Perhaps not, but there's a lot of money to be made by locking people into your platform - from what I hear, most of Netscape's revenue came from what became the iPlanet suite of services - i.e. Netscape's HTTP server, LDAP, etc. Microsoft makes a buttload of cash off IIS-related software (Windows NT/2K/XP Server, SQL Server) and IE-related development tools.
Giving out browsers gives you mindshare (and takes mindshare away from the competition). Imagine - if Netscape had kept a good market share, what would be the percentage of Netscape HTTP servers compared to IIS servers? Probably a good deal higher than it is now.
Sun owns all the iPlanet stuff now though, so AOL probably has their own reasoning for keeping Netscape around.
Sun invented JavaScript (in cooperation with Netscape if I am not mistaken)
Actually, Netscape originally created LiveScript as their client scripting language. Sun was about to release Java, and the two got together and decided to change the syntax of LiveScript to be more Java-like and rename it JavaScript. Sun really didn't do that much with JavaScript - it was only named such so that they could promote each other (remember, at the time Java was the next big thing for internet applications).
Nowdays, JavaScript (and JScript) are both modeled after ECMAScript, which is standardized - similar to the W3C standards. Mozilla is far ahead in this reguard - last I remember, IE 5.5 only supported ECMAScript v3, and Mozilla M18 had v5 implemented (each version is a superset of the previous versions).
So, if you want to get mad at someone, get mad at ECMA - they're the current maintainers of JavaScript. Informative links are left as an exercise for those less lazy than I.
There's some POSIX stuff for regex, although I think it mostly concerns the C library. Read up on regex in awk - it should give you some info on the POSIX aspects. I'm not sure if those are implemented in perl or not - I learned perl first and only use awk on occasion.
Perhaps have something similar to the/proc filesystem -/var/spool/mail and friends would be virtual. That way/bin/mail and every other email client would work fine.
Of course, it'd probably require kernel support for that, like the loopback, proc, and dev filesystems do. Linux would probably have kernel support in a few months, as well as the various *BSDs, but the commercial UNIX vendors would likely take years. There's a lot of solaris-based mail servers out there...
IIRC, the gui (as of a month of two ago) was still quite unofficial - that's why it's not built by default.
Personally, while I build the gui whenever I build mplayer, I rarely use it. The command line is well suited for what I need, really. Plus the fact that it tries to mock xmms/winamp/etc. and doesn't use regular widgets - thus is way too small on a 17" monitor running 1600x1200.
M$ just wanted to control the browser scene. They make money by pushing IE-centric development tools and limiting the "good browser" to the platforms they choose.
Netscape made most of its money on server software. Sun inherited all that from them (the iPlanet stuff). When they were forced to allow free downloads of their browser, it wasn't too big a deal for them.
AOL wants a browser not controlled by microsoft.
So really, as far as the companies are concerned, the browsers are merely tools to make/break a monopoly. M$ wants to push their "standards" on everyone, AOL doesn't want to be M$'s bitch, and Netscape, as a company, is irrelevant.
If you're saying what I think you're saying (that why would it be OK for the FSF to bother companies and not the BSA), then I think you're misunderstanding my point.
I don't have a problem with the BSA wanting companies to pay for their software. I do have a problem with the way they're going about it. Strong-arm tactics and threats are an abuse of power.
The FSF wouldn't benifit from such a thing. For one, they don't have that much power, and for two even if they did, it would be a rare occasion they would need to use it. Not too many companies violate the GPL - usually because there's little to no reason to. Usually when they do it's because the suits don't understand how the GPL works. The FSF certainly doesn't (and doesn't need to) have US marshalls bust in and ransack a place.
Sometimes legal action is the only recourse, but the BSA takes it too far. A BSA inspection causes companies to lose money, whether or not they have to pay fees. It costs money to do an audit. Have you ever worked in IT with a large corporation? It's nigh impossible to keep track of licenses when you have thousands of computers around. So companies who are completely compliant end up paying anyway. The BSA has found a nice legal form of extortion and are using it for their own gains - but even if it's legal, it doesn't make it right.
Really, the only major way to violate the GPL is to distribute programs containing GPL'd code without releasing the source as GPL.
