the AGPLv3!), I would be *most* interested in knowing how your community plans to subsidize programmers' salaries? I presume the only could they can create will be FSF-sanctioned and approved, as well?
Would you treat software engineers as a sort of priest class, and give them communal food, housing, and Internet connections? (filtered, of course, to only allow websites served via Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (or other suitably-licensed stacks)!)
I'm curious ;-)
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
Daemonizing has more to do with your OS than the language used. Java can't daemonize because it doesn't expose access to the native posix functions needed, but little PERL wrapper can do it and exec java.
and your 'int main()' takes an unspecified amount of arguments. to specify 0 you'd do 'int main(void)'.
Nope. That's only true in a function declaration, but not in a function definition.
it would make more difference if you are a smaller shop or running free software only atop your unix
the cost of commercial UNIX is irrelevant [but quality and support are not] when there are vendor licenses which run 20 times more per box.
Even if that were true, which office suite in wide use is written in C?
If you're going to be playing fast and loose with the ethics, trying to cut every corner you can, the GPL is not for you.
That depends entirely on your point of view, ignorantly presenting a particular ethical point of view in an objective manner like you are doing is exactly where a lot of the FOSS zealotry stems from. Just because you don't follow GPL's idea of what ethics is doesn't mean you're "playing fast and loose with the ethics", even if you would like to pretend it does.
LOL, you are right, but its still an interesting exercise, if for nothing else than educating people about what you can do with the netbeans platform. I had cause on a project to integrate some netbeans libraries into it, and it gave me some incredibly powerful features. If he makes an office suite by "cheating" more power to him, and if open source, it should provide interesting fodder for others into further integrate into their projects.
"They literally don't care if an important part of the license is problematic for large corporations. "
Actually they do care, they like it to be problematic for corporations if they think it could force their hand to play nice in the open source arena.
that's because they, unlike you, understand that the GPL is a legal hack to subvert copyright laws so that they work for freedom rather than against it.
Whereby "restrictive" means "forced to respect the rights of end users"
And where in your entitlist mentality do you get the idea that if I give you a binary you have a *right* to the source code and the *right* to then modify and distribute that source code?
Truth is we've had ZERO cases of GPL violators being sued for more than just compliance. And, in any case, here's the logic I don't understand:
- This license from the FSF says I can do whatever the hell I want with the software, except for a few restrictions, and the developers have a history of no litigation, plus they are not looking for profit. They also don't own patents in addition to their copyright, so If I need to ever replace the component, I should be able to write my own.
- This other license from Microsoft says I can't do anything, and the few things I can do might still be restricted by microsoft at any time, and the developer has a huge history of litigating against everyone with their team of ruthless lawyers. Profit is their main interest, and if I need to ever replace their component, they can still use their patents to prevent me from doing so.
Replace Microsoft with just about any other software company. How is the GPL so bad compared to most proprietary licenses?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
abuse your users
The GPL crowd really needs to get off the FUD bandwagon, the fear-mongering that goes with the 'you users are paying to be abused by evil corporations' is not convincing anybody. I'm not saying it's unfounded but the fact is you need to sell the premise on positives, you can't go around telling users how they are being abused and having their rights stolen or whatever other rhetoric by using an iPhone - for example - and expect them to care when the alternative is non-existent. It really is time to start doing rather than spreading FUD, the tipping point will come when the benefits speak for themselves and you can say 'hey this smartphone is better than an iPhone or Galaxy or whatever in the ways end users actually care about and it also happens to be free and open'.
I just assumed the standard coding ratios apply:
18 seconds to write, 162 seconds to debug.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
So on top of the limited functionality mentioned it is going to be about 10 times heavier than anything written in C and 10 times slower..
I would mod that up if I had points...
Could you possibly be even more condescending? I'd appreciate it, thanks.
Okay, but you don't need the GPL to do any of this. A free license allows for all the things you just described. A user can redistribute the program, make changes to it, modify any sources, etc. And unlike the GPL, the developer isn't restricted in what they can do with their code.
Suppose a developer writes a program from scratch, licenses the work under the GPL, and distributes only compiled binaries by selling them. The developer can do this because he entirely and wholly owns the copyright, and can change it on his whim, it wouldn't make any sense to file a lawsuit, there's no injured party. Now you have "free software" that you're not allowed to redistribute because you don't have the sources. Contradiction of terms much? This proves the GPL cannot be "free software".
