Think of a republic, in a free state, you don't have the freedom to kill someone else, that's not a freedom really, cuz you're just taking away someone elses freedom.
Same thing with GPL, the only things you are not allowed to do is to deprive others of the freedoms you enjoy or to make it possible to deprive others of those freedoms.
I mean if I release some software I want everybody to have equal access to it. Somebody shouldn't have more rights to it just because he made some modification.
This is sort of like the tyrant saying to people crying for a republic: Before I came along you were living in caves.
I don't believe in being able to own knowledge. In the past it was the kings and emperors owned all knowedge (see the story of where copyright came about). Now since we got republics, we sort of started wondering who to give information to, so we just pick the rich and ruling class apparently.
How come we all can agree that things like schools, military, and zero gravity toilets are neccessary for public good and are all willing to pay the government to support it. But we can't agree that software is for public good and it must be a viable product (thus we need to make up the notion of ownership of knowledge) for us to use/buy/do it.
Note I have only one thing against miscrosoft and it's products, the fact that they're proprietary. And thus I cannot use them, and I will not use them because I don't like giving up my rights and I don't like giving up the community's rights in order to be able to change the font in an easier way.
My mom has been using linux for the past 4 years or so. My doesn't know much about computers, up until recently she thought netscape == internet. the truly beginning users we can already get, it's the users who think they can configure their system temselves (like my dad), that linux will have a thougher time with. I don't evangelize linux to people who don't want to try it, most people don't want to be convinced, so I let them. I tried to get my dad to use linux and the result was a disaster, he never really wanted to use it so would only look for flaws.
The biggest point the guy is missing is that linux on the desktop is GROWING, not the other way around. It is getting easier to use and there are more and more apps. So yes, it is not ready to take over the desktop, but it's closer to that goal then it was a year ago. In my book that's not being dead.
While working at eazel I've seen a bunch of people use linux that have come from the MS world without much trouble. These were the truly casual computer users, not programmers or tech elite. No problem there.
I want to know where are you buying your crack. It's really good!
Have you ever thought about that we do compile on mainstream platforms? Because otherwise we couldn't work on the thing. Build system not working on some particular setup doesn't mean that the build system in general is screwed. Most likely it means that 1) you have some weird ass library 2) screwed up headers 3) too bleeding edge environment.
From your comments I don't suppose you've ever tried fixing build problems. I do this all the time because I have an alpha. And imagine what, I've never seen most of the code that I try to fix. It's fairly simple to identify the problem and it's usually some weird setup on my part rather then a bug in the build system.
So guess what. We aren't running into build errors. I guess we're not quality-driven by your meassure. Think about what you are saying. Why would we release something that doesn't build for us, it doesn't make sense.
Think about how many even just linux platforms there are. I don't have that many partitions and spare machines to try them all. If you don't want to contribute your time, then send me a machine, and I'll make sure it builds on there.
Plus do note that it takes one, read carefully, ONE person to fix a build problem and send in a patch so that the next beta will build on his system. And then it will work for all those users. If a particular setup does not have enough people who care about gnome compiling, then it is unlikely to get fixed. Way of life. I won't go around fixing build problems on Fufu Linux because I have better things to do. Oh yeah, like coding, you know, that process that produces code rather then to deal with stupid build problems on broken platforms that 5 1/2 people use.
I'm glad you volunteered to help with this and send it bug reports and patches. You see, GNOME is a cooperative effort of volunteers, so you have to volunteer to fix stuff. We aren't excusing ourselves from build troubles.
So... yes, we are taking patches. That is, if you are willing to get off your whining ass and do something instead of putting down people's work that you just got for free.
GNU GNOME would be redundant. The G in GNOME is GNU. Thus Gnu Network Object Model Environment. And given that Miguel is on the FSF board of directors, It could easily be said that it was his cronies that decided to write GNOME. It was, is and always will be an official GNU project. In fact very large parts of the code are copyright of FSF.
I don't think you understand. You think a license is a purely political choice and only relevant to the developers. No it is not. It is a very technical choice. It is a choice you make about the long term. Linus was quoted as saying that choosing GPL was the best technical decision he made. And it was.
The reason why I don't give a damn about what the Big 5 consultancy firms say, is that they don't look beyond this years profit sheet. Damned be tommorrow, if we can make more money today. Why don't we all look at 10-20 years in the future. Why don't we pick the choices that are best for the society, for what's best for the society is best for us. Philosophers have been trying to convince normal folk for thousands of years about this, but apparently have always failed.
