Okay, in reverse order: My report will certainly contain the details of this situation, one which could tarnish the entire "open" reputation of this movement.
Surely this has to be a troll. Even reports from Gartner Group et al aren't taken that seriously (mainly because they keep changing their mind). Unless you work for a major IT consultancy, this is not only misguided but incredibly arrogant.
Okay, with that out of the way:
If it is such a great browser, as the Linux community here on Slashdot seem to think I use Linux. I read Slashdot. I'm as much a part of that community as anyone else, but I personally think that Mozilla is overlarge,overcomplex and riddled with bugs and dubious design. IMHO.
this is a sure indication of a large number of major security flaws Uhuh. So the Mozilla core developers know about lots of security bugs that have somehow been missed by all the external developers who have access to the same source code. No, this is about bugs that will be discovered in future, and the way that they will be handled.
If you actually read the news post, it will be a number of trusted developers, both in and out of Netscape (i.e. both commercial and non-commercial) who will be intially informed about the discovery of the bug. Once a fix is available, everyone gets told. Regardless, everyone still has access to the source, and anyone could find the same bug.
market forces have been shown to overcome socialist idealism The free software movement is not a political one. While individuals may extend the ideology to social and political concerns, they are only individuals. The only thing we all have in common is a belief in free software. Period.
The value of LinuxOne's business is inestimable. There's no way we can tell how much this business is worth. Probably nothing.
The company has made an immeasurable contribution to the open source software... The company's contribution to OSS does not register on any known scale of measurement.
and can expect copious intangible rewards i.e., no money.
The CEO has no small degree of experience as a tech-businessman Factually speaking, it's miniscule, not small.
manage the company with his usual degree of skill Bear in mind his usual degree of skill, here...
for its entire future Which is measurable in weeks.
profits of anything up to 500% more than the company is making now Remember, 5 x 0 = 0
This is an IPO which the investment community should be falling over each other to learn about. After all, you wouldn't want to invest in it by accident, would you?
Shades of David Langford's "Net of Babel" (after Borges). Or see here for a real demonstration that the 'net contains an infinite amount of data (although it'd be stretching to call it "information").
Software companies have been depending upon this for years and years. Do you think id software would have been built by doom and quake if just anyone could clone their game??? NO.
Of course. And we all remember the lawsuits that id issued against all the Doom and Quake clones..oh no, hang on, were there any? Anyway, you seem to be referring to code theft, which is a rather specialised form of reverse engineering, and already accounted for in law. If someone does reverse engineer your software and steal either your code or your methodologies then these can both be offenses covered by prior statute, namely those covering copyright and patent. No need for extra protection.
It is not a "bad" law. I guess free software people don't know much about commercial software, but all commercial software has had license agreements you click to accept for years and years. This is how they make money.
I guess people who use commercial software don't always pay much attention to what they're clicking on. Agreed, the business model is usually to trade money for a right-to-use license, but the whole point this is that up until now, these licenses have had many clauses which were widely regarded as unenforceable. In fact, in legal circles, there is considerable doubt about the validity of mass-market (non-negotiated) licenses, full stop.
This is a law that was a long time coming I guess, and it will let the makers of good software relax that a real law is backing up their license agreement that more or less said the exact same thing.
So, let's get this right. You're happy to support a law that will
Let softies get away with producing shoddy, sub-functional or non-functional software, against which you have absolutely no chance of claiming any kind of compensation no matter what form of personal or financial injury you suffer due to the software's failure to perform.
Allow them to prevent reviews or benchmark tests of their products
Encourage proprietary lock-in strategies and lead us back to the dark ages of non-interoperability (clue: you know this funky Internet thing you're using? It only exists because of interoperability).
? I mean, really? If so, you're just the sort of citizen I require to help form my new police state: quiet, subservient, gullible...
Plus a law will make the licensing for all products uniform, and let the consumer know exactly what they can and can't do.
You know, I'd laugh if I didn't feel like crying. Ok, listen carefully, I'll only say it once. This law will let any software manufacturer put any clause they feel like in their licenses, and this is the kicker, change the terms of the license anytime they feel like it, after you've accepted the license.
Well, that could be to do with all kinds of things, including platform-specific concerns, but that's a side issue.
Realistically speaking, it can be hard to draw a line between IIS and Apache in performance terms. As far as I can tell, IIS being threaded means that it's got great static page performance. On the other hand, Apache's CGI performance seems to exceed IIS's by a clear margin. This may be NT's fault.
It's also been my experience that Apache is far more resistant to the damage that bad CGIs can cause, but that is probably more to do with the forking architecture than superiority of code.
A lot of the problems that IIS experiences are actually down to the ASP DLL, which is frankly quite a sucky piece of code. It also doesn't help that Microsoft's error messages are the least helpful of any software product I have ever seen.
In the end, I use Apache for UN*X and IIS for NT. I prefer Apache/UN*X because it's easier to fix it if things do go wrong, and its open nature means that what you can do with it is limited only by your imagination and the time you're prepared to put into it. I suspect that the main reason people like Amazon use Apache is it's just nicer to develop for.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely this has to be a troll. Even reports from Gartner Group et al aren't taken that seriously (mainly because they keep changing their mind). Unless you work for a major IT consultancy, this is not only misguided but incredibly arrogant.
