I know I would opt for Debian instead of Mandrake or SuSE now for a novice user.
My friend who knew only Windows actually wanted to try Linux a while ago, and asked what distribution I was using, so I told him I use Debian, but I'd recommend Red Hat (which I had used previously) or Mandrake (which I hadn't even seen before) for him. So we installed Red Hat. My friend thought it was quite horrible. Tried Debian, and I guess it was quite as horrible for him. Then installed Mandrake, which he used for 3 months or so, and moved to WinXP.
Well, after three weeks or so his WinXP simply refused to boot anymore, and he seemed willing to give Linux one more try. We installed the newest Mandrake (7.1, the previous one was 7.0). Somehow just it didn't work quite right -- things like fonts, antialias, sound and such breaking on their own. So we decided to try SuSE (and I was quite amazed at how patient my friend was:-)
I guess it's something with the version of SuSE you can install from the Internet (it's different than the CD version, isn't it? YaST not being free or something?), but it was truly horrible -- my friend thought the (text based) installation script was even more unintuitive than the Debian dselect interface. It also required quite a bit of tweaking until things like X and sound begun to work, and even then things kept crashing. So we finally installed Debian again, and suddenly my friend didn't think it was so horrible after all:-)
And all this probably wasn't because of faulty hardware, since he bought an entirely new computer before switching to WinXP... Oh well, at least I now know to recommend Debian to my friends (though I probably wouldn't just hand the CDs and tell them to go and install:-)
By the way, fork bombs do a pretty good job of taking down a linux box.
If a user can take down your Linux system with a fork bomb, you still have some configuring to do. See the ulimit command in bash, limit in tcsh, or setrlimit(2) for the appropriate system call.
So, I do agree with their claim that this is RDF, but I really don't think they should get any royalties from it. If they were that concerned, how could they let the RDF specification reach recommendation in 1999, and just now in 2002 finally say something?
Well, that's just the way patents work. That's why I think patents suck, but that's entirely another story. The point is, whoever implements something is responsible for finding out about any relevant patents, not the patent owner for telling the implementor about the patent. This is unlike trademarks - you can actually lose a trademark by failing to defend it. With patents this just doesn't hold.
Plus the fact that Vim seems to violate GPL. Well, at least the Debian binaries are linked with libgpm which is GPL'd and therefore requires that all software linked with it be also distributed under the GPL.
Um. I might have said it more clearly, but I didn't say GPL forbids distributing binaries. I said it forbids _forbidding_ binary distribution, as the MPlayer developers did.:-)
Politics? Licensing is licensing, not politics. Using other people's code released under the GPL in a way which violates GPL is no more politics than pirating the latest Microsoft operating system is.
In a somewhat comical incident, the same thing happened in Finland when the police forces sent a cease-and-desist letter to an association for linking to their main page (and with probably as much foundation in law as in this case).
According to that definition, it is "Open Source": the license does allow (some) modifications and derived works, and it does allow them to be distributed under the same terms.
So if I write a program and allow you to make derivative works by changing the version number, it's open source? Your reading of the definition makes no sense.
Of course you may argue that the common definition of open source is irrelevant, but that just doesn't make it so. Can you find me a definition which allows for this license and is accepted by even a single significant Linux/BSD distribution or open source developer community?
And you seem to think the only reason to change software is to port it or improve it. My advice is this: Rethink.:-)
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
Quite obviously, a license which disallows some kinds of modifications or derived works isn't open source.
1. They use a whole bunch of GPL code, and depend on it, thus making their mplayer a derivative work and thus GPL, yet claim their work isn't GPL
Using GPL lib/code doesn't automatically make the derivative work GPL, it just creates a situation where you can either distribute it under the GPL or not at all. In this case the latter seems to be the only option, as MPlayer also uses third party non-GPL components which they simply can't distribute under GPL (because they're licensed in a different way, and even the source code is not available).
Think about it. They're infringing the copyright of whatever GPL code they didn't write themselves by linking it with non-GPL code (for example the codec DLLs), even if they claimed MPlayer was GPL. So legally MPlayer can't be distributed at all without infringing the copyright of at least the authors of included GPL libraries.
What i cannot comprehend is how external contributions to the GPL'ed source can be embraced by the other incompatible licenses in this scheme???
They can't.If you make big modifications to, say, Qt, and want them to be part of the official Qt distribution, I'm sure Trolltech will ask you to give them the permission to include it in their proprietary version.
