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Solaris to be Community Licensed
In an update to
Rob's report, ZD-Net is reporting that
Sun will Community License Solaris. Basically you can get
the source at zero-cost, but you must return bug fixes to Sun,
you must pass Sun's compatability tests, and pay Sun if you
ship binaries commercially.
...
1) You can only ship the Solaris source if the license allows it. Why not check yourself?
2) In any case, a big part of what makes Free Software work is the way the community follows the spirit, not the letter, of the law. Don't burn Sun, please.
... for the ultrapenguin port, that is. It will be much easier for the ultrapenguin people to fix the remaining problems in ultrasparc linux now that they have the manufacturer's source code to study.
Could a vendor ship a box that compiles Solaris under Linux and then installs the compiled Solaris over Linux to avoid paying the fees???
Why why why why why....
take that, bill.
samedi@disifo.homina.net
nuff said, right?
Er, it=Solaris. (I know I won't be getting an Ultra 10 for free.)
Sengan is already so far off the "what's cool scale" that light emitted from it will not reach him before the heat-death of the universe.
rip their software, whine when we nuke iraq, delete critical posts.
ALL HAIL COMRADE SENGAN!
sengan needed a public vote on removal many months ago when he pulled the lame anti-american threads.
malda lets him get away with that, and now we're stuck with crap like this article.
wtf is wrong with malda? did he sleep with sengan's mom or something?
So it was.
If you've got Linux and Solaris as (more or less) open source, are we looking at a trend with other OS's (Tru64 Unix, AIX, OS/2, etc.)? If so, can that be construed as a conspiracy against MS? Are companies sacrificing short term to rid themselves of MS long term? Companies don't kill off revenue streams for no reason. Just because you have a free competitor doesn't mean everybody is going to switch, meaning you'll at least see a dwindling income stream, which is better than nothing. What other reason would there be for this?
(Don't get me wrong, I agree with the Corel guy from the interview mentioned a few articles ago... He basically said "OS's should be transparent to the end user" -- this world needs a lot of competing but compatible OS variants and the only way to ensure this is open source.)
More jingoistic anti-Sengan pro-US babble... Have you Americans ever been outside of the U.S.? If you have, you probably have noticed that most industrialised non-US countries have higher taxes, social systems that work and tastier beer.
Also, non-Americans generally know that the world isn't flat, doesn't start at the Atlantic and end at the Pacific.
~AC
hi, sengan. too afraid to post with your own account, you little weasel?
Hmmmmm, how about better public education? Seems like you and your fellow countrymen seriously need it.
Apart from third world dictatorships and oligarchies, I've never seen such an extreme income disparity until I visited the US.
Land of the Free? Opportunity? I'd suggest you ask your non-white citizens and native Indian populace about your inane slogans...
And why is everything that doesn't resemble laissez-faire capitalism labelled 'communism' by Americans?
~AC
I've been a Linux user since '93. I've also employed other Unices as servers - Solaris/SPARC, FreeBSD, SGI Irix, HP-UX. Solaris is pretty well designed, and technically current. FreeBSD is all there, and it all works. Linux, however, has the potential to surpass them all if it continues to improve as it has.
Linux is my favorite OS, but let's get real - Solaris and FreeBSD are worthy of respect too.
/*More jingoistic anti-Sengan pro-US babble... Have you Americans ever been outside of the U.S.? If you
have, you probably have noticed that most industrialised non-US countries have higher taxes, social systems
that work and tastier beer. */
Higher taxes are a feature?
Working social systems are a lot easier to keep going in more homogenous societies.
As for the last, I'd agree with you ten years ago, but with the consolidation of breweries in Britain along with the microbrewing explosion in America, it is getting easier to get a cask conditioned ale in the US than in the old country.
So there.
Will
Sun notices that it's no longer possible to sell operating systems as a "product" anymore. (Selling OS's as a service - including support and rapid responses to problems - is a different matter.)
They don't want to commoditize their hardware by allowing Linux to gain dominance on the UltraSparc, so they're giving their source code away.
What they're really doing is trying to kill Linux on the Sun platform. On the other hand, they'd love it to succeed on other platforms because it would kill the other Unix vendors.
You like him encouraging people to fuck Sun?
right on! Everyone agrees welfare only helps the bureaucrats who run the programs
Greetings, to those of you who find it necessary to deny Sengan his right to speak freely. It's amazing that you feel you have the right to tear his comments down when your own are probably just as bad, if not worse. Unfortunately, I didn't get to read his question because too many people felt the need to crucify him over his thoughts and opinions. I personally wish it hadn't been removed, but that is his (or Rob's) perogative. Most of the people who have the ability to post stories to Slashdot add in their own comments or questions. As long as it does not alter what the story is about, what is your problem? As if you would not put in your own thoughts... And you think everyone reading Slashdot would agree with what you say? Get real, people. Stop putting on the "Holier than thou" act. My parting thought for you to consider: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" or for those who are not religious, "Let he who is without error..."
Peace, I'm outee here,
J-Freak
Well.. restrictions aside...
and weird liscenses aside...
I'm happy for this announcement.
Now... SGI.. Show me the IRIX source!
Show me the source!
-Precedings rants come from the voices in my head
I think that companies are realizing that OS's aren't the real revenue streams they depend on. All of the companies you listed make money by selling kick-ass hardware and support. The OS is mostly just a development cost. The only hardware that Microsoft makes, OTOH, are mice, keyboards, and joysticks. MS lives and dies by OS revenue.
If you get people used to operating systems actually being free, it suddenly starts to make a whole lot less sense to pay whopping licensing fees for W2K.
MS, of course, is partly to blame for this becoming a problem for them. By hiding the cost of DOS (let's call Win98 what it is, DOS 8) in the purchase price of a PC, people thought they had a "free" OS so they didn't buy a replacement.
The more companies release source and give away the OS, the worse it is for MS.
Will
I'm downloading the Java source tonight :). I was glad when Java 2 SDK went under this license. I know it is not the GPL,
but I believe that he who writes the code picks the license. I think that free software (as in freedom) has both positive "moral" benefits (spread of information, sharing, etc. etc.) which I really value and also engeneering and economical benefits. I think both of them are important. But I am not convinced that there is a moral absolute that all software should be free. I believe free software is morally superior. But few "morals" are absolute.
Any ways, just saying that I'm glad to see this. Not as improtant to me as the Java source release, but it puts Sun in an even better light for me.
Snoop
it's doing fine as it is..now I think it has the potential to kill MS for good
I just love listening to the limeys get uppity.
Newsflash - its 1999 and you still have a Queen.
otherwise gas wouldn't be $.89 a gallon. it's a symptom of what's wrong with country: lack of a holistic view of the country, world, or individual situation. everything is me, me, me. we're supposed to have a federal government surplus with a huge retained debt, and all people think about is tax refunds and lowering income taxes. we act like we petroleum is being produced so fast we can't use it all. use of mass transit is rare to non-existant. people on wellfare have cable TV (or TV's period) and nike's and don't realize that they're not necessities in life. this country is made up of the most childish, irresponsible people i could ever imagine.
