You come onto MS's radar, you will be sued or paid to go away.
Since they have more money than most, they win the battle of attrition.
Remember the golden rule. Those who have the gold makes the rules. So how did that work out with the EU? Or South Korea? Both cases where Microsoft lost. And don't forget about the time Sun stopped Microsoft from making Microsoft Java, or Microsoft coming to a settlement with Linspire over the Lindows name. There are plenty of other cases where Microsoft couldn't buy their way out of trouble if you spend a few minutes on Google you can find them easily enough.
Microsoft do not always win. They pick the battles they can win and go to court. Those they know they can't win will be settled out of court or some cross licensing arrangement will be arranged. Those they might win will go to court and if the opponent is small enough, they will appeal and stall until the other side runs out of money. No victory guaranteed.
Thank you for mentioning this. I *hate* GIMP's UI. It's evil that it fills up my taskbar completely with buttons for every damn toolbar, and it's a bitch to find anything when half your toolbars manage to hide themselves behind another window. Hence the number of buttons on the task bar. Open Gimp on a seperate desktop and away you go. Press the Tab button to hide all toolbars, and press it again to reveal. How hard is that?
I'm telling them that I work with people more important than they are in the organization and that I'm not going to change my clothing to placate employees that are less important to the people that make decisions than the idiots in marketing. That my mathematics classes were more rigorous and that I took all of the hard science classes of any random structural or computer engineer is more than enough fuel for my ego to discount entirely any intellectual snobbery from people that aren't smart enough to manipulate vapid assholes for their own benefit, when those assholes use them like the supplicating beta males they are before shopping their jobs off to Asia the first opportunity they get. So basically, you don't have the personal confidence and authority to get your point across, so you power dress to intimidate. How is that working out for you?
Windows users will stick with XP, there's no evidence to say that they would give up on Windows and get a Mac. Firstly they would need to buy new hardware, the obvious choice is to go to Linux since you can keep your hardware. Don't be so sure.. There are quite a lot of PC users who only ever buy a small amount of hardware. A printer, perhaps a scanner, and a camera, and not a lot more. And its not uncommon for home users to not buy very much in the way of software either. Currently, there is no real guarantee that the hardware or software will work with Vista, so they could very well find themselves with a new PC and still have a bunch of hardware with no drivers.
Throw in the reputed ease of use and the reputation for having less in the way of viruses and spyware, and you have a very attractive package for the casual user. Especially if they have a friend with an Apple.
For a more intermediate or advanced user, who has collected a fair bit of hardware over the years, and perhaps a bit of software too, there is much more to recommended Linux to them. Especially if they are techy inclined. No outlay apart from downloading and burning the ISO, and they can use their existing hardware. Worst case scenario, they have to reinstall their copy of Windows. They would possibly get an extra few years from their existing gear too.
True.. although in this case, it was because they had no idea that a spreadsheet could actually perfom calculations based on the numbers inserted into specific cells.
You would be surprised how many people and even small businesses don't use the advanced features. Or even many of the ordinary features of an office suite. I actually caught someone typing a column of figures into an Excel spread sheet once, and then turning on a calculator to add them up. Open Office would have had way more features than they needed or would ever use.
No justifiable purchase is foolish. If you need the features that Office has, but Open Office doesn't then go for it. Don't assume however that these features will for ever be absent in Open Office, or any other office suite.
You make a lot of arguments, but, at the end of the day, you have described a situation where it is perfectly permissable to have a closed system. You can argue the letter of the GPL as much as you want, but, that leaves me, asking, if it is ok for you to have a closed system in your world of a proprietary web service based company, or a system closed because it enables a proprietary business practice, then why is it so wrong for me to have a closed system as someone who provides software for distribution? You aren't -really- in favor of open systems, as much as you are picking a particular kind of closed system that suits you best.
