Not quite. One reason for a GNU VMWare would be to add features I want, like real soundcard support (not emulated soundblaster), that plugs straight into esd, accelerated video, and fixes for the mouse pointer problem. I would also junk Motif. Motif is terrible! It's the equivilent of Windows 3.1 in the Xtoolkit world.
That said, I can't do these things. While I would encourage VMWare to go the freed software route, I'm not going to. Why? Because the only reason you use VMWare in the first place is to run nonfreed software! Freed software, by definition, can be ported natively to GNU/Linux (or OpenBSD =). If you want VMWare so you can run IE 5.0 and your Windows games, you have no business takling about freed software morality.
Instead, work on Mozilla. I recently got the source tree working again, and it's so much nicer than last year around this time. Or, write some games--go work with the Golgotha Forever people. There's plenty to do besides try to get your security-blanket Windows programs running in VMWare.</end-shameless-vitriol>
I fail to see what makes freemware so much better than VMWare until the licence is fixed. Until then, I have to pay the author money after 30 days. This is no different than VMWare, and VMWare works--now. Bochs/freemware doesn't (the speed of an 8086/10 on an Ultra 5 is unacceptable).
I would also like to point out the piracy issue: a freed clone of VMWare could actually reduce the amount of pirated copies of VMWare. Do you really think pimply-faced kids who just got ``this Redhat thing'' installed are going to pay for VMWare? Of course not. They'll get it from their favorite EFnet channel like they do everything else.
On the topic of world domination and us freed software developers, I really don't see how it has any meaning at all. Who cares how many people are using my code or some code that has some contributions of mine? It doesn't affect me, except in the remote sense that better software makes the world a slightly nicer place. It's not like all these semi-free projects coming from IBM or Apple are hurting me. I keep on hacking away at my OS/2/X11/GNU/printing integration software. I continue to fiddle with xfstt to get antialiasing working with XFree86. I continue to install and use freed software packages, like mailman, that I need on my system and learn how to use them.
There's no-one clamoring for my resources. Freed software will go on long after the current Linux hype is over. GNU will still be around. I'll probably still be using the Linux kernel. My PS/2s will still be running. I'll still be maintaing the XGA XFree86 Xserver. Who cares if Linux has.01% of the desktop or 99%?
Disclaimer: I am pimply faced some of the time, at least after eating Syrian food.
I've decided that proprietary, closed software IS the problem (and Bochs is such a piece of software due to its licence). Case in point: Stardock Object Desktop. It's unzip feature is very broken. Try unpacking XFree86 for OS/2 with it. It scared me off from the demo right away--I never came back. I liked some things about Object Desktop, but it just was a still target.
With freed software, *I* can fix bugs, and I know the project won't suddenly go frozen and stiff when a company can't continue development (or won't), such as happened with Colorworks.
OS/2 has really turned me off to the non-free software world. OTOH, I have really been enjoying the freed software community, esp. the XFree86 and Debian people. It's simply a lot more fun.
I have too many times spent money on a piece of OS/2 software that, while nice, quickly became another coprolith lining my shelves that was a waste of (insert dollar amount here).
This is, of course, common in any community. In the Windows community, everyone wants warez. (This is true both of the drones inhabiting IRC with their bLaCk-bAcKgRoUnDeD websites and also of the general populace, which routinely borrows CDs and installs unlicenced software with disregard.) That's not quite so cool in the freed software community. In general, there are four reactions:
Good to see some commercial apps for GNU/Linux. I think I might buy a copy.
Too expensive. I want a free version. Wahh, somebody write one for me please!
Sounds interesting. I've got some code here that sort of does this, but needs some work done. Anyone want to start a FreeFoobar project?
I tried this program and it's terrible. It won't work with my 2.3.176-ac13 kernel, and where are the glibc7 binaries? I demand opensource.
#2 is the most common and also the most arrogant and stupid. If you want good software, write it. #4 is reasonable--that's why many of us use a distribution like Debian so we can always have the latest of everything, and we generally don't pay attention to non-freed software. #3 is, of course, the best reaction, because it creates more competition for #1.
That said, I still think the world needs more freed software, not commercial software. I just don't know how to resolve this with the diametric problem of being able to eat.
