I must assume YES, since such a lot of money is spent on it. But sometime I wonder if company A spends money on advertising because company B spends money on advertising, and vice-versa...
Instead of making your mission statement on your application something to the effect of "to make as much money as we can while still following the law," you actually write down what your mission is.
There is middle ground between a corporation and a no-profit.
I believe LWN mandate is just "do someting useful for people (possibly enjoying doing it) and make a decent living out of it". Which translates in "get a job", and is actually my mandate, also.
But since I didn't look at LWN constitution act (if they have one), you may be right in LWN being a coroporation.
All this donating to for-profit corporations sickens me. If you want donations from me, you need to be at least a nonprofit, and preferably a 501(c)(3).
I agree on the general statement, but
call a business of 6-7 people a corporation is a bit eccessive. I'd say rathery they are like a dad-and-mom shop.
You should not pay out of general good will. But if you in the past used their site and rekon that they delivered you a good service - as I do - you may well pay what you think their service was worth - as I did.
Debian/stable releases are typically meant for server environments, and as a stable development platform. With that in mind, where tradeoffs are made, stability is favoured over the newest software available. "Stability" doesn't just mean apps that don't crash. It also means things that don't change out from underneath you. . I wonder if stable rules should not be relaxed a little, to includeupstream bux-fixing minior releases. I.e. if Woody ships with packge foo-3.0.1, and then comes out foo-3.0.2 which fixes a few non-critical-but-still-serious bugs, shouldn't it be included in stable? Maybe not automatically, but in the next point release? (maybe at discretion of the release manager?)
I know, many so called bug-fix releases actually slip inside also some added feature (starting with the kernel itself). But shouldn't this matter left in the (ir)ressponibily of mainstream developers?. After all, it is _their_ software.
This is not technical news. It's _commercial_ news.
If I read it correctly, SuSE, Caldera & C. did not decide only to do distribution in the same way (i.e. following standards). They decided to do it _togheter_. Not a common product, but a sort of meta-distribution from which each one can derive its own products.
IMO it makes sense. In this way, they save costs on things they cannot profit from (because it is open-source) and concentrate on specific 'added-values'.
I believe this will be a trend in Linux business. Maybe in a not-too-far future Linux companies will give up with the distribution business and will instead sell vertical products based on the same 'common base distribution', maybe mantained by the community.
Maybe.
People keep making the mistake that the human race is highly intellegent, it is not. a small percentage of the human race is
Uhm : and I suppose you put yourself in the small percentage?:-)
I agree with the general comment, anyway. Only, the 'small percentage' are so not because they are the smartest, but because they lived in an environment which let them develop some (relative) ethic.
BTW : intelligent people can be (and often are) evil and unhetic. And racist.
It could be that there exists in the world of ideas a 'Perfect GUI', the same as there could be a 'Perfect Car' or a 'Perfect OS'. And I understand that GNome developers wants to go after it.
However, the Man-Machine Interface (MMI=GUI+CLI) is the front-ent between me and the computer. Better yet, is _the_ computer as I see it. And what I like about Gnome is that it is a reasonable good platform with a lot of components (panels, menus, applets) with which I can build _my own_ GUI. Which is surely not the best GUI. But is it the GUI which best fits my needs.
I whish good luck to Gnome developers in their quest. I just hope they don't loose the component approach they had up to now. And don't lock users in _their_ idea iof the best GUI (while I agree that too many preferences are evil).
Somehow I can't bring myself to believe that Linux preachers at school may result in long-term benefits for Linux and other OSS'es.
Hence I hope your profs also explain _why_ they think Linux is better, run some serious comparative analysis, and let students have their own opinion on the matter.
Uhm,it should have been the same also for Java JITs, but it is not (at least the ones I have tried). There are other factors which, while make the life easier for programmers, slow down execution ( garbage collection and dynamic typing, for instance).
BTW, I never understood the rationale of JIT for anything other than applets. For installed applications, why compile them every time you run them?
But what is the 'performance penalty' of the CLI? If it is of the same order of the JVM, no thanks, a CLI-based desktop will not run on my PCs for at least 5 years ( although it might be wise to start now to be ready then... ).
He's made what appears to many to be a stunninglyn naive and reckless decision, giving virtually no explanation for the obvious risks he's taking.
