The point here is that it seems a bit hypocritical for Nokia to talk about how the iPhone is closed when their own browser depends upon code written at Apple and used on the iPhone.
I see nothing hypocritical about it: the Nokia phones are open (i.e., you can install applications on it), iPhone is closed (i.e., you can't).
I also don't see why it's Apple's responsibility to support GTK+ or ext3
Responsibility? No, it's not their "responsibility". The fact that they don't is one of many indications, however, that Apple's business model is based on trapping people in proprietary interfaces and APIs.
and am not sure where exactly they're badmouthing Linux (which is, after all, one of their competitors).
Glad you realize that; many Apple apologists claim that Apple is somehow a friend to Linux.
Yes, of course: Linus would be completely impartial and would never do something as silly as voicing his own personal opinion when he shouldn't. Great idea!
Now would be a terrible time to stop developing parallel languages, because the problem is just now coming to the forefront with the limits of single-core performance pushing back and multi-cores taking over.
This is one of the reasons dual-licensing is bad. Big projects with this problem are OpenOffice, Java, and Qt.
ooo-build (previously just for build fixes) is now a formal fork of OpenOffice [CC] to be located at http://go-oo.org/ [CC]
And this is the proper response: to fork the code and make an open-source only version, leaving the company and all its legal shenanigans in the dust.
My faith (Christianity) teaches me to love everyone, regardless of their economic status, race, or faith. Because I am completely ignorant as to how someone could regard such teachings as "sad," please educate me.
It's the other parts of Christianity are sad. It's also the failure to even remotely live up to its teachings that are sad. Well, they aren't just "sad", they are evil.
In summary, the conquering of the Americas was about big money, imperialism, and economic colonialism, and at best (worst) the Church was along for the ride. Just because some of the imperial families of Europe decided to wrap up parts of it in religion didn't make it a religious action in any way
Oh, but it did. If the Catholic church had disapproved of those actions, it could simply have made public statements denouncing them and excommunicating anybody participating in them. They could also have refused money from anybody who made it by conquering the Americas.
Instead, the church was doing far more than just come along for the ride: they provided the moral justification, they provided PR, they settled, raped, pillaged, and stole, and they got a big cut of everything.
This "choice overload" is just a symptom of bad computer science in general: nobody knows whether any of those systems is "better" than any of the others. Nobody even knows what "better" would mean.
Furthermore, the academic process rewards people not doing the work to find out. If you spent six months to find out that your hot new idea is actually (1) worse than what was there before and (2) not so new anyway, you don't get tenure because you don't publish enough.
I suspect that you'd be in trouble in most Muslim countries if you proclaimed that "God is not great", you aren't going to follow Islam's silly rituals, or that you're an atheist. Until you can, Islamic science is simply not going to be competitive.
/ can really piss me off sometimes with these petty little complaints from people that clearly are not that sure about what they are doing in the first place.
Of course, I don't know what I'm doing; that's the point: Sun makes it too f*cking hard and confusing to figure out.
Go read up on your OS history: the majority of commercial server and desktop operating systems over the last 50 years have been written in high level languages. We don't have to "guess" whether it's fast enough--it is. We don't have to guess how much assembly language it takes--we know (it takes very little). We don't have to guess whether it prevents buffer overflows and many of the ills that afflict Windows, UNIX, and Linux--it does.
Hardly. Java would qualify as such. The defining characteristic [of a managed language] is that its inteded to be run inside a VM.
Those kinds of languages have been around since the 70's, so there was no reason for Microsoft to invent a new name for them. And I have no idea why you brought this into this discussion, since I didn't suggest using VM-based languages, I suggested using safe languages. Or do you labor under the misconception that only VM-based languages can be safe?
The OP that started this was basically claiming that companies should just 'do it right' as if thats a magic wand you can wave and make it happen. This is a common trap, often completed by stating, 'if they would just use [insert your favorite niche language here]'
I don't advocate particular languages. As long as a language is reasonably designed, it doesn't matter which one you use. You can write a good, safe, commercial, high-performance OS in Pascal, Modula-2, Modula-3, Oberon, Cedar/Mesa, PL/I, Smalltalk, Lisp, Algol, and many other languages, and people have. You can't do it in C-derived languages because C is fundamentally defective. That's another thing we don't have to guess about, the data on that is in, people like you just refuse to accept it.