Yep.. absolutely true. I'm picking the one that works and delivers actual benefits to the community, and is enforceable in court should anybody try to get away with breaking it. As opposed to the hypothetical and impossible to enforce in any meaningful way version. No shame in that. Life is a compromise. And yes. I'm picking a particular model. As are you. The difference is that mine works.
Nothing is stopping you from selling you programs if you want. If you didn't create all the code in your program, then you are bound by the licenses of the code you reuse. What could be simpler. Open source licenses are no more or less valid than any other. And as far as I remember, the BSD license only requires a credit to the original author, yet is still an open source license.
A license is a license. I have to follow the terms of service for my ISP, for any open or closed OS I use, and for any program I use. I have three options.
1) Use the software within the restrictions and rights of the license.
2) Break the license terms and use it illegally.
3) Don't use it and find something that has a license more to my liking.
The GPL license specifically grants me the option to use and modify the code as I see fit, and provides the source to enable me to exercise these options. It restricts the option to distribute someone else's GPL code as part of a closed product, so if I use GPL code in my program, I have to pass on the code and the modifications/additions should I distribute it to a third party. Other open licenses vary on grants and restrictions.
The whole point of open source is to promote the exchange of information based on the idea that, overall, society is genuinely better off when information is shared and when new ideas are quickly vetted and put to use, by more than one person. When you make a proprietary system, either behind a corporate veil, or behind closed source, you rob society at large of your discoveries, while at the same time you had no problem taking society's.
No. You seem determined to see distribution where none exists.
I'm using a web application to type this response to your post. As my end of the process is using open source applications, do I have the right to see the code of every web server and application that my post goes through until you see it? and if you are not using an open source application to view it, do I have the right to see the code from that application?
In the case of Google, they are using an HTML page with various other technologies in a browser to interface with their computers which may or may not be running modified open source apps. Thus, even for more complex transactions than a simple search, the code is at no time running on a computer outside Google's property. So they are not infringing the GPL and other licenses that Linux works under.
If I own a business and provide a service that uses open source applications, but only provide the product of these applications such as word processed documents, spread sheet files etc. to the customer, then I at no time distribute open source code to a third party, so have no obligation to publish the method of producing my product.
If I make a product that includes open source code, and give this product to a third party, then I DO have an obligation to publish the code, as I have given a
No. For distribution to take place, yo have to give or sell the software to someone outside the company.
This is what the argument between you two boils down, isn't it? What is the barrier between inside and outside, the line over which "distribution" happens? Not really.. the argument is between someone using free software (me) and having a rational view, and someone who is pretending to be a rabid free software advocate (tjstork) while he writes and sells closed programs. He just happens to be using a particularly pedantic and I hope inaccurate definition of distribution to get a reaction.
Has it actually been defined as "a company" in GPL?
I'd be surprised if Stallman and Mogden had resorted to commercial entities or concepts in their definitions. Admitted, I've gotta go read it myself... Maybe "a company or individual" was a sufficiently clear legal concept for them. Including non-profits, foundations, and other types of legally definable bodies, I guess. Buggered if I know. I'm in the same boat as you. I have read the summary and various articles, but get lost after the first page of the license. I can't imagine anybody wanting to use open software if they were bound to publish every line of code and every configuration change as a clause in the license.
Okay okay, I'm going already;-) I know how you feel. Some of these discussions are a bit daft:-)
You assume all segments of each user base are going to take advantage of the service. But I very strongly doubt that is the case.
So out of the 95% or whatever Windows is reputed to be right now..
Remove the business users who will not be able to install the iPlayer client, then remove the considerably large number who are still on dialup, so will not be able to access the service, and finally remove the percentage of users who can't be bothered either way.
Then do the same with the flash based player users, except you may have to re survey the business users, as some will be ok with using flash from work. And as most people already use flash, providing it isn't a customised player, they have also less effort involved should they wish to use the service on a casual basis.
And you have a considerably smaller market with an unknown ratio of Windows to everything else. It would be very interesting to see what the figures are after a few months of use. Especially the figures for flash versus the customised player.