I don't know if choosing.NET is technically sound (don't have enough data). But, apart from wasting work on a unsuitable technical goal, what would be the other 'obvious risks?'.
Let's say that some open source software is based on an open source implementation of.NET, because it solves some of the problems. Then what? Microsoft changing their standard? Well, the open source.NET based software will still run, the problems that.NET solved will still be solved. People not running Micro$oft OS will not be forced to switch to the new incompatible.NET. Ok, they will loose the compatibility with M$oft platform, but it is not that right now there _is_ any compatibility.
So, I believe that.NET adoption in open-source should be discussed technically, not politically.
I can see an argument for encouraging developers (Microsoft, MacOS and yes, Linux hackers) to supply 40 bit security by default on all consumer systems.
Why stop here? I propose to distribute any e-mail software (better yet, any Operating System ) only as source code. Chances are that Al Qa'ida people do not know how to do
configure/make/make install
(ohops... I just revelead a state secret here ) and hence will have to resort to sending messages on paper scraps.
You should count 3 BSDs (supposing it runs on all three... )
And how many Linux distros are out there? At least 4 big commercial one in Western countries, plus a couple (or more) in Eastern countries. Plus Debian, (not counting its flavours), plus Slackware...
Then you start counting platform ports for each of the above...
I'm kidding of course, but not so much... if original code is not super-portable, it would be an hell of work!
This is why I'm always awestruck by the sheer black magic of Autoconf/Automake (when it works, that is...:-)
I don't know if they are going to run peer inspections of all their code looking for security hole. But there are a couple of things that could al least increase the (perceived?) security of the windows Oses
ship everithing with scripting engines disabled: if user enables them, put out a big security warning window. Not real security, but good for PR : "default windows installation is secure!".
Make stacks non-writable with something akin to the linux kernel patch shipped with OpenWallLinux. This would ensure some temporary security, until all current buffer overflow exploits are re-written. Again, PR people could again use this time to show off the improved security.
They could make a different set of boxes (Windows XXP!) and make money out of it:-)
It would be a lot easier and require a lot less money to just rate every single product level 0 and do a bit of standard MS-style marketing to
convince people that the software is just as good as a level 1. If every single piece of software written by every single company was rated
level 0 then no one would be any better off since everyone would be forced to buy level 0 products.
Agreed (almost). I thing that _most_ of software would stay level 0, and that_most_ of customers would choose to buy (or download) level 0 software. After all, nobody forces current users to buy current software: they buy it because they find it useful, bugs nevertheless.
But then, this would only be market ruling. If a real market for quality software exists, some sort of 'software qualification standards' would allow qualified software products to meet the demand.
Software should be sold with a label indicating its quality level, as certified by well-defined and verifiable standards:
level-0 is the software provided as-it-is or whith disclaimers that nullify any liability (that is 99% of today commercial and free software)
other levels could be defined for software which promises (and therefore is liable for) a well-specified level of accuracy/data integrity/security.
Companies would price their software accordingly with the quality level they warrant, and people and company could make their own cost/quality/risk trade-off analysis and freely use whathever they want.
Note that in theory an open-source redistributor could achieve quality level > 0 by submitting the products it distributes to rigorous qualification tests and patching the software accordingly. A problem could be that they should publish their patches, making easier for the competition to do the same. But this is nothing new, being the same dilemma that open-source distributors already face for the works which goes in packaging/integrating the free software.
most folks complaining about it will be using a clone of it in 6 months
Actually, I have seen a 'flat-screen-on-a-stalk-and-everything-in-the-base ' intel-based PC more than one year ago, somewhere in Germany. But can't remember the name of the company selling them ( big one, maybe US based, does also network stuff), let alone to provide any URL.
I quite liked it, except for not expandability and price.
For business, definively not. My company generates docs of hundreds of pages. It would takes days to reformat one of them (I had to, a couple of times:-( ).
And it is not only the good-looking. For large docs, things like cross-reference and automatic indexes are a god blessing.
1. There are plenty of Office Suites out there that understand the Word Format. (StarOffice and Koffice to name two.)
Not very well. Usually half of the formatting and meta data are lost.
2. Microsoft has already stated they are switching to the non-proprietary XML format for their standard document format.
'XML Format' means nothing. XML can be used in a lot of incompatible ways (AbiWord and KWord both uses XML, I believe, but in incompatible way). And a standard is non-proprietary only if it is not controlled by a single company.
