There's already a format that sounds like a 128Kb/s mp3 at 80Kb/s. It's called.VQF, and it was released by Yamaha, who was using technology from the not-quite-released MP4's, (mpeg 1 layer 4) which has more ugly licensing issues.
I didn't understand your post at all, but since it seems to have nothing to do with mine, I will ask you this.
Doesn't the golden rule condone rape?
"But I thought she'd want to, I know that's what *I* wanted her to do..."
Sometimes, what people say can be taken the wrong way. I don't see how my personal choices in what I want to see on the internet has anything to do with the unsolicited e-mail stupid people might send me. In fact, in the spirit of this thread, that's a good reason to filter your e-mail.:)
That same person could very well contribute back the same changes to the *BSD community, however this behavior is allowed by the *BSD licenses, which is what i was saying I didn't like in the first place.
And yes, if you were concerned about someone making a million dollars off of your code, and givving you nothing for it, then you would have licensed it under the GPL, not under a BSD license.
The GPL does force everything to be open when the copyright holders are many and disparate. This is why the linux kernel is safe. And even if Microsoft had rights to all future versions of GCC, they would never have exclusive rights to the current or previous versions, and therefore development would be unchanged. However, I really doubt the FSF would do this. (Over RMS's dead body...)
Anyhow, let's stick to licensing issues here, this is getting silly. There already is nothing to stop Microsoft from stealing all the BSD code they want (except not knowing what good code looks like), and there is something to stop them from stealing GPLed code, given the sanity of the copyright holders.
Therefore, I don't see where this argument is going, if anywhere...
"ShutUp Software" -- Web Content Filters and Katz.
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I also don't agree with content filters. I often *agree* with the points that Katz has to say, just not necessarily his style.
I also didn't see this on the main slashdot page, but it's in ultramode.txt, which I parse into lynx when I just want to see headlines (yeah, yeah, not more than every hour).
However, I do love the new moderation feature of slashdot. I also enjoy being able to track my replies. The reason I usually disagree with web content filtering is because it's completely impersonal. Usually, it just matches text strings looking for offensive words or links, or something equally stupid. That may be content filtering, but it isn't accurate.
However, the moderators on slashdot are users, just like I am. They recognize good comments when they see them, and I generally agree with them. It has the net effect of making slashdot back into the small community it used to be, which is what I liked originally.
Also, with the moderation on slashdot, "if you don't like it, turn it off". That is an essential feature, and it's also my answer to people who want to censor television, books, or anything else. Watch what you like, and don't blame other people for your own preferences. If you want to censor yourself, go ahead, as long as it's your choice.
I would have to agree. When I have the luxury, I love using UNIX, even for the simple things. However, sometimes there are hardware or platform incompatibilities which require the use of another machine, perhaps running a different OS.
A different UNIX, I can deal with. Windows NT 4 or MacOS 8 is more annoying, arguably because I don't use it as much. (even though I have used them both extensively, and I appreciate that NT tends crash less than other versions of Windows and that MacOS 8.x generally runs better than earlier versions of MacOS (although I liked the interface better in 7.5, and hate how so many useless extensions are so often preloaded on newer Macs))
However, some of the problems I run into on these platforms could surely be encountered by novices, even doing simple things. Should novices be forced to become experts when things go wrong, or is that when they have to find an expert to help them?
I don't know why the files I was working with on the Mac were so mangled. All I know is that my girlfriend sent them to me after giving a few (PC-formatted) disks to a clueless teacher (apparently a Mac user) so she could get some images. I know that the second disk she had was corrupt, but the other two should have been fine. The files were.PICT files, and their associations but not their icons were intact. However, the associated application (the one they were created in) couldn't load them, and the one.GIF file was associated to GraphicsConverter, which could load them.
I'm not about to blame all of this on the MacOS, but consider this. Any novice (and even my girlfriend, who is by no means a novice) would never know what these files were. I found out for sure that they were.PICT files only when GraphicsConverter (a well-written Macintosh application, even if it is at least nagware) told me they were.
Under DOS, these files would have had extensions, but MacOS mangled those. I also don't know why the long names weren't intact, but the other Mac didn't read them properly. Although the icons didn't work, the associations weren't there. Under UNIX, I can autodetect filetypes, but this didn't work until I resaved them, so perhaps the extra data in the files interfered with this.
I'm sure that horror stories exist for all OSes, but I have yet to find a platform with more irrational behavior, providing less information, when things go wrong. It's fine to say that a platform is user-friendly when everything works, but in my experience they don't work far too often for this sort of design to be a feature.
It is possible to license code under both licenses, especially licensing BSD code as GPL code. Unfortunately, doing it the other way around again defeats the purpose of the GPL.
However, let's make your example theoretical. (I'm sure this has happened before, but being specific in this case only leads to bickering over facts that don't appy to the discussion:)
Let's say that a device driver foo was originally written under a BSD style license. Some random GPL fanatic comes along, takes this driver, adds to it, and releases *his* driver under a GPL style license. The options the original BSD fanatic has are: (1) continue to hack his own driver. (2) hack the other driver under the GPL.
If this particular BSD fanatic shares anyhow, what does he have to lose by contributing to the GPL'ed driver? If he doesn't... well, we know he has already, because of the BSD style license.