Wonder what the public key field is for?
And as of C99 no return is necessary.
Not necessary does not mean that it _should_ be eliminated. I personally find it bad form, because it makes the intent of the code less clear. Even in PHP, the intent of the code becomes much clearer when return is specified. It is a code smell, and it only gets smellier as the application gets larger.
For the trivial program above, I wouldn't have even mentioned anything, though.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
You needed 3 minutes to write that code?
Obviously he wrote it in Emacs. In VIM it would have been four keypresses and a macro, 5.2 seconds from the bash prompt to a.out.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
And unlike the GPL, the developer isn't restricted in what they can do with their code.
That's why it's called a restrictive license, the GPL forces it's own ideology on downstream projects whereas proprietary and BSD-style licenses are interoperable and only apply to the actual work. So I can work with proprietary and permissively-licensed code bases, swap code in and out of the two, release bits and pieces here and there without the users of that code having to worry about whether that code will affect the license of their other code or whether they have to release changes or how they can integrate it into their own proprietary applications or devices and how usage of that code might affect the need to release other toolchain elements.
Free software should be about altruism and freedom to work together with people that *don't* necessarily share your ideology, not about segregation and an "us and them" mentality, permissive licenses provide that. Proprietary software won't go away and neither will free software so thankfully the decline of in use of restrictive licenses like the GPL (as seen on recent studies of Github) shows people are indeed waking up to the fact that segregation and intolerance are not beneficial and that truly free software is about altruism.
It's using copyright law to prevent you from being able to do things you could do with software under the the original MIT licenses.
Ergo, not free.
I've written a bunch of stuff, but no library, so obviously I'm using "me" and "you" only for dramatic purposes.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
*ahem*
The exclusive job of a copyright license (and associated legal enforcement) is to restrict distribution so as to create artificial scarcity and permit commercial distribution by the copyright owners.
Left to themselves, distribution is absolutely something that end users do: Witness every p2p sharing program ever.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
damn, i was hoping nobody would actually bother to read the standard ;)
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
int main(int argc, char* argv[]), because what use is a program that can't take piped input...
The key term is "very basic". The IBM Journal, Issue 1,1 printed a text formatter that did "very basic" word processing and it was one page. However, good for him for doing it. The error handling and complex formatting will take another 30 months. (and never really be finished ala m$ wurd :-)
1 is simply false. You may be thinking of kernel modules, but that wouldn't be the fsf. Simply linking to a shared object doesn't make the software a derivative of the shared object.
4 and everything that depends on it is false. Anything you write you have complete control over. If you don't agree to the terms of the gpl you have no rights to the covered software. That doesn't mean you would have to open up your own software. It just means you cannot distribute, etc, the covered software.
8 is irrelevant and untrue
11 is also untrue. Rh and suse wrote an enormous amount of code. This is easy to verify.
Don't be so fucking retarded. If I wanted someone to be able to make changes to MY work and redistribute closed without attribution etc. THEN I WOULDN'T CHOOSE THE GPL. As the copyright holder, its my choice!
I'm not dividing anything, or taking something away from other people. I'm not forcing an ideology on anyone. You don't agree to my licence because of my ideology, that's your choice. Then write your own fucking software. ONLY the gpl allows you to copy or distribute my software.
I haven't actually seen fear mongering from the oss community. Typically its proprietary companies who want you to buy their product(s).
Gpl3 is a solid license, but since u.s. IP laws are so bizarre, it wasn't able to solve the core patent problems. It means somebody can't give you code and then sue you for patent violation. But the problem with patents is that its rarely the person who created the code that is sueing.
Well, let's look at the 'issues' that GPL3 solved that weren't already solved by GPL2.
Tivoization. Aside from the sheer idiocy of labelling a problem after a company - not a proprietary software company such as Microsoft, mind you, but a company that uses Linux to help its product work, the question arises of whether this was an issue in the first place. TiVo put in the OS on a Flash memory device that they locked for a pretty simple reason - they didn't want users to tamper w/ it. For one thing, the content providers would yank their content from their boxes, pretty much ripping apart their business model, and also, by not locking it, they leave open the possibility of moronic users damaging thier boxes by flashing their OS w/ something that creates unforeseen issues. There was certainly not a valid reason for 'closing that loophole'.