And why is this a bad thing? Do you prefer apple to be the only company in control of a mobile smartphone platform?
Apple doesn't sell a mobile smartphone platform, but half a dozen other companies do.
You sound like it's a bad thing for a company to have a successful product. Your hidden assumption is that it's bad to seek profit.
I have no problem with companies making a profit or having a successful product. I have a problem with Troll Tech's business model, which I consider harmful to open source and the success of Linux on phones.
Think about it for a second. Let's say that Troll Tech is lucky and picks up some amazing programmers, perhaps some that have a little vision and imagine the whole thing and make it a seamless experience, they even hang out with artist types. Let's say they also do phenomenally well with their phone. Do you think other hardware manufacturers wouldn't jump on it? Forks and different Linux versions would quickly emerge, you'd have the Linux "ready for the desktop, really trully this time" but on commodity phones instead of computers. How is this bad?
It is bad because Troll Tech's pricing structure makes Qtopia more expensive for commercial developers than other popular platforms, and this hurts the adoption of mobile Linux because mobile platforms need commercial developers to succeed. So, I'm against Troll Tech because it's clear to me that they will not be doing "phenomenally well" with their phone; the more phones they run on, the worse it will be for mobile Linux.
Furthermore, Qtopia simply doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of unifying the Linux phone market because many phone manufacturers simply will not be willing to depend on Troll Tech for their GUI (and because it just isn't all that good anyway). Therefore, far from unifying the phone market, to the degree that Qtopia will be adopted, it will fragment it.
The fact remains that Qt dual GPL/commercial model works and it arguably works better than what Gtk/LGPL provides for.
Yes, it works for Troll Tech's bottom line.
Ughh... another anti-Qt/GPL troll post gets modded up as "interesting" on/. - not news anymore.
The problem with Qt is not that it's available under the GPL, it's that it is available under a commercial license as well.
Linux kernel is only available in GPL flavor.
I have no problem with that. I like GPL-only software. What I don't like is companies using the GPL as a nuisance license to promote their proprietary products. And I also don't like companies trying to pretend that they are open source friendly and then exclude other open source projects from the hardware they run on.
This is usually sour grapes from the Gtk-fanboy FUD spreaders
No, yours is the usual sour grapes from the Qt/KDE fanboys, because you know deep down that I'm right.
I notice that you dont actually name this language. Can you?
There are so many: Object Pascal, Oberon, Cedar/Mesa, Modula-3, and on and on.
What classes of buffer overflows does it protect against?
The memory corrupting kind.
Do you still have full access to pointers and memory reads/writes/copies?
Of course, you do. Safe programming languages don't prevent you from doing unsafe things, they merely make you ask for them explicitly.
Do you have to give up direct manipulation of the stack?
There is no "direct manipulation of the stack" in C.
Yes, thats right. Took lessons from 7of9 on distributed computing between make-out sessions.
You lucky bastard... but, wait: I knew it! You have been assimilated! No wonder!
Now its very arguable that the reason this stuff happens is because programmers are being 'tricky' and that is backfiring on them. But its also arguable that such programmers have to be tricky still to get the performance needed in some cases.
I don't think that's arguable: I have yet to see a single inter-module interface that needed to be "tricky" or "unsafe" in order to gain performance.
In my experience, most C and C++ programmers simply are incapable of making rational performance decisions, spending excessive amounts of time "optimizing" code that makes no difference to overall performance, and often not even knowing which constructs actually work faster.
Microsoft (and I'm sure others) have research projects to try building an O/S kernel in a managed language, but its very much in early research.
The term "managed language" is some bizarre Microsoft neologism, and I have no idea what it's even supposed to mean.
In any case, people have written operating systems in Object Pascal, Cedar/Mesa, Oberon, Modula-3, Lisp, Smalltalk, and other languages. Several of those languages even have garbage collection and dynamic typing. It's not rocket science and it doesn't require new research.
No, It ensure that no one can release something and then patent it later
No, that's wrong. It means what I said it means: people can't use it and patent it.