All this said, I frankly will not contribute one line of code to freemware until the Bochs licence is changed. It's extremely arrogant of the author to astroturf like this when VMWare already has an excellent product, and he brings nothing to the table. I wrote an 80286 emulator myself--and it was in 32-bit assembler. Bochs is in C!
Calm down. RedHat is not the Great Satan, at least not now. RedHat simply donated server space to Kevin Lawton and the freemware project.
RedHat probably appreciates VMWare for providing a useful product on GNU/Linux, but RedHat would really like to be able to bundle a freed software emulator for Micros~1 software that actually works. The $300 is way to high to sell as a Windows {9[58]|NT} replacement.
If anything ever becomes of freemware, it will place competitive pressure on VMWare to compete. For starters, they might consider an accelerated video driver (easy to do), better performance (there's always a way), and Windows sound/mouse drivers that talk directly to X11 rather than through the hardware emulation layer (this would remove the mouse pointer weirdness). Making Windows windows integrate with the X11 desktop would also be nice (sort of like OS/2's seamless feature); this is actually not that hard to do.
That said, VMWare is a very nice product, but freed software is always better. =) And please DON'T tell me to go spend $300. I'd much rather use freed software and donate that money worthy causes.
This editorial hit the nail on the head. Documentation is the most critical need in the freed software community. It's the GNU project's most critical need.
Case in point: I'm trying to use the mailman mailing list software with Exim. It's been just no fun. I'll be able to figure it out, but it's going to take some effort.
You can be sure that once I do, I'm going to write up a README.exim and submit it to the manmail maintainers/developers, and perhaps add an FAQ entry.
I really didn't think he would last. JWZ has authored some world-famous quotes, such as that writing programs in Java is a waste of time; GNU/Linux is the hardest operating system there is to use; and that Netscape is the [crummiest] browser.
I wonder what he'll do next. He's probably feeling stifled in his new home with AOL. I wonder who will replace him? AOL/Netscape needs to hire around 100 new software engineers for the browser division--methinks that AOL wants to move from their current, dated user client to a Mozilla-based solution.
I'm just glad the Mozilla code is out there. And quite frankly, while I respect JWZ and ESR and their accomplishments, I disagree strongly with their philosophy of things.
We can all take refuge in the fact that RMS is not going to go away. Nothing short of death will bereave him from us (as did it to my beloved --jon.).
It should have said ``Fighting-For-The-Little-Guy dept.''. In addition, while Katz's grammar is not perfect, he wouldn't have used fifteen incomplete sentences in a row. I'm not criticising Rob (fear the taco)-- I'm just pointing out that, well, it didn't have the desired effect. I wasn't fooled.
My only question is: is Yellow Dog Linux for real?
That's why cryofusion is much better--fusion performed at extremely low temperatures (billionth Kelvin or so). Granted, it takes some pretty fancy laser cooling to achieve that, but having the dihydrogen mass in a solid makes it *so* much easier to handle (not to mention useful for cooling down your PII). Basically it uses the burst of protons streaming forth from the hydrogen to induce an eletric current.
I've been waiting for this to happen. Now I won't get annoying in #linux anymore when people ask me to where to find downloads `coz I'll say ``Sorry pup, there AREN'T any! You'll have to pay for it!''
I think this goes with RMS's recent announcement on gnu.misc.discuss of the change to the GPL 3 which requires a $10 licencing fee to be paid to the FSF everytime a copy changes hands. All I can say is: it's about time SOMEBODY gave the FSF some money.
I got rid of my hamster a long time ago (more accurately, the cat did). I just wired the Ctrl, Meta, and Delete keys on my neighbor's NT machine to a motor that charges a large flywheel. Whenever he/she (haven't figured out which he/she is yet) is installing, say, Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0 Service Pack 1, I swear that the torque from my flywheel goes up by at least 12.500 N*m.
I've found my glycogen-based generator works much better. I took a heart-lung machine from a local hospital (they were auctioning off stuff like heart monitors, MRI equipment, ECG machines, type-AB blood, unused livers, &c.) and put in some mods so that it will extract glycogen/glucose from the blood and convert it to eletrical power. Hey--my heart does that, so why shouldn't I? The biggest problem sofar has been finding a way to eat 26,000 kJ worth of food each day (that's about 3500 food calories). OTOH, who else can have their beloved equipment so close to their heart?