How many companies do this? Not many. It's happened in the past, usually with companies releasing modified versions of linux without the source code. Usually it's only been done for beta testing, but people (and the FSF) have thrown fits about it. But in none of these cases would a raid help, and in all of them the FSF had proof of the infraction before they started the stink about it.
Besides, if someone wants to take free code from somewhere, they usually take it from BSD. It's good code (for the most part) and the license allows for this. The BSD TCP/IP stack is a good example of this.
The FSF would not benefit from using strong-arm tactics. They don't try to extract "fines" from companies - they just demand that the GPL violation be fixed. They are there to protect the little guy who wants his code to be free, not to goad companies into paying exhorbant fees for software.
From what I understand the RAND part took care of that. Reasonable and Non Discriminatory - essentially, anyone could use the technology for a small fee. The licensing wouldn't be from the W3C - it would be from the company who owns the patent. The W3C just ensures that the licensing is available to all and is reasonable.
The question boils down to, "what is reasonable?". Charging a fee per program isn't reasonable for OSS, although it's perfectly fine for commercial entities. Charging a percentage won't work cleanly either - say microsoft incorporates it into windows - do they get a percentage of windows sales? Lotta money there.
The W3C actually seems to take an interest in what's good for the web, not just the interests of corporate players. Sure, they may be slow in some cases, like the ones you mentioned, but I've always had the impression that they actually care about standards and their effect on computing altogether. Otherwise they would have allowed RAND licensing and not asked for public opinion.
I might have read it wrong, but it was my take that the W3C wasn't going to take out any patents - they were going to simply going to allow RAND licensed technologies to be used in some standards. The patents would be held by the original designers, not the W3C.
We've already got quite a bit of patented stuff used in standards; video codecs and image formats are a perfect example. It's a pain, yes, but the existance of a standard enables people to write their own implementations and not rely on one vendor.
I guess it really just runs down to how far we trust the W3C. They've got a pretty open process, and there's organizations on the board for whom patents are not in their interests.
The McCarthy days are long over. Just about everyone acknowleges he was a nut. America has had a communist party for quite some time.
Islam is governed by the same laws that cover christianity and all other religions. You can bet the mosques don't pay taxes any more than synagogues or the corner pentecostal church. Sure, there's some boneheaded americans walking around talking about how evil muslims are, but there's no laws aimed specifically at muslims, and there won't be - the supreme court would rule them unconstitutional if congress tried to pass them.
Some muslims think they should be allowed to stone people in the street (some christians think so too), and of course that's illegal - as is animal or human sacrifice, much to the disdain of some satanists. Some muslims and christians believe that women should have little or no rights - in the US they do. It's not illegal for someone to pray in public school, as long as it isn't school-sanctioned. None of these laws are to prevent people from participating in religion - they are to keep the peace and prevent the government from sanctioning one religion over others.
US $0.25 per decoder (in hardware or software) for a license to make and sell and for personal use in receiving private video (i.e., not video for which a service provider or content owner receives remuneration as a result of offering/providing the video for viewing or having the video viewed), subject to a cap of $1,000,000 per year/per legal entity.
INAL, so I'm not good with legal speak (It's not quite the same as government speak, which I've been forced to learn) but the 'make and sell and for personal use' seems a little ambiguous.
Will makers of free decoders have to pay $.25 per download? I can't really tell with this.
The clause for encoders seems to be clearer; encoders for private use are $.25 a pop. That's gonna suck if they enforce it on free encoders.
Perhaps this kind of crap will be what brings out micropayments et. al. If I wrote a player that needed a license fee, I'd have a paypal button there for people to pay the license fee for a download (actually, maybe $.26 cents - the extra cent for envelopes, stamps, etc. to mail the payment off). Needless to say a lot of people would just pirate a player from somewhere and use that though.
There is no one perfect distro for learning linux. It depends how you learn.
For instance, I learned way back in the day on slackware. I had a friend help me out, and in a month I was runnin' it exclusively. Very little was automatic; there was a utility to change your network settings, and pkgtool, but that's about it. Want to install software? Download the tarball and compile it. Something went wrong? RTFM. Still can't figure it out? Jump on IRC and see if someone will help you.
Needless to say, not everyone learns best that way.
Mandrake's easy to get running and use, but you won't learn much about linux doin' it. I knew a guy who ran caldera for over a year and didn't know how to compile a program. Having GUI utilities around won't really teach you much unless you try to learn.