It does nothing to ensure that no patents can ever exist.
Of course not. I didn't claim it did. The FSF doesn't claim it does. Where do you get these insane ideas from?
That MS novell deal and the patent threat was manufactured by the FSF in order to push the GPLv3 along.
Good grief! Take off your tin foil hat.
But that same fix will come back to bite them. MS can create a little covenant not to sue their customers and place it in their product offerings and in effect turn everyone who buys MS stuff into a little novell that cannot distribute GPLv3 covered works because of language in the GPLv3 itself.
No, Microsoft can't do that because if they did, they could be hauled into court for a declaratory judgment on their patent claims.
I wish I could pull up some examples quickly, but not all buffer overflows are obvious.
Buffer overflows are completely avoidable by using a language with bounds checks.
Many millions of dollars per year flow into software/os/systems R&D to find a way to make a system impervious to these types of attacks, while still having an O/S that runs at a useful speed.
The techniques for making buffer overflows impossible are well understood, and switching to languages that implement them does not cost you anything in terms of performance (the few percent overhead of bounds checking is more than made up for by better opportunities for optimization). The only thing you can't do is prevent them and stay backwards compatible with C or C APIs.
Some of them are very much NOT obvious, and involve 3rd order effects. (yes, I realize this implies that
"3rd order effects"? Did you learn programming on Star Trek?
As a perfect validation, try to find a piece of software of non-trivial size/complexity that has no bugs, and never has had a buffer overflow.
Of course, software will have some kinds of bugs, but it does not have to have buffer overflows.
I believe Microsoft takes the credit for that one.
No, this one Sun did to themselves. While Sun squandered away Java's installed base in the browser, Flash managed to establish itself as a de-facto standard.
Microsoft made it not work on Windows. Not being able to reach 90+% of your target audience = dead product.
Microsoft has done many sleazy things, but "making Java not work on Windows" isn't among them.
I just don't get why J2ME development has to be so complicated: weird acronyms, half a dozen versions, different packages which may or may not be supported on any particular device, applications that sometimes run and sometimes don't, installers that sometimes work and sometimes don't, etc.
Sun is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory; give it another few years and they'll have thoroughly destroyed the mobile Java market as well, just like they did with the Java desktop market.
I'd agree that Apple isn't "about openness", but not being "about openness" doesn't necessarily mean you're "about lock-in".
You're right, it doesn't necessarily mean that.
But Apple is about lock-in. They are trying to do it gently so you don't notice, but from the non-standard menu bar to iTunes to Cocoa, they want you to make a commitment to their software that is hard to get out of. It's the only way they can survive.
So, you see, things are a lot more complicated than some folks seem to think.
I don't see anything "complicated" about it: Apple is complying with the KHTML license, that's all. This doesn't make them some shining open source star.
If Apple actually cared about open source, there would be a bunch of things they could do: make an official Gtk+ port, release their Objective C 2.0 runtime open source, open source Cocoa, support ext3, stop badmouthing Linux, etc.
You don't "have" to sign your code; many applications ship unsigned. All it means is that the user gets a warning dialog and has to go through an extra step.
Or are you saying that this was the reason Apple acquired NeXT instead of Be?
Actually, Apple probably bought NeXT because of Jobs. The fact that it came with an OS that had some FOSS components in it probably bugged them, but their marketing department made lemonade out of lemons by trying to portray OS X as a kind of open system. Of course, they've been up to their usual tricks ever since.
When we're deciding which threats need mitigation, we concentrate our efforts on those where the attacker can cause real damage
Well, yeah, but there are so many threats against Microsoft software. So, why not just do it right in the first place? Why not create software without the possibility of buffer overflows and most other avoidable issues in the first place?
So the fact that two disagreeing nations speak different languages now means that those languages were invented to drive a wedge between them?
Hebrew and Arabic weren't "invented" specifically to drive a wedge between Israel and the Arab world, they have simply been used again and again to drive a wedge between the respective believers and non-believers in general.