This might sound really stupid.. but how exactly would it hurt Microsoft to open the source in this same way to NT? Im certain there are legions of windows programmers who would fix bugs for them. It wouldnt exactly increase piracy (thats easy enough as it is). So whats the drawback keeping them from letting other people do their work for em?
:)
Im prolly just go ignorant to see it
t0ast.
Tinky Wink is British but I don't see what =that= has to do with anything. :|
There's all kindsa "bugs" in the OS that they don't want anyone looking at, dig?
/*1. Americans are profoundly anti-intellectual, Marxism was supported by the intellectual elite and was therefore
untrustworthy. */
America is so diverse that a generalization of this sort is essentially meaningless. Any sweeping statements about "the American culture" are nonsense as America is made up of multiple cultures.
America has been strongly anti-Marxist because its success is a result of capitalism.
Will
I don't care what color a lazy bum is.
Lazy bums deserve to starve, freeze, etc.
And at least now people will find out what the Ultra bugs are, and UltraPenguin will finally have 64-bit addressing for users.
Jason
Mine came within a matter of days.
Took a bit longer then two weeks, but it did finaly make it.
nexion@home.com
?????
The "right of free speech" applies to this very comment section, not the articles. If sengan wants a soap box, let him post comments like the rest of us.
An interesting question. I think there are at least two reasons for MS not releasing NT source code.
1. Some people inside MS will admit that there are security-related bugs inside the NT source code, and MS is worried that if a lot of people examine the code, these bugs will be exploited to harm NT machines which will generate bad PR for NT and hurt its market share.
2. NT is a complicated product that evolves a lot from major release to major release. NT 3.1 to NT 3.5, NT 3.51 to NT 4.0, and the upcoming NT 4.0 to NT 5.0 transitions all made major modifications to the code. When you release source code and invite the world to start hacking it along with you, it changes your development model at all levels. Microsoft would no longer have the ability to just trash huge parts of NT from one release to another because the development model would not be "proprietary" any more. I doubt whether MS is willing to put up with this type of change. Although you can be sure that MS development teams are looking at how the OSS model works and will try to adapt it to the microcosm that exists *within* MS.
I certainly agree with the 'not realizing what is an essential of life'.. i've seen that attitude many, many times. This is one of (IMO) the major downfalls of our current implementation of capitalism.. Advertising is so effective and starts so young that the fundamental world view of every person is touched. It's important not to forget the ultimate flexibility of the human mind: absolutely anything can be beleived to the point of not ever considering it - like breathing. **Education** is the only answer to a society that can base itself on real* needs and see more than the television.
/. account, my email address is fatjim@home.com. so i am a person here! ps, i am a saskathchwan,canadia resident if you think that colors my ideas somehow.)
This problem, of worldviews incongurent with the verifiable truth, of course plagues humankind -- witch hunts, astrology, enemy-scapegoating, etc, etc.. (think up your own examples). The problem is the way the human mind evaluates it's own efficiency. It is based entirely on Happiness. But since the mind and it's IMAGINATION are first-class inputs, you can beleive yourself out of any situation. To stay true to the physical world, one must always second guess oneself-- and the second guesses MUST be based on experimental proof. (have we heard of SCIENTIFIC METHOD? why haven't all our children?)
Of course on the other hand, nature made our imaginations first-class inputs for a 'reason'.. so far it seems to be working. It may be that a functional, maintainable human society may routinely contradict all logic and physical proof as a matter of course. (Mark Twain's A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is interesting reading along these lines). What you believe is what you live?
* real needs here are of course scientifically provables ones plus the society's own fundamental(kernal) beliefs.
(note: although i don't care to create a
Occasionally on /. you see someone take a pop at the Americans, usually from some idiot denizen of the UK (I am English btw) and I notice the majority of US responses are very forgiving. I do think you Americans should get out more and see some of the world but it isn't going to kill you if you don't.
So I'll raise a glass of any countries beer to international relations and wonder why a) a previous poster thinks the UK is the only country with a monarch b) The Americans feel they captured Enigma c) The Americans bought Telly Tubbies.
Regards
Mark
"also, non-Americans generally know that the world isn't flat, doesn't start at the Atlantic
and end at the Pacific. "
And those darn Americans are constantly making stupid generalizations about people they don't even know..... Oh, wait..... that would be you.
They'd never release their source under GPL, that's for sure. If they ever do it, It'll be something like this:
"The source is available for free (gratis). Bug fixes must be fed back. Don't cry to us if your changes break something. You must pay us if you sell or distribute derivatives."
Hell. I know about at least five bugs that I'd personally love to squash in W95. Not because I want to help MS, but because working around those bugs can be a pain in the XXX.
But, as someone else already explained, this is not going to happen. Releasing the source would make it a lot easier to fix up samba and wine in a clean-room fashion. It would also be impossible
for MS to selectively choose which ISVs they want to play on team with. (Example: They denied Netscape documentation of the win32 APIs for 6 months because N refused to play ball with MS in the browser market).
Much of MS' power derives from the fact that they are large enough to make their own proprietary standards, and selectively choose who to document these to. Available source makes it possible to clean-room these APIs and protocols. Imagine 10 ISVs hiring an independent company to look over the source and document all APIs and protocols. No way. MS won't give away their power over ISVs that easily.
Now all we need is for IBM to release OS/2. Now that would be cool.
Another thing is the code itself might be a real embarrasment for MS coders. I've heard that MS development departments are often pitted against eachother, so the standards and APIs exist soley in the heads of the one team that wins.. surely that would be spaghetti code if i ever saw it. That would make very bad PR for NT, if not for win98.
Instead of having to write test programs so you can make an educated guess at what you need to do, you can open up the source and SEE it. We do a lot of cross-platform stuff, and sometimes it's tough to figure out the little inconsistancies.
As a Swedish foreign citizen I just had to reply to this "essay" of utter bullsh*t.
First of all Sweden is one of the least rasistic countries I've ever visited. Being one of the most open in Europe accepting more refugees than any nordic country and about 0.7% of its total population each year! This means that the younger generation, at least in the urban areas, is quite used to foreign people and thus making interacial marriages and relationships a lot more common than in the US (I believe only 2% marriage interracialy in the land of the free).
Keep your facts straight and maybe you should keep your thought in your, let's say, less cunning league.
I fully support sengen. I think he should not have removed his question. It was, after all, a question, not a statement. I appreciate sengen's "alternative" views. Heck, if you guys want to be all mainstream, go buy Windows.
/* Um hate to break it to you but the UK is in no way a Homogenous country. Anything but. About 20% of people
in the UK were born outside of the country. (Africa, India, Packistan, West Indies etc). */
It is no accident that this development coincided with the rise of Thatcherism.
Traditionally however, Sweden was a very racist country.
Can the laplanders (or whatever they prefer to call tbemselves) have their ancestors heads back?
They were real human beings after all.
Mark.
I just received mine - I can't install it unless
I delete the Linux partition on my 6.8 gig drive...
The Solaris installation fails if there is any
data above 4 gigs apparently and its partition
is in the middle of the disk. What a piece of
shit. I installed FreeBSD 3.1 by FTP in a 1/2
hour instead. Plus, the Solaris CD-ROM is marginally manufactured - lots of read errors.