It's just a cheap way for the admins of segfault.org, BeDope, and the UserFriendly cartoon section to do some much-needed maintenance work (like moving up to 2.2.5; I only got to use 2.2.4-ac1 for around 70 hours!). That said, I'm quite annoyed: where am I going to go for humour today? I'll have to stick to rec.humor.funny.
As an aside, I'd like to get this code that detects my sexual orientation, because I don't know what it is. Also, exactly what encoding is that? Base65536? IEEE floating-point?
BTW, we released XFree86 4.0 today. It's got antialiasing, ability to switch client windows between displays, and true 3-D support with both OpenGL and Pex for over a dozen 3-D accelerator cards. Go to the XFree86 project webserver and check it out.
I've got it working in a beta of XFree86 4.0. No, I can't give it to you. It's got some real problems, such as dog-slow performance, and many Xapplications have real trouble with true fractional spacing, which is one of the main reasons to use antialiasing. In other words, Netscape doesn't work. Neither do GTK+ based apps.
Did I mention it's slow? EVERYTHING is rendered as an image, so your hardware's font acceleration can't be used. It probably won't be ready in time for the XFree86 4.0 release, but when XF86 4.0 comes out, look for it in the contrib/ section.
Try using the ``slim html'' feature (I believe it is labeled ``Reduce Complexity for Lynx, slow browser, Chimera, &c.). It makes/. so much easier to read--even though I typically use it with Mozilla (now that Mozilla is finally usable, I can run vrms(8) on my computer and achieve sainthood in the Church of Emacs!)
/. looks nice with its intense table system, but it took a long time to renderin classic Netscape (Gecko renders it well, however;/. with complexity is probably a good Mozilla stress-test).
That would be ``Freedumb Knights,'' as that simply has a better ring to it. This kind of discussion usually popped up on news.admin.censorship first, and then later began infecting n.a.n-a.[meu].
n.a.n-a.[meu] used to be decent newsgroups before I joined them. But they decayed rapidly--there was a point when the only reason to read it would be to see what the latest troll had done (at first, they were funny, like the Pakistani spammer or the NJSH or Johnboy Jr.), but in later times, they just got to be boring or downright nasty (like John McGrath, who killed ML.ORG for a few days, or the kind person who revengespammed me).
OS X is not NeXTStep--it's more like 4.4BSD with that phun Microkernel stuff from CMU thrown in. If it's NeXTSTEP, where's the incredible graphical environment you got on the NeXTS?
What are you using--HP-UX? Or perhaps OpenWindows? I haven't seen paging requirements like that since five minutes ago when I was fiddling with WebSphere. (Now that's a resource pig--I was using it on OS/2, it it took up 2 GIGABYTES of address space, had about 500 megabytes of that committed, and had around 100MB resident!)
I remember Slackware. It's still in use here for the sole purpose of ZipSlack, which fits so nicely in a machine otherwise prostituted to Windows. All I can say is that it's about time we got glibc6--I might actually use Slackware for something again.
I was drug kicking and screaming to the eternal judgment La-`Z'-Boy of `Bob', and he told me to install Debian! I could hear Mike Enlow's voice in my head! But I did as `Bob' commanded, and am indeed happier now. (Fear potatoes.)
Still, if Slackware 4.0 doesn't have modern compiles of everything, I won't use it. I just had too many bad experiences with Slackware 3.6 (Slackware 98) of horribly old, crusty, buggy, and vulnerable executables. (Don't even get me started of when I had my Slackware machine connected directly to the Internet and was using it to gab on IRC.)
OTOH, Slackware, along with OS/2's kernel debugger and DEBUG.COM has made me what I am today, and I am grateful.
I just want to see a revival of SLS Linux! Now those were the days! (Geesh. I was 10 years old then. Youngstuff. I didn't know what I was doing--gosh, I wish I could go back in time and help myself out!)
In terms of device independence, this is a VERY old idea. It's just that you can't get anything right when you do it in a PC. Good grief: look at how long it took us to get to the VESA 1.0 standard. (There was IBM's AI, but don't even mention that to me.)