Debian's a good median I think - if you have someone experienced around to point you in the right direction, you won't have too much of a problem. Apt takes away the pain of package management without hiding it all from you, but you'll find very few GUI admin tools. The nice thing is that with Debian, it's standardized enough that almost all the documents at the LDP are relevant - to change something, you edit files in/etc or whatnot.
As for the distro lockin you mention, debian's not a bad distro to be locked into. Stable's great for servers, sid's great for desktops, and there's even a multimedia-oriented distro around for people that work with that.
They only have to supply source code if they distribute binaries.
You can charge money to distribute GPL'd binaries - there's no limit on how much, except the limits of what people will pay. You do have to provide source upon request (you can even charge a media/shipping fee for that), but if you don't provide the binaries to someone you're not obligated to distribute source to them.
But, there's nothing against someone buying said GPL code and distributing it for free. Companies get around this by putting some non-GPL'd stuff in their distros so that ISO's can't be distributed. Note, this isn't necessarily done for this purpose - there's a lot of good linux software that isn't redistributable, but included as a value add. This is why many distros have a "free" and "pay" version - the free version is just the pay version without the non-redistributable software. Including CDE or Motif* would be a good example of this.
*Not so sure about Motif, with it's weird license. Been a while since I looked at it, since I usually only run Motif apps on Solaris, which comes with Motif.
NT 4 said it ran on MIPS. Never had a MIPS box around to try it though - only thing I had 'sides intel was alpha and sparc, and it did run on the alpha (albeit poorly).
I didn't state that quite right - I didn't mean to say that NT was OS/2. Rather I was talking about the particular niche that was filled.
The old OS/2 and NT both were designed to be used for servers and high-end workstations. Since NT didn't exist as its own, the closest MS product was OS/2.
As to how much code was used from OS/2 in the early NT versions, I don't know. I am aware that the kernels are different, but there's several simularities beyond simple look and feel between the two. That could just be becuse of similar design though.
It was part of the LAN Manager suite. I've got the complete disk set of OS/2, but one of my ex-coworkers overwrote one of the lan manager disks so I haven't been able to play with that aspect of it. But OS/2 does install, and looks an awful lot like a stripped down NT 3.5.
But if you're going to be an asshole, then you deserve going without them. There's a LOT of really kick ass comics on keenspot. Guess you'll just never know.
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Perhaps not, but there's a lot of money to be made by locking people into your platform - from what I hear, most of Netscape's revenue came from what became the iPlanet suite of services - i.e. Netscape's HTTP server, LDAP, etc. Microsoft makes a buttload of cash off IIS-related software (Windows NT/2K/XP Server, SQL Server) and IE-related development tools.
Giving out browsers gives you mindshare (and takes mindshare away from the competition). Imagine - if Netscape had kept a good market share, what would be the percentage of Netscape HTTP servers compared to IIS servers? Probably a good deal higher than it is now.
Sun owns all the iPlanet stuff now though, so AOL probably has their own reasoning for keeping Netscape around.
Sun invented JavaScript (in cooperation with Netscape if I am not mistaken)
Actually, Netscape originally created LiveScript as their client scripting language. Sun was about to release Java, and the two got together and decided to change the syntax of LiveScript to be more Java-like and rename it JavaScript. Sun really didn't do that much with JavaScript - it was only named such so that they could promote each other (remember, at the time Java was the next big thing for internet applications).
Nowdays, JavaScript (and JScript) are both modeled after ECMAScript, which is standardized - similar to the W3C standards. Mozilla is far ahead in this reguard - last I remember, IE 5.5 only supported ECMAScript v3, and Mozilla M18 had v5 implemented (each version is a superset of the previous versions).
So, if you want to get mad at someone, get mad at ECMA - they're the current maintainers of JavaScript. Informative links are left as an exercise for those less lazy than I.
There's some POSIX stuff for regex, although I think it mostly concerns the C library. Read up on regex in awk - it should give you some info on the POSIX aspects. I'm not sure if those are implemented in perl or not - I learned perl first and only use awk on occasion.
Perhaps have something similar to the /proc filesystem - /var/spool/mail and friends would be virtual. That way /bin/mail and every other email client would work fine.
Of course, it'd probably require kernel support for that, like the loopback, proc, and dev filesystems do. Linux would probably have kernel support in a few months, as well as the various *BSDs, but the commercial UNIX vendors would likely take years. There's a lot of solaris-based mail servers out there...