The only reason the 'enforced sharing' clause is there (I know, it sounds like something from the cold war) in the GPL is because at one point in time people *stopped* sharing, and started turning free applications into proprietary ones. I don't want to take sides here, but I'm sure it started somewhere around RMS writing Emacs and other companies adding to it without contributing back. Since they violated an unwritten tradition, (around the BSD-style licenses) the GPL was born.
If people always shared their code, there would be no GPL, and there would be much rejoicing. They don't, so the people who don't want to see their code used by other people without the benefits of the additions to that code use the GPL. Those who are trusting of human nature, or want to improve other people's code without necessarily improving their own use a BSD license.
I guess it comes down to if you want to help others, or if you want everyone to help each other. Therefore, it's a matter of opinion.:)
Aww man, you run Linux too? So you mean that I *still* haven't had an intelligent conversation with a BSD user?:)
Actually, I tried a boot disk with FreeBSD on it, and I liked the kernel configuration, that was slick. However, I miss all the friendly options from the GNU utils. And I thought that both the device layout and the way all the system utilities pointed to one big executable were very strange. I like to know how much space ls takes up. I hope this isn't a standard configuration, but rather something done for this boot disk. However, it was odd.
Thanks for being more polite than the other anonymous coward in this thread, I rarely see a polite response from a *BSD'er who doesn't understand my POV...
If GPL advocates just wanted payment for software, they would make it closed-source, and invalidate their entire philosophy. What they really want is the ability to share the code without losing their other freedoms. Anyone else can also sell the product, or distribute it free. Money doesn't have to be an issue, but one way people can show their support is by buying a product. Again, it's a different philosophy, and it doesn't always apply to all software. I just don't like to see people getting their operating systems stolen.
Actually, though, you have a good point there. I'd be happier if Microsoft *could* steal *BSD, because then maybe that would mean that they could write/sell a better OS for once. It's just that the OS is such a commodity, and such a battleground these days, that I don't see why anyone should help those who only help themselves.
I also don't see why a proprietary software company who also contributes back code shouldn't just use the GPL.:) If you're not afraid of sharing code, why not make it official? Then people might *respect* you (and your code) enough to buy your product. Also, there would be no question of fairness in OSes. Does the webserver give more priority to people using IE? Submit a patch to make it even, and use the new version...:)
> > I just wouldn't want a BSD-style license on an entire operating system.
> That's because you're a narrow-minded geek. NEXT (and now Apple) did contribute code to the *BSD community. AFAIK > NeXTStep, SunOS and MacOS X Server have not hurt the various free BSD flavours. They're still alive and kicking.
Thanks, you're pretty polite yourself. If I were narrow-minded, or for that matter, less cordial, I wouldn't reply to this. I am a geek, however, and for you to deny that label as well would be pretty silly by now...:)
> In a nutshell, I think FreeBSD/OpenBSD actually profit from their liberal license policy.
I never said that they didn't, but I'll be happy to argue it now. Boy, the quality of discussion always goes down when we talk about FreeBSD. Wow, we got a few measly patches so that someone else could port our operating system without contributing back the important changes. I would consider a good contribution from Apple, say, Carbon, or some windowing code, or something to help us in the UNIX "quest for the stupid user interface". But no, they take your code, and release it under a more restrictive license, without any of the higher-level tools, and say that they're 'Open Source' on one hand. On the other hand, they make the rest available for a stiff fee, as a proprietary, closed-source product that's mostly just BSD where all the new features are. And you say "I think [we] actually profit from [this]". How meek you've become.
I also specified that this was my opinion, as in "I... wouldn't want [this]". You can't deny that. If you want it, then I pity you, but that is of course your choice.
Yep, that's right. And also, native security and networking features could also use some work. The macs around here are loaded down with so much third-party software to support Kerberos and AFS and provide some basic OS filesystem permissions (like making the HD pretty much read-only) that it's a wonder we can still log in, it's about as bad as NT.
I admit that some of these problems are specific to this particular Mac set up as a server. However, we have a fairly competent IT staff that tries to use anything as a network client, and get it to work. It should be noted that they have to work much less to set up UNIX, and have to buy much less third-party stuff for it. (they still buy some of it, they just don't *need* it all) Students try to surf the net and write papers on these things, so I think this is a fair comparison for user-friendliness.
The first time I found this particular new blue Mac server, I said "Cool. It's got a built-in ZIP and DVD drive." I can get a floppy drive anywhere, but this stuff is neat. Then I tried to log in. It had crashed. I rebooted it, and then logged in. I said "look, they have ports of cool UNIX apps." I tried to run GSView. The machine locked up. (no, force-quit didn't work)...
You get the idea. The only use I've found for that Mac is downloading to a ZIP disk (the ZIP disk part, not the downloading, because of the security, the Desktop is inaccessible from a File/Save dialog, so I have to click-and-drag files from Netscape to the ZIP disk. Easy, you say? What if I wanted to change the name...) and trying to repair messed-up Mac files on DOS disks.
I tried to load a file associated with Photoshop 4. It couldn't find the (apparently completely different) version of Photoshop 4 installed on this computer. I dragged the icon to Photoshop 4. It claimed not to recognize the file format. I clicked on another file. It loaded up in GraphicsConverter, which wasn't even listed with the other applications! GraphicsConverter could open and save all of these (apparently.PICT) files and give them nifty preview icons. However, the Mac couldn't load them in the first place, thanks to it's user-friendly file associations.