And, come on, that's not some wild idea of mine, it's in the Koran and the Torah. Both groups go through a great deal of trouble creating differences from non-believers and resisting assimilation (including cutting off a piece of you-know-what and bizarre dietary rules), the Koran stresses the supposed uniqueness of Arabic, and the story of Babel tells us about the conflicts that arise when people speak different languages. Islam and Judaism are about creating distinctions and they explicitly recognize the role of language to do it. How much more clearly do you need it spelled out than in the primary texts of those religions themselves?
Were French and German invented to piss each other off?
Not quite. French and German were each created (and they were created!) to unify a lot of squabbling little principalities and regions into large nations in which people lived peacefully together, and they succeeded at that (unfortunately, those nations then became powerful enough to go raping and pillaging across the globe).
Also, If the very existence of Hebrew scares you, well... mifached. It isn't going away.
It scares me about as much as a bunch of Star Trek nerds speaking Klingon.
Maybe you should read what you cite: "There are reasons that can make it better to use the Lesser GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library. This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library."
Well, Qtopia is not much different from the GNU C library: it does not provide a significant unique functionality relative to closed source competitors. And Qtopia's licensing model makes Linux a less attractive platform to develop for than Palm, Symbian, or PocketPC, which means that standardizing on Qtopia for mobile Linux would actually hurt mobile Linux relative to the closed source competitors. (Of course, in addition, I think Qtopia just isn't very good.)
3) Is the cost really that high compared to paying developers or licensing other platforms?
I don't need to pay anything to develop for Palm, PocketPC, or Symbian.
2) Do you have the same objection to MySQL?
Since MySQL does not require me to link with it, does not prevent me from running other databases on the same machine, and does not attempt to monopolize an entire device class, I think it's a different situation from Qt. So, MySQL doesn't affect me either way, and so I really don't care. A Qtopia domination of the mobile Linux space would hurt me as an open source developer, and therefore I oppose it.
Surely a fork can remain compatible? I can see that proprietary developers would have to compile against Troll Tech's version, why would end users have to have it?
If the fork has to remain compatible, then Troll Tech controls the APIs; my point exactly.
Slashdot Mirror
The point here is that it seems a bit hypocritical for Nokia to talk about how the iPhone is closed when their own browser depends upon code written at Apple and used on the iPhone.
I see nothing hypocritical about it: the Nokia phones are open (i.e., you can install applications on it), iPhone is closed (i.e., you can't).
I also don't see why it's Apple's responsibility to support GTK+ or ext3
Responsibility? No, it's not their "responsibility". The fact that they don't is one of many indications, however, that Apple's business model is based on trapping people in proprietary interfaces and APIs.
and am not sure where exactly they're badmouthing Linux (which is, after all, one of their competitors).
Glad you realize that; many Apple apologists claim that Apple is somehow a friend to Linux.
Yes, of course: Linus would be completely impartial and would never do something as silly as voicing his own personal opinion when he shouldn't. Great idea!
Now would be a terrible time to stop developing parallel languages, because the problem is just now coming to the forefront with the limits of single-core performance pushing back and multi-cores taking over.
This is one of the reasons dual-licensing is bad. Big projects with this problem are OpenOffice, Java, and Qt.
ooo-build (previously just for build fixes) is now a formal fork of OpenOffice [CC] to be located at http://go-oo.org/ [CC]
And this is the proper response: to fork the code and make an open-source only version, leaving the company and all its legal shenanigans in the dust.
My faith (Christianity) teaches me to love everyone, regardless of their economic status, race, or faith. Because I am completely ignorant as to how someone could regard such teachings as "sad," please educate me.
It's the other parts of Christianity are sad. It's also the failure to even remotely live up to its teachings that are sad. Well, they aren't just "sad", they are evil.
In summary, the conquering of the Americas was about big money, imperialism, and economic colonialism, and at best (worst) the Church was along for the ride. Just because some of the imperial families of Europe decided to wrap up parts of it in religion didn't make it a religious action in any way
Oh, but it did. If the Catholic church had disapproved of those actions, it could simply have made public statements denouncing them and excommunicating anybody participating in them. They could also have refused money from anybody who made it by conquering the Americas.
Instead, the church was doing far more than just come along for the ride: they provided the moral justification, they provided PR, they settled, raped, pillaged, and stole, and they got a big cut of everything.