IIRC, the gui (as of a month of two ago) was still quite unofficial - that's why it's not built by default.
Personally, while I build the gui whenever I build mplayer, I rarely use it. The command line is well suited for what I need, really. Plus the fact that it tries to mock xmms/winamp/etc. and doesn't use regular widgets - thus is way too small on a 17" monitor running 1600x1200.
M$ just wanted to control the browser scene. They make money by pushing IE-centric development tools and limiting the "good browser" to the platforms they choose.
Netscape made most of its money on server software. Sun inherited all that from them (the iPlanet stuff). When they were forced to allow free downloads of their browser, it wasn't too big a deal for them.
AOL wants a browser not controlled by microsoft.
So really, as far as the companies are concerned, the browsers are merely tools to make/break a monopoly. M$ wants to push their "standards" on everyone, AOL doesn't want to be M$'s bitch, and Netscape, as a company, is irrelevant.
They just chose 'root' rather than 'postgres' or 'sa'. Doesn't really make a difference.
http://www.linux.org.uk
If you're saying what I think you're saying (that why would it be OK for the FSF to bother companies and not the BSA), then I think you're misunderstanding my point.
I don't have a problem with the BSA wanting companies to pay for their software. I do have a problem with the way they're going about it. Strong-arm tactics and threats are an abuse of power.
The FSF wouldn't benifit from such a thing. For one, they don't have that much power, and for two even if they did, it would be a rare occasion they would need to use it. Not too many companies violate the GPL - usually because there's little to no reason to. Usually when they do it's because the suits don't understand how the GPL works. The FSF certainly doesn't (and doesn't need to) have US marshalls bust in and ransack a place.
Sometimes legal action is the only recourse, but the BSA takes it too far. A BSA inspection causes companies to lose money, whether or not they have to pay fees. It costs money to do an audit. Have you ever worked in IT with a large corporation? It's nigh impossible to keep track of licenses when you have thousands of computers around. So companies who are completely compliant end up paying anyway. The BSA has found a nice legal form of extortion and are using it for their own gains - but even if it's legal, it doesn't make it right.
Really, the only major way to violate the GPL is to distribute programs containing GPL'd code without releasing the source as GPL.
How many companies do this? Not many. It's happened in the past, usually with companies releasing modified versions of linux without the source code. Usually it's only been done for beta testing, but people (and the FSF) have thrown fits about it. But in none of these cases would a raid help, and in all of them the FSF had proof of the infraction before they started the stink about it.
Besides, if someone wants to take free code from somewhere, they usually take it from BSD. It's good code (for the most part) and the license allows for this. The BSD TCP/IP stack is a good example of this.
The FSF would not benefit from using strong-arm tactics. They don't try to extract "fines" from companies - they just demand that the GPL violation be fixed. They are there to protect the little guy who wants his code to be free, not to goad companies into paying exhorbant fees for software.
The question boils down to, "what is reasonable?". Charging a fee per program isn't reasonable for OSS, although it's perfectly fine for commercial entities. Charging a percentage won't work cleanly either - say microsoft incorporates it into windows - do they get a percentage of windows sales? Lotta money there.
The W3C actually seems to take an interest in what's good for the web, not just the interests of corporate players. Sure, they may be slow in some cases, like the ones you mentioned, but I've always had the impression that they actually care about standards and their effect on computing altogether. Otherwise they would have allowed RAND licensing and not asked for public opinion.
We've already got quite a bit of patented stuff used in standards; video codecs and image formats are a perfect example. It's a pain, yes, but the existance of a standard enables people to write their own implementations and not rely on one vendor.
I guess it really just runs down to how far we trust the W3C. They've got a pretty open process, and there's organizations on the board for whom patents are not in their interests.
Islam is governed by the same laws that cover christianity and all other religions. You can bet the mosques don't pay taxes any more than synagogues or the corner pentecostal church. Sure, there's some boneheaded americans walking around talking about how evil muslims are, but there's no laws aimed specifically at muslims, and there won't be - the supreme court would rule them unconstitutional if congress tried to pass them.
