It's not as if he was unaware of the danger of the death of free software.
The supposed death of free software and a "free internet" is just the distraction he's trying to use. MySQL is open source. Even if Oracle relicenses future releases of MySQL under terms that are less free, we still have the same MySQL as we've always had with the same free terms. If it were ever to be an issue, a fork would happen immediately and/or we'd see increased use of PostgreSQL. Either way, the "internet" will be kept free regardless. I don't know much about Monty, but my prejudgment is that he's slime.
I really do hate to see them rebuild their reputation (and market value) again, just to throw it all away like they did last time, but damned if it doesn't look like that's exactly what they're trying to do.
Actually, you've got it exactly backwards. Apple nearly went out of business because they went more open and allowed Mac clones. Now that they are (arguably) more closed in that respect, they are extremely successful.
I'm not sure what point you think has been "proven," unless you believe everything Glenn Beck says must automatically be wrong because he said it. But I understand; it's important for the Left to paint Beck as a nutjob (see Times person of the year article) and anyone who listens to him or (heaven forbid) agrees with some of the things he says as uneducated zombies so that they can avoid actually dealing with the issues being discussed. It's funny (or sad?). I've seen it several times chatting with my more liberal colleagues. Whenever they start to get flummoxed, they will invariably say something like "Ah, Glenn Beck would be proud" in place of reasoned argument and expect that to be the end of it, as if that says anything. Considering your "insightful" one-line jab, I'm guessing you've assumed the same. Well, whatever. This isn't a big concern of mine because I believe this will ultimately be failing strategy for the Left.
4) Code must always be 'self documenting' ('would you rather use a one-liner that requires a 3-line comment, or a 10-liner that requires no comments?')
Not sure if that example supports his claim very well... After all, four lines is less than ten, and if you can adequately describe what the function should do in three lines, somebody should easily be able to flesh it out themselves if ever a need arises. I'm all for self-documenting code, but for functions that are simple enough to be implemented in one line, I say go for it. We've got deadlines, people.
There is a difference between outsourcing cheap toys and souvenirs and outsourcing "technology." You claim the latter and then proceeded to talk only about the former, which is something we all know about. Not that outsourcing manufacturing is ideal, but "technology" at least is still something that is largely created in Western countries and Japan.
I know people like to think that the GPL played a significant role in the success of Linux, but in the face of so many examples of successful non-GPL free software such as apache and postfix, perhaps that assertion should be accompanied by a reasoned argument. Since no single software license is clearly a common denominator for successful free software, I wouldn't assume that the GPL is the driving force behind the success of Linux unless somebody makes a convincing argument in support of that claim. As it is now, although the assertion is often repeated, it seems to be based on mere assumption.
One day I switched to Freemind and Open Office for documents and Gmail for email... so terribly un-geek like, but so much easier.
I don't care one iota about the "geekiness" of a solution. If Gmail and OO.org works for you and you can get stuff done faster, that's wonderful. Personally, I did look back after I realized I can get so much more done in vim.
so that I could have a Unix-ish environment without having to worry about power management or weird wifi issues that I'd had with Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu, Slackware, ZenWalk, Mint, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and PC-BSD...
fans of the BSD license argue that it is "more free" because anyone may do anything with the software
Including... making it non-free again...
Oops.
Yeah, oops indeed. Like so many before you, you have bought into the false belief that BSD licensed code can magically become non-free in some fashion that GPL code cannot. Let's go over this again. The only one that can relicense code is the copyright holder. Even then, that will not nullify the license of code which has already been licensed and released. This is all true whether the code is BSD licensed or licensed under the GPL. You cannot take BSD, and make it non-free, as you assert. The only rights you have are what the license itself grants you. In the case of BSD code, you can use it in combination with proprietary code and even decide for yourself how to license your changes (this in contrast with the GPL), but it is impossible for a user to just take the code and say "hence forth, this is now proprietary code; thus, nobody shall use it except I."
If you still don't understand, I don't know what more I can do to help you.
It's sad that the headline here is about removing GPL code. Got a grudge against it?