3. While I do like GPL and Freeware I also believe that we need to have comercialware.if all software was free then why would anyone in their right mind want to spend money to study programming at a an instituion?
I don't mind commercialware, but don't see any _need_ for it. Consider that many software engineers are not working for software houses, but for other kind of firms that happen to need software.
Look at other professions. Matematicians, for instance, are stil needed and hired, even though there are no companies selling directly their work.
... a commonly accepted free standard for _editable_ documents.
That is, it should be possible to read and edit the same document with different open-source tools [since there is no chance that we all use the same] without loosing neither text, nor formatting or meta information (like indexes, cross-references, review marks etc...).
You are kidding, but these people actually do something like that, and expect revenue from it[maybe get it, too]. They also (according to The Reg) invest part of their revenue in more patents, to have more litigation material.
Except that if you will buy a new PC next year it would be very hard to find one _without_ a pre-installed copy of XP, that you have to pay for even if you don't plan to use it.
Unless you assemble yourself all your PCs, that is.
Slashdot Mirror
I must assume YES, since such a lot of money is spent on it. ...
But sometime I wonder if company A spends money on advertising because company B spends money on advertising, and vice-versa
But probably it is just me ...
There is middle ground between a corporation and a no-profit.
I believe LWN mandate is just "do someting useful for people (possibly enjoying doing it) and make a decent living out of it". Which translates in "get a job", and is actually my mandate, also.
But since I didn't look at LWN constitution act (if they have one), you may be right in LWN being a coroporation.
I agree on the general statement, but
Debian/stable releases are typically meant for server environments, and as a stable development platform. With that in mind, where tradeoffs are made, stability is favoured over the newest software available. "Stability" doesn't just mean apps that don't crash. It also means things that don't change out from underneath you.
I wonder if stable rules should not be relaxed a little, to includeupstream bux-fixing minior releases. I.e. if Woody ships with packge foo-3.0.1, and then comes out foo-3.0.2 which fixes a few non-critical-but-still-serious bugs,
shouldn't it be included in stable? Maybe not automatically, but in the next point release?
(maybe at discretion of the release manager?)
I know, many so called bug-fix releases actually slip inside also some added feature (starting with the kernel itself). But shouldn't this matter left in the (ir)ressponibily of mainstream developers?.
After all, it is _their_ software.
I install bash, python,gcc,emacs on any machine I have to work with.
Of course you still have to deal with system scripts and with propretary admin tool, but at least you have some common point.
By sure,
If I read it correctly, SuSE, Caldera & C. did not decide only to do distribution in the same way (i.e. following standards). They decided to do it _togheter_. Not a common product, but a sort of meta-distribution from which each one can derive its own products.
IMO it makes sense. In this way, they save costs on things they cannot profit from (because it is open-source) and concentrate on specific 'added-values'.
I believe this will be a trend in Linux business. Maybe in a not-too-far future Linux companies will give up with the distribution business and will instead sell vertical products based on the same 'common base distribution', maybe mantained by the community.
Maybe.
Uhm : and I suppose you put yourself in the small percentage? :-)
I agree with the general comment, anyway. Only, the 'small percentage' are so not because they are the smartest, but because they lived in an environment which let them develop some (relative) ethic.
BTW : intelligent people can be (and often are) evil and unhetic. And racist.
However, the Man-Machine Interface (MMI=GUI+CLI) is the front-ent between me and the computer. Better yet, is _the_ computer as I see it. And what I like about Gnome is that it is a reasonable good platform with a lot of components (panels, menus, applets) with which I can build _my own_ GUI. Which is surely not the best GUI. But is it the GUI which best fits my needs.
I whish good luck to Gnome developers in their quest. I just hope they don't loose the component approach they had up to now. And don't lock users in _their_ idea iof the best GUI (while I agree that too many preferences are evil).
Hence I hope your profs also explain _why_ they think Linux is better, run some serious comparative analysis, and let students have their own opinion on the matter.
BTW, I never understood the rationale of JIT for anything other than applets. For installed applications, why compile them every time you run them?
But what is the 'performance penalty' of the CLI? If it is of the same order of the JVM, no thanks, a CLI-based desktop will not run on my PCs for at least 5 years ( although it might be wise to start now to be ready then ... ).