What do mean, specifically, by FreeBSD having a better "feel" than Linux? (honest question, not some kind of silly flamebait)
Oh, just wonderful! Now one of the best operating systems aside from NT -- Solaris -- will become none other than a toy, corrupted by shareware spaghetti code contributed by a bunch of 14-year old, pimply faced, socially inept losers. ;-( Yeah, like I want to use poorly structured, buggy, shareware code from kids who are pulling down C's in math.
Well, thank goodness the ethical, solid company called Microsoft won't let the Linux freaks corrupt *its* offerings!
Maybe Americans are really as stupid and intolerant as the rest of the world thinks they are...
This is an objective article that contains all necessary information, including the restrictions they put on the license.
Why are people here criticising TrollTech, but don't allow criticism of Sun???
I just don't like these f*cking US nationalists here!
I guess not.
/., but that still sheds a bad light on Americans...
OK, for European standards UK people are 'half' American, but here the US comments are really annoying.
It's incredible how much intolerance, ignorance and personal attacks are expressed here.
Yes, I know it's
He didn't say (or even imply, as I read it) that *all* Solaris users are closed source bigots. These people do, however, exist (I have personally had the extremely poor fortune of having to meet some of them... they can make RMS look extremely level-headed).
Hmm, who's the 3rd world country here?!?
A curiosity -
Anyone run "od -cb . " on Linux?
I get a message about . being a directory - (tried on Debian and Caldera)and the command ends - I have searched the man and info pages as to why this is, but cannot seem to locate an explanation.
I run the same "od -cb . " on Solaris or Digital Unix and I get the what I asked for - the bytes in the directory.
What about *BSDs?
BTW this is an exercise from the classic - "The Unix Programming Environment" by Kernighan and Pike ( page 51).
If slashdot is just a site for the authors (i.e. sengan) to spew their own personal feelings on the front page and call them "articles" and then proceed to delete comments that criticize them in any way, while accepting advertising revenue the whole time, then that needs to be said right up front so that we can all find a better use for our time.
Here's a theory a professor of mine has that I think is interesting:
/* 1. Americans are profoundly anti-intellectual, Marxism was supported by the intellectual elite and was therefore untrustworthy. */
Not to mention that Marxism is a utopian concept that would only work properly if humans were just machines. The end goal of Marxism is communism. Communism is a form of government without a government. While that may seem nice, it is not possible unless people drop their wants. This is something people are not just ready to do.
/* 2. Americans are individualistic and prefer to have no ceiling even if that means no floor */
Well, in America we do what we want to do, barring a number of illegal things. It is closer to natural law to live by your own means than by the government, is it not?
/* 3. (my favorite) Any two of the following three things can be true of a society without
a. It is non-homogenous and non-totalitarian
b. It is racist
c. It is socialist
*/
You need to rephrase that. There is a serious clause error that makes it not understandable.
What is happening to Slashdot
In the past few months my view of Slashdot has moved from being a novel website filled with interesting geeky news to a place where any viewpoint
that isn't 100% American PC is struck down by a vocal group of seemingly ill educated, racist, neanderthals.
Since the US and UK illegally bypassed the UN and started bombing Iraq (which Sengan reported and pointed out his dissapointment in his home
country's involvement (England)), many Slashdot posters took it as a que to call Sengan everything from a Communist to Nazi.
Since that date pretty much everything Sengan ever reports on is followed by posts of racism toward any non US country and brainwashed repetition of
anti communist dribble.
It amazes me that few people (none that I have seen) have noticed that it is not Sengan who is more of a Nazi, but many of those shouting so loud.
This, of course, has all happened before. Mr Stallman standing behind his GPL has been the brunt of many Communist accusations. Very few of us feel
anything but admiration for someone so prepared to stand for his beliefs that it has heralded new opportunites in the computer world.
Communism may well be flawed becuase the people who try it are not perfect, but if there is a place where it can be made to work without problem then
we only stand to gain from it. For the last couple of decades the computer world has been 100% Totalitarian, Platform racism and Nazism has stood
fast under the capitalist umbrella. Propaganda has been pumped onto out TV sets, our magazines, films and books and now, due to the likes of
Stallman, we have the chance to break all of this down and replace it something much better. Yet those, like Sengan, who claim this are accused of
being Communist. I cannot see any reason why this should be so. In the recent Solaris / Community Source case many people saw fit to think Sengan was
merely trying to screw Sun from a few dollars. This was not it at all.
Had the company in question been Microsoft I doubt anyone would have questioned Sengans comments. We'd argue "they have enough money already" and
keep it based on Money. Sengan did not do that. His viewpoint did not come from wanting to save money but to maximize the rights of the public to use
software however they wish. Linux is already under such terms and to date there has not been one person complaining about the freedom it grants them.
It is dull to see so many ignorant people speak before engaging their brains. I may have made mistakes myself in this post, but I definately thought
about it before hand. Something that seems very lacking in the race to flame Sengan.
Arthur Dent
Oxford
England
MS can't go OSS within their own microcosm. Once it's opened up to however many programmers they have (dozens, hundreds?) somebody is going to leak it.
Also, they have all those nasty bits for fed spying that OSS would bring to light. Notice the press releases talking about M$ being forced to release source immediately prompted rumors of "There are portions of the source we can't find. They've been lost."
Yeah, right. Just like there's no "break QT/Netscape/RealPlayer/anything else" bits. They'll convienently vanish too.
As if.
This is an interesting essay. Not because it has much to do with reality, but in the way Americans handle facts and theory.
Economics and natural sciences are apparently considered important, but social sciences are a catastrophe.
The theory sounds very original, it's easy to explain and provides easy recipes for complex problems.
The only problem: The analysis is nice, but the conclusion doesn't care about facts at all!
racism
Compared to the US, all European states are quite non-racist; Sweden has a reputation of being especially tolerant.
Germany is extremely non-homogenous. Not because of Turks in the first place, but because of the former socialist eastern part.
This means:
- west: 'moderate/tamed' capitalism
east: socialism (in the minds of the people)
- west: less 'race-homogenous', relatively weak racism
east: very few foreigners, strong racism, also due to bad economic situation
Certainly Germany is [...] becoming less and less homogeneous with the influx of Turks which creates political pressure to segment social programs, even citizenship on nationalistic lines.
Ironically, it's exactly the other way round: German citizenship is about to be liberalized, while it has *always* been bound to descent (unlike the French law, e.g.)
This shows once again, that in the US 'eye-catching' theories are more important than thorough knowledge, when it come to foreign policy and culture.
Next time you make statements like that, make sure you point out up front that they are completely unsupported.
I was late to the party. I'm curious what he actually said that got everyone's panties in a twist. Does anybody remember?
Hanzie@hotbot.com
Not an A/C, just didn't login
Great. Another lame crack baby Mocrosoft troller destroys a completely valid argument by making completely untrue assertions about Free Software and its programmers. It's a good thing we have reliable, ethical sources of information like Jesse Berst to clue us in on the real nature of open software.
$0.02
What the first reply asked, plus, why is Linux for people that grew up on DOS? Excatly what aspect of Linux makes it more for ex DOS people than say Solaris or *BSD? I use both Solaris and Linux and I haven't noticed this, but like the first poster, I'd really like to know why you say this.