Why is it sad? The code isn't closing, it's just now licensed under different (arguably freer) licenses. Unless you're RMS or one of his disciples who believes that all code must be GPL or it's not truly free, I don't see why this should make anyone sad. Free code is free code, and contrary to somewhat popular belief, the GPL does not make free code more free than it is.
Secondly, there are several reasons why a project might want to migrate away from GPL code, and none of those reasons have to have anything to do with having a grudge against the GPL. From a practical standpoint, avoiding the GPL also avoids many headaches related to source code and license mixing; this is especially important for a product which implements plug-ins since the legality of plugging some differently-licensed extensions into a GPL product is still uncertain. The GPL itself causes incompatibilities with certain licenses, so an easy way to avoid those types of problems is to avoid the GPL entirely.
Can you even name any important GPL software (other than emacs)
As an aside, Vim beats emacs on the license front anyway. In my book, charityware is considerably more endearing and noble than an All-Your-Source-Are-Belong-To-Us license.
I don't know why he called it tacky either. If anything was tacky, it was the original Xbox controller (or more generally, the entire original Xbox). IMO.
By doing what Apple does best. They weren't the first, but that doesn't mean that they didn't completely change the mobile industry. They saw something that sucked and people hated (your typical mobile phone), and they set out to make one that didn't suck and that people would actually want to use. It is abundantly clear, regardless of how big or small its market share, the iPhone definitely shook things up. Whether or not "apps" or "app stores" existed, Apple did make an impact on the mobile industry whether you will admit it or not.
Ubuntu also brought something else to the table: The Debian package manager.
So the most notable contribution of Ubuntu for you is a package manager which existed before Ubuntu... Yeah, I'm pretty sure that is actually in support of the point I made.
My experience with Mandrake, pre-Ubuntu is that it was buggy as hell. For whatever reason, I would say that Ubuntu has raided the bar for Linux distros.
Maybe. I have no experience with Mandrake or "Mandriva" for that matter; I have only heard several times that Mandrake excelled at the types of things the OP listed. However, I do personally know of at least one pre-Ubuntu distro with all the "necessities" listed: YDL. Though Ubuntu is not my every-day distro, I have nothing at all against it; as distros go it is definitely a good choice for all kinds of users (not just "n00bs" as is often assumed). A lot of people I know think of Ubuntu as Linux itself, but again, that's a testament of the Canonical marketing power and hype than any actual raising of any bar. We had many choices of quality distros before Ubuntu, just as we do today, and the biggest thing lacking back in the day was marketing. Certainly I mean no disrespect by pointing out that marketing was Ubuntu's biggest contribution.
Why can't you just install to/usr/$username/bin? They disallow that these days?
Maybe you mean/home/$USER/bin... At least I've personally never used any *nix system where installing to user-specific directories in/usr was common; installing to your home directory is, however, very common in every UNIX flavor I've come across.
It's very cool how Ubuntu has essentially forced every other distro to get up to speed on these seemingly basic features.
I would just point out that everything in your list was available before Ubuntu in distributions such as Mandrake. I'm not going to say you're wrong, though, since Ubuntu did bring something important to the table which apparently did provide a boost: a rich guy who wanted to spend a lot of it.
In other news, thousands of corporate gpl users reevaluate their use of gpl software. I know... Many gpl advocates are ecstatic at the idea of corporations not using gpl code.
Oracle cannot kill MySQL. The code has been released via the GPL license. This means anyone can fork MySQL and continue to develop it!
Why are people so stupid!
I'm sure you're aware of this, but forking is not a feature of the GPL. You could just as easily have put: "The code is open source. This means anyone can fork MySQL and continue to develop it!" But I'm sure that's what your implication was.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I'm a luddite, but I'm not really in favor of TV becoming more prevalent than it already is.
It's not as if he was unaware of the danger of the death of free software.