Naturally you can refuse, in which case your modifications will not become part of the Qt distribution, effectively forking the code base. And you're perfectly within your rights to do so, but you will have an uphill battle trying to gain acceptance for the forked version, which you probably won't be allowed to call Qt (a restriction which GPL allows - simply put, it's a different product, and you may not market it as Trolltech's Qt using their trademark). And even for big open source projects it's often good to be based on a well-known toolkit a company has made famous by marketing rather than rather unknown MyFoobarToolkitFork 0.9beta with a very uncertain future.
I find this one (owned by Apple) hilarious too, granted November 13, 2001:
System and method for analyzing web-server log files
A method for analyzing traffic data generated by a plurality of web servers, which host a single web site. The site is mirrored on each server. A traffic data hit is generated responsive to each access of one of the servers. The hit includes data representing the time of the access. Each data hit is stored in a log file on the server accessed. The first-stored data hit is read from each server. Each of the read data hits are compared, and the oldest data hit is passed to a log file analyzer. The next-stored data hit is read from the server from which the passed data hit was read, and a second comparison is performed on the read data hits, with the oldest data hit being passed to the log file analyzer. This process continues until all of the data hits are read, compared, and passed to the log file analyzer. This results in passing all of the data hits to the log file analyzer in the chronological order in which the hits were generated.
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable loce-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
- Albert Einstein, probably the greatest physicist of the 20th century
However, if you expected to be treated specially for your contribution, then I might be offended.
Would you be offended if if money was specifically offered to you for making a certain feature the donor needs? I know I wouldn't. Though if it's as strange as most of the features usually requested by clients, it wouldn't make it into the main code base:-)
Sending a check is definitely not insulting. Remember, it's free-as-in-speech (most important) and free-as-in-beer (only second most important). And since beer is not free (as in beer), they need money to buy it. Most developers would also like a pizza with their beer.
you're why the entire linux movement looks like a joke.
I'm sure it makes Mr. Gates laugh:-)
Seriously, I do very much doubt there would be Linux as we know it without this so-much-despised viral GPL license. I believe there are more those hackers who don't want to see their code end up being part of some proprietary application than those who do (and therefore use licenses like BSD). Don't take me wrong, I've myself released some minor stuff under BSD license, I just prefer GLP for bigger ones.
What if Linux and all the tools were released under BSD license? I believe it would have become a platform for a lot of crappy shareware software. I only need to look back at DOS and shudder.
Big changes were required when printing press was invented, too. And Internet forces telcos to change their business plans quite a bit or risk being run over by very cheap TCP/IP phones.
In fact I can almost think of more advances which require someone to change business plans than those which don't. That's life.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it doesn't. Try read things again and go figure out why this is different from suspending a laptop.
My friend who knew only Windows actually wanted to try Linux a while ago, and asked what distribution I was using, so I told him I use Debian, but I'd recommend Red Hat (which I had used previously) or Mandrake (which I hadn't even seen before) for him. So we installed Red Hat. My friend thought it was quite horrible. Tried Debian, and I guess it was quite as horrible for him. Then installed Mandrake, which he used for 3 months or so, and moved to WinXP.
Well, after three weeks or so his WinXP simply refused to boot anymore, and he seemed willing to give Linux one more try. We installed the newest Mandrake (7.1, the previous one was 7.0). Somehow just it didn't work quite right -- things like fonts, antialias, sound and such breaking on their own. So we decided to try SuSE (and I was quite amazed at how patient my friend was :-)
I guess it's something with the version of SuSE you can install from the Internet (it's different than the CD version, isn't it? YaST not being free or something?), but it was truly horrible -- my friend thought the (text based) installation script was even more unintuitive than the Debian dselect interface. It also required quite a bit of tweaking until things like X and sound begun to work, and even then things kept crashing. So we finally installed Debian again, and suddenly my friend didn't think it was so horrible after all :-)
And all this probably wasn't because of faulty hardware, since he bought an entirely new computer before switching to WinXP... Oh well, at least I now know to recommend Debian to my friends (though I probably wouldn't just hand the CDs and tell them to go and install :-)
If a user can take down your Linux system with a fork bomb, you still have some configuring to do. See the ulimit command in bash, limit in tcsh, or setrlimit(2) for the appropriate system call.
Well, that's just the way patents work. That's why I think patents suck, but that's entirely another story. The point is, whoever implements something is responsible for finding out about any relevant patents, not the patent owner for telling the implementor about the patent. This is unlike trademarks - you can actually lose a trademark by failing to defend it. With patents this just doesn't hold.