I don't know if choosing .NET is technically sound (don't have enough data). But, apart from wasting work on a unsuitable technical goal, what would be the other 'obvious risks?'. .NET, because it solves some of the problems. Then what? Microsoft changing their standard? Well, the open source .NET based software will still run, the problems that .NET solved will still be solved. People not running Micro$oft OS will not be forced to switch to the new incompatible .NET. Ok, they will loose the compatibility with M$oft platform, but it is not that right now there _is_ any compatibility.
Let's say that some open source software is based on an open source implementation of
So, I believe that .NET adoption in open-source should be discussed technically, not politically.
Why stop here? I propose to distribute any e-mail software (better yet, any Operating System ) only as source code. Chances are that Al Qa'ida people do not know how to do
(ohopsAnd how many Linux distros are out there? At least 4 big commercial one in Western countries, plus a couple (or more) in Eastern countries. Plus Debian, (not counting its flavours), plus Slackware
Then you start counting platform ports for each of the above
I'm kidding of course, but not so much ... if original code is not super-portable, it would be an hell of work! ... :-)
This is why I'm always awestruck by the sheer black magic of Autoconf/Automake (when it works, that is
- ship everithing with scripting engines disabled: if user enables them, put out a big security warning window. Not real security, but good for PR : "default windows installation is secure!".
- Make stacks non-writable with something akin to the linux kernel patch shipped with OpenWallLinux. This would ensure some temporary security, until all current buffer overflow exploits are re-written. Again, PR people could again use this time to show off the improved security.
They could make a different set of boxes (Windows XXP!) and make money out of itHoops! Wrong click. The one above it's me.
Agreed (almost). I thing that _most_ of software would stay level 0, and that_most_ of customers would choose to buy (or download) level 0 software. After all, nobody forces current users to buy current software: they buy it because they find it useful, bugs nevertheless.
But then, this would only be market ruling. If a real market for quality software exists, some sort of 'software qualification standards' would allow qualified software products to meet the demand.
- level-0 is the software provided as-it-is or whith disclaimers that nullify any liability (that is 99% of today commercial and free software)
- other levels could be defined for software which promises (and therefore is liable for) a well-specified level of accuracy/data integrity/security.
Companies would price their software accordingly with the quality level they warrant, and people and company could make their own cost/quality/risk trade-off analysis and freely use whathever they want.Note that in theory an open-source redistributor could achieve quality level > 0 by submitting the products it distributes to rigorous qualification tests and patching the software accordingly. A problem could be that they should publish their patches, making easier for the competition to do the same. But this is nothing new, being the same dilemma that open-source distributors already face for the works which goes in packaging/integrating the free software.
Actually, I have seen a 'flat-screen-on-a-stalk-and-everything-in-the-base ' intel-based PC more than one year ago, somewhere in Germany. But can't remember the name of the company selling them ( big one, maybe US based, does also network stuff), let alone to provide any URL.
I quite liked it, except for not expandability and price.
For business, definively not. My company generates docs of hundreds of pages. It would takes days to reformat one of them (I had to, a couple of times :-( ).
And it is not only the good-looking. For large docs, things like cross-reference and automatic indexes are a god blessing.
Not very well. Usually half of the formatting and meta data are lost.
2. Microsoft has already stated they are switching to the non-proprietary XML format for their standard document format.
'XML Format' means nothing. XML can be used in a lot of incompatible ways (AbiWord and KWord both uses XML, I believe, but in incompatible way). And a standard is non-proprietary only if it is not controlled by a single company.
3. While I do like GPL and Freeware I also believe that we need to have comercialware.if all software was free then why would anyone in their right mind want to spend money to study programming at a an instituion?
I don't mind commercialware, but don't see any _need_ for it. Consider that many software engineers are not working for software houses, but for other kind of firms that happen to need software.
Look at other professions. Matematicians, for instance, are stil needed and hired, even though there are no companies selling directly their work.
That is, it should be possible to read and edit the same document with different open-source tools [since there is no chance that we all use the same] without loosing neither text, nor formatting or meta information (like indexes, cross-references, review marks etc...).
You are kidding, but these people actually do something like that, and expect revenue from it[maybe get it, too]. They also (according to The Reg) invest part of their revenue in more patents, to have more litigation material.
Except that if you will buy a new PC next year it would be very hard to find one _without_ a pre-installed copy of XP, that you have to pay for even if you don't plan to use it.
Unless you assemble yourself all your PCs, that is.