Transgaming and open source...
on
WineX 2.0
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I know that Transgaming contributes some stuff to the wine project already where it's convenient, but if I recall correctly they were going to release a lot more when they had a certain number of subscribers.
What ever happenned with that? Did they reach the number of subscribers? Did they scrap that idea?
I personally am always doubtful, when people claim that they are going to release source under an open source license at some future date. From what I've seen they seem to change their mind over half the time.
I guess, I really don't care either way if release the source or not. I'm not subscribed and so they're under no obligation to me, but I was just curious.
The key is that Microsoft should not be the one to create the different versions. That task should be left to the EOMs and windows resellers.
Of course, if you force Microsoft to create their own versions of windows then they are going to do their best to screw it up. For anyone who has watched Microsoft, this goes without saying. On the other hand, if you empower the OEMs to create their own versions of windows then having multiple versions does not mean that they will be incompatible.
Does it make my computer incompatible if I install netscape as well as IE? Does it make my computer incompatible if I put an AOL icon on the desktop? If I install a JAVA virtual machine? If I remove the Microsoft spyware? No. None of these things make windows incompatible.
The only way to stop Microsoft from abusing customers is to allow OEMs to modify windows as they wish without fear of Microsoft.
>>If these companies have paid for advertising space in Times Sq., they must be factoring in the fact that Times Sq. is a well known location, and likely to feature in films/TV etc.
True. They may have assumed that. But the film-makers can't really stop them from making stupid assumptions can they?
I hearby grant you the "Marketing Genious" award. That is the most brilliant idea I have heard all day.
Really the big idea behind jabber was that ISPs would provide instant messanging to their users. In 1998 that seemed like a great idea but now it seems as if most ISPs could not care less about providing new services. Sendmail is already the most popular email server around and it makes sense for jabber and sendmail to get together. Perhaps more people would provide jabber if it just meant turning it on and providing a.exe on their webpage.
Metcalfe's law that the value of software is the square of the number of users applies here of course.
btw: a jabber smtp transport is a bit of a hack, potentially a useful hack, but it doesn't compare to a full fledged email server.
>>I think what would be smart would be to hide the filesystem to the user, presenting them with the blank slate of your/home
I agree with this.
In UNIX there is a clear difference between applications and documents and this is a good thing. The user gets full control of where they put documents but the internal workings of where the applications are is hidden.
Installing software is much easier because you don't have to worry about where to install things; you just click the packages you want and they are installed automatically.
On the other hand, documents should be left entirely up to the user. I personally do not use the Evolution mail client because it messes up my/home/ directory with files that are not my documents and I don't know what they do. In my home directory, I know what every single file is and I know where every single file is, because I made myself and I saved it there myself.
On a macintosh, I have a harder time because I need to know where files are stored on the harddrive to start them. I also get confused because there are many files that I don't know what they are or do.
RPM is designed to test for specific files and programs on your computer and.deb is designed to test whether you have specific debian packages installed. Since the LSB is designed to work across many distros it makes sense to use RPMs which (theoritically) install on any distro rather than something Debian specific.
The LSB guys are smarter than you'd think. And Debian contributed too btw.
Of course, it might be nice if people wrote packages for each distribution and release but that doesn't happen in the "Real World." The LSB is a compromise that most people can live with.
I'm really inclined to agree with the fellow who said that if you want a garuantee on your software, you can get it right now for a price. For example, banks and insurance companies need their software to work correctly and they are able to achieve impresive results.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons why some people do not purchase expensive service contracts, but that's their decision and they should deal with the consequences.
On the other hand, perhaps there should be laws that force software distributors to give a summary of all the security flaws the software has had in the last six months. Think of it as the ingredients list on food products. The summary would come with the software when you purchased it or would be posted on a website when you downloaded it.
In the end it's up to the consumer to decide what level of software quality they need (or can afford), but with this full disclosure consumers would be able to make better, more informed choices.
As a non-animator I first installed Blender and immediately became deeply confused and gave up.
A while later, I installed k3d. There was no.deb available, but it was simple to install. On start up k3d offers a brilliant tutorial on animating. The tutorial moves the mouse around and shows you how to create new shapes, modify them, and move the camera around etc.
Within an hour I learned how to make animations with dancing deformed tea pots.
K3d is GPL. It's available under windows as well, but that's a massive pain in the butt to install.
>>My whole problem with the free-speech protects me from liability argument is the fact that all benefits flow to the programmer/seller and none to the consumer.