Printing has always been a weak spot in Unix, and it's especially glaring in Linux. This is probably due to the historic use of Postscript-only printer devices in Unix's history. Few of us have Postscript printers, and Ghostscript's device support is abjectly horrible. (I'm working on a usable 4019/4029 driver, though. =)
It's just interesting to see the various defiencies in the internet protocols improve. I've never liked ad-hoc Berkeley protocols anyway (like rcmd, although it is handy for some things). OK, so I *do* like SLIP.
Yet another reason to ditch Postscript. Postscript has numerous advantages, but it's really overkill for printing--a much simpler and leaner hardcopy carriage format would be nice.
I never thought of viruses in Postscript before because I never thought of printing Postscript files straight to a printer from unknown sources. The only Postscript I ever process is the output from troff or groff which I then run through Ghostscript in bitmap-file generation mode which I then run through my extremely ugly program to generate a compressed image for my ancient 4019 printer (or, when I'm feeling playful, my MX-80 with or without GRAFTRAX-80 or when I'm feeling devious, a 3820.)
That said, the LDS church has not practiced polygamy since 1890, following numerous legal appeals of the law which made it against the law.
Huh? Maybe it's not *officially* practiced, but it definitely took place in recent times. I say this from personal conversation with people from Mormons (both in RL and via electronic media).
This is a fault of all religions, though. Some of the followers of the religion will be terrible people and make great straw men to beat up when we don't like a particular religion. Mormonism has quite a few straw men from which to select. But it's not a reflection against Mormonism itself (although it is pretty wild--I like the part about ruling planets in the next life).
Slashdot Mirror
That said, I can't do these things. While I would encourage VMWare to go the freed software route, I'm not going to. Why? Because the only reason you use VMWare in the first place is to run nonfreed software! Freed software, by definition, can be ported natively to GNU/Linux (or OpenBSD =). If you want VMWare so you can run IE 5.0 and your Windows games, you have no business takling about freed software morality.
Instead, work on Mozilla. I recently got the source tree working again, and it's so much nicer than last year around this time. Or, write some games--go work with the Golgotha Forever people. There's plenty to do besides try to get your security-blanket Windows programs running in VMWare.</end-shameless-vitriol>
Cheers,
Joshua.
I fail to see what makes freemware so much better than VMWare until the licence is fixed. Until then, I have to pay the author money after 30 days. This is no different than VMWare, and VMWare works--now. Bochs/freemware doesn't (the speed of an 8086/10 on an Ultra 5 is unacceptable).
I would also like to point out the piracy issue: a freed clone of VMWare could actually reduce the amount of pirated copies of VMWare. Do you really think pimply-faced kids who just got ``this Redhat thing'' installed are going to pay for VMWare? Of course not. They'll get it from their favorite EFnet channel like they do everything else.
On the topic of world domination and us freed software developers, I really don't see how it has any meaning at all. Who cares how many people are using my code or some code that has some contributions of mine? It doesn't affect me, except in the remote sense that better software makes the world a slightly nicer place. It's not like all these semi-free projects coming from IBM or Apple are hurting me. I keep on hacking away at my OS/2/X11/GNU/printing integration software. I continue to fiddle with xfstt to get antialiasing working with XFree86. I continue to install and use freed software packages, like mailman, that I need on my system and learn how to use them.
There's no-one clamoring for my resources. Freed software will go on long after the current Linux hype is over. GNU will still be around. I'll probably still be using the Linux kernel. My PS/2s will still be running. I'll still be maintaing the XGA XFree86 Xserver. Who cares if Linux has .01% of the desktop or 99%?
Disclaimer: I am pimply faced some of the time, at least after eating Syrian food.
I've decided that proprietary, closed software IS the problem (and Bochs is such a piece of software due to its licence). Case in point: Stardock Object Desktop. It's unzip feature is very broken. Try unpacking XFree86 for OS/2 with it. It scared me off from the demo right away--I never came back. I liked some things about Object Desktop, but it just was a still target.
With freed software, *I* can fix bugs, and I know the project won't suddenly go frozen and stiff when a company can't continue development (or won't), such as happened with Colorworks.
OS/2 has really turned me off to the non-free software world. OTOH, I have really been enjoying the freed software community, esp. the XFree86 and Debian people. It's simply a lot more fun.
I have too many times spent money on a piece of OS/2 software that, while nice, quickly became another coprolith lining my shelves that was a waste of (insert dollar amount here).
- Good to see some commercial apps for GNU/Linux. I think I might buy a copy.
