Um, Free Software is a charity. If the IRS should get involved, it seems that Free Software authors should get a tax break (I certainly wouldn't mind one).
No, no, no! A free Windows port would kill TrollTech. TT (judging from the outside, Qt's API, for instance--which is the best I've used) assembled a great team of programmers and is paying them to work on the free version of Qt by letting the corporations that can afford it pay for a Windows version (as well as one that can be used to write non-free apps). If there's a Windows version, it might help a few people who want to develop free software for widows, but it will hurt all those who don't--if TT drops Qt, its quality will drop drastically.
Well, if the material should never have been copyrighted, which seems like what Slashdot's lawyer is trying to argue, then there is no problem.
I have mixed feelings about this response. On the one hand, these are questions which we are all interested in, but on the other hand, it's obvious Microsoft isn't going give any real answers to them--just use legal loopholes. So I don't think it will achieve anything.
I don't see how they come to their conclusion. They say that because most contributors contribute only to 1 project, OSS development doesn't work as a bazaar. Shouldn't they be looking instead at how many people contribute per project? They would get 4 on average, and obviously the more successful projects will have more contributors.
Other than that, they are sampling a very small (and non-representative, I would guess) number of projects. There are a hell of a lot more than 3000 projects listed on Freshmeat alone. And god knows how many developers are missed. It's a start, but no more than that.
I don't think RMS says that programmers shouldn't be paid to program. Suppose I am a large company and I need an application for doing something that does not already exist. It is perfectly fine that I find some good programmers and pay them to write the application. Then I release the application under GPL. Everyone is happy: the programmers got paid, I got my application, and everyone else as well.
IMHO the problem is that this model is fair to the users and the programmers, but unfair (and highly disadvantageous) to me. Suppose that application is an office suite whose development costs millions of dollars. Right now, I can get MS Office (or any other office suite) for under $1000. With the above model, I would have to pay those millions, while everyone else will get it for free. It seems far more fair to share the cost, doesn't it?
Right now, these guys would not even be able to get a simple adder working with this tech. It seems that the way they are making these test switches is slow as hell and about as far from mass production as anything. They don't even know what molecule to use as the switch. I'd guess that the ole IC's are safe for at least a decade (that's several generations in computer time!).
But then, when I get some of those THZ CPU's and make a Beowulf cluster...:)
IANAL, but this is my understanding: Every software license I know (open source or closed) grants the user of the software rights which cannot be taken away by the copyright holder unless the license is violated. Any license would cause the same issue: however it was distributed, people who already have the program have rights to it and Mattel can't do shit about that.
You are partially (mostly) right. While code is compiling, I work (I tend to do design before coding, but that's not always the case:) or rest (which boosts my productivity in the long run) so the doubling is exaggerated, but not by much: I am often anxious to see results of a new feature I just added and it's tough to get your mind off it during the compile.
In terms of paying the money, I wouldn't do it personally either, but think about it from the POV of a company: suppose they are paying me $80/hour. They have the chance to boost my productivity by 10% by paying an extra $1000 for a faster processor. That's an extra $8 of work per hour. 1000/8 = 125 hours so the investment will pay itself back in less than a month. I know that the estimates are crude and that people get paid based on their market value, not on the value of their work, but you get the idea.
OK, Whenever there's an article about a new fast processor, there are always the people that say "why would anybody need it?!" I think one already posted and I'm sure more is on the way.
Here are a couple of reasons why I could use all the processing power I could get:
If I am working on a project, my code-compile-debug (whatever it's called) cycle is approx 5-10 min plus the time it takes to compile. If in that time I change a.h file, I must recompile most of the project, which takes a few minutes. If my cycle time goes from 10 min to 5 because of a processor that compiles faster, I just doubled my productivity!
As another example, A year ago I was doing some research involving Mandelbrot/Julia sets. Rendering those in large quantities at high quality can take forever even on a fast machine.
I won't even talk about tons of applications in the scientific world--they should be obvious. So if you post that you don't need no faster processor, all that means is you're not a coder.
Would this development make everything Transmeta did seem like a joke? I mean they cut down the power consumption by something like at most 6 times. Compared to the potential of cutting it down by a factor of a 1000, it's nothing. The cool thing is that the two developments are completely independent (and at different levels) so combining the two would be like running a faster algorithm on a faster processor and would result in power savings of 6000 times over current non-crusoe chips!
is mathworld.wolfram.com I know this is slightly offtopic, but mathworld references Sloane all the time so the association came to my mind. mathworld is a great fully cross-referenced moderately in-depth encyclopedia on everything math (by Eric Wiesstein, I think). Iy's an awesome resource--if you like math, check it out.