Some muslims think they should be allowed to stone people in the street (some christians think so too), and of course that's illegal - as is animal or human sacrifice, much to the disdain of some satanists. Some muslims and christians believe that women should have little or no rights - in the US they do. It's not illegal for someone to pray in public school, as long as it isn't school-sanctioned. None of these laws are to prevent people from participating in religion - they are to keep the peace and prevent the government from sanctioning one religion over others.
INAL, so I'm not good with legal speak (It's not quite the same as government speak, which I've been forced to learn) but the 'make and sell and for personal use' seems a little ambiguous.
Will makers of free decoders have to pay $.25 per download? I can't really tell with this.
The clause for encoders seems to be clearer; encoders for private use are $.25 a pop. That's gonna suck if they enforce it on free encoders.
Perhaps this kind of crap will be what brings out micropayments et. al. If I wrote a player that needed a license fee, I'd have a paypal button there for people to pay the license fee for a download (actually, maybe $.26 cents - the extra cent for envelopes, stamps, etc. to mail the payment off). Needless to say a lot of people would just pirate a player from somewhere and use that though.
For instance, I learned way back in the day on slackware. I had a friend help me out, and in a month I was runnin' it exclusively. Very little was automatic; there was a utility to change your network settings, and pkgtool, but that's about it. Want to install software? Download the tarball and compile it. Something went wrong? RTFM. Still can't figure it out? Jump on IRC and see if someone will help you.
Needless to say, not everyone learns best that way.
Mandrake's easy to get running and use, but you won't learn much about linux doin' it. I knew a guy who ran caldera for over a year and didn't know how to compile a program. Having GUI utilities around won't really teach you much unless you try to learn.
Debian's a good median I think - if you have someone experienced around to point you in the right direction, you won't have too much of a problem. Apt takes away the pain of package management without hiding it all from you, but you'll find very few GUI admin tools. The nice thing is that with Debian, it's standardized enough that almost all the documents at the LDP are relevant - to change something, you edit files in /etc or whatnot.
As for the distro lockin you mention, debian's not a bad distro to be locked into. Stable's great for servers, sid's great for desktops, and there's even a multimedia-oriented distro around for people that work with that.
You can charge money to distribute GPL'd binaries - there's no limit on how much, except the limits of what people will pay. You do have to provide source upon request (you can even charge a media/shipping fee for that), but if you don't provide the binaries to someone you're not obligated to distribute source to them.
But, there's nothing against someone buying said GPL code and distributing it for free. Companies get around this by putting some non-GPL'd stuff in their distros so that ISO's can't be distributed. Note, this isn't necessarily done for this purpose - there's a lot of good linux software that isn't redistributable, but included as a value add. This is why many distros have a "free" and "pay" version - the free version is just the pay version without the non-redistributable software. Including CDE or Motif* would be a good example of this.
*Not so sure about Motif, with it's weird license. Been a while since I looked at it, since I usually only run Motif apps on Solaris, which comes with Motif.
The old OS/2 and NT both were designed to be used for servers and high-end workstations. Since NT didn't exist as its own, the closest MS product was OS/2.
As to how much code was used from OS/2 in the early NT versions, I don't know. I am aware that the kernels are different, but there's several simularities beyond simple look and feel between the two. That could just be becuse of similar design though.
Lesse, what does it say...
Right off the disk:
Microsoft OS/2 Operating System
Installation Disk A
OS/2 Series
Disk format: High-density (1.44MB)
Version 1.3
Disk Assy 096-045-647
©1981-1992 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
It was part of the LAN Manager suite. I've got the complete disk set of OS/2, but one of my ex-coworkers overwrote one of the lan manager disks so I haven't been able to play with that aspect of it. But OS/2 does install, and looks an awful lot like a stripped down NT 3.5.
All versions of windows v3.11 and earlier did. Considering that desqview was in competition with windows 3.x, it makes no sense to compare it to NT.
Hell, back when this was out, NT was called Microsoft OS/2 (yes, _microsoft_). I know, I got the disks for it on my shelf.
Nice try though.
Keenspace does go down now and again...
But if you're going to be an asshole, then you deserve going without them. There's a LOT of really kick ass comics on keenspot. Guess you'll just never know.
Yeah, the firmware patch came with the solaris CD set. I patched it during my first install after I got the machine.
Kernel's runnin' in 64 bit mode. Unfortunately, I don't know enough C to really take advantage of it like I want to, but I'm learnin'...