User friendly. Bah, humbug. Shoot me now. The Mac has a level of user-friendliness I never want to emulate (ooh, look, help baloons! these things are completely useless, because they don't tell me that this file with the PC-text icon is associated to Photoshop 4, even though it will only be opened by GraphicsConverter, if you can find it...). If Linux had friendliness like this, newbies would fear the GUI, not the CLI.
Actually, ZDNet was being more than fair on this one. IIRC, this was the article that didn't publish the NT results *because* they were so bad.
Also, I don't see how this could possibly be unfair to NT. When NT4SP1 was released, hardware like this didn't exist at all. I (later, years after it came out) installed it on a P133, with 32MB of RAM, and a 2GB HD, roughly half of the system you're talking about. Although it was a little sluggish, (and far slower than DOS or Linux on the same machine) it worked, and it wasn't unbearably slow. It was surprisingly bloated in its memory requirements compared to either DOS or Linux, but it still didn't have to swap.
When they first were releasing NT, the standard testing practice was to get the fastest 486 you could find, load it up with RAM, and... see how many copies of solitare the system could handle. I think Microsoft was relying completely on Moore's law here...
Now, one would think that NT4SP2, 3, and 4, as the name "Service Pack" suggests, would be minor, free upgrades and bugfixes? Otherwise, they would have released an NT version 4.1 or something? Nope. I'm currently running NT4SP3+ActiveDesktop on that same machine, and it's *incredibly* slow. The RAM requirements have almost doubled. However, the system requirements for NT 4.0 haven't changed, have they?
If you're going to blame anyone for a Server OS not running well on that hardware, blame Microsoft. They aren't obeying their own released specs, and they aren't serving their users. If NT4SP1 was slower than it needed to be, then why aren't later versions faster? Who would pay for an upgrade that doesn't fix the real problems? Maybe that's what "Service Pack" means.
Maybe that ZD article should have been entitled "Linux kernel upgrades actually add features *and* increase performance, unlike NT upgrades." Personally, I prefer the title "Windows turns fast computers into toasters that crash and burn toast", but maybe that's just me.
Ah, but if someone does swipe GPL code, and we do find out, we either get a new GPL'ed app, or we sue them. It's a different mindset.
Personally, I'd be a little offended if I were working on a project and ended up having my code used by a big corporation who out-marketed my product and left me in the dust. That's what the BSD-style licens allows for that I don't like.
(hence, MacOS X. As far as I'm concerned, if Steve Jobs wants a UNIX, he can try to write it himself, but that's not the BSD opinion... It's also why you aren't going to see 'Microsoft Linux')
Meanwhile, if people do contribute code back to a BSD project, that's great. Just because it isn't GPL'ed, doesn't mean it's bad, I'm a big fan of WINE.:) I just wouldn't want a BSD-style license on an entire operating system.
I actually needed to strip carriage returns because indent couldn't figure out how to indent ascii-art-c properly... oh well...:)
Of course lines of code is an inaccurate, stupid, braindead, unreliable measure of productivity. So are bogomips. We still use them... However, they aren't the holy grail of software metrics or benchmarking or anything. That's why this is just a poll topic, instead of something serious.
However, if you think it *is* the holy grail, use gnu-style indenting. More lines-of-code thank k&r, so your code is suddenly better.:)
I guess if we ever make "The Ultimate Pretentious Open-Source Buzzword-Compliant Web-Server Benchmark", we've got a name for it.
Katz/Thieme Buzzword bingo
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I could care less about buzzwords, it's the message that's important. I liked this much better than *any* of Katz's articles, buzzwords aside.
This is someone with a sense of history, a perspective that I don't feel Katz has in the same way I do. I remember playing the HitchHiker's Infocom game on a Commodore 64, and learning BASIC on the Apple II's, and all the different little variations that no one needs anymore.
How do you clear the screen? Is it CLS, or HOME, or ? CHR$(147) or clrscr(); or clear, or xlock -nolock -mode blank or do you choose the blank screen in the screensavers and test it?
I have a personal fondness for many of the old ways of doing things, and as long as something still supports it, I will try them along with the new ways. People still write in FORTH, because sometimes they need to... I've written scripts in both BASIC and Perl, and benchmarked them.
(last night, I did a simple test of everything from shell scripts to compiled languages. C beat C++, Perl beat out BASIC, bash was faster than tcsh, ash lost because expr wasn't compiled in... Some benchmarks are useless, but boy are they fun.)
We may learn the "new ways" of doing things, but that doesn't stop us from using the old ways. Especially when they work better.:)
But seriously, folks, I wouldn't want a handheld device, because... what would I do with it? Laptops are bad enough with their small keyboards and funky hardware. I'm not about to pay money for a gameboy that tries to be a computer.
Hmm. But I might pay money for a gameboy. What games does the Palmpilot run?;)
Aww man, I'm sorry, guys. I didn't realize the "PRE" tag wasn't supported. I guess I'll just keep posting in text.:)
From their website:
The Benchmark for Web Servers
WebStone 2.5
We've just released WebStone 2.5. Both executable and source code are available for free and will stay that way. The highlights of the new release are:
It's much more reliable. Tests are reproducible. The previous version of WebStone used a time of day random seed. Now it can optionally use a fixed random seed. WebStone 2.5 comes with a new license designed to encourage you to contribute enhancements while protecting you and your company from liability. There is an optional new dynamic workload that simulates ad rotation. WebStone 2.5 results can be compared to WebStone 2.01 results (unless you use the new dynamic workload).