It's Windows only, guys. And without the source, it's impossible for anyone outside Borland to port it. At least for myself, this is pretty much useless, and I suspect a lot of the/. crowd does mostly Linux development.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a port at some point, though given that it's owned by Corel.
Whatever, the spy tools are, I cannot imagine them in Win 2000. As the DOJ trial is going on, at least the POSSIBILITY of open-sourcing Windows is being discussed. If it were open-sourced, such things would be easy to detect--and then MS gets its pants sued off by millions of angry users. They don't want that.
Is there any way to GPL ideas? Some sort of license according to which you can use my idea royalty-free, but if you improve it and don't "patent" it with the same GPL-like license, you have to pay me royalties. The problem with this patent is the same as with non-free software patents--it prevents competition (from non-free software, but I think e.g. Windows is good for Linux) instead of encouraging it. A GPL-like patent would force corporations to share their ideas instead of restricting their access to ours.
That's why Intel is so willing to work with the Linux guys--Linux users will be the ones receiving the greatest benefit from Itanium--they can just recompile their software and--voila--it's optimized for IA64! Meanwhile, Windows users have to wait until all their software vendors do it for them--they have no motivation to move to Itanium if they gain no performance benefit (IA32 code runs slower on Itanium than on a fast PIII). Who do you think is going to be Intel's initial market?
Does anyone know what the license on TeX is? I tried looking for source (not very hard) without any result. TeX is amazing (good and fast) and I'd love to take a look at how he did it. I'd vote for Knuth, BTW since he was one of the first people to write a major piece of free software. As for those who object to TAOCP not being open source, that doesn't matter, the material described in them is free to be used by all.
Not if it is your car. Have you ever had a car stolen? Were you thinking about rights of individuals then? What about murder? Is not having an automated camera at the right place worth a few lives as well? I don't really see how a camera with intelligence is worse than a dumb camera--you're still being watched, except that crimes are detected more effectively.
While machine translation is very practical, it can also provide entertainment. I remember a story about scientists testing an English-Russian-English translator by translating phrases to Russian and back. Input: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Output: "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten."
Is this ISO file a sort of "copy protection" scheme (yes I know it's legal to copy, but they can still try to get in your way) to make it more attractive to buy the CD? If so, is this legal with the GPL? I don't want to scream "foul play" but it looks fishy...
Another judge out somewhere has just issued an order restraining a highly malicious slashdot poster known only as "Anonymous Coward". Coward will be banned from slashdot for a year.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, Free Software is a charity. If the IRS should get involved, it seems that Free Software authors should get a tax break (I certainly wouldn't mind one).
No, no, no! A free Windows port would kill TrollTech. TT (judging from the outside, Qt's API, for instance--which is the best I've used) assembled a great team of programmers and is paying them to work on the free version of Qt by letting the corporations that can afford it pay for a Windows version (as well as one that can be used to write non-free apps). If there's a Windows version, it might help a few people who want to develop free software for widows, but it will hurt all those who don't--if TT drops Qt, its quality will drop drastically.
I have mixed feelings about this response. On the one hand, these are questions which we are all interested in, but on the other hand, it's obvious Microsoft isn't going give any real answers to them--just use legal loopholes. So I don't think it will achieve anything.
Other than that, they are sampling a very small (and non-representative, I would guess) number of projects. There are a hell of a lot more than 3000 projects listed on Freshmeat alone. And god knows how many developers are missed. It's a start, but no more than that.
I am sure after benchmarking the servers, they could truthfully claim that NT is faster than Linux!
IMHO the problem is that this model is fair to the users and the programmers, but unfair (and highly disadvantageous) to me. Suppose that application is an office suite whose development costs millions of dollars. Right now, I can get MS Office (or any other office suite) for under $1000. With the above model, I would have to pay those millions, while everyone else will get it for free. It seems far more fair to share the cost, doesn't it?
Not quite.
Right now, these guys would not even be able to get a simple adder working with this tech. It seems that the way they are making these test switches is slow as hell and about as far from mass production as anything. They don't even know what molecule to use as the switch. I'd guess that the ole IC's are safe for at least a decade (that's several generations in computer time!).
But then, when I get some of those THZ CPU's and make a Beowulf cluster... :)
IANAL, but this is my understanding: Every software license I know (open source or closed) grants the user of the software rights which cannot be taken away by the copyright holder unless the license is violated. Any license would cause the same issue: however it was distributed, people who already have the program have rights to it and Mattel can't do shit about that.
