While nobody knows if GPL has a legal value (well, possibly FSF lawyers do), it surely has a *cultural value*.
It means that companies infringing it have to pay not only a legal cost (if any) but also a public-relation cost. I believe is this PR cost which keeps big companies selling in the mass-market from openly infringing GPL.
For small companies, or companies operating in niche markets, PR costs might be acceptable, however.
Ideas are not usually born from thin air, but from other ideas, reworked and integrated with new bits
(and often also the new bits aren't original).
This is true in general, and this is why patents are temporary. This is even more true in software (where design and product are mostly the same thing).And this is why open-source is such a nice development model : it removes many (not all) barriers from sharing ideas in the software world.
And you can find many examples of this kind of innovation in open source software (yes, including the 'command-line network software installer' - aka apt).
What is still to see if open-source can sustain itself commercially. Many people have bet on it, but the final answer is still to come.
I'm not sure that the current copyright legislation is the best tool to enforce copyleft (while probably being the best available).
Maybe it is time to push for some copyleft-specific legislation, which protects originators of IP which decide to share it.
The originator of shared IP should be able to dictate its terms, either picking an existing icence or creating its own by a set of standard options, and then it should be protected by Law against violation of its terms.
</IANAL>
I still have to try kde 2.x on my laptop (150 MHz and 80 MB)... but kde 1.x takes around 30 secs to start, same as Gnome. And both kfm and gmc takes a few seconds to fire up the first time, and are significantly slow when rendering an iconic view of 'very populated' directories (like/usr/share/doc on Debian ).[This is why I always use the 'tabular view'].
All this is still in the range of usability for me... but I figured (wrongly, maybe), that both Konqueror and Nautilus, having so much more features than their 1.x couterpart, also required better hardware to run properly. This is the reason why, having a relatively old box, I am glad that 'first generation' tools like gmc are still around for a while.
But as long as we're doomed to complete freedom, we should do everything we can to advance ourselves (which is mostly done with technology).
Uhm... technology ( better yet, Science ) is only half of the answer to improve life. It gives us power but id does not tell us how to use it. The other half of it is *ethics*: ideals, beliefs, reasoning which tell us what to aim for, and what to avoid.
In the 20th century, mankind advanced greatly in science & technology, but the current ethic system failed to controll the growing power ( not totally, luckily, but it failed IMO).
In this century, we should upgrade our ethic system. The Internet can help in that ( if it is not totally screwed by commercialism, that is ): the more ideas circulate, the more our ethic system improves.
I'm not saying that we should stop or even slow technology improvements: only that we should stop believing that they will solve all our problems.
About immortality : no thanks. A world of immortals will be rotten. Fresh human beings is what is needed for mankind improvement (but I could use a couple of century, thank you).
So gmc will still be around (even if not in 'official' gnome anymore)? Good.
I mean, I could end up running Nautilus on my Athlon 700, but I doubt it would be usable on my Laptop Pentium 150.
And I'm afraid konqueror is going on the same route...
I looked around in freshmeat: there are many 'light graphical file managers', most of them based of GTK. Maybe two or more of them could coelesce, even include some GMC code, and produce a gnome-integrated file manager for not-so-powerful machines ?
Yes I know the mantra... if you want it, do it yourself... or buy a better laptop .
I mean, how are they going to dispose of that big chunk of space garbage, in the 20xx ? (I doub't it will survive up to next century).
Another riddle for our children, I suppose - to be solved in the coffee break between the session about the nuclear waste and the one about climate pollution.
That is, the user's computer call the tech support system and establish a ppp link... then it can chat with the operator, explain the problem, and the operator can ssh in user's computer, look itself and try to fix the problem.
Debian has been the first distro (IIRC) to plan and use a network install/upgrade process integrated with their package system.
Possibly because they don't care if a good net installer makes yo sell less distro boxes. And they didn't need to come up with a payment model to replace the unsold boxes.
However my feeling is that the 'stable' version, once released, is left to itself. At least, I never read of Gnome 1.2.x ( that is a version with the same functions of 1.2 but with more bug fixing ).
If I want bugs of 1.2 fixed, I shall wait for 1.4, which also includes large new features ( and new bugs ).
As developer, I understand it is resource-consuming and not much fun to mantain a double versioning like this.