"From all reports, the Microsoft based client is buggy, difficult to set up, and is a bandwidth hog." Bullshit. *All* reports say that, or only the ones you are predisposed to believe? All I have seen. I haven't gone out of my way looking for reports on the service, as I am not particularly interested in it, so most I have seen are little snippets in other forums, magazine articles and the like I have come across. But I have yet to see an article that says anything positive about it. If you can find me several reports (I tend to be sceptical about single articles) showing how easy the player is to set up, how economic it is with bandwidth due to the codec that the BBC and Microsoft have chosen to provide the media in, and how good the quality of the video is once it is downloaded, I will quite happily admit my ignorance and apologise.
Based on the information coming out about the iPlayer, the flash version seems superior. I have a Linux PC as my main machine, and a Windows homebrew PVR, so I'll skip the iPlayer, and go directly to flash, which works perfectly on both.
I wasn't saying whether it was right or wrong, just pushing my finger through the big gaping hole in the analogy. But, hypothetically, if NTSC (US style) TV sets were a small percentage of the market (5-10%) and PAL (European style) sets were the other 90%, I don't think it would be unreasonable for BBC to devote more resources to the PAL viewers. I say that as I write this on a Mac. Or...
and I know this is a radical idea.. but bear with me..
Make the thing cross platform from day one. No extra resources. One system for everyone, and the system only has to be created and debugged once instead of two or more times. Instead, the beta tested with the largest sector of the market. Still.. should be interesting to see how much traffic they get.
From all reports, the Microsoft based client is buggy, difficult to set up, and is a bandwidth hog. Some of this may change between now and when they launch it on the public, but don't bet on it. Interestingly.. In the UK, where fixed download limits are common, how many people are going to sign up and not realise that it is a peer to peer system, so while they are downloading, others are downloading from them.
I mean, yeah, whatever, that's great, that, Google can distribute Linux from one department to another, but, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose? If you believe that this is ok, then, what you are really doing is creating a defacto subsidization of service providers over software distributors. No. For distribution to take place, yo have to give or sell the software to someone outside the company. Each employee doesn't rent space in the office and supply their own hardware, so the software, or in this case, the modifications are still the property of Google.
If they sold the modified software, or gave it to a different company, then they would be breaking the GPL, and would get a call from the FSF just like anybody else.
That's actually -worse-. At least if you have a copy of Word or Windows, you can, when the DMCA lawyers aren't looking, go and tinker with both and sorta figure out how things work. You can control the installation of the software, and, above all, you can at least get some kind of clue to see if they violated the GPL. So in other words, you can only find out if they are breaking the GPL by breaking a different license first. How is that worse than a company using GPL software as intended. The software is never at any point closed. Even if you found something, it would be inadmissible.
You don't get any of that when someone uses a GPL behind the shield of a web service, or behind the shield of a corporate veil. In the grand scheme of things, if you are using a piece of software to enable a business - even in the back office, you are sorta distributing it... because you are copying the benefits that it provides. And, you give the users of that software no rights at all. No. You are using the software. It is specifically licensed so that you can do anything you want to do with it, so long as you do not distribute the software without making the source available. Using it within a company is the same concept of one person using the software.
Honestly, I got nuked down to zero, but the intent of OSS is that software is a globally collaborate thing. Hiding behind web services and corporate barriers is not open and not collaborative, and therefor, I stand by my statement, even if not the letter, ALL OF YOU who are using this software at work without making the derived application publicly available are violating the spirit of the GPL. Perhaps you get nuked because the points you are making are wrong. Read the GPL again. You can use, inspect and modify the code to your heart's content. But you must allow access to the source IF you distribute. Distribution is something that occurs OUTSIDE the influence of a company or an individual user.
