... simply wouldn't sell enough to pay for the administrative overhead. None of the cheaer alternatives to MS Word is doing well on the market, even before StarOffice was bought by Sun and made available gratis.
The only price that can compete with a market leader for office applications is $0, or a clearly superior product.
base64 is part of MIME from the start of the 90'ties, and wasn't really used on Usenet before mid 90'ties. Before that we used uuencode, however there was very little pr0n back then, and low quality. ASCII art comapred favorable to it. You couldn't upload much with 2400 baud modem.
If not, I suggest the MPL/GPL/LGPL tripple license used by Mozilla for new code (actually the GPL part is unnecesary, but it is safest to use the text pointed to by the link, since it has been proffread by lawyers). The MPL part will make it useful for embedded and most other purposes, the (L)GPL for use in (L)GPL projects, and it still means changes to your files will be made public.
I switched from Gtk-- to Qt
on
GTK-- vs. QT
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
From a conceptual point of view, I like Gtk-- better. It actually uses the modern C++ language, including the C++ type system. This way you avoid the need for a preprocessor, and get static typechecking instead of "dynamic typechecking" (i.e. "the user does the checking"), which is the entire point of using C++ in the first place. It also use the standard C++ library instead of duplicating it poorly, so you don't have to deal with multiple string types and the like. Since the application is a GUI frontend to a library written in standard C++, using the standard C++ library classes, this matter a lot. Qt is written for an ancient subset of C++, something closer to "C with Classes" than the C++ standard.
However, Qt is simple to use, well documented, and have stable API's. In practice, these make it much easier to use than Gtk--.
As an extra plus, Qt is GPL and therefore more gnulitically correct than Gtk--, which is only LGPL.
I believe the ABI for the compiler proper doesn't change (on most architechtures), but the ABI for the library *does*. The library was a total rerite, getiing it right at the first attempt was probably too much to hope for.
It was well known that de-facto standard for file compression in the net, "compress", was covered by the Unisys compression patent. However, showed no interest in enforcing the patent outside hardware (modems and the like), and would informally tell people who asked that.
Nonetheless the FSF insisted on having a patent free compression format for use by GNU, and eventually settled on gzip. This made some people angry, it was annoying to have to deal with a new compression format, and they claimed the FSF was seeing ghosts and that Unisys would never change their policy.
However, as we all know, Unisys *did* change their policy, allthough the target wasn't compress (which meanwhile had lost most of its markedshare to gzip), but GIF which used the same algorithm internally, and had become a big thing thanks to the WWW. Thankfully, at that time we had gzip, and could create PNG fast using the same code.
The morale "they haven't enforced the patent yet" provide false security. Companies don't enforce software patents until it become economically profitable to do so, typically when the algorithm is in so common use that it will be expensive to switch to an alternative. What we need is a legally binding promise not to enforce the patent.
The two-legged, four-foot white and silver Asimo, whose Japanese name roughly translates as ``legs, even,'' was on display on Monday, showing off its new skills.
It's name may mean "legs, even", but it must also be a hint to Isaac Asimov, who invented the term "robotics" and brought the sci-fi portrait of robots away from the Frankenstein myth.
The only way proprietary licenses work is that men with gun from the governemnt are required by law to enforce them by gunpoint.
If one is against the proprietary license, the solution is simply that the state should *stop* sending men with guns to enforce them, i.e. *remove* the laws that make such licenses possible.
So ESR is the man who should defend why sending men with guns against civilians to enforce his ideas of interlectuel property is a proper task for the state.
RMS is in this issue the one who might want less interfering by the state in the matters of the citizens.
He just took over maintenance of GNU Emacs again by default, and I doubt he is seeking any additional programming challenges. Maintaining GNU Emacs is a full time job, it is one of the largest free software packages out there, much larger than the Gnome core, libs and applets combined according to this study.
I have been using google to measure popularity for some time, the most relevant page here is my free software celebricies page. Google has some problems when used this way, the largest is that the hit count are very unstable. I have seen entries in my list go from 200 to 15.000 and back to 200 in a week, for no obvious reason. Another problem is that it is often hard to find a term that is specific enough, but not too specific. For example, Bill and Gates are both English words.
> This is shown even by Slashdot, which has
> switched from "news for nerds" to an almost
> exclusively Linux-advocacy site.
Actually, it is the other way around. It has switched from an almost exclusively Linux-advocacy site, to a general "news from nerds" site. The prototypical/. story when I started reading was "someone mentioned Linux somewhere! We are getting maintstream recogniztion now!".
At least that is the development in the time I have read it. I'm willing to be corrected about even earlier times by someone with a lower user-id.