This "choice overload" is just a symptom of bad computer science in general: nobody knows whether any of those systems is "better" than any of the others. Nobody even knows what "better" would mean.
Furthermore, the academic process rewards people not doing the work to find out. If you spent six months to find out that your hot new idea is actually (1) worse than what was there before and (2) not so new anyway, you don't get tenure because you don't publish enough.
I suspect that you'd be in trouble in most Muslim countries if you proclaimed that "God is not great", you aren't going to follow Islam's silly rituals, or that you're an atheist. Until you can, Islamic science is simply not going to be competitive.
/ can really piss me off sometimes with these petty little complaints from people that clearly are not that sure about what they are doing in the first place.
Of course, I don't know what I'm doing; that's the point: Sun makes it too f*cking hard and confusing to figure out.
Is it possible that writing an O/S using
Go read up on your OS history: the majority of commercial server and desktop operating systems over the last 50 years have been written in high level languages. We don't have to "guess" whether it's fast enough--it is. We don't have to guess how much assembly language it takes--we know (it takes very little). We don't have to guess whether it prevents buffer overflows and many of the ills that afflict Windows, UNIX, and Linux--it does.
Hardly. Java would qualify as such. The defining characteristic [of a managed language] is that its inteded to be run inside a VM.
Those kinds of languages have been around since the 70's, so there was no reason for Microsoft to invent a new name for them. And I have no idea why you brought this into this discussion, since I didn't suggest using VM-based languages, I suggested using safe languages. Or do you labor under the misconception that only VM-based languages can be safe?
The OP that started this was basically claiming that companies should just 'do it right' as if thats a magic wand you can wave and make it happen. This is a common trap, often completed by stating, 'if they would just use [insert your favorite niche language here]'
I don't advocate particular languages. As long as a language is reasonably designed, it doesn't matter which one you use. You can write a good, safe, commercial, high-performance OS in Pascal, Modula-2, Modula-3, Oberon, Cedar/Mesa, PL/I, Smalltalk, Lisp, Algol, and many other languages, and people have. You can't do it in C-derived languages because C is fundamentally defective. That's another thing we don't have to guess about, the data on that is in, people like you just refuse to accept it.
And why is this a bad thing? Do you prefer apple to be the only company in control of a mobile smartphone platform?
Apple doesn't sell a mobile smartphone platform, but half a dozen other companies do.
You sound like it's a bad thing for a company to have a successful product. Your hidden assumption is that it's bad to seek profit.
I have no problem with companies making a profit or having a successful product. I have a problem with Troll Tech's business model, which I consider harmful to open source and the success of Linux on phones.
Think about it for a second. Let's say that Troll Tech is lucky and picks up some amazing programmers, perhaps some that have a little vision and imagine the whole thing and make it a seamless experience, they even hang out with artist types. Let's say they also do phenomenally well with their phone. Do you think other hardware manufacturers wouldn't jump on it? Forks and different Linux versions would quickly emerge, you'd have the Linux "ready for the desktop, really trully this time" but on commodity phones instead of computers. How is this bad?
It is bad because Troll Tech's pricing structure makes Qtopia more expensive for commercial developers than other popular platforms, and this hurts the adoption of mobile Linux because mobile platforms need commercial developers to succeed. So, I'm against Troll Tech because it's clear to me that they will not be doing "phenomenally well" with their phone; the more phones they run on, the worse it will be for mobile Linux.
Furthermore, Qtopia simply doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of unifying the Linux phone market because many phone manufacturers simply will not be willing to depend on Troll Tech for their GUI (and because it just isn't all that good anyway). Therefore, far from unifying the phone market, to the degree that Qtopia will be adopted, it will fragment it.
The fact remains that Qt dual GPL/commercial model works and it arguably works better than what Gtk/LGPL provides for.
/. - not news anymore.
Yes, it works for Troll Tech's bottom line.
Ughh... another anti-Qt/GPL troll post gets modded up as "interesting" on
The problem with Qt is not that it's available under the GPL, it's that it is available under a commercial license as well.
Linux kernel is only available in GPL flavor.
