"If he can use that same kernel, with the same backports, fixes and regressions tests, Ubuntu LTS does not need to do anything to support the same vendor hardware. Easy, but at the expense of both Novell and Red Hat."
I feel a borg joke coming on....something about a collective maybe?
The more all these distros converge and provide nearly identical desktops, the clearer it will be that most of them don't actually need to exist in the first place.
I agree with you mostly, my real problem is the subject of this thread. MS makes a bunch of software source available under a variety of licenses, and somehow they are "hijacking" open source because those licenses don't fit perfectly into the OSI definition. If they did, the licenses wouldn't need to exist, they would be identical to all the others.
I just have a problem with people excluding software from the "open source" party simply because it doesn't guarantee things that I personally, and obviously Microsoft too, don't care about. Like the freedom to endlessly modify software and give it away for free.
The analogies don't HAVE to work, because my point is that the word open, and thus the phrase open source doesn't imply anything like the OSI wants it to. Hell even the FSF is in agreement, open source is highly ambiguous given that you can't twist the definition of open to mean all the things they want it to mean, at least you can say the free in free software means freedom which is a core goal of licenses like the GPL.
They apparently do not have a trademark on the phrase Open Source, or any other valid claim to define such a term, its like someone picked the wrong word all those years ago and have spent the last few trying to force their definition on everyone when it is clearly inaccurate and lacking given their intentions.
There are licenses I and many others would completely consider open source because they satisfy the reasons I want access to source code, namely transparency, in that i can see what the code is supposed to be doing if it does something weird, lack of secret backdoors, and "eyes on the code". Simply having access to the source code satisfies all of these things, and I would argue these are actually the biggest strengths of open source, free software and the like, so I'm not in any big hurry to lump all these other conditions, especially things that have NOTHING to do with being open in the first place, into a term that clearly doesn't mean what the OSI wants it to mean.
I'm claiming the OSI is the one hijacking the term open source for their own purposes, definitions of the word open itself just reinforce this.
For instance, the OSI definition specifically states software must be redistributable free of cost. That has nothing to do with being open at all, and is entirely political.
You proved my point, an open house doesn't mean you can take the house and burn it down though, nor can you give the house away or recarpet the living room.
Those are rights you don't have, and they aren't even implied by the word open.
Open has a dictionary definition, so no it doesn't mean whatever i want it to mean.
Open source then must at least be somewhat related to what "open" means in the first place. Yet i see all these additional terms and conditions placed on the term Open Source by the OSI, things that have nothing to do with being "open" but are in reality licensing terms and rights.
""open source" licenses do not convey the right to make any use of the code. encouraging companies to get away with this by "opening" the source code is clearly not ok"
Your assertion that people will revolt against opening of source code unless they are permitted to do whatever they want with it is absurd. Most people (yes I'm making that assertion, most) value transparency of code for security and stability reasons way more than they value the ability to take software and do whatever you want with it.
Yea if you are trying to throw stuff through them, true they aren't open. None of this has anything to do with software and the comparison is meaningless.
Hijack huh...i see MS releasing source code under their own licenses, none of which even use the words open or free.
On the other hand i see the OSI literally redefining what the word "open" means, adding terms, conditions and such to an otherwise commonly used english word.
Part of the definition there includes the phrase "not closed", and I don't see anything but reinforcement for the fact that open means what it sounds like, it doesn't have anything at all to do with implied conditions or rights.
Wow, so altering the definition of a phrase to radically change what it means is "clarification".
I would answer yes to every one of those situations.
There are some things that need to be separated here. Licensing and rights are a totally separate concept than open vs closed source, these are the territory of EULAs and license like the GPL, not the definition of a common word. My problem here is the redefining of what open means. If my house is open, that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want to my house, in fact you can't even walk inside. If my car is open you can't take it for a ride even if I leave it unlocked. Open means open, opposite of closed. Nothing more.
Now, Closed source means you don't have it, don't have access to it, and quite obviously also can't do whatever you want with it because of the first 2 conditions. Anything beyond this, like rights, is EULA territory, which lays out what you can and can't do with the code in binary form because thats all you have.
Open source means what it sounds like, the source isn't being hidden away from users, either intentionally like with a compiled language, or because it can't be as with scripted languages. I'll make this clear though, just because you have the source doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it, this is a license issue not an issue of having the source or not.