Funny, Open office is copying MS office. I still can not watch.wma's in Linux. No good games on Linux. Blender sucks compared the Maya. Gimp sucks compared to Photoshop. I know you are talking about Microsoft but and they did not create Maya and photoshop but they did provide the platform, the API calls, and they somehow got 95% of the desktop market to run their software no matter how bad you say it is. Looks to me like the beat Linux to the punch. So maybe it is Linux that is behind the bleeding edge of technology. Or maybe what you consider bleeding edge of technology is off in left field, but to 1% of the PC market (the Linux community) this off in left field stuff is bleeding edge. Looks to me more like catch up to older products. Just give me something to works in Linux. Like playing a DVD? Or maybe connecting to my ipod? Even funnier..
Microsoft was not the first to make a word processor, database, spread sheet or presentation software. All All already existed before Microsoft started expanding out of the OS market.
Why would you want to watch Windows media AUDIO files? although you can listen to the non DRM encumbered versions on Linux quite easily.
Games on Linux are a pretty small market because not enough people are using Linux for gaming to make it a viable market for any but a few companies like ID, who release Linux clients for most if not all of their games. Not because of any shortcoming in the OS. The fact that there are ANY games proves that the platform has all the required technology.
Blender is different to Maya, true enough, so why not buy a copy of the Linux version of Maya? Its available for not just Windows, but for the Mac and for Linux. In fact, Linux and variations are quite popular with companies in the 3D animation field where much of the software used can be written in house and optimised for the particular hardware.
Photoshop also started out as a program called Display on the Mac platform. And to this day, Apple are the dominant suppliers of computers to the graphic design and publishing sectors where Photoshop reigns supreme.
Microsoft have cornered the market by being in the right place at the right time. They got in on the ground floor when IBM was looking for an OS for their new PC product line, which was a response to the new Apple home and small business computers that IBM wanted to get in on. Microsoft bought in an OS and ported it. They included license for Microsoft BASIC, which was a port of a language invented in the 60s. They then traded on their relationship with IBM to dominate this new niche in the computer industry. Microsoft have continued with the culture of looking at what everyone else is doing and taking bits from here and there. As do all OS makers. And to a large extent, app makers too. Nothing new or particularly wrong until they start whining about others doing the same to the ideas they swiped off someone else.
Linux can play DVDs quite easily. It doesn't do it out of the box, but neither did Windows before Vista, and after a little research and a few downloads Linux plays DVDs just as well as Windows does.
Linux not being compatible with the iPod is also not strictly accurate. It doesn't have iTunes, and is not officially supported, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. Even when Apple changes the software on the most recent iPods.
They didn't tell the exact number of Windows based servers either, so does that mean anything? The desktop and server markets are quite different, so assuming what is common in one is common in the other is not a good idea. Things that make Linux a hard sell for an unskilled desktop user are irrelevant in the server market, and Linux has the advantage of being closer to Unix than Windows is, so perhaps better for someone moving from one to the other.
All the big names in the server market have a long association with both Unix and Linux, so its not a case of Linux moving recently from being an OS dreamed up by a student to suddenly being a valid choice in the business world. So if Dell are seeing continued growth in the Linux market, they are seeing significant numbers. Not just a few more units a year.
On desktops and laptops yes. But hasn't Dell been selling Red Hat for several years on servers?(the topic of the article) and about the time the Ubuntu deal was made public, they also started selling Novell's server Linux.
Can't you turn off the bits you don't want? IF not, try downloading Beryl. It is the same thing basically, but has more options than really needed. So you can turn off just about anything.
Well.. I never met this Mr Head, but apparently he was very particular about people using less formal variations of his name. Must have been torture for the poor guy in school.
If the patent is for a feature of the desktop, then it affects all versions of Linux with desktops which use this feature. So IBM, Oracle and all the others would be in the frame for the next round of suits from this parasite. So they will have to either remove this feature very quickly, or risk getting sued for more money should Red Hat lose.