- Too expensive. I want a free version. Wahh, somebody write one for me please!
- Sounds interesting. I've got some code here that sort of does this, but needs some work done. Anyone want to start a FreeFoobar project?
- I tried this program and it's terrible. It won't work with my 2.3.176-ac13 kernel, and where are the glibc7 binaries? I demand opensource.
#2 is the most common and also the most arrogant and stupid. If you want good software, write it. #4 is reasonable--that's why many of us use a distribution like Debian so we can always have the latest of everything, and we generally don't pay attention to non-freed software. #3 is, of course, the best reaction, because it creates more competition for #1.That said, I still think the world needs more freed software, not commercial software. I just don't know how to resolve this with the diametric problem of being able to eat.
All this said, I frankly will not contribute one line of code to freemware until the Bochs licence is changed. It's extremely arrogant of the author to astroturf like this when VMWare already has an excellent product, and he brings nothing to the table. I wrote an 80286 emulator myself--and it was in 32-bit assembler. Bochs is in C!
RedHat probably appreciates VMWare for providing a useful product on GNU/Linux, but RedHat would really like to be able to bundle a freed software emulator for Micros~1 software that actually works. The $300 is way to high to sell as a Windows {9[58]|NT} replacement.
If anything ever becomes of freemware, it will place competitive pressure on VMWare to compete. For starters, they might consider an accelerated video driver (easy to do), better performance (there's always a way), and Windows sound/mouse drivers that talk directly to X11 rather than through the hardware emulation layer (this would remove the mouse pointer weirdness). Making Windows windows integrate with the X11 desktop would also be nice (sort of like OS/2's seamless feature); this is actually not that hard to do.
That said, VMWare is a very nice product, but freed software is always better. =) And please DON'T tell me to go spend $300. I'd much rather use freed software and donate that money worthy causes.
Case in point: I'm trying to use the mailman mailing list software with Exim. It's been just no fun. I'll be able to figure it out, but it's going to take some effort.
You can be sure that once I do, I'm going to write up a README.exim and submit it to the manmail maintainers/developers, and perhaps add an FAQ entry.
Writing is not hard, and it really helps.
I wonder what he'll do next. He's probably feeling stifled in his new home with AOL. I wonder who will replace him? AOL/Netscape needs to hire around 100 new software engineers for the browser division--methinks that AOL wants to move from their current, dated user client to a Mozilla-based solution.
I'm just glad the Mozilla code is out there. And quite frankly, while I respect JWZ and ESR and their accomplishments, I disagree strongly with their philosophy of things.
We can all take refuge in the fact that RMS is not going to go away. Nothing short of death will bereave him from us (as did it to my beloved --jon.).
Cheers,
Joshua (a GNUite)
My first thought was that IBM had done something new with the GNU/Linux port of NetObjects Fusion.
My only question is: is Yellow Dog Linux for real?
Cheers,
Joshua.
That's why cryofusion is much better--fusion performed at extremely low temperatures (billionth Kelvin or so). Granted, it takes some pretty fancy laser cooling to achieve that, but having the dihydrogen mass in a solid makes it *so* much easier to handle (not to mention useful for cooling down your PII). Basically it uses the burst of protons streaming forth from the hydrogen to induce an eletric current.
I think this goes with RMS's recent announcement on gnu.misc.discuss of the change to the GPL 3 which requires a $10 licencing fee to be paid to the FSF everytime a copy changes hands. All I can say is: it's about time SOMEBODY gave the FSF some money.
I got rid of my hamster a long time ago (more accurately, the cat did). I just wired the Ctrl, Meta, and Delete keys on my neighbor's NT machine to a motor that charges a large flywheel. Whenever he/she (haven't figured out which he/she is yet) is installing, say, Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0 Service Pack 1, I swear that the torque from my flywheel goes up by at least 12.500 N*m.
That's what you think.
There Is No Slashdot Conspiracy.
<claps hand over mouth> I've said too much already.
Cheers,
Joshua "I just brushed my teeh five minutes ago after eating two bowls of Nutri-Grain" Rodd
What I really want is to get into the heavy stuff--the 2.3 kernel series. It's been too long between register panics!
Ah, I feel good today. It's a lovely spring day, the kids are home from school, and the birds are singing.
Cheers,
Joshua.