Because people are constantly having to remind people what Open Source means because the definition zealots like to throw around isn't at all reflected by the name.
Open Source is the opposite of Closed Source. Its quite clear english as far as I'm concerned.
However, the OSI and others step in and add conditions to an otherwise clear phrase. Open Source is open, but also you can do whatever you want with it, etc.
Yea, the problem with that BSD vs GPL view of things, is that the CDDL mixes some of both licenses capabilities.
CDDL code is copyleft, you modify and release it, you release your source. On the other hand it can be linked with any code you want to link it with, unlike the GPL, even if it is statically linked together with proprietary code.
Thats probably a big reason sun went with it, they needed to support code mixing especially somewhere like the kernel with drivers, but still wanted the code to remain in their control and perhaps as an afterthought, also open.
Yea it becomes usable pretty quick but it continues to improve over time, hours etc.
Back a year or so ago i was able to download a few OGG files pretty quickly, they were vorbis music files from some freesite and each was probably 8-9mb, they were done in a few minutes.
That stuff is in the minority though and can be ignored easily. The majority of the stuff on freenet is political in nature or things people were otherwise afraid to say on the public net.
That old study about the content of freenet found most of it was text files anyway, perhaps this has changed but it seems likely to be true still.
It depends on a lot of things, primarily lots of people install it one day, screw around for an hour or so and give up. This is the wrong way to test out freenet, it takes a bit for your node to really become part of the network, and until then things are quite slow.
Eventually, after maybe a day or so of running the node, the speed approaches what it would otherwise be outside of freenet, with some overhead of course.
Slashdot Mirror
"If he can use that same kernel, with the same backports, fixes and regressions tests, Ubuntu LTS does not need to do anything to support the same vendor hardware. Easy, but at the expense of both Novell and Red Hat."
I feel a borg joke coming on....something about a collective maybe?
The more all these distros converge and provide nearly identical desktops, the clearer it will be that most of them don't actually need to exist in the first place.
I agree with you mostly, my real problem is the subject of this thread. MS makes a bunch of software source available under a variety of licenses, and somehow they are "hijacking" open source because those licenses don't fit perfectly into the OSI definition. If they did, the licenses wouldn't need to exist, they would be identical to all the others.
I just have a problem with people excluding software from the "open source" party simply because it doesn't guarantee things that I personally, and obviously Microsoft too, don't care about. Like the freedom to endlessly modify software and give it away for free.
The analogies don't HAVE to work, because my point is that the word open, and thus the phrase open source doesn't imply anything like the OSI wants it to. Hell even the FSF is in agreement, open source is highly ambiguous given that you can't twist the definition of open to mean all the things they want it to mean, at least you can say the free in free software means freedom which is a core goal of licenses like the GPL.
They apparently do not have a trademark on the phrase Open Source, or any other valid claim to define such a term, its like someone picked the wrong word all those years ago and have spent the last few trying to force their definition on everyone when it is clearly inaccurate and lacking given their intentions.
There are licenses I and many others would completely consider open source because they satisfy the reasons I want access to source code, namely transparency, in that i can see what the code is supposed to be doing if it does something weird, lack of secret backdoors, and "eyes on the code". Simply having access to the source code satisfies all of these things, and I would argue these are actually the biggest strengths of open source, free software and the like, so I'm not in any big hurry to lump all these other conditions, especially things that have NOTHING to do with being open in the first place, into a term that clearly doesn't mean what the OSI wants it to mean.
There are people on this very thread who say otherwise, but I don't know either way.
I'm claiming the OSI is the one hijacking the term open source for their own purposes, definitions of the word open itself just reinforce this.
For instance, the OSI definition specifically states software must be redistributable free of cost. That has nothing to do with being open at all, and is entirely political.
You proved my point, an open house doesn't mean you can take the house and burn it down though, nor can you give the house away or recarpet the living room.
Those are rights you don't have, and they aren't even implied by the word open.
Steve is my real name....
:D
How dare i question the OSI though, i mean what was i thinking, having an opinion of my own.
Feel free to roll over me with the freedom train then, carry on
Open has a dictionary definition, so no it doesn't mean whatever i want it to mean.