So after a while, I e-mailed them about it. They appologized and I had the package on my desk in a few days. Not bad at all.
I just cleaned my room, they could use it!
(this comment is intentionally dum)
Don't give me that crap. My parents weren't rich at all but they worked damn hard all their lives to make sure their kids had a warm bed and decent clothes and food on the table. I'm sick of people leeching off the system and then bitching about how bad it is and how bad America sucks. Well get the hell out of here if you can't roll up your sleeves and actually WORK.
As a Communist I resent your implication that we go around nukeing Iraq or deleting /. posts. We have constantly objected to the bombing of Iraq and we have no plans, as of yet, to exercise any editorial control over /.
Anonymous Comrade
Make the next poll "do you leave your numlock on or off?"
personally I leave it off because I know how to type numbers with the QWERTY method, yo, and I use the numpad for the arrows. And I hate, HATE machines that always put the numlock ON on boot without a cmos option. So make that the next poll, it would be interesting and ereet. Word up to slackware!
They delivered mine very promptly (UK). Both times (2.6 and 7.0), and a friend recieved hers extremely quickly in NZ.
> Newsflash - its 1999 and you still have a Queen.
Ah... another member of the US intelligentsia. Evidently, the gene pool isn't very large over there.
And your point is ? Is following the Queen of 1999 any worse than falling behind a proven liar and adulterer like circus seals just because he puts a few extra dollars in your pocket ?
>I run Solaris at work, Linux on m laptop, and
>FreeBSD on my home machines. The right tool for
>the right job. They're all fine, but I must
>admit that FreeBSD has the best feel to me - it
>is the tightest unix around. Solaris is a pillar
>of stability, but messy, and, well, Linux is
>Unix for those who grew up on DOS...
Oh not again.
One of those FreeBSD people who claim that
FreeBSD has a better userbase (I've seen this
statement used in comparisons) than linux and thus is better.
So if everybody uses FreeBSD, its userbase will
be as crap as Linux's, yes?
So for its sake lets all stay far away.
Solaris is neat though.
Hopefully, the lack of Y2K preparation at Russian nuclear installations will deal with it.
The US is the only industrialized nation without universal health care. Who's the 3rd world nation now? We only take care of the people that can afford to be taken care of. That's 3rd world-ism if you ask me.
Once it's been picked clean of various optimizing and SMP tricks, Linux should end up being the better UNIX on Sun platforms, unless Sun decides to replace all their various tools with the GNU versions which are more stable and flexible. And if Sun does that, the platform will practically be Linux running a different kernel, anyway.
I didn't think so, besides what's so wrong with killing a mass murderer, or a murderer that commits a very violent murderious crime (like drags someone behind a car/truck to kill them)? Sure, but in that case you need be 100% sure of guilt, have a legal system where people cannot get away with lying, perjury, abuse of power and those adjudging the process have the guts to carry out what they start... in other words everything the world has just seen that the US legal system isn't.
Sad but true. Except in some of the major cities, we're a nation of people extremely suspicious of other countries, even though we're almost all descendents of people from those countries. On the other hand, I think the o-so-vocal xenophobic Americans are overly represented here on /.
That is 35 million lines of shite for Win2000 if I am not mistaken. If M$ can squeeze so many bugs into Win95 with less than 10 million, wait until you see Win2000!!!
Sun's just trying to get Linux out of the way with this. Linux already has a larger growth than Sun, they figure if they open their source, why wouldn't people go to them rather than Linux (after all, when it comes down to it, that's the only real advantage with Linux...it's better because it's open). This sucks if you ask me.
I must say that I have slept with sengen's mom and found it to be a very enjoyable experience ... but then the only comparison you can make is against your own, asshole.
I'm first! ME ME ME! YESSSSSSSSSSSS
Receiving them, not making them...
When did we Nuke (Nuq?) Iraq?
If NT went for this open source model, Microsoft could prosper.
They would probably end up with a more stable product, yes. But it would also be a lot harder for them to keep protocols and APIs closed.
What is holding the Samba team back from properly implementing the PDC/BDC protocols? Documentation.
What is holding the Wine people back? Documentation.
What is stopping us from making an email program that can talk natively with Exhange Server? Documentation.
If MS release their source, they level the playing field. Judging by their past behaviour, I'd be very surprised if they did this voluntarely.
Sovereign individuals voluntarily cooperating is
anything but communistic or fascist. It is only
possible when people have freedom of association
and the freedom to develop and use whatever technology they care to. Open source development only flourishes in those countries where people are free to accumulate the wealth required to purchase computer hardware and where they live far enough above subsistance to have the leisure time to develop code. Unless and until people are secure in their person and property they cannot develop free software.
An anarcho-capitalist
I assume your post was referring to the US.
I don't think you can argue that the US has no welfare.
Decent Education system? I'll give you that, but it isn't because we don't spend enough money on it. It's overly bueracratic and often bows to Special Interest rather than properly educating the children.
Let me just say something about America and racism. Sure racism exists, but in the U.S, you have more diversity than probably anywhere else in the world, and it's relativly peaceful. A single racist act (dragging a black man in Texas) makes national news and causes national outrage.
Now lets look at Europe by comparison. Each region tends to be made up of ethnicly similar people. When there are small differences, there is big trouble.. Northern Ireland, Bosnia, etc. I'm told the French and Germans hate each other.
Before you non-U.S. residents accuse us of racism, look at your own situation. Then ask yourself, if your neighborhood was part black, part Oriental, part Middle Eastern, part Hispanic, and part Jewish how peaceful it would be.
SUN is trying to kill Microsoft by taking the value of the OS to $0. SUN helps Linux because it helps drive the cost of the OS to $0.
Just like IE did to browsers.
It is beautiful.
Jim
Two words: Bosnia and Northern Ireland
Oh wait, that's not racism, it's just religious intolerance.
May I remind you that the greatest examples of intolerance in human history occured in Europe.. Hitler, the Holocost.
Yeah but we can't spell color (colour), check (cheque), tire (tyre), civilization (civilisation) and many other words correctly either, can we?
> and tastier beer
Obviously you've missed the real value of American individualism...if Americans want good beer we brew it ourselves, not buy it...
Self reliance...it's not just a political theory, it's better beer (and cider...and wine...and apple brandy...and moonshine (which you sissy Europeans couldn't even invent:)...opps, skip the last two...BATF regs and all:)
Herb
>it's no surprise that US leaders can't even spell potato.
;)
Actually, his spelling is an acceptable (if archaic) alternate according to the OED...now what country is that document from again?
Herb
> that what happened to the BSD's (companies
> basically stealing the work of others and
> reselling it,but really giving nothing back)
> doesn't happen to them.
...which is exactly what Sun did when they took BSD and closed the source to make SunOS.
Sun knows it's a hardware company that just happens to sell software. A few years out, when Sun is trying to sell the same 12-way Merced boxes as Dell and Packard Bell, it's going to be impossible to charge a premium to run Solaris over running NT, HP-UX, Linux, or any of the other ten OSs that will run on Merced.
So as a hardware company, they need to do what they can to assist people running on their hardware. Opening up the source of Solaris lets Linux projects and software vendors optimise for Sun's products, given them an advantage over other hardware companies. So, what's the problem?