The patent termination clauses. Under this, if a user of any GPL3 software happens to be the owner of any patents that the software happens to use, it's automatically granting a license to all users of that software. While one can argue whether intellectual property rights should exist at all or not, as long as it does, writing a license that makes a company grant everyone in the world licenses to its patents regardless of whether they're involved in the transaction or not is just a mess waiting to happen. What has it done? Apple, which was not GPL hostile when they were GPL2, banned GPL once GPL3 kicked in. GCC was replaced by LLVM/Clang, Samba was removed and so on. B'cos under GPL2, let's say GCC contained Apple patents, it didn't grant people down the chain licenses w/ it, so Apple could require that such licenses be explicitly obtained. But since GPL3, under which GCC was re-licensed, does grant people such licenses, Apple was left w/ no choice but to ban it.
The only positive I see in GPL3 is requiring that all the info used to build the source code into binaries be there, so that a company can't just dump source code that doesn't compile and be GPL compliant. But that doesn't outweigh the serious shortcomings of the license itself.
The LGPL was created more as a long term 'bait & switch' tool - to promote the parts of the software that the GNU project did care about as far as adaptation went, even if they didn't care about the main parts. If you read Stallman's essay Why you should n't use the Lesser GPL for your next library (emphasis mine), it's obvious that it's only an expedient license to be used only when there are plenty of alternatives available - such as C libraries. They certainly don't want you to use that in your killer app that requires dynamic linking. Once it's popular enough, they can 'upgrade' the license to something like GPL3.
Of course, given how people are fleeing from GCC to LLVM/Clang, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point, using the same reasoning as in that article, they put GCC under LGPL. However, make no mistake - while you may maintain that a developer can decide whether to use GPL or LGPL, RMS clearly wants people to use GPL over LGPL.
Is it a grab for marketshare or mindshare? Or is it an attempt to eliminate any meaningful way that the software developer has of making money if all he does is write the software? I agree w/ you - Freedoms 2, and a part of freedom 3 of the GNU has to go - 'help your neighbor' is NOT a right that you have, nor even an obligation, particularly when it implies disrupting someone else's source of income. If one is that sanctimonius, then let them pay the developer the thousands or millions of $$$ it took to develop the software and own it, and THEN let's see them just give it away. Only difference b/w that scenario and the developer scenario is that the latter is made to piss away tangible cash, whereas the former is forced to piss away his time & effort, which in real life may have cost him that much to stay alive.
Except that corporations - small or large - go to the alternatives, be it proprietary or other open source alternatives that don't have GPL balls & chains attached to them
At this point, it's a wash. You have companies like Red Hat or Suse providing adequate support for Linux, companies like Oracle providing adequate support for Sun. Main reason is that Linux was way ahead of the successors to BSD 4.3, such as FBSD, OBSD and NBSD, and pretty much has that market sown up. Add to that the fact that Linux is locked in GPL2 and will NOT move to GPL3, and it's the other reason it's not as much a problem as other GPL software would be.
RH & Suse are not who he's talking about - he's talking about companies that use Linux as the base of their computing platforms. They take whatever they get from RH, Suse, Debian, Centos or Oracle, and don't make changes to the OS: they only build application software on top of it. Unless they are building things like routers or firewalls or storage equipment, they don't mess around w/ the OS.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
For one thing, the content providers would yank their content from their boxes, pretty much ripping apart their business model
This is exactly the issue, DRM and lockdown exists to appease the content providers yet FOSS advocates go after the software and device makers that implement these schemes. If the content producers/publishers were happy to distribute their products DRM-free we wouldn't have software and hardware DRM in the first place, but they aren't and they never have been, this goes back to the days before digital distribution - with things like Macrovision VHS copy protection - and continues on physical media distribution with various DRM and copy protection schemes implemented on DVD and Bluray.
The reason most of the anti-DRM movement in the software industry has never gone anywhere is they don't even know who they are supposed to target.
I haven't actually seen fear mongering from the oss community.
Really? Most of RMS' interviews center around him spreading fear about the potential evil of proprietary software.