I would of course also disagree on what's the best desktop even now, but then again, I am biased, and it would be a subjective opinion, just like yours. It would give absolutely no real proof, it would just say, foo is better then bar, just because I think it is. Or because a 1000 people think it is. It makes no difference. Any subjective opinion is wrong on the face of it.
So why don't you make your choices based on:
What's going to be the best choice in the long run. noting that If I choose something now it will change the future, so choose carefully.
Choose not what's good for you in the next year or two. Choose what's good for the community, for the economy in the next 10 to 20 years. You will most likely still be on this planet in 10 to 20 years, and you'll be doing much better if other people are also doing better, and if the entire economoy is doing better.
Never get sucked into subjective judgements like you do above. They help you nothing. They only help to convince yourself that the choice you made was correct, but they don't make it more correct nor more wrong.
With all that, most people would agree that GPL (note the beautiful falacy in my argument here) will create a better computing environment in 10 to 20 years by allowing code reuse and limit the reinvention of wheels. Also by increasing the overall pool of usable software in the long run, rather then having a couple quality proprietary solutions which are better in their time, but get lost and reinvented again later as something else because their source is never free.
uhhh? As far as I'm reading your reply it says "Because most people use C++ for GUI programming, using C for such purpose is inferrior". By the same argument Windows must really be waay better at just about everything since more people use it.
You are giving your personal opinion. There is nothing rational about saying that "language FOO is inferrior to language BAR for doing BLAH". It is a subjective choice. It depends on your coding style, your preferences, the people you work with, etc...
You also appear to be mixing object oriented programming (which is a programming technique) with language with sugar object oriented syntax. Yes. OO syntax is sugar. That doesn't say it's bad or good, but it does say that it is not mandatory.
The best programming environment is the one you are the most comfortable with. If I know FOO and am very profficent with FOO, I will probably be much more productive with FOO then with BAR. Not only will I be more productive, but what I produce will be more useful and less buggy.
So don't take this as an argument either way. I'm not arguing that C is better in GUI then C++ or that C++ is better then C.
and this is wrong in what way? Motif apps will dnd into GTK+ apps and gtk apps can dnd into motif apps. it's completely transparent for the user. Xt or no Xt makes absolutelyno difference here. GTK+ not being based on Xt makes it hard to do a Motif->GTK+ port, but it makes absolutely no difference on how DnD works together. Things can happily continue to use motif. Now dragging of complex data types is another story, but motif doesn't handle that really. So if you made your motif app support bonobo, you could dnd bonobo objects to/from gtk apps. The toolkit makes absolutely no difference here.
Re:Like Democracy, choice yeilds two majorities ..
on
Gnome 1.1.4 Released
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I wonder what the G in GNOME stands for. Could it be? No it can't be. It is. GNU. Think about that. Also note that all original GNOME code is Copyright FSF.
All of this proprietary crap that only has one really bad player that only works on some versions of some operating systems is just driving me nuts.
I think there need to be some open standards for audio and video and people should follow them. I think this is the area that free software philosophy really needs to invade next.
There was no 80187. The 80186 was just 8086 with some extra functionality on the IO side, but no new instruction set, so you just used 8087 with the 80186 if you needed floating point in hardware.
There was no 4040, since Intel made the 4004 to order, and then sold it to everyone, and people wanted a more powerful version, so intel came out with the 8008, which was the 4004, but in an 8-bit rendition, instead of 4-bit. The 8080 was a faster 8-bit processor, which was more advanced, and faster (orders of magnitude), but still code compatible. Once there were 8-bits on the market on the market there was no interest in the scrappy little 4004, so it was discontinued, and intel never made another 4-bit since.
Actually 80186 came out first, that is before 80286, and it was meant for general PCs, but it was same speed as 8086, and had a lot of the support chips integrated in itself, things like the SIO, and Clock generator, and other stuff. Manufacturers didn't use it because 8086 plus the other chips was cheaper then the integrated 80186. In PCs the waste of space, and power didn't matter enough to pay more for the 80186, but in embedded systems both are high premium, so the 80186 find its niche there.