Did anyone actually answer Sengan's (fairly interesting) question?
Whinging that he hilighted a possible loophole is a bit like complaining because someone has found a bug in your code. The correct response is to thank them and fix it - not accuse them of malicious intent so that they withdraw the bug report.
Nick May
Nah, only Americans make real Moonshine (need native ingredients)...anyway, Russians aren't Europeans, they're just Asians with really big living spaces....
Actually, I've hear Russian homemade stuff makes good southern 'shine seem tame.
No matter how cosmopolatine the world becomes, booze will always be nationalistic...
Herb
Yep, I'd buy a 40 000 car from him alright
first!
I agree.
It's much more fair than Red Hat making billions of dollars on shit that we develope, and as their distro sucks, it makes it even worse.
America is a Continent, just because your country have the ugliest name in the Wolrd all the United Statecians have call themselves "americans" well you are but also are cubans, argentinians, mexicans(no our fault), etc, so please don't be a Stupid Yankee and call yourself something of your own...
Pura Vida...
I don't know why this is but I found the same things when going through that book.
Fundamentally Linux is a Unix-like so some things are implemented differently, this particularly shows up when you look 'under the hood' which is some of what that books is trying to show you. The same was true when looking at the directory structure which should be a plain file according to the book but there was something strange about Linux I believe (memory a bit fuzzy)
Yeah we have our problems...but so do you.
Frankly, it seems almost every time a Brit posts on here it has to include some sort of anti-US comment about some of the oddities/problems of our culture. Your culture is equally farcical. We could talk about that injunction that basically censored your press last year (regarding those embarrasing MI5 allegations), your drug problem at raves,all the talk show stuff lately in the news, etc. There's certainly plenty of things to point out that's wrong with the UK.
The guys who post this remind a lot of the Danes I see on the net. All they talk about is real 'football' (soccer of course) and 'beer' and compare it to the US stuff. Gee...they're so tough. I don't really have anything against either country's citizens. I just get real tired of seeing this crap. You wonder why they're so concerned about pointing this stuff out to us?
...so you stupid morons can call everything you dislike communist and therefor anti-American propaganda without anyone criticising it, because everyone who critizises it must be afraid of getting shot by you gun-bigots, after being framed wanted on some anti-senganistic site.
It's bigots like you that make me ashamed to be an American.
grow up, or shut up.
History? Alright, but it said: newsflash.
And now dont come in with that Camilla/Charles/Di/Dodi thing - Charles is no leader and he might propably never become one.
I don't entirely agree with the "hacker-wannabe-os" vs "quality" OS description.
I get to use Linux at home & work, and Solaris at work (as a development/CAD platform). I've seen more bugs in the Solaris system core (kernel & system utilities) than I have from my Linux box. For anything but the most horrible show-stopping bugs, fixes come from Sun in a week or two at the best, whereas I've seen fixes for all kinds of problems for Linux come out within hours after being posted on a newsgroup.
I've seen MORE bugs on my Linux box in the "extra" utilities (clock programs, cd players, games, etc). I attribute this to the smaller number of people & perhaps less expertise being applied to that functionality.
On the other hand, the bugs for Solaris seem to be distributed pretty evenly among all system services, utilities & applications. (The only exception I've seen is that the horrible piece of network administration software Solstice seems to have bugs up the ying-yang, but there are workarounds for most of them so they never get fixed).
As far as performance is concerned, my Linux box on a reasonably powerful PC (Cyrix 200+ w/256MB) outperforms Solaris quite a bit on a reasonably "weak" SPARC (SPARCstation 20 with 512MB) for disk access & application latency. It would probably be faster if I had decent hard disks (only got 2 2GB IDEs). And, it was a LOT cheaper (not just a little!).
The ONLY thing I see which keeps Linux from being used as a mainstream platform for many of the companies in my line of work is that most of the CAD tools we use aren't available for it. If that were to change, it would be a nobrainer as far as cost-effectiveness for companies to use Linux as a primary platform.
Yeah sure, Alan Cox and Linus are not even close to Yankees, only Billy G. so ???
In a world without walls and fences who needs windows and gates
Just fell off my chair...
Sweden has the highest immigration rate in your dreams perhaps!
I'll give points to Sweden for being the *European* country most accepting of multiculturalism. But being the most multicultural in Europe is a far cry from being the most multicultural overall.
Canada has the highest rate of immigration percapita in the world with 1 out of every 6 Canadians born outside of Canada.
The USA is number 2.
I live in Toronto - the most ethnicly diverse city on Earth (New York City = number 2). When I visit Europe I'm struck by the overwhelming homogenity of the ethnic makeup of the various countries. It's kind of spooky in a way (although I realize that my experience is really the abnormal one in the world).
Last time I checked about 90% of the population of Sweden was ethnic Swede - an overwhelmingly dominant majority - and most of the ethnic minorities (Finns, Yugoslavs, Danes, Norwegians, Greeks and Turks) are fellow Europeans. The number of non-European ethnic groups must surely be in a low single digit percentile.
Kudos to Sweden for its attitude to multiculturalism which is rare in Europe.
But the highest immigration rate in the world? Hardly.
>Compared to the US, all European states
>are quite non-racist; Sweden has a reputation
>of being especially tolerant.
As a Canadian, I find it hard to jump to the defense of the US but... you... are... forcing... me.
This statement is often made and is ridiculous.
Just how is Europe even a little bit less racist than the United States?
Let's look for some "thorough knowledge" shall we Mr./Ms. Patronizing?
All European countries have a level of homogenity far greater than the United States. Germany for instance is inhabited by peoples who are 91.5% ethnic German and 8.5% non-ethnic German. If you look at the people who are actually granted full citizenship in Germany it's more like 99% German, 1% non-German. Of the 8.5% who are non-German, they are largely Turks, Italians, Greeks, Poles and people fleeing the war in the former Yugoslavia - i.e. fellow Europeans. The number of non-Europeans resident in Germany is miniscule. The figures are similar or more extreme in every other European country (except perhaps Sweden - and countries such as Britain and Holland where the number of non-Europeans will be higher due to colonial histories).
So when you walk down the street in any given European country you have a 9 in 10 chance that the next person you walk by will be a person of your own ethnic background. Europeans don't even have the chance to try and show themselves to be "less racist" than the US. Their frame of reference is completely different.
German citizenship law may be about to be liberalized. But dear God, what took so long? That you can be born in Germany and not automatically be granted citizenship at the end of the 20th century is atrocious. By all means kudos to Germany for finally *trying* to change this. But it hasn't happened yet and half the country seems to be up in arms about it. The mainstream opposition parties (CDU, CSU) are running a populist campaign, complete with petition to block this proposed change, and seemingly have a slim majority opinion with them. And the US is supposed to be more racist than that? I don't think so. You are born in the USA = you are an American citizen - end of story. And its been that way for some time I believe.
Isn't Germany the country in which a boy who was of Turkish ethnic background but who was born in Germany, who lived his entire life in Munich, who couldn't speak fluent Turkish, who had never been to Turkey and whose mother tongue was German, was deported to Turkey after a crime spree just a few short months ago?
This is "less racist" than the United States.