The supposed death of free software and a "free internet" is just the distraction he's trying to use. MySQL is open source. Even if Oracle relicenses future releases of MySQL under terms that are less free, we still have the same MySQL as we've always had with the same free terms. If it were ever to be an issue, a fork would happen immediately and/or we'd see increased use of PostgreSQL. Either way, the "internet" will be kept free regardless. I don't know much about Monty, but my prejudgment is that he's slime.
I really do hate to see them rebuild their reputation (and market value) again, just to throw it all away like they did last time, but damned if it doesn't look like that's exactly what they're trying to do.
Actually, you've got it exactly backwards. Apple nearly went out of business because they went more open and allowed Mac clones. Now that they are (arguably) more closed in that respect, they are extremely successful.
I'm not sure what point you think has been "proven," unless you believe everything Glenn Beck says must automatically be wrong because he said it. But I understand; it's important for the Left to paint Beck as a nutjob (see Times person of the year article) and anyone who listens to him or (heaven forbid) agrees with some of the things he says as uneducated zombies so that they can avoid actually dealing with the issues being discussed. It's funny (or sad?). I've seen it several times chatting with my more liberal colleagues. Whenever they start to get flummoxed, they will invariably say something like "Ah, Glenn Beck would be proud" in place of reasoned argument and expect that to be the end of it, as if that says anything. Considering your "insightful" one-line jab, I'm guessing you've assumed the same. Well, whatever. This isn't a big concern of mine because I believe this will ultimately be failing strategy for the Left.
4) Code must always be 'self documenting' ('would you rather use a one-liner that requires a 3-line comment, or a 10-liner that requires no comments?')
Not sure if that example supports his claim very well... After all, four lines is less than ten, and if you can adequately describe what the function should do in three lines, somebody should easily be able to flesh it out themselves if ever a need arises. I'm all for self-documenting code, but for functions that are simple enough to be implemented in one line, I say go for it. We've got deadlines, people.
They're so cheap nowadays that I got one as a gift.
So... you only buy cheap gifts?
There is a difference between outsourcing cheap toys and souvenirs and outsourcing "technology." You claim the latter and then proceeded to talk only about the former, which is something we all know about. Not that outsourcing manufacturing is ideal, but "technology" at least is still something that is largely created in Western countries and Japan.
I know people like to think that the GPL played a significant role in the success of Linux, but in the face of so many examples of successful non-GPL free software such as apache and postfix, perhaps that assertion should be accompanied by a reasoned argument. Since no single software license is clearly a common denominator for successful free software, I wouldn't assume that the GPL is the driving force behind the success of Linux unless somebody makes a convincing argument in support of that claim. As it is now, although the assertion is often repeated, it seems to be based on mere assumption.
One day I switched to Freemind and Open Office for documents and Gmail for email ... so terribly un-geek like, but so much easier.
I don't care one iota about the "geekiness" of a solution. If Gmail and OO.org works for you and you can get stuff done faster, that's wonderful. Personally, I did look back after I realized I can get so much more done in vim.
so that I could have a Unix-ish environment without having to worry about power management or weird wifi issues that I'd had with Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu, Slackware, ZenWalk, Mint, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and PC-BSD...
No, I'm sorry. The correct answer is "BeOS."
fans of the BSD license argue that it is "more free" because anyone may do anything with the software
Including... making it non-free again...
Oops.
Yeah, oops indeed. Like so many before you, you have bought into the false belief that BSD licensed code can magically become non-free in some fashion that GPL code cannot. Let's go over this again. The only one that can relicense code is the copyright holder. Even then, that will not nullify the license of code which has already been licensed and released. This is all true whether the code is BSD licensed or licensed under the GPL. You cannot take BSD, and make it non-free, as you assert. The only rights you have are what the license itself grants you. In the case of BSD code, you can use it in combination with proprietary code and even decide for yourself how to license your changes (this in contrast with the GPL), but it is impossible for a user to just take the code and say "hence forth, this is now proprietary code; thus, nobody shall use it except I."
If you still don't understand, I don't know what more I can do to help you.
It's sad that the headline here is about removing GPL code. Got a grudge against it?