But as a user, I'd appreciate it. ( users always demands more than what they get - even if they don't pay for it;) ).
Projects as large as Gnome (or KDE) should follow Linux (or Debian) example and split in a Stable branch ( doing small changes/fixes/cleanup and keeping users happy on short-term ) and an unstable branch ( pursuing the 'blue sky' goals ).
Not that it solves all problems they have (for instance, which branch should adopt GTK 2.0 ? ),
but it should help. The only problem : has Gnome enough developers to do it ? .
Re:What about the anti-genetic backlash?
on
Genetic Stone Soup
·
· Score: 1
My personal fear is that Money will push Science to hack the genetic code before it has been truly understood.
It happened in the past, with less critical issues, that 'The Official Scientific Truth' has been dictated not by honest research but by corporate money.
I just completed a work estimate for my company,
so, since I was in the mood, I made two calculations for this, too.
I am supposing that is C code, and there is no documentation apart comments, and no qualification apart programmers self-performed tests.
I'm also supposing that the metric used is '1 LOC = a non-blank non-remark line' [e.g. also lines of a single character counts]'.
The formula is:
10000 LOC / 100 LOC per day * 8 hours per day * 30$ per hour.
Pardon my blatant pragmatism. I'm in better mood when I code.
Win Modems are a dumb Idea in begin with.
Sure of that? I happen to have a Lucent winmodem on both my Linux boxes, bought when I still dual-booted. I often do other things, while downloading, and since I have flat rate I often leave connection open. Never got disconnected because of lack of CPU.
Sure, a 'real' modem would be better. But so would be two CPUs...
It's all matter of trade-offs. The real concern is that in this case is not the user which makes the trade-off, since winmodem are often built-in in mass-marketed computers.
I mean, how 'new' is this modem for which IBM is releasing the driver? I remember having a mwave-based modem/audio combo three computers ago.
I can see a trend, here : when the technology of a piece of hardware is not hot anymore, they open the specs/ release the driver, so that they found a new market in Linux users.
Well, not that I like to be a second-class user.
But OTHA, I'v never been keen to hot hardware, either. And a driver is better than no driver. And an open-source driver is better than a half-hacked binary one (Lucent, please, follow IBM example! ).
Some time ago I read an interesting article about
the benefits to storing programs in some structured way (e.g. tables of a database) instead of text : representation-independent, automation language translation, semi-automated test cases, semi-automated code documentation.
Supposing that exists some code parser which reads code files and stores them in databaser, this looks to me as an interesting idea.
Corel failed at Linux because it tried to slap a pretty face on Linux, and to sell it to the mass market.
OK. What Corel did not understood is that Linux is not ready for that. Linux distros are still more a set of nice tools than an out-of-the-box system (and Corel was based on Debian, nevertheless).
If one can/like fiddle with his computer and his OS, one can use a Linux distro to transform his computer in a better and more powerful tool.
If one wants the soup ready, the best chance is NOT to buy a distro, but to get a PC with Linux pre-installed, on which soneone else already fixed the miriad of little problems a Linux user usually face. And he shall remember to always ask his Linux vendor before buying pretty new hardware for his PC.
Corel failed at Linux beacuse its goals were stark and unappreciated in the world of dedicated computer lovers.
This was irrelevant for Corel objectives, since, as you have said, computer lovers are only a 0.5% of computer user.
Actually he says that the concept of open API (like supposedly will be the ones of.NET) is a notch better than opensource, because it allows to keep software proprietary (and so make money by selling it) while still allowing cooperation among companies.
Yes, copoperation may happen, if the company that controls the API (M$soft, nevertheless) do not use that control to screw competitors... but this will never happen, will it;)
Corel has definitively changed his skin : from 'big adversary' of M$oft, they are now faithful ans subservient allies. So they hope to sleep better and get some of M$soft money.
Fine. But be aware, Corel : when M$oft is hungry, it can eat allies as well as enemies.
Uhm. Admittedly being a programmer I'm biased, but this does not sound right. Computers are empty general purpose machines, not appliances, therefore the software IS the computer (well, almost).
Think of another classic dualism: genetic vs culture. Which one is more important in the determination of human personality?
My idea is that genetic gives potentials, i.e. it defines the hardware. But is the cultural environment that 'programs' the human brain
about how to actually *think*.