This boy was born and lived his entire life in Germany, spoke only German fluently and yet was not a German citizen because the "wrong" sort of blood flowed through his veins.
Understand this: that would *never* have happened in the "more racist than Europe" United States.
Even the rightest of the right wing of mainstream politicians in the US would not even dream of a day when such an act would be possible under US law.
Anyway: US bad, evil - in many ways yes.
More racist than Europe? Not in your wildest Euro-fantasies my friend. Don't even bother commenting until you have a society which can even begin to compare - and you don't.
>Then ask yourself, if your neighborhood
>was part black, part Oriental, part Middle
>Eastern, part Hispanic, and part Jewish how
>peaceful it would be.
My neighbourhood is like that.
I live in Toronto.
In fact its part 180 other known ethnic groups too. Europeans (taken as a whole) will be a minority by the end of the year 2000 here.
It's one of the most peaceful cities on Earth.
(no, not 100% problem but still...)
In the Middle East, they chop off heads in public.
We should do that in the US. Either it convinces
felons to behave properly, or we run out of
felons because they all die.
Life in jail is cruel. Death is much more humane,
and it gets rid of the bastards for good.
Solaris includes the Korn shell, which replaced the Bourne shell as the standard UNIX shell some years ago. The latest version (ksh-93) is the best shell I've ever used, full stop. It's also a superset of the Bourne shell and the POSIX shell.
ksh is perhaps more imposing for novice users than less-advanced shells such as bash because it doesn't presume it knows what every user wants. For example, ksh doesn't simply assume everyone uses emacs, so emacs keybindings are not set unless the environment specifies they should be. There are other examples, such as the $ENV variable, which indicates the path of the environment file (rather than a static name like ~/.bashrc or ~/.cshrc). A novice doesn't know to set $ENV, so it seems like a feature (.rc file) is missing, but an adept user appreciates the flexibility.
Solaris has its weak point, but the shell is certainly not one of them. Even if it still comes with the old ksh-88 as the default shell, dtksh (ksh-93 with extensions for interfacing with Motif/CDE) is in there too.
I agree. I use open-source software because I prefer to have source code for any software I use (so I know what it's really doing, so I can modify it to suit my needs, etc.). I'll even use closed-source software if it's significantly better.
I certainly don't expect Sun to give me their source code without retaining control of it, and if I make money from it, I'm more than happy to return some of it to Sun as royalties. If they were to give it away (via a BSD or GPL licence), I'd be happy with that too, but to expect or demand such a thing is nonsensical.
The only place you will even come close to 20% is in certain dense urban areas.
In the UK, words like "Jap" and "Paki" grace the headlines of tabloids, something that would never happen in the US.
There is no racial sensitivity in the UK, and most UK citizens can group up and go through their entire education seeing *few* minorities in their classes, except in higher education. Being one of the original imperialists, UK citizens delight in their superiority over the immigrant population, rather than assimilating them.
Europe is a wasteland of countries paralyzed by unions, dependents on the government dole, and politicians with no backbone.
Everything is more expensive there. Food comes in smaller portions. Pay is lower. Taxes are higher. There is less entrepreneurism, and the schools just suck.
Anyone considering a career in just about anything: medicine, law, acting, computers, education, finance, would be better served by coming to the US.
Hmm, let's see. Where is Linus living now?
Tired: Europe
Wired: US
You forget "real" UNIX never innovated much after being released, compared to BSD.
The work done by the CSRG at Berkeley was not commercial; the software was written to be used. Insofar as commercial users (like Sun) were making use of the BSD source code, they were helping fulfil that goal. They weren't `stealing' anything.
In contrast, Sun are a commercial group: their purpose is to earn a profit. They can't give away software they've paid to develop without retaining control, or at least some means of supporting their commercial development efforts. If they can do that while providing source code to users, so much the better.
The bottom line:
I like the BSD licence because it supports free software anyone can use for any purpose.
I like this new Sun licence because it makes Sun's commercial software more useful to more people without destroying the commercial base which led to its development in the first place, and on which future commercial development depends.
I don't like the GPL because it reduces the usefulness of free software by disallowing its use in projects which aren't `politically correct' (in the sense of adhering to the FSF's political viewpoint).
If it could be proved that the GPL was necessary for free software to succeed, I would be in favour of it. However, the success of projects like XFree86 and Apache, not to mention the free BSDs, shows a resrictive licence like the GPL is not needed for free software. Commercial software is another matter, and I think it's clear it must be restrictively licensed.
What the fsck are you talking about? Everyone knows that the world _really_ begins at the mouth of the Long Island Sound and ends at the Hudson River. :)
And obviously you're not doing too bad financially, since you can afford an ISP and computer.
Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful (metaphorically)... and Sam Adams really is quite good.
Get a clue, you jealous dickface.
...he types on his Yankee-invented computer under his Yankee-invented lightbulbs right before he gets in his Yankee-invented automobile.
Stupid fucking Americans, at least the French brought the world something useful: mimes!
Last time I checked Rocky Balboa was one up on your best fighter you silly commie...and we have plenty more where he came from :)
It has done a superb job at corrupting its offerings all by itself.
Open Source == Better Code
I can't beleive I'm reading this.
A big kick ass linux supporting company like Sun goes all out to try and do something good for the world of computing (anb bad for M$), and Sengan is trying to figure out a way to pimp them out of a few bucks.
Why anyone woul want to screw Sun out of a few bucks by loopholing their binary clause is beyond me.
Slashdot (and Sengan especially) just lowered a notch on the what's cool scale.
--Aaron Newsome
Bill Gates invented the Internet.
While this is obviously false, you've failed to make a point. Your previous two examples seemed aimed at downplaying US influence, while this one shows the importance of the US. Even though Bill Gates did not invent the Internet, it *was* Americans who did it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Also, non-Americans generally know that the world isn't flat, doesn't start at the Atlantic and end at the Pacific
If that's so, then why was it Europeans who thought that the world was flat and ended at the Atlantic?
You might want to research your examples a bit more prior to using them.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Deal with it.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Note: Sengan has removed the question in question.
--
--
=8^
So you piss on him either way, whether he removes it or not. I don't think he "can't take the heat"; it's more like "we had to kill the sentence in order to save the IQ level of the comments". Thank you very much for forcing him to censor himself; maybe /. should just remove all thought-provoking questions.
Sengan, instead of covering up your mistakes (like your probable censoring of this post) why not just not make the mistakes in the first place? Here's an easy way: Think first, then post.
There was no mistake. I wish you kneejerk anti-Sengan bastards would follow your own advice; take a look at your comments in this thread (while they're still here) - those comments show absolutely no thought at all.
--
--
=8^
You're way too kind. I don't think anyone misunderstood the question (well, you maybe); people were just piling on Sengan, using it as an excuse. It's not the first time - this has been going on ever since the Iraq bombing; some people's IQs seem to hit bottom at the very sight of Sengan's name. And they all seem to post anonymously for some reason.
--
--
=8^
Gee, after the sublime comes the ridiculous. After Arthur's post sweetens my morning coffee, you have to drag this bit of misinformation into it. Go back to the page in question and read Rob and Sengan's addenda to the post. I'll leave it to you to find the URL.
--
--
=8^
but I think it was UPS's fault.