What have we accomplished here? Ooh, we made yet another friggin' license to check for freedom, and admitted that... the last version didn't support "reproducible results"? *chuckle* Yep, that sounds like 'The Benchmark for Web Servers' to me. Maybe I'll try it on their web server...
From their website: The Benchmark for Web Servers WebStone 2.5 We've just released WebStone 2.5. Both executable and source code are available for free and will stay that way. The highlights of the new release are: It's much more reliable. Tests are reproducible. The previous version of WebStone used a time of day random seed. Now it can optionally use a fixed random seed. WebStone 2.5 comes with a new license designed to encourage you to contribute enhancements while protecting you and your company from liability. There is an optional new dynamic workload that simulates ad rotation. WebStone 2.5 results can be compared to WebStone 2.01 results (unless you use the new dynamic workload). What have we accomplished here? Ooh, we made yet another friggin' license to check for freedom, and admitted that... the last version didn't support "reproducible results"? *chuckle* Yep, that sounds like 'The Benchmark for Web Servers' to me. Maybe I'll try it on their web server...
I'd like to see them contact someone who knows how to configure a Linux box before saying they ran benchmarks showing something. They claim to have contacted Red Hat and a couple of newsgroups for help, but they don't apparently have that many UNIX gurus on staff...
Maybe if they'd, say, bought a box from VA Research for this purpose, or asked them for help, or contacted the Samba team or the apache team...
Heck, if I had too much money to toss around, I'd be happy to run benchmarks like this, and refute their claims. Linux ran wonderfully on my P133, and NT4 (any revision, later ones are worse) runs horribly on it. I've never seen NT do anything besides eat memory and watch applications crash.
Some of the arguments are reasonable here, but others are uninformed, and therefore fail. All the arguments about companies who produce proprietary software "stealing" open source software only apply to BSD-style licenses. If they try that with the GPL, they'll get sued.:)
Also, there is no reason why improving open software would lead to a confusing number of versions. Patches are incorporated by maintainers, and extra features can always be turned into modules, or options in the makefile.
There aren't 18 incompatible versions of the linux-kernel source tree, just a couple being modified at the time, clearly marked. People send in their patches, compile their kernels and pick their modules. It's surely less complicated than the many official incompatible versions of DOS/Windows 3.1/Win32s, Windows NT, Windows 95/98, Windows CE, etc., etc. with their conflicting APIs and DLLs with root access and different kernel design....
The author found a good metaphor for his comparison to relate it to normal people and events, and he ran with it. The pictures were of popular figures in our culture, which you might see on any entertainment web site, and aren't inherently sexist. (I've seen the movie La Femme Nikita in French with subtitles, and it deals with a lot of issues. I don't think they're objectifying that particular woman there.:)
The content wasn't bad. It wasn't what I'd call a technical article, but telling people to be informed before they start spouting arguments is always good. Judging from the ranting about how "X doesn't support cut-and-paste", I'd like to see articles like this more often...
If you somehow thought linking two.jpg's of pretty women to prove a point was sexist, then so be it. However, I think that many people would see it as a nice pictoral explanation to the dry descriptive text here. This article wasn't completely dry either, so you could also consider the addition somewhat whimsical and humorous. (like Linux having genital herpes...:)
Also, if this somehow misled you, there were also links to other Linux sites, which should correct any misinformation for the avid reader. Also an example of getting informed before you rant.
Anyhow, I found the article to be remarkably informative and well-written, and that didn't offend me either.
Why? Because there isn't always an easy option to *change* those creator codes, or file types.
Personally, I think "the right way" to do it is either to autodetect filetypes, or to *always* have an easy way to open a file in another application.
I've had to copy files off of a CD and use Norton Utilities on a Mac to change a creator type to view a movie before, because it was associated with the wrong application, and I've had even more trouble with text files that are too big to open in SimpleText.
This is a Mac feature that I don't consider to be user-friendly, due to the lack of useful options.
The 'Joe User' argument only works with the 'Joe User' computer. I'm not Joe User, but I bought my computer for $1,100 at my local computer store, and just got cheap hardware. This is a pretty common trend these days... I installed Red Hat 5.0 originally, I think, and everything worked fine. Of course, 5.2 was even better...:)
I never worried about if something was 'on the list', but I believe that 'Joe User' would have the same problem with installing NT. (However, NT4SP1 installed fine on my old P133, it's just slower than Linux was, and SP3 is much slower.:)
Yep, Linux ain't Windoze. I like OSes, and my Linux computer is something I use productively. I don't have to turn it on because... well, it just doesn't have to shut down that often.
I've run DOOM more in the last few days than I have the last few months. I just love debugging;-) (Linus Torvalds)
I'm a 'real user', and not much of a consumer, but I still like games. That's why we already have xboing and xkobo, and there are people writing FreeCiv and DUMB. There are many open-source games out there, and until companies port their games, we're going to be cloning them.:)
Slashdot Mirror
There's already a format that sounds like a 128Kb/s mp3 at 80Kb/s. It's called .VQF, and it was released by Yamaha, who was using technology from the not-quite-released MP4's, (mpeg 1 layer 4) which has more ugly licensing issues.
I wonder where Microsoft stole this technology...