I completely agree with you that the free-speech argument can only affect authors and distributors, not vendors. In my mind saying "Vendors should be held responsible" is entirely different than saying "Programmers should be held liable."
You may be entirely correct when you say that vendors should have some level of responsibility. It opens a whole can of worms, but it's something to potentially consider.
Microsoft makes operating systems which may or may not be your cup of tea, but they aren't making the computer itself.
Sure that's one definition of computer but not the only one. When people hate computers they hate the software and not the hardware.
It's true that the overwhelming majority of Americans prefer to fix their computers than to buy new.
They do? How do you know? And if they do, what's the problem?
Read the article.
but that doesn't stop me from finding an answer,
The point is that there is no answer to problems with Microsoft software. If there were answers then you would never be told to start over from scratch and reinstall the operating system. Instead, that's often the first thing you are told.
"If you want to write software that absolves you of any kind of product liability then you should not be charging for it."
That's a good distinction to make because it allows free speech. It seems like a small thing, but all the software I use at home falls under this catagory.
In some ways, it's reasonable for vendors to be held responsible for their products, but the idea is still problematic. Liability hurts small vendors more than large vendors. How do you measure the harm done? How do you assign blame to products that were developed by more than one company? Is every Linux company liable for a problem in the Linux kernel? What about software that costs money but is downloaded from another country? What about free products such as Internet Explorer or Outlook?
Some of common security problems are really user interface problems. For example, most users misconfigure windows network neighborhood. Is Microsoft liable for that?
In your first post you stated: "My guess is, this letter was an attempt to secure a cheaper license from MS. They're not going to simply switch over to something else."
I agree with you, and I suspect no new laws are going to change this. There may be some consumers that may need protection from vendor laziness, but the airforce knew about the problems with Microsoft products and chose to use them anyways. I don't think they should be able to sue Microsoft for something they knew was going to be a problem all along.
Liability is a bad idea. It is a right of free speech and free thinking for people to be able to create any type of software and distribute it so long as it isn't malicious. They shouldn't have to have a legal department.
If you ask me, the airforce can't complain. Everyone smart enough to watch TV can tell you Microsoft does not make secure products.
It's stupid to pretend to be shocked by this. If anyone should be have to pay for Microsoft's security problems it's the people who bought the software with known security problems... Oh wait, they already do.
It's true that the overwhelming majority of Americans prefer to fix their computers than to buy new. If I made computers I would empower users to do just that. But I'm don't and Microsoft does...
When my friends have computer problems I'm powerless to help them. How do I get rid of lurking programs that pop up advertisements? How do fix there computer if something screwed up their registry? Sometimes I am able to find help online but most of the time I'm not.
Microsoft software is fragile, undocumented, unpredictable and unfixable. It's not just end users who are frustrated using Microsoft products; techincal people get frustrated and angry too.
I figured that the article should have said: "People who are not following the [free software] licence are pirates, it's as simple as that."
From looking at the rest of the article it seems as if they use parens instead of square brackets repeatedly. For example, take this statement: "We specifically allow people to use all the system call entry points for Linux for driver software, and the main libraries you need to build applications are under (a different) licence."
Why are there parens around "a different?" The sentence makes much better sense without the parens. It looks to me like the "a different" was used to replace LGPL.
Alan Cox seems to be saying that he thinks people should abide by the license regardless whether its Microsoft software or GNU software. The "(free software)" was probably added in by an editor.
In all those cases someone signed a contract to not talk about something.
In some situations, I think anti-defemation laws are appropriate but I don't think this is one of those.
I especially think that something is screwed up if he didn't get his certified letter when they said he did. That is easy to verify one way or the other.
I don't think they mean to try to force anyone to use Solaris. They're just trying to make some cash from their product.
I'd bet that way more people use Star Office on Windows and Linux than use it on Solaris. It's not very profitable to start charging the people who use it on Solaris since these are so few. They're also Sun's most loyal customers so it doesn't hurt to give them the occasional freebee.
People are willing to pay for Star Office on Windows and Linux. It would be nice to make some money so that more money could be invested in advertising and marketing. Maybe you could hire some new developers with the cash as well. Then maybe SO could be a real competitor to Word.
Basically, it's nice to work at a company where customers buy your products and the executives really care about making money.
The "Specification Overview" pdf from the 3dlabs white paper page is pretty interesting. It has a list of over 250 opengl extensions and what happens to them in opengl 2.