Anyways, they're idiots, but their OS is pretty well constructed, so I'll probably throw some more money at them when I get an older Sparc box.
I don't see why not, really.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
It's easy to start "dogging" Sun for what appears to be an attempt get end-users/developers to start doing Sun's development for them. But this could end up being a Really Good Thing for Solaris users. If you work in a Solaris shop, or use apps that only run on Solaris, then you are going to be paying for Solaris anyways. A semi-open license may not be as good as a true GPL, but at least it will allow Solaris users a chance to make their OS work better for them. And who knows, if this works well for Sun maybe they will be more apt to semi-open other software.
Most people don't mind paying for software that works the way they want it to. So they would be much more willing to pay for software that allows them access to the source code. Good for Sun, good for Sun's customers.
When are clean room procedures required? I know it's needed for reverse engineering, but I don't know exactly why. Presumably to ensure there is no copyright violation?
Linus (along with thousands of OS design students who are now working in industry) saw the source to Minix and that wasn't deemed a problem. People from Digital's VMS group ended up working on NT. Clearly seeing the source for one OS doesn't prevent somebody from ever working on another.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
And the military-industrial complex is becoming an endangered species. Many have gone out of business or have had to merge to remain viable. With the increasing use of 'commercial' hardware, the military-idustrial complex has to compete with 'civilian' companies, and most companies have had to diversify out of pure military applications, or at least their mother companies have.
If anything, the military projects of Europe are more 'socialistic.' How many projects have been supported by France, GB, and Germany, even when costs have spiraled completely out of control? The governments funds inital research, as well as the cost of building, just to make sure the state-owned enterprise doesn't look too badly managed?
I ordered a copy of Solaris x86 the day they started the offer. It never came at all.
Apparently his second thought was to get huffy, reply as an Anonymous Coward and do the right thing.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
I get timeouts when trying to access http://www.sun.com, at least this one:
Name: wwwwseast2.usec.SUN.COM
Address: 192.9.49.33
Aliases: www.SUN.COM
"L'IT c'est moi!"
I find Sengan's posts to be troublesome not because they are anti-US, but because they are anti-sense. I'm not talking about the geopolitical editorials, but ones that have convoluted grammatical constructions. I thought that Sengan was a non-native English speaker for a some time, but apparently he's British, so now I just think he's a little hasty.
As to your other points, I attended an international school (25% US, 75% other) and I agree wholeheartedly that Americans,even well educated ones, tend to be less well rounded than others. However, Europe is not the whole world either and once you get outside of that your taxes and social systems quip is even less true. And besides, in my limited experience, Panama and Chile have by far worse beer than the US.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Now, now. Quayle was less of a leader than the Queen.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
The market does a great job of pricing commodities if all internal and external costs related to the production and distribution of that commoditity.
Does the price of gasoline accurately internalize the price of military intervention in the Middle East?
Does the price of gasoline accurately internalize environmental and human harms of agressive exploration and extraction of petroleum? or of the damage when it is used?
When those things are true, gasoline will be fairly priced.
As for your other point, you are correct will never run out of petroleum reserves since the price will rise as supply diminishes, hence some will never be extracted. We will, however, run out of useful quantities of gasoline, which is a man made product and which will not be produced if it is priced out of the energy market.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Considering what a gut-wrenching adaptation it must be for companies like Sun to open up their source code, we shouldn't be too harsh on them for taking baby steps. The CEO's probably have nightmares about shareholder lawsuits, etc. when they take these steps.
In 10 years everything will be GPL'd. It'll just take a while for people to regard copyleft as normal.
Why not just let it drop and say something about Solaris?
I have no problem getting rid of murderers or any other violent thug. Everyday should be fry day.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Community Source? Though looking under the SunOS hood might be interesting, this intentionaly warm and fuzzy term is fundamentally different from GPL. At this point in time, Linux is more of a specific threat to commercial/commodity unixes than WinNT.
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
Well we have a Social Security system that is about to collapse because it is
unsound, we have a Medicare (health care for elderly) which has similar problems.
Both are defrauded at incredible rates, but are too big to police. We have a
Welfare system that has about 75% overhead
Americans are scared to let the government that constructed these programs to
have a hand at Universal Health Care, with good reason I think.
Australia has universal health care (called Medicare, though available to the non-elderly as well). Visits to the doctor (up to a point) and many treatments are bulk-billed (paid for by Medicare), and medicine is subsidised. We seem to manage just fine without much fraud or loss.
Also, if the Americans are so paranoid about socialism, why do they have no problems with a multi-billlion-dollar military-industrial complex, a vast industry all paid for by the state? Surely that is a shining example of all-American Socialism.
The First Law of Hollywood Movies: All heroes must be recognisable 20th-century Americans, unless their ethnic identity is part of the gimmick (i.e., The Avengers and other swinging-60s Cool Brittannia fare). You lose audience mind-share if you ask people to identify with Britons, French, New Zealanders and other weird foreigners.
Besides, everybody knows the Americans saved the world in WW2, Henry Ford invented the automobile and Bill Gates invented the Internet.
That's pretty far out. Yeah, I know it's not GPL. But hey, if you want it you can run Linux on your ultra :).
I think this is a big step forward -- and I bet there's a lot of stuff in the infamous Slowlaris that could use some outside eyes.
However, I personally have no intention of _ever_ under _any circumstances_ looking at a single line of Slowlaris source. Yeaahh! yuck.
I know this is not quite related to the free source offer, but just as an example of how I have seen these offers managed by Sun in the past.
About five months back they offered free copies of Solaris for personal use. All you had to do was order on the web site and pay delivery. Five months later (just yesterday infact) I got sick of waiting for it to be delivered, cancelled the order and demanded a refund. Lets hope this will be better managed.
I tried Solaris x86 at home, and as a home system solaris doesn't hold a candle to a typical linux distribution. Out of the box I find Solaris completely unuseable, and I would have to download about a gigabyte of GNU stuff just to bring it to Red Hat's level.
What they need to do with Solaris is start adding value - better shell than sh would be a good start.
The install isn't nearly as good as Red Hat's either, despite what some people say.
support gun control: take guns from cops
real UNIX was sysv 5 years from now. real UNIX will be Linux 5 years from now.
Never heard of poteen (potain) ?
(Irish moonshine).
A pome:
Since I discovered Murphy's over here I have no need for Merkin beer.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
...just because he's rubbed some doofus-headed
merkins up the wrong way is no reason to ostracise him.
Maybe you should listen your own free-speech rhetoric, and let Sengan be. If you don't like what he says, don't read it. Some of use *like* what he has to say.
I was wondering what the heck everyone was talking about. By the time I got to the article it seemed completely innocuous.
Mine took about 3 days to get here.
(This seems just about as good of a time as any to ask this...)
Does anyone know if there is a way to run Solaris x86 binaries on Linux? I've heard of such things with *BSD, but never with Linux. I'm thinking it might be the quickest/easiest way to get a Lotus Notes client up and running.
(I have Solaris 7 installed on my PC. Any magic libraries that need to be copied? If this is impossible now, could "open source Solaris" help?)
Thanks for any pointers...