I didn't understand your post at all, but since it seems to have nothing to do with mine, I will ask you this.
:)
Doesn't the golden rule condone rape?
"But I thought she'd want to, I know that's what *I* wanted her to do..."
Sometimes, what people say can be taken the wrong way. I don't see how my personal choices in what I want to see on the internet has anything to do with the unsolicited e-mail stupid people might send me. In fact, in the spirit of this thread, that's a good reason to filter your e-mail.
That same person could very well contribute back the same changes to the *BSD community, however this behavior is allowed by the *BSD licenses, which is what i was saying I didn't like in the first place.
And yes, if you were concerned about someone making a million dollars off of your code, and givving you nothing for it, then you would have licensed it under the GPL, not under a BSD license.
The GPL does force everything to be open when the copyright holders are many and disparate. This is why the linux kernel is safe. And even if Microsoft had rights to all future versions of GCC, they would never have exclusive rights to the current or previous versions, and therefore development would be unchanged. However, I really doubt the FSF would do this. (Over RMS's dead body...)
Anyhow, let's stick to licensing issues here, this is getting silly. There already is nothing to stop Microsoft from stealing all the BSD code they want (except not knowing what good code looks like), and there is something to stop them from stealing GPLed code, given the sanity of the copyright holders.
Therefore, I don't see where this argument is going, if anywhere...
I also don't agree with content filters. I often *agree* with the points that Katz has to say, just not necessarily his style.
I also didn't see this on the main slashdot page, but it's in ultramode.txt, which I parse into lynx when I just want to see headlines (yeah, yeah, not more than every hour).
However, I do love the new moderation feature of slashdot. I also enjoy being able to track my replies. The reason I usually disagree with web content filtering is because it's completely impersonal. Usually, it just matches text strings looking for offensive words or links, or something equally stupid. That may be content filtering, but it isn't accurate.
However, the moderators on slashdot are users, just like I am. They recognize good comments when they see them, and I generally agree with them. It has the net effect of making slashdot back into the small community it used to be, which is what I liked originally.
Also, with the moderation on slashdot, "if you don't like it, turn it off". That is an essential feature, and it's also my answer to people who want to censor television, books, or anything else. Watch what you like, and don't blame other people for your own preferences. If you want to censor yourself, go ahead, as long as it's your choice.
I would have to agree. When I have the luxury, I love using UNIX, even for the simple things. However, sometimes there are hardware or platform incompatibilities which require the use of another machine, perhaps running a different OS.
.PICT files, and their associations but not their icons were intact. However, the associated application (the one they were created in) couldn't load them, and the one .GIF file was associated to GraphicsConverter, which could load them.
.PICT files only when GraphicsConverter (a well-written Macintosh application, even if it is at least nagware) told me they were.
A different UNIX, I can deal with. Windows NT 4 or MacOS 8 is more annoying, arguably because I don't use it as much. (even though I have used them both extensively, and I appreciate that NT tends crash less than other versions of Windows and that MacOS 8.x generally runs better than earlier versions of MacOS (although I liked the interface better in 7.5, and hate how so many useless extensions are so often preloaded on newer Macs))
However, some of the problems I run into on these platforms could surely be encountered by novices, even doing simple things. Should novices be forced to become experts when things go wrong, or is that when they have to find an expert to help them?
I don't know why the files I was working with on the Mac were so mangled. All I know is that my girlfriend sent them to me after giving a few (PC-formatted) disks to a clueless teacher (apparently a Mac user) so she could get some images. I know that the second disk she had was corrupt, but the other two should have been fine. The files were
I'm not about to blame all of this on the MacOS, but consider this. Any novice (and even my girlfriend, who is by no means a novice) would never know what these files were. I found out for sure that they were
Under DOS, these files would have had extensions, but MacOS mangled those. I also don't know why the long names weren't intact, but the other Mac didn't read them properly. Although the icons didn't work, the associations weren't there. Under UNIX, I can autodetect filetypes, but this didn't work until I resaved them, so perhaps the extra data in the files interfered with this.
I'm sure that horror stories exist for all OSes, but I have yet to find a platform with more irrational behavior, providing less information, when things go wrong. It's fine to say that a platform is user-friendly when everything works, but in my experience they don't work far too often for this sort of design to be a feature.
It is possible to license code under both licenses, especially licensing BSD code as GPL code. Unfortunately, doing it the other way around again defeats the purpose of the GPL.
:)
:)
:)
However, let's make your example theoretical. (I'm sure this has happened before, but being specific in this case only leads to bickering over facts that don't appy to the discussion
Let's say that a device driver foo was originally written under a BSD style license. Some random GPL fanatic comes along, takes this driver, adds to it, and releases *his* driver under a GPL style license. The options the original BSD fanatic has are: (1) continue to hack his own driver. (2) hack the other driver under the GPL.
If this particular BSD fanatic shares anyhow, what does he have to lose by contributing to the GPL'ed driver? If he doesn't... well, we know he has already, because of the BSD style license.
The only reason the 'enforced sharing' clause is there (I know, it sounds like something from the cold war) in the GPL is because at one point in time people *stopped* sharing, and started turning free applications into proprietary ones. I don't want to take sides here, but I'm sure it started somewhere around RMS writing Emacs and other companies adding to it without contributing back. Since they violated an unwritten tradition, (around the BSD-style licenses) the GPL was born.