The 8088 was a bastardized 8086 with external 8-bit bus, where the 8086 was 16-bit throughout. This was done especially at IBMs request, because IBM wanted a CPU for the PC, but didn't want 16-bit external bus, because it didn't want it to compete with its mainframe business, and they though this would shlow down the I/O sufficiently to achieve this and they were right. ISA bus is their other endevour in this direction, and we are still living with that one. This bus reduction disappeared with the 80186, and 80286, which were only available in the full version, but the 80386 brought us 80SX386, which was a similar bastard which was 32-bit internally, and 16-bit externally. The 80SX486 was also crippled, but it lacked the math co-processor which was built into the DX version, and the busses were of the same speed, and bit width. Neither of these crippling techniques have been used since, but now the Celeron is crippled by slower bus speed, and disabling of the SMP functionality. (It can be overclocked, and enabled, but for general user these limits are not surmountable.) So the correct time line of the backward compatible series of CPUs (not counting the odballs of other incompatible cpu lines.):
4004,8008,8080,8085,8086,8088,80186,80286,80386,80 SX386,80486,80SX486,pentium,pentium pro,pentium MMX, pentium II, pentium II xeon, pentium III, pentium III xeon.
The 4004 was the first general application CPU, which was available outside of research laboratories. Intel made it for a japanese calculator company, but it became quite popular as a general CPU for computers, and was used in trafic control systems, and in some of the early NASA deep space probes, where these chips are still in operation, and transmitting data back to earth. (I think it is in the Voyagers, and Mariners.) This was a very slow 100KHZ, and very simple 4-bit CPU. It was fairly quickly superceded by its more powerfull cousing the 8008, which was an 8-bit machine of similar speed. Then came the 8080, which was also 8-bit, but much faster as it raged from 1-MHz to 4-MHz, and later even faster. At this time some people left Intel, and founded Zilog, which had the bestselling Z80, which was a descendant of th 8080, and was much faster, and more versatile, and could go up to 8-MHz. Intel also released the more integrated 8085, which is still used in some embedded applications, but it was overshadowed by Z80 in fame, and speed. Then Intel made a quick hack of a 16-bit CPU called 8086 to beat Motorola, and have the first 16-bit on the market. They meant to phase it out later, but unfortunately IBM adopted a crippled version of it called 8088, which was internally 16-bit, and externally 8-bit. So until today we live with the compromises this hack made to be finished with the design in just 6-weeks. We suffer from the horrible memory model, and other penalties. This model overshadowed the Z80, and its successors 80186, 80286, 80386, 80486, pentium, pentium pro, pentium II, and pentium III are still the mainstream today. They can still run some of the 4004 code if you wanted to, and if you switch them into the basic compatibility mode. The descendants of the Z80 the Z280, and the Z380 haven't done nearly as well, but Zilog is still around manufacturing embedded version of the Z80, which is still used in cars, kitchen appliances, hard drive controllers, and such. They beat Intel at its own game for a while, but the selection of 8088 by IBM over other chips elevated Intel so far, that no one has been able unseat them from the throne. That is not to say that Intel didn't have its own failures. The 80186 was a disaster, and alsmost no one used it as a compoter chip, although it did some business as an embedded processor. The real 16-bit project meant to replace the X86 series, and usher in era of more designer friendlier CPUs was continually delayed, and when it came out it was underwhelming, and never succeded as a general computer CPU, although it has seen some success as embedded processor, and was user as a brain of laser printers until the late 1990s. This was the i960, and i860 series of processors. The merced project is the latest attemp by Intel to get rid off the pupolar bastard X86, but many thing it is doomed to failure like the earlier chips. Only future will show us what will really happen.
What the $#@! does this have to do with RedHat. However I don't think it was such a bad idea. Remember the 2.0.0 linux kernel? was that a publicity stunt? Same thing here. The betas weren't tested enough and most bugs came to light afterwards. Because we released 1.0 that early we now have a stable enviroment, which we might not have had had we not released. GNOME != RedHat, remember that. RedHat may suggest certain things, but ultimately it is not their decision.
Which is why it was the redhat people not me that were pushing the ability to read KDE menus fromt he gnome panel. Take a close look at the gnome and KDE sites, and try to figure out on which you find more references to the other. After THEN open your mouth.
commercial software is NOT necessarily proprietory software
do make a distinction, redhat is quite commercial software so is gcc and so is abiword... however they are all free software... making software free doesn't mean not getting paid for it...
If country is free (people in it have freedom), the country does not have laws. If a country has any kind of law, the country is NOT free. All the democrats that repeat this hynagogic mantra put 98% of the democratic movement to sleep. (of course for you americans, I don't mean the democratic party here)
I can easily show prior art for this one in our own magazine...
US patents are scary...