I have no problem with that. I like GPL-only software. What I don't like is companies using the GPL as a nuisance license to promote their proprietary products. And I also don't like companies trying to pretend that they are open source friendly and then exclude other open source projects from the hardware they run on.
This is usually sour grapes from the Gtk-fanboy FUD spreaders
No, yours is the usual sour grapes from the Qt/KDE fanboys, because you know deep down that I'm right.
I notice that you dont actually name this language. Can you?
There are so many: Object Pascal, Oberon, Cedar/Mesa, Modula-3, and on and on.
What classes of buffer overflows does it protect against?
The memory corrupting kind.
Do you still have full access to pointers and memory reads/writes/copies?
Of course, you do. Safe programming languages don't prevent you from doing unsafe things, they merely make you ask for them explicitly.
Do you have to give up direct manipulation of the stack?
There is no "direct manipulation of the stack" in C.
Yes, thats right. Took lessons from 7of9 on distributed computing between make-out sessions.
You lucky bastard... but, wait: I knew it! You have been assimilated! No wonder!
Now its very arguable that the reason this stuff happens is because programmers are being 'tricky' and that is backfiring on them. But its also arguable that such programmers have to be tricky still to get the performance needed in some cases.
I don't think that's arguable: I have yet to see a single inter-module interface that needed to be "tricky" or "unsafe" in order to gain performance.
In my experience, most C and C++ programmers simply are incapable of making rational performance decisions, spending excessive amounts of time "optimizing" code that makes no difference to overall performance, and often not even knowing which constructs actually work faster.
Microsoft (and I'm sure others) have research projects to try building an O/S kernel in a managed language, but its very much in early research.
The term "managed language" is some bizarre Microsoft neologism, and I have no idea what it's even supposed to mean.
In any case, people have written operating systems in Object Pascal, Cedar/Mesa, Oberon, Modula-3, Lisp, Smalltalk, and other languages. Several of those languages even have garbage collection and dynamic typing. It's not rocket science and it doesn't require new research.
No, It ensure that no one can release something and then patent it later
No, that's wrong. It means what I said it means: people can't use it and patent it.
It does nothing to ensure that no patents can ever exist.
Of course not. I didn't claim it did. The FSF doesn't claim it does. Where do you get these insane ideas from?
That MS novell deal and the patent threat was manufactured by the FSF in order to push the GPLv3 along.
Good grief! Take off your tin foil hat.
But that same fix will come back to bite them. MS can create a little covenant not to sue their customers and place it in their product offerings and in effect turn everyone who buys MS stuff into a little novell that cannot distribute GPLv3 covered works because of language in the GPLv3 itself.
No, Microsoft can't do that because if they did, they could be hauled into court for a declaratory judgment on their patent claims.
I wish I could pull up some examples quickly, but not all buffer overflows are obvious.
Buffer overflows are completely avoidable by using a language with bounds checks.
Many millions of dollars per year flow into software/os/systems R&D to find a way to make a system impervious to these types of attacks, while still having an O/S that runs at a useful speed.
The techniques for making buffer overflows impossible are well understood, and switching to languages that implement them does not cost you anything in terms of performance (the few percent overhead of bounds checking is more than made up for by better opportunities for optimization). The only thing you can't do is prevent them and stay backwards compatible with C or C APIs.
Some of them are very much NOT obvious, and involve 3rd order effects. (yes, I realize this implies that
"3rd order effects"? Did you learn programming on Star Trek?
As a perfect validation, try to find a piece of software of non-trivial size/complexity that has no bugs, and never has had a buffer overflow.
Of course, software will have some kinds of bugs, but it does not have to have buffer overflows.
I believe Microsoft takes the credit for that one.
No, this one Sun did to themselves. While Sun squandered away Java's installed base in the browser, Flash managed to establish itself as a de-facto standard.
Microsoft made it not work on Windows. Not being able to reach 90+% of your target audience = dead product.
Microsoft has done many sleazy things, but "making Java not work on Windows" isn't among them.
I just don't get why J2ME development has to be so complicated: weird acronyms, half a dozen versions, different packages which may or may not be supported on any particular device, applications that sometimes run and sometimes don't, installers that sometimes work and sometimes don't, etc.