Basically they all disapear.
Some have already become part of the standard. Some are added to the standard in opengl 2. Some just disapear altogether.
But the large majority of them are not needed anymore when you have programability, memory management and opengl objects etc.
To me that means that opengl 2 is way more flexible. Flexible enough so that we won't need as many extensions in the future.
And that's pretty cool.
(BTW: Brian Paul is a member of the ARB. He wrote on the mesa list that he hasn't been following the opengl 2 process very closely but that he expected that they would probably want him to write a free implementation).
Slashdot Mirror
What ever happenned with that? Did they reach the number of subscribers? Did they scrap that idea?
I personally am always doubtful, when people claim that they are going to release source under an open source license at some future date. From what I've seen they seem to change their mind over half the time.
I guess, I really don't care either way if release the source or not. I'm not subscribed and so they're under no obligation to me, but I was just curious.
Of course, if you force Microsoft to create their own versions of windows then they are going to do their best to screw it up. For anyone who has watched Microsoft, this goes without saying. On the other hand, if you empower the OEMs to create their own versions of windows then having multiple versions does not mean that they will be incompatible.
Does it make my computer incompatible if I install netscape as well as IE? Does it make my computer incompatible if I put an AOL icon on the desktop? If I install a JAVA virtual machine? If I remove the Microsoft spyware? No. None of these things make windows incompatible.
The only way to stop Microsoft from abusing customers is to allow OEMs to modify windows as they wish without fear of Microsoft.
True. They may have assumed that. But the film-makers can't really stop them from making stupid assumptions can they?
I hearby grant you the "Marketing Genious" award. That is the most brilliant idea I have heard all day.
.exe on their webpage.
Really the big idea behind jabber was that ISPs would provide instant messanging to their users. In 1998 that seemed like a great idea but now it seems as if most ISPs could not care less about providing new services. Sendmail is already the most popular email server around and it makes sense for jabber and sendmail to get together. Perhaps more people would provide jabber if it just meant turning it on and providing a
Metcalfe's law that the value of software is the square of the number of users applies here of course.
btw: a jabber smtp transport is a bit of a hack, potentially a useful hack, but it doesn't compare to a full fledged email server.
I agree with this.
In UNIX there is a clear difference between applications and documents and this is a good thing. The user gets full control of where they put documents but the internal workings of where the applications are is hidden.
Installing software is much easier because you don't have to worry about where to install things; you just click the packages you want and they are installed automatically.
On the other hand, documents should be left entirely up to the user. I personally do not use the Evolution mail client because it messes up my
On a macintosh, I have a harder time because I need to know where files are stored on the harddrive to start them. I also get confused because there are many files that I don't know what they are or do.
The LSB guys are smarter than you'd think. And Debian contributed too btw.
Of course, it might be nice if people wrote packages for each distribution and release but that doesn't happen in the "Real World." The LSB is a compromise that most people can live with.
I'm really inclined to agree with the fellow who said that if you want a garuantee on your software, you can get it right now for a price. For example, banks and insurance companies need their software to work correctly and they are able to achieve impresive results.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons why some people do not purchase expensive service contracts, but that's their decision and they should deal with the consequences.
On the other hand, perhaps there should be laws that force software distributors to give a summary of all the security flaws the software has had in the last six months. Think of it as the ingredients list on food products. The summary would come with the software when you purchased it or would be posted on a website when you downloaded it.
In the end it's up to the consumer to decide what level of software quality they need (or can afford), but with this full disclosure consumers would be able to make better, more informed choices.
And frankly, I doubt you have even tried Lycoris.
As a non-animator I first installed Blender and immediately became deeply confused and gave up.
A while later, I installed k3d. There was no
Within an hour I learned how to make animations with dancing deformed tea pots.
K3d is GPL. It's available under windows as well, but that's a massive pain in the butt to install.
I completely agree with you that the free-speech argument can only affect authors and distributors, not vendors. In my mind saying "Vendors should be held responsible" is entirely different than saying "Programmers should be held liable."
You may be entirely correct when you say that vendors should have some level of responsibility. It opens a whole can of worms, but it's something to potentially consider.
Sure that's one definition of computer but not the only one. When people hate computers they hate the software and not the hardware.
They do? How do you know? And if they do, what's the problem?
Read the article.
but that doesn't stop me from finding an answer,
The point is that there is no answer to problems with Microsoft software. If there were answers then you would never be told to start over from scratch and reinstall the operating system. Instead, that's often the first thing you are told.