I think I'll patent taking a shit... then everybody who will take a shit from now on will have to pay me a $1 for the privilage... I don't want much... and I just want what is rightfully mine for the idea of patenting it...
classic FUD... same could be said about just about anything....
imagine you buy a car... the car company doesn't tell you how to drive it... you have to use THEIR driver.... you can't hire a different driver... and you can't drive it yourself... that's what happens....
what they should give out is the interface... NOT the implementation... the product is the hardware... not the software... not to mention that your understanding of patent laws is not that good... if they have something patented... they can make it completely public... no-one can copy it.... plus if you already made something public... no one can patent it...
creative should make all the INTERFACES to their hardware public... and provide sample drivers and smale source code...
if I were to argument like you... "CPU companies should keep their instruction sets secret and only provide you with a compiler..."... I mean they don't want a bunch of broken compilers... and they don't want others to discover how their cpu works.... and car companies should not allow you to drive your car by yourself... you probably aren't as good of a driver...
I agree 100%... I won't be buing any creative product for which there isn't a 100% free driver... maybe I wills kip their products entierly... which has been my policy to date... so nothing will change... same with 3D under linux...
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Same thing with GPL, the only things you are not allowed to do is to deprive others of the freedoms you enjoy or to make it possible to deprive others of those freedoms.
I mean if I release some software I want everybody to have equal access to it. Somebody shouldn't have more rights to it just because he made some modification.
So you are misusing the word free in this case.
I don't believe in being able to own knowledge. In the past it was the kings and emperors owned all knowedge (see the story of where copyright came about). Now since we got republics, we sort of started wondering who to give information to, so we just pick the rich and ruling class apparently.
How come we all can agree that things like schools, military, and zero gravity toilets are neccessary for public good and are all willing to pay the government to support it. But we can't agree that software is for public good and it must be a viable product (thus we need to make up the notion of ownership of knowledge) for us to use/buy/do it.
Note I have only one thing against miscrosoft and it's products, the fact that they're proprietary. And thus I cannot use them, and I will not use them because I don't like giving up my rights and I don't like giving up the community's rights in order to be able to change the font in an easier way.
The biggest point the guy is missing is that linux on the desktop is GROWING, not the other way around. It is getting easier to use and there are more and more apps. So yes, it is not ready to take over the desktop, but it's closer to that goal then it was a year ago. In my book that's not being dead.
While working at eazel I've seen a bunch of people use linux that have come from the MS world without much trouble. These were the truly casual computer users, not programmers or tech elite. No problem there.
This has nothing to do with communism and I should politely say that you are full of, as you say, sh-t.
Have you ever thought about that we do compile on mainstream platforms? Because otherwise we couldn't work on the thing. Build system not working on some particular setup doesn't mean that the build system in general is screwed. Most likely it means that 1) you have some weird ass library 2) screwed up headers 3) too bleeding edge environment.
From your comments I don't suppose you've ever tried fixing build problems. I do this all the time because I have an alpha. And imagine what, I've never seen most of the code that I try to fix. It's fairly simple to identify the problem and it's usually some weird setup on my part rather then a bug in the build system.
So guess what. We aren't running into build errors. I guess we're not quality-driven by your meassure. Think about what you are saying. Why would we release something that doesn't build for us, it doesn't make sense.
Think about how many even just linux platforms there are. I don't have that many partitions and spare machines to try them all. If you don't want to contribute your time, then send me a machine, and I'll make sure it builds on there.
Plus do note that it takes one, read carefully, ONE person to fix a build problem and send in a patch so that the next beta will build on his system. And then it will work for all those users. If a particular setup does not have enough people who care about gnome compiling, then it is unlikely to get fixed. Way of life. I won't go around fixing build problems on Fufu Linux because I have better things to do. Oh yeah, like coding, you know, that process that produces code rather then to deal with stupid build problems on broken platforms that 5 1/2 people use.
So ... yes, we are taking patches. That is, if you are willing to get off your whining ass and do something instead of putting down people's work that you just got for free.
GNU GNOME would be redundant. The G in GNOME is GNU. Thus Gnu Network Object Model Environment. And given that Miguel is on the FSF board of directors, It could easily be said that it was his cronies that decided to write GNOME. It was, is and always will be an official GNU project. In fact very large parts of the code are copyright of FSF.
Lay off the crack...
The reason why I don't give a damn about what the Big 5 consultancy firms say, is that they don't look beyond this years profit sheet. Damned be tommorrow, if we can make more money today. Why don't we all look at 10-20 years in the future. Why don't we pick the choices that are best for the society, for what's best for the society is best for us. Philosophers have been trying to convince normal folk for thousands of years about this, but apparently have always failed.
I would of course also disagree on what's the best desktop even now, but then again, I am biased, and it would be a subjective opinion, just like yours. It would give absolutely no real proof, it would just say, foo is better then bar, just because I think it is. Or because a 1000 people think it is. It makes no difference. Any subjective opinion is wrong on the face of it.