Sun is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory; give it another few years and they'll have thoroughly destroyed the mobile Java market as well, just like they did with the Java desktop market.
I'd agree that Apple isn't "about openness", but not being "about openness" doesn't necessarily mean you're "about lock-in".
You're right, it doesn't necessarily mean that.
But Apple is about lock-in. They are trying to do it gently so you don't notice, but from the non-standard menu bar to iTunes to Cocoa, they want you to make a commitment to their software that is hard to get out of. It's the only way they can survive.
So, you see, things are a lot more complicated than some folks seem to think.
I don't see anything "complicated" about it: Apple is complying with the KHTML license, that's all. This doesn't make them some shining open source star.
If Apple actually cared about open source, there would be a bunch of things they could do: make an official Gtk+ port, release their Objective C 2.0 runtime open source, open source Cocoa, support ext3, stop badmouthing Linux, etc.
Unsigned apps just generate a warning dialog. Like they do, oh, on Debian Linux or for Windows drivers.
You don't "have" to sign your code; many applications ship unsigned. All it means is that the user gets a warning dialog and has to go through an extra step.
Or are you saying that this was the reason Apple acquired NeXT instead of Be?
Actually, Apple probably bought NeXT because of Jobs. The fact that it came with an OS that had some FOSS components in it probably bugged them, but their marketing department made lemonade out of lemons by trying to portray OS X as a kind of open system. Of course, they've been up to their usual tricks ever since.
for our wide variety of customers and their unique needs.
Just remember: "our customer base, they're all individuals to us."
When we're deciding which threats need mitigation, we concentrate our efforts on those where the attacker can cause real damage
Well, yeah, but there are so many threats against Microsoft software. So, why not just do it right in the first place? Why not create software without the possibility of buffer overflows and most other avoidable issues in the first place?
So the fact that two disagreeing nations speak different languages now means that those languages were invented to drive a wedge between them?
Hebrew and Arabic weren't "invented" specifically to drive a wedge between Israel and the Arab world, they have simply been used again and again to drive a wedge between the respective believers and non-believers in general.
And, come on, that's not some wild idea of mine, it's in the Koran and the Torah. Both groups go through a great deal of trouble creating differences from non-believers and resisting assimilation (including cutting off a piece of you-know-what and bizarre dietary rules), the Koran stresses the supposed uniqueness of Arabic, and the story of Babel tells us about the conflicts that arise when people speak different languages. Islam and Judaism are about creating distinctions and they explicitly recognize the role of language to do it. How much more clearly do you need it spelled out than in the primary texts of those religions themselves?
Were French and German invented to piss each other off?
Not quite. French and German were each created (and they were created!) to unify a lot of squabbling little principalities and regions into large nations in which people lived peacefully together, and they succeeded at that (unfortunately, those nations then became powerful enough to go raping and pillaging across the globe).
Also, If the very existence of Hebrew scares you, well... mifached. It isn't going away.
It scares me about as much as a bunch of Star Trek nerds speaking Klingon.
Oh yes they do
Maybe you should read what you cite: "There are reasons that can make it better to use the Lesser GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library. This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library."
Well, Qtopia is not much different from the GNU C library: it does not provide a significant unique functionality relative to closed source competitors. And Qtopia's licensing model makes Linux a less attractive platform to develop for than Palm, Symbian, or PocketPC, which means that standardizing on Qtopia for mobile Linux would actually hurt mobile Linux relative to the closed source competitors. (Of course, in addition, I think Qtopia just isn't very good.)
3) Is the cost really that high compared to paying developers or licensing other platforms?
I don't need to pay anything to develop for Palm, PocketPC, or Symbian.
2) Do you have the same objection to MySQL?
Since MySQL does not require me to link with it, does not prevent me from running other databases on the same machine, and does not attempt to monopolize an entire device class, I think it's a different situation from Qt. So, MySQL doesn't affect me either way, and so I really don't care. A Qtopia domination of the mobile Linux space would hurt me as an open source developer, and therefore I oppose it.
Surely a fork can remain compatible? I can see that proprietary developers would have to compile against Troll Tech's version, why would end users have to have it?
If the fork has to remain compatible, then Troll Tech controls the APIs; my point exactly.