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Sun must've noticed that it's only a matter of time before the Linux Sparc port is mature enough to beat the pants off Solaris. It makes no sense to charge a sizable fee for an operating system, when you can get something else which works at least as well, and it's free.
Look again, dude. Back here in the UK The real ale/commercial fizz pendulum has swung back; double diamond is dead, long live Theakstones!
Does anyone *really* miss Watneys Red Barrel ?
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
Since when is the ability of the poor to purchase luxuries a BAD thing? Americans have a fairly high standard of living overall... and this is a reason to bash Americans?
One man's luxury is another's necessity (emotionally if not physically).
I meant to say:
...doesn't support the [sarcasm] tag.
In all fairness the Vice-President of the US is hardly a leader. He's pretty much just there incase the presdent gets killed and to pretend to give a crap about the stuff the president is too busy to pretend to give a crap about
-matt
I hate to break it to you, but the VFS model existed in Unix OS's before Linux existed. So you're right, it isn't the most lucid explanation, it isn't even an accurate explanation.
This opening of Solaris 7 & al. will certainly assist in getting Solaris x86 (and SPARC, for that matter) binaries running on other platforms. Methinks a number of Solaris x86 binaries running on Linux would be very nice... (as a previous poster pointed out with Notes)
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Why is Sun obsessed with creating all these
weird almost open source but not quite licenses?
Solaris is there mainl to sell Sun hardware,
services and add-on products, these businesses
would do just as well if Sun made Solaris truly
open. I mean, who's going to compete with Sun
in the Solaris support business?
It really seems like they are trying to get everyone to fix bugs and add features for them,
but still maintain the control and the revenue stream. I'd like to be able to say that people will see through this sort of thing, but Qt got plenty of third-party patches under the old license, and I'm sure MySQL and qmail still do.
I'm actually willing to use proprietary software in some cases, but licensing tricks like this really annoy me.
So Sun basically is trying to get the best of both worlds: Getting hundreds of hackers to debug your source code for free (freed software world), and getting a piece of the action for every copy sold (un-free software world).
Somehow, I do not think developers will be throwing themselves at Sun like armadillos into oncoming cars to take them up on this offer. I guess it depends on how big a cut Sun wants, and if it's set in advance of you developing your product, or after.
(For the unaware, the armadillo looks like an armored rat and is about the size of a small dog, but is low to the ground -- low enough to pass unscathed under some cars and most larger vehicles -- but it's defense mechanism is to jump straight up into the air where they are invariably killed, victims of... well, you know.)
-- Blame any errors on your own stupidity. All wrongs reserved.
You are correct, in that if you already have some investment in using Solaris, this is pretty good news, because you'll get bug fixes quicker. The point is, I do not think this will attract new users to Solaris or inspire the sort of development that Linux currently enjoys.
I think the old cliche applies here:
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
(cow == "commiting to full open source model", milk == "hackers debugging your code")
i.e., with community source, someone is givin' it away, and it ain't Sun.
-- Blame any errors on your own stupidity. All wrongs reserved.
But I think I will stick with Linux.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
In the good ol' days, when Unix only grokked one filesystem type, the OS used the directory bit to detect directories, but didn't bother to treat them any different otherwise. (Made the implementation of ls real simple, too.)
Then along came Linux with its Virtual File System model. Since multiple file systems are supported, the app-level software must be shielded from the gory details of each particular filesystem's implementation.
In this model, the only apps that should be accessing filesystem metadata directly are filesystem maintenance tools (e.g., e2fsck). I suppose, if there were a great hue and cry for access to directory metadata, a conduit could be written into the VFS model, but that's not likely.
This isn't the most lucid explanation, but I'm having too much fun enjoying my (rare) day off to really polish it down to a smooth sheen.
Ask your doctor if getting up off your ass is right for you! -- Bill Maher
Yeah right...but I can't get their site tonight. It's a happy thought. :-)
"I want peace on earth and good will toward men." "We're the U.S. government. We don't do that sort of thing!!"
Mine took about two weeks, but it got here before the E-mail saying they had shipped it :-)
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Okay, found by login password.
I don't necessarily want to comment on Swedish racism at present, or your argument about all countries being racist, I'm British and therefore can't really comment.
However, to flesh out my orginal point, I hate to see a country oblivious to its past responsibilies, and Sweden seems distinctly oblivious to theirs. Please see http://www.itv.se/boreale/history.htm (admittedly a swedish site, albeit one that uses an NT server, if that page name is anything to go by) and consider the entry:
"1913-1920: The Swedish race-segregation politic creates a system of institutional racism. The use of the Sami language is forbidden in the "Nomadicschools" A racebiological institute is created in Uppsala."
Aparthied, I think you will agree.
We're all guilty of something, and that fact that Sweden has some immigration, not a large amount but some, doesn't absolve them of anything.
Mark.
(This is called being majorly off topic)
All this nationalist crud on everyone's part is really driving me insane. I hereby declare myself dictator of the world. My first official act is to dissolve all national boundaries. To facilitate communication among my new citizens, I proclaim Klingon to be the world language. Anyone caught discriminating against another human based on any criteria other than merit will be shot. Anyone who cannot pass a standardized test that I will create will be sterilized. Teachers/Professors/other educators will receive more goods and services than all other professions. My Lieutenants will be selected purely on the criteria of merit. They will distribute goods and services based on an individual's contribution to society, but all citizens will be cared for. I command that research begin on farming the Moon and Mars to provide for all citizens, as the Earth can no longer sustain us all. People who dislike my policies will be sent to mine the asteroid belt for valuable materials.
Imagine what kind of Beowulf cluster you could
build with some of that 31337 SoL@r1z source
code...
:-P
--C
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
I got mine rather promptly...
But you have a point. Sun might be better off not trying to handle the distribution themselves. Maybe they could allow cheapbytes to distribute gratis Solaris as well? (I've never personally dealt with them, so I don't know for sure if they'd be any better...)
You are certainly right: Solaris will not get anywhere NEAR the kind of community development that Linux, etc. gets. You have to admire the direction they're taking, though.
I was not trying to knock Sun's license. I was just saying that while some people might contribute bug fixes, there will not be as many people as there are doing the same thing for gnu/linux (I don't normally say "gnu/linux" but I want to make it clear I'm referring to a full OS, not a kernel).
Mainly because they are legally allowed to say it here, but not there.
>That's NOT racism, it's religious was.
And that makes it better? Different?
It's even MORE stupid, in my book.
>I think I should add that US supplied Iraq with >almost all it's weapons to fight the Islam >fundamentalists in Iran.
Yes, fighting "dirty wars" thru front-men is always a evil and nasty business. The Europeans developed it to a fine art using natives and colonials in Africa, South America, and North America. Before our independence, *we* were used as those "front men".
>Marxism is about all humans are equal
And "some animals are more equal than others". Orwell was a big fan of Marxism, until he was given the opportunity to see it in action.
>I think I should add that US supplied Iraq with >almost all it's weapons to fight the Islam >fundamentalists in Iran.
.... sheesh. Read a book, Read Jane's ... read something!
>So USA has just as dirty past when it comes to >religious wars.
Pull your head out of your ass man, Europeans and Soviets monger far more weapons to 3rd world countries than the U.S. And don't get me started on the French