Why is it sad? The code isn't closing, it's just now licensed under different (arguably freer) licenses. Unless you're RMS or one of his disciples who believes that all code must be GPL or it's not truly free, I don't see why this should make anyone sad. Free code is free code, and contrary to somewhat popular belief, the GPL does not make free code more free than it is.
Secondly, there are several reasons why a project might want to migrate away from GPL code, and none of those reasons have to have anything to do with having a grudge against the GPL. From a practical standpoint, avoiding the GPL also avoids many headaches related to source code and license mixing; this is especially important for a product which implements plug-ins since the legality of plugging some differently-licensed extensions into a GPL product is still uncertain. The GPL itself causes incompatibilities with certain licenses, so an easy way to avoid those types of problems is to avoid the GPL entirely.
Can you even name any important GPL software (other than emacs)
As an aside, Vim beats emacs on the license front anyway. In my book, charityware is considerably more endearing and noble than an All-Your-Source-Are-Belong-To-Us license.
Would you say its safari to wait?
No... I wouldn't.
I don't know why he called it tacky either. If anything was tacky, it was the original Xbox controller (or more generally, the entire original Xbox). IMO.
Exactly, and big part of the reason theres so many apps already is because innovation is greatly driven by money and many people want to jump in.
What kind of blasphemy is this? Everybody knows the government drives innovation, not independent players in a market scenario.
How?
By doing what Apple does best. They weren't the first, but that doesn't mean that they didn't completely change the mobile industry. They saw something that sucked and people hated (your typical mobile phone), and they set out to make one that didn't suck and that people would actually want to use. It is abundantly clear, regardless of how big or small its market share, the iPhone definitely shook things up. Whether or not "apps" or "app stores" existed, Apple did make an impact on the mobile industry whether you will admit it or not.
If I'm going for a portable as big as 12", it better have something better than the Atom, Ion notwithstanding. 12" is basically a laptop IMO.
You sit there long enough and a big mac and fries start to look pretty good.......
Never.
Ubuntu also brought something else to the table: The Debian package manager.
So the most notable contribution of Ubuntu for you is a package manager which existed before Ubuntu... Yeah, I'm pretty sure that is actually in support of the point I made.
My experience with Mandrake, pre-Ubuntu is that it was buggy as hell. For whatever reason, I would say that Ubuntu has raided the bar for Linux distros.
Maybe. I have no experience with Mandrake or "Mandriva" for that matter; I have only heard several times that Mandrake excelled at the types of things the OP listed. However, I do personally know of at least one pre-Ubuntu distro with all the "necessities" listed: YDL. Though Ubuntu is not my every-day distro, I have nothing at all against it; as distros go it is definitely a good choice for all kinds of users (not just "n00bs" as is often assumed). A lot of people I know think of Ubuntu as Linux itself, but again, that's a testament of the Canonical marketing power and hype than any actual raising of any bar. We had many choices of quality distros before Ubuntu, just as we do today, and the biggest thing lacking back in the day was marketing. Certainly I mean no disrespect by pointing out that marketing was Ubuntu's biggest contribution.
Why can't you just install to /usr/$username/bin? They disallow that these days?
Maybe you mean /home/$USER/bin ... At least I've personally never used any *nix system where installing to user-specific directories in /usr was common; installing to your home directory is, however, very common in every UNIX flavor I've come across.
It's very cool how Ubuntu has essentially forced every other distro to get up to speed on these seemingly basic features.
I would just point out that everything in your list was available before Ubuntu in distributions such as Mandrake. I'm not going to say you're wrong, though, since Ubuntu did bring something important to the table which apparently did provide a boost: a rich guy who wanted to spend a lot of it.
In other news, thousands of corporate gpl users reevaluate their use of gpl software. I know... Many gpl advocates are ecstatic at the idea of corporations not using gpl code.
Oracle cannot kill MySQL. The code has been released via the GPL license. This means anyone can fork MySQL and continue to develop it! Why are people so stupid!
I'm sure you're aware of this, but forking is not a feature of the GPL. You could just as easily have put: "The code is open source. This means anyone can fork MySQL and continue to develop it!" But I'm sure that's what your implication was.