Red Hat uses Gnome and possibly KDE as an option, so it has relevance to almost all distros. They might possibly customise it a bit beyond the standard Gnome or KDE, but if one is not allowed to use this feature without paying for it, then they would all lose the option, be forced to pay a possibly excessive amount for it, or face a charge of wilfully infringing on a patent.
As far as being a competitor, it is far from straightforward. Linux competitors seem to also be partners. Look at the contributions from the major distro makers. Especially the commercial ones like Red Hat, Novell, etc.
Same here. Pre ordered, played through once, uninstalled. NWN1 on the other hand had and still has tons of modules, low system requirements, and it works on Linux too.
I don't know if Ubuntu uses the same archiver, but Fedora handles Zip files no problem. Double click in your preferred file manager and the zip file opens in the archiver window just like a tarball (just checked). I did have a hiccup with RAR files a few weeks ago, but Winrar under WINE worked perfectly. Installed with no tweaking required.
As for the yet to be discovered codec, I wonder if the poster had VLC installed.
Well, at least the smart ones will buy Windows PCs for their students, since that will best prepare them for their future. Quite the opposite. Any school that just teaches specific applications is letting their students down and wasting any money spent on computer equipment. Teaching someone that a certain menu option is here, and you do a certain task like so is a waste of time. The entire class could be replaced with a set of cheat sheets that list the whole process. What they are supposed to be teaching is how to use a computer. The person who only learned the specific steps without understanding what those steps mean is not going to really understand the finer points and be able to adapt to different software. Teach someone how to use the help menu, and they can find out for themselves how to do things that were not covered in the class. And if the teachers can't do the same, they need to spend the money on better teachers instead of new hardware and software.
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You come onto MS's radar, you will be sued or paid to go away.
Since they have more money than most, they win the battle of attrition.
Remember the golden rule. Those who have the gold makes the rules. So how did that work out with the EU? Or South Korea? Both cases where Microsoft lost. And don't forget about the time Sun stopped Microsoft from making Microsoft Java, or Microsoft coming to a settlement with Linspire over the Lindows name. There are plenty of other cases where Microsoft couldn't buy their way out of trouble if you spend a few minutes on Google you can find them easily enough.
Microsoft do not always win. They pick the battles they can win and go to court. Those they know they can't win will be settled out of court or some cross licensing arrangement will be arranged. Those they might win will go to court and if the opponent is small enough, they will appeal and stall until the other side runs out of money. No victory guaranteed.
Currently, there is no real guarantee that the hardware or software will work with Vista, so they could very well find themselves with a new PC and still have a bunch of hardware with no drivers.
Throw in the reputed ease of use and the reputation for having less in the way of viruses and spyware, and you have a very attractive package for the casual user. Especially if they have a friend with an Apple.
For a more intermediate or advanced user, who has collected a fair bit of hardware over the years, and perhaps a bit of software too, there is much more to recommended Linux to them. Especially if they are techy inclined. No outlay apart from downloading and burning the ISO, and they can use their existing hardware. Worst case scenario, they have to reinstall their copy of Windows. They would possibly get an extra few years from their existing gear too.
True.. although in this case, it was because they had no idea that a spreadsheet could actually perfom calculations based on the numbers inserted into specific cells.
You would be surprised how many people and even small businesses don't use the advanced features. Or even many of the ordinary features of an office suite. I actually caught someone typing a column of figures into an Excel spread sheet once, and then turning on a calculator to add them up. Open Office would have had way more features than they needed or would ever use.
No justifiable purchase is foolish. If you need the features that Office has, but Open Office doesn't then go for it. Don't assume however that these features will for ever be absent in Open Office, or any other office suite.
You make a lot of arguments, but, at the end of the day, you have described a situation where it is perfectly permissable to have a closed system. You can argue the letter of the GPL as much as you want, but, that leaves me, asking, if it is ok for you to have a closed system in your world of a proprietary web service based company, or a system closed because it enables a proprietary business practice, then why is it so wrong for me to have a closed system as someone who provides software for distribution? You aren't -really- in favor of open systems, as much as you are picking a particular kind of closed system that suits you best.