The best these companies can hope for is that their measures will deter some of the least tech-savvy from doing things they don't like.
This is exactly what they are aiming at. So-called anti-piracy tools are not aimed to the tech-savy minority, but to the mass market. This is why Napster is seen as a problem, while FTP is not (unless you add some Napster-like front-end to it, that is).
One good point of the article (which is a bit too much on the catastrophic side ) is that you cannot have general purpose computers _AND_ end-to-end copyright enforcement technology. Computers give too much power to the end user. This is why digital contents sellers are happy with today trend which replace general-purpose computers with closed purpose-specific appliances ( tv top-set boxes, M3 players, net terminals, game consoles ).
Appliances in-se are good for end-users: they are cheaper and easier and, being engineered for a single task, are better at it.
But if this trend continues, general-purpose computers will be less and less mass-produced, and their price will increase correspondingly. And this is bad for the tech-savy minority, for free software movements and similar free content producers.
Slashdot Mirror
It means that companies infringing it have to pay not only a legal cost (if any) but also a public-relation cost. I believe is this PR cost which keeps big companies selling in the mass-market from openly infringing GPL.
For small companies, or companies operating in niche markets, PR costs might be acceptable, however.
This is true in general, and this is why patents are temporary. This is even more true in software (where design and product are mostly the same thing).And this is why open-source is such a nice development model : it removes many (not all) barriers from sharing ideas in the software world.
And you can find many examples of this kind of innovation in open source software (yes, including the 'command-line network software installer' - aka apt).
What is still to see if open-source can sustain itself commercially. Many people have bet on it, but the final answer is still to come.
I'm not sure that the current copyright legislation is the best tool to enforce copyleft (while probably being the best available).
Maybe it is time to push for some copyleft-specific legislation, which protects originators of IP which decide to share it.
The originator of shared IP should be able to dictate its terms, either picking an existing icence or creating its own by a set of standard options, and then it should be protected by Law against violation of its terms.
</IANAL>
All this is still in the range of usability for me ... but I figured (wrongly, maybe), that both Konqueror and Nautilus, having so much more features than their 1.x couterpart, also required better hardware to run properly. This is the reason why, having a relatively old box, I am glad that 'first generation' tools like gmc are still around for a while.
Uhm... technology ( better yet, Science ) is only half of the answer to improve life. It gives us power but id does not tell us how to use it.
The other half of it is *ethics*: ideals, beliefs, reasoning which tell us what to aim for, and what to avoid.
In the 20th century, mankind advanced greatly in science & technology, but the current ethic system failed to controll the growing power ( not totally, luckily, but it failed IMO).
In this century, we should upgrade our ethic system. The Internet can help in that ( if it is not totally screwed by commercialism, that is ): the more ideas circulate, the more our ethic system improves.
I'm not saying that we should stop or even slow technology improvements: only that we should stop believing that they will solve all our problems.
About immortality : no thanks. A world of immortals will be rotten. Fresh human beings is what is needed for mankind improvement (but I could use a couple of century, thank you).
I mean, I could end up running Nautilus on my Athlon 700, but I doubt it would be usable on my Laptop Pentium 150.
And I'm afraid konqueror is going on the same route...
I looked around in freshmeat: there are many 'light graphical file managers', most of them based of GTK. Maybe two or more of them could coelesce, even include some GMC code, and produce a gnome-integrated file manager for not-so-powerful machines ?
Yes I know the mantra ... if you want it, do it yourself... or buy a better laptop .
Another riddle for our children, I suppose - to be solved in the coffee break between the session about the nuclear waste and the one about climate pollution.
That is browser + server + search engine
That is, the user's computer call the tech support system and establish a ppp link ... then it can chat with the operator, explain the problem, and the operator can ssh in user's computer, look itself and try to fix the problem.
It looks a nice idea to me ...
Possibly because they don't care if a good net installer makes yo sell less distro boxes. And they didn't need to come up with a payment model to replace the unsold boxes.
However my feeling is that the 'stable' version, once released, is left to itself. At least, I never read of Gnome 1.2.x ( that is a version with the same functions of 1.2 but with more bug fixing ).
If I want bugs of 1.2 fixed, I shall wait for 1.4, which also includes large new features ( and new bugs ).