If people always shared their code, there would be no GPL, and there would be much rejoicing. They don't, so the people who don't want to see their code used by other people without the benefits of the additions to that code use the GPL. Those who are trusting of human nature, or want to improve other people's code without necessarily improving their own use a BSD license.
I guess it comes down to if you want to help others, or if you want everyone to help each other. Therefore, it's a matter of opinion.
Aww man, you run Linux too? So you mean that I *still* haven't had an intelligent conversation with a BSD user?
Actually, I tried a boot disk with FreeBSD on it, and I liked the kernel configuration, that was slick. However, I miss all the friendly options from the GNU utils. And I thought that both the device layout and the way all the system utilities pointed to one big executable were very strange. I like to know how much space ls takes up. I hope this isn't a standard configuration, but rather something done for this boot disk. However, it was odd.
Thanks for being more polite than the other anonymous coward in this thread, I rarely see a polite response from a *BSD'er who doesn't understand my POV...
:) If you're not afraid of sharing code, why not make it official? Then people might *respect* you (and your code) enough to buy your product. Also, there would be no question of fairness in OSes. Does the webserver give more priority to people using IE? Submit a patch to make it even, and use the new version... :)
If GPL advocates just wanted payment for software, they would make it closed-source, and invalidate their entire philosophy. What they really want is the ability to share the code without losing their other freedoms. Anyone else can also sell the product, or distribute it free. Money doesn't have to be an issue, but one way people can show their support is by buying a product. Again, it's a different philosophy, and it doesn't always apply to all software. I just don't like to see people getting their operating systems stolen.
Actually, though, you have a good point there. I'd be happier if Microsoft *could* steal *BSD, because then maybe that would mean that they could write/sell a better OS for once. It's just that the OS is such a commodity, and such a battleground these days, that I don't see why anyone should help those who only help themselves.
I also don't see why a proprietary software company who also contributes back code shouldn't just use the GPL.
> > I just wouldn't want a BSD-style license on an entire operating system.
:)
... wouldn't want [this]". You can't deny that. If you want it, then I pity you, but that is of course your choice.
> That's because you're a narrow-minded geek. NEXT (and now Apple) did contribute code to the *BSD community. AFAIK
> NeXTStep, SunOS and MacOS X Server have not hurt the various free BSD flavours. They're still alive and kicking.
Thanks, you're pretty polite yourself. If I were narrow-minded, or for that matter, less cordial, I wouldn't reply to this. I am a geek, however, and for you to deny that label as well would be pretty silly by now...
> In a nutshell, I think FreeBSD/OpenBSD actually profit from their liberal license policy.
I never said that they didn't, but I'll be happy to argue it now. Boy, the quality of discussion always goes down when we talk about FreeBSD. Wow, we got a few measly patches so that someone else could port our operating system without contributing back the important changes. I would consider a good contribution from Apple, say, Carbon, or some windowing code, or something to help us in the UNIX "quest for the stupid user interface". But no, they take your code, and release it under a more restrictive license, without any of the higher-level tools, and say that they're 'Open Source' on one hand. On the other hand, they make the rest available for a stiff fee, as a proprietary, closed-source product that's mostly just BSD where all the new features are. And you say "I think [we] actually profit from [this]". How meek you've become.
I also specified that this was my opinion, as in "I
...unless it's based on UNIX. :)
.PICT) files and give them nifty preview icons. However, the Mac couldn't load them in the first place, thanks to it's user-friendly file associations.
Yep, that's right. And also, native security and networking features could also use some work. The macs around here are loaded down with so much third-party software to support Kerberos and AFS and provide some basic OS filesystem permissions (like making the HD pretty much read-only) that it's a wonder we can still log in, it's about as bad as NT.
I admit that some of these problems are specific to this particular Mac set up as a server. However, we have a fairly competent IT staff that tries to use anything as a network client, and get it to work. It should be noted that they have to work much less to set up UNIX, and have to buy much less third-party stuff for it. (they still buy some of it, they just don't *need* it all) Students try to surf the net and write papers on these things, so I think this is a fair comparison for user-friendliness.
The first time I found this particular new blue Mac server, I said "Cool. It's got a built-in ZIP and DVD drive." I can get a floppy drive anywhere, but this stuff is neat. Then I tried to log in. It had crashed. I rebooted it, and then logged in. I said "look, they have ports of cool UNIX apps." I tried to run GSView. The machine locked up. (no, force-quit didn't work)...
You get the idea. The only use I've found for that Mac is downloading to a ZIP disk (the ZIP disk part, not the downloading, because of the security, the Desktop is inaccessible from a File/Save dialog, so I have to click-and-drag files from Netscape to the ZIP disk. Easy, you say? What if I wanted to change the name...) and trying to repair messed-up Mac files on DOS disks.
I tried to load a file associated with Photoshop 4. It couldn't find the (apparently completely different) version of Photoshop 4 installed on this computer. I dragged the icon to Photoshop 4. It claimed not to recognize the file format. I clicked on another file. It loaded up in GraphicsConverter, which wasn't even listed with the other applications! GraphicsConverter could open and save all of these (apparently
User friendly. Bah, humbug. Shoot me now. The Mac has a level of user-friendliness I never want to emulate (ooh, look, help baloons! these things are completely useless, because they don't tell me that this file with the PC-text icon is associated to Photoshop 4, even though it will only be opened by GraphicsConverter, if you can find it...). If Linux had friendliness like this, newbies would fear the GUI, not the CLI.