Open source then must at least be somewhat related to what "open" means in the first place. Yet i see all these additional terms and conditions placed on the term Open Source by the OSI, things that have nothing to do with being "open" but are in reality licensing terms and rights.
""open source" licenses do not convey the right to make any use of the code. encouraging companies to get away with this by "opening" the source code is clearly not ok"
Your assertion that people will revolt against opening of source code unless they are permitted to do whatever they want with it is absurd. Most people (yes I'm making that assertion, most) value transparency of code for security and stability reasons way more than they value the ability to take software and do whatever you want with it.
I love how it always turns into YOU HATE FREEDOM! I saw you punch a bald eagle you FREEDOM HATER!
Yea if you are trying to throw stuff through them, true they aren't open. None of this has anything to do with software and the comparison is meaningless.
It's called shared source because they are sharing it with you. Sharing is caring! :D
OSI isn't the authority on what "open" means, so don't link to them as if it were a dictionary.
Even if you use FOSS instead, microsoft hasn't hijacked anything.
Show me where Microsoft refers to anything under similar terms as free software licenses. They don't even use the word open, nor free.
You guys actually have a word for free beer?
Hijack huh...i see MS releasing source code under their own licenses, none of which even use the words open or free.
On the other hand i see the OSI literally redefining what the word "open" means, adding terms, conditions and such to an otherwise commonly used english word.
And yet they get to explain it over and over, 100s of times per day. Sounds like someone chose the wrong word :D
I would refer you and anyone else here:
http://simple.wiktionary.org/wiki/open
Part of the definition there includes the phrase "not closed", and I don't see anything but reinforcement for the fact that open means what it sounds like, it doesn't have anything at all to do with implied conditions or rights.
Wow, so altering the definition of a phrase to radically change what it means is "clarification".
I would answer yes to every one of those situations.
There are some things that need to be separated here. Licensing and rights are a totally separate concept than open vs closed source, these are the territory of EULAs and license like the GPL, not the definition of a common word. My problem here is the redefining of what open means. If my house is open, that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want to my house, in fact you can't even walk inside. If my car is open you can't take it for a ride even if I leave it unlocked. Open means open, opposite of closed. Nothing more.
Now, Closed source means you don't have it, don't have access to it, and quite obviously also can't do whatever you want with it because of the first 2 conditions. Anything beyond this, like rights, is EULA territory, which lays out what you can and can't do with the code in binary form because thats all you have.
Open source means what it sounds like, the source isn't being hidden away from users, either intentionally like with a compiled language, or because it can't be as with scripted languages. I'll make this clear though, just because you have the source doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it, this is a license issue not an issue of having the source or not.
Because people are constantly having to remind people what Open Source means because the definition zealots like to throw around isn't at all reflected by the name.
Open Source is the opposite of Closed Source. Its quite clear english as far as I'm concerned.
However, the OSI and others step in and add conditions to an otherwise clear phrase. Open Source is open, but also you can do whatever you want with it, etc.
mister please don't make me use that thing, i promise i'll be real good! and i won't complain about selinux or nothin!
Yea, the problem with that BSD vs GPL view of things, is that the CDDL mixes some of both licenses capabilities.
CDDL code is copyleft, you modify and release it, you release your source. On the other hand it can be linked with any code you want to link it with, unlike the GPL, even if it is statically linked together with proprietary code.
Thats probably a big reason sun went with it, they needed to support code mixing especially somewhere like the kernel with drivers, but still wanted the code to remain in their control and perhaps as an afterthought, also open.
Yea it becomes usable pretty quick but it continues to improve over time, hours etc.
Back a year or so ago i was able to download a few OGG files pretty quickly, they were vorbis music files from some freesite and each was probably 8-9mb, they were done in a few minutes.
That stuff is in the minority though and can be ignored easily. The majority of the stuff on freenet is political in nature or things people were otherwise afraid to say on the public net.
That old study about the content of freenet found most of it was text files anyway, perhaps this has changed but it seems likely to be true still.
It depends on a lot of things, primarily lots of people install it one day, screw around for an hour or so and give up. This is the wrong way to test out freenet, it takes a bit for your node to really become part of the network, and until then things are quite slow.
Eventually, after maybe a day or so of running the node, the speed approaches what it would otherwise be outside of freenet, with some overhead of course.