I'm not forcing an ideology on anyone.
Bullshit, the GPL ensures you don't work with anybody that doesn't share your ideology because the GPL is incompatible with proprietary software and isn't backwards compatible with permissively licensed works, the GPL is about exclusion of people with different ideologies, which you validated with your next comment:
You don't agree to my licence because of my ideology, that's your choice. Then write your own fucking software.
lol! This is exactly the segregation and intolerance I was talking about, "you don't like my ideology, then fuck off", no wonder the GPL is slowly fading away.
Focussing on why a corporate may not permit use of GPL code, not views and goals:
[1] It's at least demonstrably inconsistent, since (for example) a "common OS" clause is needed.
[2-5] A single end-user can assemble/use anything they like, but these rights are irrelevant if ABC distribute to XYZ against the license terms in the first place. In large corporations, it may not even be clear what legal entities are involved, and practically speaking no-one would get themselves into that position. The LGPL is another indicator of inconsistency in my view.
[6] Correct. However many individuals are granted the necessary authority to use/assemble for a legal entity, or release internally/externally, under licenses as agreed, as long they do not trigger additional license changes or obligations.
[7] Thanks for the practical suggestion.
[8] It's not relevant why it hasn't been tested in court, just note that it hasn't. No-one in their right mind would want to take it as far as not taking it that far. :)
Like I said, RMS would take exception to anyone describing him as being a part of the OSS community
Like I said, RMS would take exception to anyone describing him as being a part of the OSS community
Fair enough, given I was talking about the GPL crowd I assumed we were on the same page, replace that with 'Free Software crowd' if you prefer.
So you're saying it will be compatible with Microsoft Office, then?
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
The FSF is ideology-driven, but it isn't ideologically pure. The various GPL versions were drawn up to have an effect on the world that RMS wants. If you want the ideological purity, you can read his essays. The LGPL is indeed inconsistent, but it was intended to get more code somewhat copylefted than would be without it. The common OS clause you mentioned was important, since otherwise a system could not be partly GPLed and partly proprietary.
No version of the GPL forces anybody to distribute anything; it limits the combination of things you can distribute. If ABC sends GPLed software to their XYZ subsidiary, then why would XYZ release it freely? What sort of oversight does ABC have over XYZ anyway? If XYZ does what ABC wants, no problem.
Somebody with authority to release corporate software under a license of their choosing can do a great deal of harm without the GPL. They could release it under a BSD-type license with almost exactly the same effect to the company, but I haven't heard anybody condemn BSD on that basis.
As far as the legal department goes, if they can't understand a fairly short license written to be explicit, well, that's not my fault.
A wise man once wrote that the ideal contract is not one that will let you win in court. It's one that is clear enough so that it's obvious who would win, so that the other guy realizes that suing would be useless expense. Litigation is always a drain and expense, even when you win. Since nobody's challenged the GPL in court, and everybody confronted has always backed down, it seems to me that the GPL has this quality.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
> The various GPL versions were drawn up to have an effect on the world that RMS wants.
I know. I have no idea why you are telling me this, since we were discussing the situation as it _is_ for developers in corporations as of today. As for ideological purity.
> If ABC sends GPLed software to their XYZ subsidiary, then why would XYZ release it freely?
That is irrelevant if the ABC to XYZ distribution itself wasn't under the terms of the license of any part for which ABC is not the licensee. That sounds bad, until you realize that dynamically linking to a GPL library that you do not distribute might be enough to hit an embarrassingly low bar of violation, that flies in the face of the natural interpretation of dynamic linking every single developer I have ever met shares.
> As far as the legal department goes, if they can't understand a fairly short license written to be explicit, well, that's not my fault.
Nor mine. What's your point?
> it's one that is clear enough so that it's obvious who would win,
I presume you've not been involved in any court cases, via your employer or otherwise? The outcome is never clear, it is always costly in terms not only of legal costs, but internal company discovery and retasking, and if you have poor representation or drop the ball in an way, this can trump the facts being on your side. There are some cases I know of where a decision was made which flew in the face of facts already accepted in prior hearings, and it took further appeals to reverse. If you want to take yet more risks in terms of costs awarded, which often surpass the damage or opportunity cost under the case itself, feel free to do so.