Yep.. absolutely true. I'm picking the one that works and delivers actual benefits to the community, and is enforceable in court should anybody try to get away with breaking it. As opposed to the hypothetical and impossible to enforce in any meaningful way version. No shame in that. Life is a compromise. And yes. I'm picking a particular model. As are you. The difference is that mine works.
Nothing is stopping you from selling you programs if you want. If you didn't create all the code in your program, then you are bound by the licenses of the code you reuse. What could be simpler. Open source licenses are no more or less valid than any other. And as far as I remember, the BSD license only requires a credit to the original author, yet is still an open source license.
A license is a license. I have to follow the terms of service for my ISP, for any open or closed OS I use, and for any program I use. I have three options.
1) Use the software within the restrictions and rights of the license.
2) Break the license terms and use it illegally.
3) Don't use it and find something that has a license more to my liking.
The GPL license specifically grants me the option to use and modify the code as I see fit, and provides the source to enable me to exercise these options. It restricts the option to distribute someone else's GPL code as part of a closed product, so if I use GPL code in my program, I have to pass on the code and the modifications/additions should I distribute it to a third party. Other open licenses vary on grants and restrictions.
The whole point of open source is to promote the exchange of information based on the idea that, overall, society is genuinely better off when information is shared and when new ideas are quickly vetted and put to use, by more than one person. When you make a proprietary system, either behind a corporate veil, or behind closed source, you rob society at large of your discoveries, while at the same time you had no problem taking society's.
No. You seem determined to see distribution where none exists.
I'm using a web application to type this response to your post. As my end of the process is using open source applications, do I have the right to see the code of every web server and application that my post goes through until you see it? and if you are not using an open source application to view it, do I have the right to see the code from that application?
In the case of Google, they are using an HTML page with various other technologies in a browser to interface with their computers which may or may not be running modified open source apps. Thus, even for more complex transactions than a simple search, the code is at no time running on a computer outside Google's property. So they are not infringing the GPL and other licenses that Linux works under.
If I own a business and provide a service that uses open source applications, but only provide the product of these applications such as word processed documents, spread sheet files etc. to the customer, then I at no time distribute open source code to a third party, so have no obligation to publish the method of producing my product.
If I make a product that includes open source code, and give this product to a third party, then I DO have an obligation to publish the code, as I have given a
This is what the argument between you two boils down, isn't it? What is the barrier between inside and outside, the line over which "distribution" happens? Not really.. the argument is between someone using free software (me) and having a rational view, and someone who is pretending to be a rabid free software advocate (tjstork) while he writes and sells closed programs. He just happens to be using a particularly pedantic and I hope inaccurate definition of distribution to get a reaction. Has it actually been defined as "a company" in GPL?
I'd be surprised if Stallman and Mogden had resorted to commercial entities or concepts in their definitions. Admitted, I've gotta go read it myself... Maybe "a company or individual" was a sufficiently clear legal concept for them. Including non-profits, foundations, and other types of legally definable bodies, I guess. Buggered if I know. I'm in the same boat as you. I have read the summary and various articles, but get lost after the first page of the license. I can't imagine anybody wanting to use open software if they were bound to publish every line of code and every configuration change as a clause in the license. Okay okay, I'm going already
My mistake. I assumed that upload and download were counted by default.
So out of the 95% or whatever Windows is reputed to be right now..
Remove the business users who will not be able to install the iPlayer client,
then remove the considerably large number who are still on dialup, so will not be able to access the service,
and finally remove the percentage of users who can't be bothered either way.
Then do the same with the flash based player users, except you may have to re survey the business users, as some will be ok with using flash from work. And as most people already use flash, providing it isn't a customised player, they have also less effort involved should they wish to use the service on a casual basis.