Actually, ZDNet was being more than fair on this one. IIRC, this was the article that didn't publish the NT results *because* they were so bad.
Also, I don't see how this could possibly be unfair to NT. When NT4SP1 was released, hardware like this didn't exist at all. I (later, years after it came out) installed it on a P133, with 32MB of RAM, and a 2GB HD, roughly half of the system you're talking about. Although it was a little sluggish, (and far slower than DOS or Linux on the same machine) it worked, and it wasn't unbearably slow. It was surprisingly bloated in its memory requirements compared to either DOS or Linux, but it still didn't have to swap.
When they first were releasing NT, the standard testing practice was to get the fastest 486 you could find, load it up with RAM, and... see how many copies of solitare the system could handle. I think Microsoft was relying completely on Moore's law here...
Now, one would think that NT4SP2, 3, and 4, as the name "Service Pack" suggests, would be minor, free upgrades and bugfixes? Otherwise, they would have released an NT version 4.1 or something? Nope. I'm currently running NT4SP3+ActiveDesktop on that same machine, and it's *incredibly* slow. The RAM requirements have almost doubled. However, the system requirements for NT 4.0 haven't changed, have they?
If you're going to blame anyone for a Server OS not running well on that hardware, blame Microsoft. They aren't obeying their own released specs, and they aren't serving their users. If NT4SP1 was slower than it needed to be, then why aren't later versions faster? Who would pay for an upgrade that doesn't fix the real problems? Maybe that's what "Service Pack" means.
Maybe that ZD article should have been entitled "Linux kernel upgrades actually add features *and* increase performance, unlike NT upgrades." Personally, I prefer the title "Windows turns fast computers into toasters that crash and burn toast", but maybe that's just me.
Ah, but if someone does swipe GPL code, and we do find out, we either get a new GPL'ed app, or we sue them. It's a different mindset.
:) I just wouldn't want a BSD-style license on an entire operating system.
Personally, I'd be a little offended if I were working on a project and ended up having my code used by a big corporation who out-marketed my product and left me in the dust. That's what the BSD-style licens allows for that I don't like.
(hence, MacOS X. As far as I'm concerned, if Steve Jobs wants a UNIX, he can try to write it himself, but that's not the BSD opinion... It's also why you aren't going to see 'Microsoft Linux')
Meanwhile, if people do contribute code back to a BSD project, that's great. Just because it isn't GPL'ed, doesn't mean it's bad, I'm a big fan of WINE.
Heh. You mean 'LoC' should therefore be:
:)
:)
cat bigprog.cc | indent | wc -l
(or, as an added bonus, probably more like
cat obfuscated.c | grep -v ^# | cc -E - | tr -d '\n' | indent -kr | wc -l
)
I actually needed to strip carriage returns because indent couldn't figure out how to indent ascii-art-c properly... oh well...
Of course lines of code is an inaccurate, stupid, braindead, unreliable measure of productivity. So are bogomips. We still use them... However, they aren't the holy grail of software metrics or benchmarking or anything. That's why this is just a poll topic, instead of something serious.
However, if you think it *is* the holy grail, use gnu-style indenting. More lines-of-code thank k&r, so your code is suddenly better.
:) Yep.
From Whetstone to Dhrystone to Whebstone.
That's really horrible.
I guess if we ever make "The Ultimate Pretentious Open-Source Buzzword-Compliant Web-Server Benchmark", we've got a name for it.
I could care less about buzzwords, it's the message that's important. I liked this much better than *any* of Katz's articles, buzzwords aside.
:)
This is someone with a sense of history, a perspective that I don't feel Katz has in the same way I do. I remember playing the HitchHiker's Infocom game on a Commodore 64, and learning BASIC on the Apple II's, and all the different little variations that no one needs anymore.
How do you clear the screen?
Is it CLS, or HOME, or ? CHR$(147)
or clrscr(); or clear, or xlock -nolock -mode blank or do you choose the blank screen in the
screensavers and test it?
I have a personal fondness for many of the old ways of doing things, and as long as something still supports it, I will try them along with the new ways. People still write in FORTH, because sometimes they need to... I've written scripts in both BASIC and Perl, and benchmarked them.
(last night, I did a simple test of everything from shell scripts to compiled languages. C beat C++, Perl beat out BASIC, bash was faster than tcsh, ash lost because expr wasn't compiled in... Some benchmarks are useless, but boy are they fun.)
We may learn the "new ways" of doing things, but that doesn't stop us from using the old ways. Especially when they work better.
Palmpilots like cloned sheep?
;)
But seriously, folks, I wouldn't want a handheld device, because... what would I do with it? Laptops are bad enough with their small keyboards and funky hardware. I'm not about to pay money for a gameboy that tries to be a computer.
Hmm. But I might pay money for a gameboy. What games does the Palmpilot run?
and found this gem about what happens when NT needs tuning. *chuckle*
I guess tuning makes all the difference.
Aww man, I'm sorry, guys. I didn't realize the "PRE" tag wasn't supported. I guess I'll just keep posting in text. :)
From their website:
The Benchmark for Web Servers
WebStone 2.5
We've just released WebStone 2.5. Both executable and source code are available for free and will
stay that way. The highlights of the new release are:
It's much more reliable.