As an aside, I'd like to get this code that detects my sexual orientation, because I don't know what it is. Also, exactly what encoding is that? Base65536? IEEE floating-point?
BTW, we released XFree86 4.0 today. It's got antialiasing, ability to switch client windows between displays, and true 3-D support with both OpenGL and Pex for over a dozen 3-D accelerator cards. Go to the XFree86 project webserver and check it out.
Cheers,
Joshua.
I've got it working in a beta of XFree86 4.0. No, I can't give it to you. It's got some real problems, such as dog-slow performance, and many Xapplications have real trouble with true fractional spacing, which is one of the main reasons to use antialiasing. In other words, Netscape doesn't work. Neither do GTK+ based apps.
Did I mention it's slow? EVERYTHING is rendered as an image, so your hardware's font acceleration can't be used. It probably won't be ready in time for the XFree86 4.0 release, but when XF86 4.0 comes out, look for it in the contrib/ section.
/. looks nice with its intense table system, but it took a long time to renderin classic Netscape (Gecko renders it well, however; /. with complexity is probably a good Mozilla stress-test).
n.a.n-a.[meu] used to be decent newsgroups before I joined them. But they decayed rapidly--there was a point when the only reason to read it would be to see what the latest troll had done (at first, they were funny, like the Pakistani spammer or the NJSH or Johnboy Jr.), but in later times, they just got to be boring or downright nasty (like John McGrath, who killed ML.ORG for a few days, or the kind person who revengespammed me).
OS X is not NeXTStep--it's more like 4.4BSD with that phun Microkernel stuff from CMU thrown in. If it's NeXTSTEP, where's the incredible graphical environment you got on the NeXTS?
What are you using--HP-UX? Or perhaps OpenWindows? I haven't seen paging requirements like that since five minutes ago when I was fiddling with WebSphere. (Now that's a resource pig--I was using it on OS/2, it it took up 2 GIGABYTES of address space, had about 500 megabytes of that committed, and had around 100MB resident!)
I was drug kicking and screaming to the eternal judgment La-`Z'-Boy of `Bob', and he told me to install Debian! I could hear Mike Enlow's voice in my head! But I did as `Bob' commanded, and am indeed happier now. (Fear potatoes.)
Still, if Slackware 4.0 doesn't have modern compiles of everything, I won't use it. I just had too many bad experiences with Slackware 3.6 (Slackware 98) of horribly old, crusty, buggy, and vulnerable executables. (Don't even get me started of when I had my Slackware machine connected directly to the Internet and was using it to gab on IRC.)
OTOH, Slackware, along with OS/2's kernel debugger and DEBUG.COM has made me what I am today, and I am grateful.
I just want to see a revival of SLS Linux! Now those were the days! (Geesh. I was 10 years old then. Youngstuff. I didn't know what I was doing--gosh, I wish I could go back in time and help myself out!)
Cheers--Joshua.
Printing has always been a weak spot in Unix, and it's especially glaring in Linux. This is probably due to the historic use of Postscript-only printer devices in Unix's history. Few of us have Postscript printers, and Ghostscript's device support is abjectly horrible. (I'm working on a usable 4019/4029 driver, though. =)
It's just interesting to see the various defiencies in the internet protocols improve. I've never liked ad-hoc Berkeley protocols anyway (like rcmd, although it is handy for some things). OK, so I *do* like SLIP.
I never thought of viruses in Postscript before because I never thought of printing Postscript files straight to a printer from unknown sources. The only Postscript I ever process is the output from troff or groff which I then run through Ghostscript in bitmap-file generation mode which I then run through my extremely ugly program to generate a compressed image for my ancient 4019 printer (or, when I'm feeling playful, my MX-80 with or without GRAFTRAX-80 or when I'm feeling devious, a 3820.)
That said, the LDS church has not practiced polygamy since 1890, following numerous legal appeals of the law which made it against the law.
Huh? Maybe it's not *officially* practiced, but it definitely took place in recent times. I say this from personal conversation with people from Mormons (both in RL and via electronic media).
This is a fault of all religions, though. Some of the followers of the religion will be terrible people and make great straw men to beat up when we don't like a particular religion. Mormonism has quite a few straw men from which to select. But it's not a reflection against Mormonism itself (although it is pretty wild--I like the part about ruling planets in the next life).