That's a good distinction to make because it allows free speech. It seems like a small thing, but all the software I use at home falls under this catagory.
In some ways, it's reasonable for vendors to be held responsible for their products, but the idea is still problematic. Liability hurts small vendors more than large vendors. How do you measure the harm done? How do you assign blame to products that were developed by more than one company? Is every Linux company liable for a problem in the Linux kernel? What about software that costs money but is downloaded from another country? What about free products such as Internet Explorer or Outlook?
Some of common security problems are really user interface problems. For example, most users misconfigure windows network neighborhood. Is Microsoft liable for that?
In your first post you stated: "My guess is, this letter was an attempt to secure a cheaper license from MS. They're not going to simply switch over to something else."
I agree with you, and I suspect no new laws are going to change this. There may be some consumers that may need protection from vendor laziness, but the airforce knew about the problems with Microsoft products and chose to use them anyways. I don't think they should be able to sue Microsoft for something they knew was going to be a problem all along.
If you ask me, the airforce can't complain. Everyone smart enough to watch TV can tell you Microsoft does not make secure products.
It's stupid to pretend to be shocked by this. If anyone should be have to pay for Microsoft's security problems it's the people who bought the software with known security problems... Oh wait, they already do.
They are almost exclusively made by Microsoft.
It's true that the overwhelming majority of Americans prefer to fix their computers than to buy new. If I made computers I would empower users to do just that. But I'm don't and Microsoft does...
When my friends have computer problems I'm powerless to help them. How do I get rid of lurking programs that pop up advertisements? How do fix there computer if something screwed up their registry? Sometimes I am able to find help online but most of the time I'm not.
Microsoft software is fragile, undocumented, unpredictable and unfixable. It's not just end users who are frustrated using Microsoft products; techincal people get frustrated and angry too.
The article talks about them having 400 customers "already," so my guess is they aren't planning to sell to individuals.
I certainly hope not...
I figured that the article should have said: "People who are not following the [free software] licence are pirates, it's as simple as that."
From looking at the rest of the article it seems as if they use parens instead of square brackets repeatedly. For example, take this statement: "We specifically allow people to use all the system call entry points for Linux for driver software, and the main libraries you need to build applications are under (a different) licence."
Why are there parens around "a different?" The sentence makes much better sense without the parens. It looks to me like the "a different" was used to replace LGPL.
Alan Cox seems to be saying that he thinks people should abide by the license regardless whether its Microsoft software or GNU software. The "(free software)" was probably added in by an editor.
>>Slashdot can't put the comments in a book and sell the book, for example.
:P
I think you'd be surprised. At what the copyright law allows.
Most people believe it.
It's possible to get fonts to look correct... My fonts look fine. The real trick I think, is to get fonts working right by default.
In some situations, I think anti-defemation laws are appropriate but I don't think this is one of those.
I especially think that something is screwed up if he didn't get his certified letter when they said he did. That is easy to verify one way or the other.
Anyone trying to boycott the movie industry is either an idiot or Southern Baptist.
The funny thing was that I'm not on any Suse email list or on savoixmagazine.
Perhaps it happenned again but missed me. I've been out of the loop a lot recently.
It has drm included in the kernel.
I'd bet that way more people use Star Office on Windows and Linux than use it on Solaris. It's not very profitable to start charging the people who use it on Solaris since these are so few. They're also Sun's most loyal customers so it doesn't hurt to give them the occasional freebee.
People are willing to pay for Star Office on Windows and Linux. It would be nice to make some money so that more money could be invested in advertising and marketing. Maybe you could hire some new developers with the cash as well. Then maybe SO could be a real competitor to Word.
Basically, it's nice to work at a company where customers buy your products and the executives really care about making money.
The "Specification Overview" pdf from the 3dlabs white paper page is pretty interesting. It has a list of over 250 opengl extensions and what happens to them in opengl 2.
Basically they all disapear.
Some have already become part of the standard. Some are added to the standard in opengl 2. Some just disapear altogether.
But the large majority of them are not needed anymore when you have programability, memory management and opengl objects etc.
To me that means that opengl 2 is way more flexible. Flexible enough so that we won't need as many extensions in the future.
And that's pretty cool.
(BTW: Brian Paul is a member of the ARB. He wrote on the mesa list that he hasn't been following the opengl 2 process very closely but that he expected that they would probably want him to write a free implementation).