So why don't you make your choices based on:
With all that, most people would agree that GPL (note the beautiful falacy in my argument here) will create a better computing environment in 10 to 20 years by allowing code reuse and limit the reinvention of wheels. Also by increasing the overall pool of usable software in the long run, rather then having a couple quality proprietary solutions which are better in their time, but get lost and reinvented again later as something else because their source is never free.
You are giving your personal opinion. There is nothing rational about saying that "language FOO is inferrior to language BAR for doing BLAH". It is a subjective choice. It depends on your coding style, your preferences, the people you work with, etc...
You also appear to be mixing object oriented programming (which is a programming technique) with language with sugar object oriented syntax. Yes. OO syntax is sugar. That doesn't say it's bad or good, but it does say that it is not mandatory.
The best programming environment is the one you are the most comfortable with. If I know FOO and am very profficent with FOO, I will probably be much more productive with FOO then with BAR. Not only will I be more productive, but what I produce will be more useful and less buggy.
So don't take this as an argument either way. I'm not arguing that C is better in GUI then C++ or that C++ is better then C.
and this is wrong in what way? Motif apps will dnd into GTK+ apps and gtk apps can dnd into motif apps. it's completely transparent for the user. Xt or no Xt makes absolutelyno difference here. GTK+ not being based on Xt makes it hard to do a Motif->GTK+ port, but it makes absolutely no difference on how DnD works together. Things can happily continue to use motif. Now dragging of complex data types is another story, but motif doesn't handle that really. So if you made your motif app support bonobo, you could dnd bonobo objects to/from gtk apps. The toolkit makes absolutely no difference here.
I wonder what the G in GNOME stands for. Could it be? No it can't be. It is. GNU. Think about that. Also note that all original GNOME code is Copyright FSF.
All of this proprietary crap that only has one really bad player that only works on some versions of some operating systems is just driving me nuts.
I think there need to be some open standards for audio and video and people should follow them. I think this is the area that free software philosophy really needs to invade next.
:>>--
4004,8008,8080,8085,8086,8088,80186,80286,80386,80 SX386,80486,80SX486,pentium,pentium pro,pentium MMX, pentium II, pentium II xeon, pentium III, pentium III xeon.
What the $#@! does this have to do with RedHat. However I don't think it was such a bad idea. Remember the 2.0.0 linux kernel? was that a publicity stunt? Same thing here. The betas weren't tested enough and most bugs came to light afterwards. Because we released 1.0 that early we now have a stable enviroment, which we might not have had had we not released. GNOME != RedHat, remember that. RedHat may suggest certain things, but ultimately it is not their decision.
Which is why it was the redhat people not me that were pushing the ability to read KDE menus fromt he gnome panel. Take a close look at the gnome and KDE sites, and try to figure out on which you find more references to the other. After THEN open your mouth.
commercial software is NOT necessarily proprietory software
do make a distinction, redhat is quite commercial software so is gcc and so is abiword ... however they are all free software ... making software free doesn't mean not getting paid for it ...
If country is free (people in it have freedom), the country does not have laws. If a country has any kind of law, the country is NOT free. All the democrats that repeat this hynagogic mantra put 98% of the democratic movement to sleep. (of course for you americans, I don't mean the democratic party here)
US patents are scary ...
I think I'll patent taking a shit ... then everybody who will take a shit from now on will have to pay me a $1 for the privilage ... I don't want much ... and I just want what is rightfully mine for the idea of patenting it ...
imagine you buy a car ... the car company doesn't tell you how to drive it ... you have to use THEIR driver .... you can't hire a different driver ... and you can't drive it yourself ... that's what happens ....
what they should give out is the interface ... NOT the implementation ... the product is the hardware ... not the software ... not to mention that your understanding of patent laws is not that good ... if they have something patented ... they can make it completely public ... no-one can copy it .... plus if you already made something public ... no one can patent it ...
creative should make all the INTERFACES to their hardware public ... and provide sample drivers and smale source code ...
if I were to argument like you ... "CPU companies should keep their instruction sets secret and only provide you with a compiler ..." ... I mean they don't want a bunch of broken compilers ... and they don't want others to discover how their cpu works .... and car companies should not allow you to drive your car by yourself ... you probably aren't as good of a driver ...
your logic is extremely flawed
212 is much faster at the same MHz as 211 ... from the benchmarks I saw a 500MHz 212 would outperform a 211 running at 1GHz
I agree 100% ... I won't be buing any creative product for which there isn't a 100% free driver ... maybe I wills kip their products entierly ... which has been my policy to date ... so nothing will change ... same with 3D under linux ...