Plus the fact that Vim seems to violate GPL. Well, at least the Debian binaries are linked with libgpm which is GPL'd and therefore requires that all software linked with it be also distributed under the GPL.
Um. I might have said it more clearly, but I didn't say GPL forbids distributing binaries. I said it forbids _forbidding_ binary distribution, as the MPlayer developers did. :-)
Politics? Licensing is licensing, not politics. Using other people's code released under the GPL in a way which violates GPL is no more politics than pirating the latest Microsoft operating system is.
The funny thing being that the license in the GPL'd software they're using in MPlayer forbids forbidding binary distribution.
Other than that, I like it that they got to fixing this stupid mess.
In a somewhat comical incident, the same thing happened in Finland when the police forces sent a cease-and-desist letter to an association for linking to their main page (and with probably as much foundation in law as in this case).
So if I write a program and allow you to make derivative works by changing the version number, it's open source? Your reading of the definition makes no sense.
Of course you may argue that the common definition of open source is irrelevant, but that just doesn't make it so. Can you find me a definition which allows for this license and is accepted by even a single significant Linux/BSD distribution or open source developer community?
And you seem to think the only reason to change software is to port it or improve it. My advice is this: Rethink. :-)
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
Quite obviously, a license which disallows some kinds of modifications or derived works isn't open source.
Using GPL lib/code doesn't automatically make the derivative work GPL, it just creates a situation where you can either distribute it under the GPL or not at all. In this case the latter seems to be the only option, as MPlayer also uses third party non-GPL components which they simply can't distribute under GPL (because they're licensed in a different way, and even the source code is not available).
Think about it. They're infringing the copyright of whatever GPL code they didn't write themselves by linking it with non-GPL code (for example the codec DLLs), even if they claimed MPlayer was GPL. So legally MPlayer can't be distributed at all without infringing the copyright of at least the authors of included GPL libraries.
They can't.If you make big modifications to, say, Qt, and want them to be part of the official Qt distribution, I'm sure Trolltech will ask you to give them the permission to include it in their proprietary version.
Naturally you can refuse, in which case your modifications will not become part of the Qt distribution, effectively forking the code base. And you're perfectly within your rights to do so, but you will have an uphill battle trying to gain acceptance for the forked version, which you probably won't be allowed to call Qt (a restriction which GPL allows - simply put, it's a different product, and you may not market it as Trolltech's Qt using their trademark). And even for big open source projects it's often good to be based on a well-known toolkit a company has made famous by marketing rather than rather unknown MyFoobarToolkitFork 0.9beta with a very uncertain future.
Umh, I'm not sure anymore if it's owned by Apple (probably not). But still, it's there.
System and method for analyzing web-server log files
A method for analyzing traffic data generated by a plurality of web servers, which host a single web site. The site is mirrored on each server. A traffic data hit is generated responsive to each access of one of the servers. The hit includes data representing the time of the access. Each data hit is stored in a log file on the server accessed. The first-stored data hit is read from each server. Each of the read data hits are compared, and the oldest data hit is passed to a log file analyzer. The next-stored data hit is read from the server from which the passed data hit was read, and a second comparison is performed on the read data hits, with the oldest data hit being passed to the log file analyzer. This process continues until all of the data hits are read, compared, and passed to the log file analyzer. This results in passing all of the data hits to the log file analyzer in the chronological order in which the hits were generated.
Umm, you think they reverse-engineered the protocol so they can switch to another ISP?
Sounds like a good theory to me.
- Albert Einstein, probably the greatest physicist of the 20th century
What makes you think GNU libc is GPL'd? It's not.
I've never quite understood this. I wouldn't probably care much about very large fonts not being antialiased as long as the 8-14 pt ones are :-)
And the only one with anti-alias support, I think.
Would you be offended if if money was specifically offered to you for making a certain feature the donor needs? I know I wouldn't. Though if it's as strange as most of the features usually requested by clients, it wouldn't make it into the main code base :-)
Well, I don't know. I wouldn't be insulted :-)
I'm sure it makes Mr. Gates laugh :-)
Seriously, I do very much doubt there would be Linux as we know it without this so-much-despised viral GPL license. I believe there are more those hackers who don't want to see their code end up being part of some proprietary application than those who do (and therefore use licenses like BSD). Don't take me wrong, I've myself released some minor stuff under BSD license, I just prefer GLP for bigger ones.
What if Linux and all the tools were released under BSD license? I believe it would have become a platform for a lot of crappy shareware software. I only need to look back at DOS and shudder.
In fact I can almost think of more advances which require someone to change business plans than those which don't. That's life.