In terms of paying the money, I wouldn't do it personally either, but think about it from the POV of a company: suppose they are paying me $80/hour. They have the chance to boost my productivity by 10% by paying an extra $1000 for a faster processor. That's an extra $8 of work per hour. 1000/8 = 125 hours so the investment will pay itself back in less than a month. I know that the estimates are crude and that people get paid based on their market value, not on the value of their work, but you get the idea.
Here are a couple of reasons why I could use all the processing power I could get:
If I am working on a project, my code-compile-debug (whatever it's called) cycle is approx 5-10 min plus the time it takes to compile. If in that time I change a .h file, I must recompile most of the project, which takes a few minutes. If my cycle time goes from 10 min to 5 because of a processor that compiles faster, I just doubled my productivity!
As another example, A year ago I was doing some research involving Mandelbrot/Julia sets. Rendering those in large quantities at high quality can take forever even on a fast machine.
I won't even talk about tons of applications in the scientific world--they should be obvious. So if you post that you don't need no faster processor, all that means is you're not a coder.
Would this development make everything Transmeta did seem like a joke? I mean they cut down the power consumption by something like at most 6 times. Compared to the potential of cutting it down by a factor of a 1000, it's nothing. The cool thing is that the two developments are completely independent (and at different levels) so combining the two would be like running a faster algorithm on a faster processor and would result in power savings of 6000 times over current non-crusoe chips!
is mathworld.wolfram.com I know this is slightly offtopic, but mathworld references Sloane all the time so the association came to my mind. mathworld is a great fully cross-referenced moderately in-depth encyclopedia on everything math (by Eric Wiesstein, I think). Iy's an awesome resource--if you like math, check it out.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a port at some point, though given that it's owned by Corel.
Whatever, the spy tools are, I cannot imagine them in Win 2000. As the DOJ trial is going on, at least the POSSIBILITY of open-sourcing Windows is being discussed. If it were open-sourced, such things would be easy to detect--and then MS gets its pants sued off by millions of angry users. They don't want that.
Is there any way to GPL ideas? Some sort of license according to which you can use my idea royalty-free, but if you improve it and don't "patent" it with the same GPL-like license, you have to pay me royalties. The problem with this patent is the same as with non-free software patents--it prevents competition (from non-free software, but I think e.g. Windows is good for Linux) instead of encouraging it. A GPL-like patent would force corporations to share their ideas instead of restricting their access to ours.
That's why Intel is so willing to work with the Linux guys--Linux users will be the ones receiving the greatest benefit from Itanium--they can just recompile their software and--voila--it's optimized for IA64! Meanwhile, Windows users have to wait until all their software vendors do it for them--they have no motivation to move to Itanium if they gain no performance benefit (IA32 code runs slower on Itanium than on a fast PIII). Who do you think is going to be Intel's initial market?
Does anyone know what the license on TeX is? I tried looking for source (not very hard) without any result. TeX is amazing (good and fast) and I'd love to take a look at how he did it. I'd vote for Knuth, BTW since he was one of the first people to write a major piece of free software. As for those who object to TAOCP not being open source, that doesn't matter, the material described in them is free to be used by all.
Not if it is your car. Have you ever had a car stolen? Were you thinking about rights of individuals then? What about murder? Is not having an automated camera at the right place worth a few lives as well? I don't really see how a camera with intelligence is worse than a dumb camera--you're still being watched, except that crimes are detected more effectively.
Who is he going to sue for all the money he will lose in this suit?
While machine translation is very practical, it can also provide entertainment. I remember a story about scientists testing an English-Russian-English translator by translating phrases to Russian and back. Input: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Output: "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten."
Is this ISO file a sort of "copy protection" scheme (yes I know it's legal to copy, but they can still try to get in your way) to make it more attractive to buy the CD? If so, is this legal with the GPL? I don't want to scream "foul play" but it looks fishy...
Does this mean that it can't use any drivers and can only take pictures at a crappy 640x480?
Cygnus has a report of an obscure bug which prevents its development tools from running on a Caldera distribution. No word on when it will be fixed. :)
Another judge out somewhere has just issued an order restraining a highly malicious slashdot poster known only as "Anonymous Coward". Coward will be banned from slashdot for a year.
Of course it's a good idea to get rid of them. Otherwise, they will fly to your planet and steal your oxygen :)