As developer, I understand it is resource-consuming and not much fun to mantain a double versioning like this. ;) ).
But as a user, I'd appreciate it. ( users always demands more than what they get - even if they don't pay for it
Not that it solves all problems they have (for instance, which branch should adopt GTK 2.0 ? ), but it should help. The only problem : has Gnome enough developers to do it ? .
It happened in the past, with less critical issues, that 'The Official Scientific Truth' has been dictated not by honest research but by corporate money.
I am supposing that is C code, and there is no documentation apart comments, and no qualification apart programmers self-performed tests.
I'm also supposing that the metric used is '1 LOC = a non-blank non-remark line' [e.g. also lines of a single character counts]'.
The formula is:
10000 LOC / 100 LOC per day * 8 hours per day * 30$ per hour.
Pardon my blatant pragmatism. I'm in better mood when I code.
Sure of that? I happen to have a Lucent winmodem on both my Linux boxes, bought when I still dual-booted. I often do other things, while downloading, and since I have flat rate I often leave connection open. Never got disconnected because of lack of CPU.
Sure, a 'real' modem would be better. But so would be two CPUs ...
It's all matter of trade-offs. The real concern is that in this case is not the user which makes the trade-off, since winmodem are often built-in in mass-marketed computers.
I can see a trend, here : when the technology of a piece of hardware is not hot anymore, they open the specs/ release the driver, so that they found a new market in Linux users.
Well, not that I like to be a second-class user. But OTHA, I'v never been keen to hot hardware, either. And a driver is better than no driver. And an open-source driver is better than a half-hacked binary one (Lucent, please, follow IBM example! ).
Supposing that exists some code parser which reads code files and stores them in databaser, this looks to me as an interesting idea.
OK. What Corel did not understood is that Linux is not ready for that. Linux distros are still more a set of nice tools than an out-of-the-box system (and Corel was based on Debian, nevertheless).
If one can/like fiddle with his computer and his OS, one can use a Linux distro to transform his computer in a better and more powerful tool.
If one wants the soup ready, the best chance is NOT to buy a distro, but to get a PC with Linux pre-installed, on which soneone else already fixed the miriad of little problems a Linux user usually face. And he shall remember to always ask his Linux vendor before buying pretty new hardware for his PC.
Corel failed at Linux beacuse its goals were stark and unappreciated in the world of dedicated computer lovers.
This was irrelevant for Corel objectives, since, as you have said, computer lovers are only a 0.5% of computer user.
Yes, copoperation may happen, if the company that controls the API (M$soft, nevertheless) do not use that control to screw competitors
Corel has definitively changed his skin : from 'big adversary' of M$oft, they are now faithful ans subservient allies. So they hope to sleep better and get some of M$soft money.
Fine. But be aware, Corel : when M$oft is hungry, it can eat allies as well as enemies.
Uhm. Not that different from this world, is'n it?
Uhm. Admittedly being a programmer I'm biased, but this does not sound right. Computers are empty general purpose machines, not appliances, therefore the software IS the computer (well, almost).
Think of another classic dualism: genetic vs culture. Which one is more important in the determination of human personality?
My idea is that genetic gives potentials, i.e. it defines the hardware. But is the cultural environment that 'programs' the human brain about how to actually *think*.
This is exactly what they are aiming at. So-called anti-piracy tools are not aimed to the tech-savy minority, but to the mass market. This is why Napster is seen as a problem, while FTP is not (unless you add some Napster-like front-end to it, that is).
One good point of the article (which is a bit too much on the catastrophic side ) is that you cannot have general purpose computers _AND_ end-to-end copyright enforcement technology. Computers give too much power to the end user. This is why digital contents sellers are happy with today trend which replace general-purpose computers with closed purpose-specific appliances ( tv top-set boxes, M3 players, net terminals, game consoles ).
Appliances in-se are good for end-users: they are cheaper and easier and, being engineered for a single task, are better at it.
But if this trend continues, general-purpose computers will be less and less mass-produced, and their price will increase correspondingly. And this is bad for the tech-savy minority, for free software movements and similar free content producers.
My fault :(.
But people owning less-than-500-MHz-CPU-box will still need a gnome-compliant graphical window manager ...