And you have a considerably smaller market with an unknown ratio of Windows to everything else. It would be very interesting to see what the figures are after a few months of use. Especially the figures for flash versus the customised player. "From all reports, the Microsoft based client is buggy, difficult to set up, and is a bandwidth hog."
Bullshit. *All* reports say that, or only the ones you are predisposed to believe? All I have seen. I haven't gone out of my way looking for reports on the service, as I am not particularly interested in it, so most I have seen are little snippets in other forums, magazine articles and the like I have come across. But I have yet to see an article that says anything positive about it. If you can find me several reports (I tend to be sceptical about single articles) showing how easy the player is to set up, how economic it is with bandwidth due to the codec that the BBC and Microsoft have chosen to provide the media in, and how good the quality of the video is once it is downloaded, I will quite happily admit my ignorance and apologise.
Based on the information coming out about the iPlayer, the flash version seems superior. I have a Linux PC as my main machine, and a Windows homebrew PVR, so I'll skip the iPlayer, and go directly to flash, which works perfectly on both.
and I know this is a radical idea.. but bear with me..
Make the thing cross platform from day one. No extra resources. One system for everyone, and the system only has to be created and debugged once instead of two or more times. Instead, the beta tested with the largest sector of the market. Still.. should be interesting to see how much traffic they get.
From all reports, the Microsoft based client is buggy, difficult to set up, and is a bandwidth hog. Some of this may change between now and when they launch it on the public, but don't bet on it. Interestingly.. In the UK, where fixed download limits are common, how many people are going to sign up and not realise that it is a peer to peer system, so while they are downloading, others are downloading from them.
If they sold the modified software, or gave it to a different company, then they would be breaking the GPL, and would get a call from the FSF just like anybody else. That's actually -worse-. At least if you have a copy of Word or Windows, you can, when the DMCA lawyers aren't looking, go and tinker with both and sorta figure out how things work. You can control the installation of the software, and, above all, you can at least get some kind of clue to see if they violated the GPL. So in other words, you can only find out if they are breaking the GPL by breaking a different license first. How is that worse than a company using GPL software as intended. The software is never at any point closed. Even if you found something, it would be inadmissible. You don't get any of that when someone uses a GPL behind the shield of a web service, or behind the shield of a corporate veil. In the grand scheme of things, if you are using a piece of software to enable a business - even in the back office, you are sorta distributing it... because you are copying the benefits that it provides. And, you give the users of that software no rights at all. No. You are using the software. It is specifically licensed so that you can do anything you want to do with it, so long as you do not distribute the software without making the source available. Using it within a company is the same concept of one person using the software. Honestly, I got nuked down to zero, but the intent of OSS is that software is a globally collaborate thing. Hiding behind web services and corporate barriers is not open and not collaborative, and therefor, I stand by my statement, even if not the letter, ALL OF YOU who are using this software at work without making the derived application publicly available are violating the spirit of the GPL. Perhaps you get nuked because the points you are making are wrong. Read the GPL again. You can use, inspect and modify the code to your heart's content. But you must allow access to the source IF you distribute. Distribution is something that occurs OUTSIDE the influence of a company or an individual user.
Microsoft was not the first to make a word processor, database, spread sheet or presentation software. All All already existed before Microsoft started expanding out of the OS market.
Why would you want to watch Windows media AUDIO files? although you can listen to the non DRM encumbered versions on Linux quite easily.
Games on Linux are a pretty small market because not enough people are using Linux for gaming to make it a viable market for any but a few companies like ID, who release Linux clients for most if not all of their games. Not because of any shortcoming in the OS. The fact that there are ANY games proves that the platform has all the required technology.
Blender is different to Maya, true enough, so why not buy a copy of the Linux version of Maya? Its available for not just Windows, but for the Mac and for Linux. In fact, Linux and variations are quite popular with companies in the 3D animation field where much of the software used can be written in house and optimised for the particular hardware.