Okay, with that out of the way:
If it is such a great browser, as the Linux community here on Slashdot seem to think
I use Linux. I read Slashdot. I'm as much a part of that community as anyone else, but I personally think that Mozilla is overlarge,overcomplex and riddled with bugs and dubious design. IMHO.
this is a sure indication of a large number of major security flaws
Uhuh. So the Mozilla core developers know about lots of security bugs that have somehow been missed by all the external developers who have access to the same source code. No, this is about bugs that will be discovered in future, and the way that they will be handled.
If you actually read the news post, it will be a number of trusted developers, both in and out of Netscape (i.e. both commercial and non-commercial) who will be intially informed about the discovery of the bug. Once a fix is available, everyone gets told. Regardless, everyone still has access to the source, and anyone could find the same bug.
market forces have been shown to overcome socialist idealism
The free software movement is not a political one. While individuals may extend the ideology to social and political concerns, they are only individuals. The only thing we all have in common is a belief in free software. Period.
It also generates scadloads of X traffic, even when it's idle in winshade mode.
The value of LinuxOne's business is inestimable.
There's no way we can tell how much this business is worth. Probably nothing.
The company has made an immeasurable contribution to the open source software...
The company's contribution to OSS does not register on any known scale of measurement.
and can expect copious intangible rewards
i.e., no money.
The CEO has no small degree of experience as a tech-businessman
Factually speaking, it's miniscule, not small.
manage the company with his usual degree of skill
Bear in mind his usual degree of skill, here...
for its entire future
Which is measurable in weeks.
profits of anything up to 500% more than the company is making now
Remember, 5 x 0 = 0
This is an IPO which the investment community should be falling over each other to learn about.
After all, you wouldn't want to invest in it by accident, would you?
Shades of David Langford's "Net of Babel" (after Borges). Or see here for a real demonstration that the 'net contains an infinite amount of data (although it'd be stretching to call it "information").
Software companies have been depending upon this for years and years. Do you think id software would have been built by doom and quake if just anyone could clone their game??? NO.
Of course. And we all remember the lawsuits that id issued against all the Doom and Quake clones..oh no, hang on, were there any? Anyway, you seem to be referring to code theft, which is a rather specialised form of reverse engineering, and already accounted for in law. If someone does reverse engineer your software and steal either your code or your methodologies then these can both be offenses covered by prior statute, namely those covering copyright and patent. No need for extra protection.
It is not a "bad" law. I guess free software people don't know much about commercial software, but all commercial software has had license agreements you click to accept for years and years. This is how they make money.
I guess people who use commercial software don't always pay much attention to what they're clicking on. Agreed, the business model is usually to trade money for a right-to-use license, but the whole point this is that up until now, these licenses have had many clauses which were widely regarded as unenforceable. In fact, in legal circles, there is considerable doubt about the validity of mass-market (non-negotiated) licenses, full stop.
This is a law that was a long time coming I guess, and it will let the makers of good software relax that a real law is backing up their license agreement that more or less said the exact same thing.
So, let's get this right. You're happy to support a law that will
- Let softies get away with producing shoddy, sub-functional or non-functional software, against which you have absolutely no chance of claiming any kind of compensation no matter what form of personal or financial injury you suffer due to the software's failure to perform.
- Allow them to prevent reviews or benchmark tests of their products
- Encourage proprietary lock-in strategies and lead us back to the dark ages of non-interoperability (clue: you know this funky Internet thing you're using? It only exists because of interoperability).
? I mean, really? If so, you're just the sort of citizen I require to help form my new police state: quiet, subservient, gullible...Plus a law will make the licensing for all products uniform, and let the consumer know exactly what they can and can't do.
You know, I'd laugh if I didn't feel like crying. Ok, listen carefully, I'll only say it once. This law will let any software manufacturer put any clause they feel like in their licenses, and this is the kicker, change the terms of the license anytime they feel like it, after you've accepted the license.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Well, that could be to do with all kinds of things, including platform-specific concerns, but that's a side issue.
Realistically speaking, it can be hard to draw a line between IIS and Apache in performance terms. As far as I can tell, IIS being threaded means that it's got great static page performance. On the other hand, Apache's CGI performance seems to exceed IIS's by a clear margin. This may be NT's fault.
It's also been my experience that Apache is far more resistant to the damage that bad CGIs can cause, but that is probably more to do with the forking architecture than superiority of code.
A lot of the problems that IIS experiences are actually down to the ASP DLL, which is frankly quite a sucky piece of code. It also doesn't help that Microsoft's error messages are the least helpful of any software product I have ever seen.
In the end, I use Apache for UN*X and IIS for NT. I prefer Apache/UN*X because it's easier to fix it if things do go wrong, and its open nature means that what you can do with it is limited only by your imagination and the time you're prepared to put into it. I suspect that the main reason people like Amazon use Apache is it's just nicer to develop for.
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