Tests are reproducible. The previous version of WebStone used a time of day random
seed. Now it can optionally use a fixed random seed.
WebStone 2.5 comes with a new license designed to encourage you to contribute
enhancements while protecting you and your company from liability.
There is an optional new dynamic workload that simulates ad rotation.
WebStone 2.5 results can be compared to WebStone 2.01 results (unless you use the
new dynamic workload).
What have we accomplished here? Ooh, we made yet another friggin' license to check for freedom, and admitted that... the last version didn't support "reproducible results"? *chuckle* Yep, that sounds like 'The Benchmark for Web Servers' to me. Maybe I'll try it on their web server...
From their website: The Benchmark for Web Servers WebStone 2.5 We've just released WebStone 2.5. Both executable and source code are available for free and will stay that way. The highlights of the new release are: It's much more reliable. Tests are reproducible. The previous version of WebStone used a time of day random seed. Now it can optionally use a fixed random seed. WebStone 2.5 comes with a new license designed to encourage you to contribute enhancements while protecting you and your company from liability. There is an optional new dynamic workload that simulates ad rotation. WebStone 2.5 results can be compared to WebStone 2.01 results (unless you use the new dynamic workload). What have we accomplished here? Ooh, we made yet another friggin' license to check for freedom, and admitted that... the last version didn't support "reproducible results"? *chuckle* Yep, that sounds like 'The Benchmark for Web Servers' to me. Maybe I'll try it on their web server...
I'd like to see them contact someone who knows how to configure a Linux box before saying they ran benchmarks showing something. They claim to have contacted Red Hat and a couple of newsgroups for help, but they don't apparently have that many UNIX gurus on staff...
Maybe if they'd, say, bought a box from VA Research for this purpose, or asked them for help, or contacted the Samba team or the apache team...
Heck, if I had too much money to toss around, I'd be happy to run benchmarks like this, and refute their claims. Linux ran wonderfully on my P133, and NT4 (any revision, later ones are worse) runs horribly on it. I've never seen NT do anything besides eat memory and watch applications crash.
Nah, slashdot already has dotslash registered. :)
I'd rather go to www.microsoftsucks.org anyway.
Some of the arguments are reasonable here, but others are uninformed, and therefore fail. All the arguments about companies who produce proprietary software "stealing" open source software only apply to BSD-style licenses. If they try that with the GPL, they'll get sued. :)
Also, there is no reason why improving open software would lead to a confusing number of versions. Patches are incorporated by maintainers, and extra features can always be turned into modules, or options in the makefile.
There aren't 18 incompatible versions of the linux-kernel source tree, just a couple being modified at the time, clearly marked. People send in their patches, compile their kernels and pick their modules. It's surely less complicated than the many official incompatible versions of DOS/Windows 3.1/Win32s, Windows NT, Windows 95/98, Windows CE, etc., etc. with their conflicting APIs and DLLs with root access and different kernel design....
The author found a good metaphor for his comparison to relate it to normal people and events, and he ran with it. The pictures were of popular figures in our culture, which you might see on any entertainment web site, and aren't inherently sexist. (I've seen the movie La Femme Nikita in French with subtitles, and it deals with a lot of issues. I don't think they're objectifying that particular woman there. :)
.jpg's of pretty women to prove a point was sexist, then so be it. However, I think that many people would see it as a nice pictoral explanation to the dry descriptive text here. This article wasn't completely dry either, so you could also consider the addition somewhat whimsical and humorous. (like Linux having genital herpes... :)
The content wasn't bad. It wasn't what I'd call a technical article, but telling people to be informed before they start spouting arguments is always good. Judging from the ranting about how "X doesn't support cut-and-paste", I'd like to see articles like this more often...
If you somehow thought linking two
Also, if this somehow misled you, there were also links to other Linux sites, which should correct any misinformation for the avid reader. Also an example of getting informed before you rant.
Anyhow, I found the article to be remarkably informative and well-written, and that didn't offend me either.
Why? Because there isn't always an easy option to *change* those creator codes, or file types.
Personally, I think "the right way" to do it is either to autodetect filetypes, or to *always* have an easy way to open a file in another application.
I've had to copy files off of a CD and use Norton Utilities on a Mac to change a creator type to view a movie before, because it was associated with the wrong application, and I've had even more trouble with text files that are too big to open in SimpleText.
This is a Mac feature that I don't consider to be user-friendly, due to the lack of useful options.
The 'Joe User' argument only works with the 'Joe User' computer. I'm not Joe User, but I bought my computer for $1,100 at my local computer store, and just got cheap hardware. This is a pretty common trend these days... I installed Red Hat 5.0 originally, I think, and everything worked fine. Of course, 5.2 was even better... :)
:)
I never worried about if something was 'on the list', but I believe that 'Joe User' would have the same problem with installing NT. (However, NT4SP1 installed fine on my old P133, it's just slower than Linux was, and SP3 is much slower.
Yep, Linux ain't Windoze. I like OSes, and my Linux computer is something I use productively. I don't have to turn it on because... well, it just doesn't have to shut down that often.
From linux-quotes:
;-)
:)
I've run DOOM more in the last few days than I have the last few months. I just love debugging
(Linus Torvalds)
I'm a 'real user', and not much of a consumer, but I still like games. That's why we already have xboing and xkobo, and there are people writing FreeCiv and DUMB. There are many open-source games out there, and until companies port their games, we're going to be cloning them.