Photoshop also started out as a program called Display on the Mac platform. And to this day, Apple are the dominant suppliers of computers to the graphic design and publishing sectors where Photoshop reigns supreme.
Microsoft have cornered the market by being in the right place at the right time. They got in on the ground floor when IBM was looking for an OS for their new PC product line, which was a response to the new Apple home and small business computers that IBM wanted to get in on. Microsoft bought in an OS and ported it. They included license for Microsoft BASIC, which was a port of a language invented in the 60s. They then traded on their relationship with IBM to dominate this new niche in the computer industry. Microsoft have continued with the culture of looking at what everyone else is doing and taking bits from here and there. As do all OS makers. And to a large extent, app makers too. Nothing new or particularly wrong until they start whining about others doing the same to the ideas they swiped off someone else.
Linux can play DVDs quite easily. It doesn't do it out of the box, but neither did Windows before Vista, and after a little research and a few downloads Linux plays DVDs just as well as Windows does.
Linux not being compatible with the iPod is also not strictly accurate. It doesn't have iTunes, and is not officially supported, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. Even when Apple changes the software on the most recent iPods.
Now what was your point again?
They didn't tell the exact number of Windows based servers either, so does that mean anything? The desktop and server markets are quite different, so assuming what is common in one is common in the other is not a good idea. Things that make Linux a hard sell for an unskilled desktop user are irrelevant in the server market, and Linux has the advantage of being closer to Unix than Windows is, so perhaps better for someone moving from one to the other.
All the big names in the server market have a long association with both Unix and Linux, so its not a case of Linux moving recently from being an OS dreamed up by a student to suddenly being a valid choice in the business world. So if Dell are seeing continued growth in the Linux market, they are seeing significant numbers. Not just a few more units a year.
On desktops and laptops yes. But hasn't Dell been selling Red Hat for several years on servers?(the topic of the article) and about the time the Ubuntu deal was made public, they also started selling Novell's server Linux.
Can't you turn off the bits you don't want? IF not, try downloading Beryl. It is the same thing basically, but has more options than really needed. So you can turn off just about anything.
Does this mean that 2008 might be the year of Vista?
Well.. I never met this Mr Head, but apparently he was very particular about people using less formal variations of his name. Must have been torture for the poor guy in school.
Could be worse. My ex used to work with a guy called Richard Head.
If the patent is for a feature of the desktop, then it affects all versions of Linux with desktops which use this feature. So IBM, Oracle and all the others would be in the frame for the next round of suits from this parasite. So they will have to either remove this feature very quickly, or risk getting sued for more money should Red Hat lose.
Red Hat uses Gnome and possibly KDE as an option, so it has relevance to almost all distros. They might possibly customise it a bit beyond the standard Gnome or KDE, but if one is not allowed to use this feature without paying for it, then they would all lose the option, be forced to pay a possibly excessive amount for it, or face a charge of wilfully infringing on a patent.
As far as being a competitor, it is far from straightforward. Linux competitors seem to also be partners. Look at the contributions from the major distro makers. Especially the commercial ones like Red Hat, Novell, etc.
Wouldn't using multiple monitors also infringe this patent?
Same here. Pre ordered, played through once, uninstalled. NWN1 on the other hand had and still has tons of modules, low system requirements, and it works on Linux too.
I don't know if Ubuntu uses the same archiver, but Fedora handles Zip files no problem. Double click in your preferred file manager and the zip file opens in the archiver window just like a tarball (just checked). I did have a hiccup with RAR files a few weeks ago, but Winrar under WINE worked perfectly. Installed with no tweaking required.
As for the yet to be discovered codec, I wonder if the poster had VLC installed.
What they are supposed to be teaching is how to use a computer. The person who only learned the specific steps without understanding what those steps mean is not going to really understand the finer points and be able to adapt to different software. Teach someone how to use the help menu, and they can find out for themselves how to do things that were not covered in the class. And if the teachers can't do the same, they need to spend the money on better teachers instead of new hardware and software.