The time for numbers have passed. Use a short mnemnonic keyword instead, computers handle them just as well as numbers these days, and humans handle them way better.
With XP, you can have multiple desktops running as different users, and switch between them with a hotkey.
This is the one feature of my Debian box I miss most when using my NT 4.0 box. I don't think it is worth upgrading for, though. I'm pretty happy with NT 4.0 otherwise.
Nope. Open Software was used in the 80'ties, Open Source was not used before the summit. In fact, it was explicitly chosen to have new unique term without the ambiguity associated with the term "free software".
It is sad to see revisionists attempt to hijack the term by changing history, but off course they can't provide any references to prior usage.
Hopefully they will license wine from transgaming
on
"Lindows" Coming Soon?
·
· Score: 2
Not according to the Open Source Definition. Since nobody have been able to point to use of the tem "Open Source" earlier than the O'Reilly summit defining it, they should be considered autoritative.
Of course, people will go reinvent terms when convenient. They (the summit people) even tried to trademark it, but the definition is too broad for that to work.
zealous hacker(TM) applications aren't relevant
on
Opposing Open Source?
·
· Score: 2
You shouldn't use one-person projects, free and especially not non-free, for critical purposes.
The free software projects that do compete with non-free software also involve many people, many of which livelihood depend on the software, because they work for companies that use the software.
Software projected started "to spite Microsoft" rarely produce anything useful enough to consider an alternative to a non-free product. They might be common measured in head counts, but rare measured in lines written or impact made.
Depend on the software. Perl, for example, integrate very well into Unix.
- performance
You *must* be joking.
- feature completeness
Right, "feature incomplete" is what I think of when I see Emacs 21.
- support
It might be possible to find examples where non-free software is better supported, I just can think of any. I have several times had to give up using non-free software I had paied for, and use an inferior free solution simply because the support for the non-free software sucked.
- documentation
Too variable to say conclusively, the Gtk and Gnome related projects such with regard to documentation, but I find Emacs documentation to be way better than any non-free product I have encountered.
- stability (at the application level -- not true for kernels)
The GNU tools are consistently more robust than their Unix counterparts, and the server software such as Apache, postfix and Samba all have an excellent reputation.
Possibly you are talking about Gnome/KDE applications here, who have a poor reputation (especially Gnome). I wouldn't know, I don't use any of them.
- ease of installation
Probably correct, although I haven't used any of the systems that are supposed to make it easy.
- support for hardware
If you limit that to "OS level support for the newest hardware on the ia32 platform" you might be right. It would be hard to find a non-free compiler that support as many targets as GCC, or a non-free operating system that is available at so diverse platforms as NetBSD.
- availability of software
Depend on the application area.
- total cost of ownership (TCO)
Obviously wrong for servers, unknown for dedicated clients, and not applicable for general purpose clients, where Microsoft have a de-facto monpoly.
Lack of Support: Things never go wrong at 3PM. Instead, they always happen at 2AM on Sunday. Commercial outfits have dedicated people to help when this happens -- open source people aren't around.
Actually, most of the free software hackers I know are more likely to be around at 2AM then 3PM. And if they are around at 3PM it is probably too early on the day for them to be any real help.
Is Linuxgram a serious site? Their "about" claim how fact oriented and professional they are, but a lot of their content look like is has been written by rejects from the/. troll community.
Slashdot Mirror
... simply wouldn't sell enough to pay for the administrative overhead. None of the cheaer alternatives to MS Word is doing well on the market, even before StarOffice was bought by Sun and made available gratis.
The only price that can compete with a market leader for office applications is $0, or a clearly superior product.
base64 is part of MIME from the start of the 90'ties, and wasn't really used on Usenet before mid 90'ties. Before that we used uuencode, however there was very little pr0n back then, and low quality. ASCII art comapred favorable to it. You couldn't upload much with 2400 baud modem.
We loved it, though!
Thanks.
:-(
I just need to learn be more careful when previewing
In this case, if you find it acceptable that people make changes to your code and distribute the result without sharing them, use the (new) , it is small, simple and give you the minimal legal protection against getting sued.
If not, I suggest the MPL/GPL/LGPL tripple license used by Mozilla for new code (actually the GPL part is unnecesary, but it is safest to use the text pointed to by the link, since it has been proffread by lawyers). The MPL part will make it useful for embedded and most other purposes, the (L)GPL for use in (L)GPL projects, and it still means changes to your files will be made public.
From a conceptual point of view, I like Gtk-- better. It actually uses the modern C++ language, including the C++ type system. This way you avoid the need for a preprocessor, and get static typechecking instead of "dynamic typechecking" (i.e. "the user does the checking"), which is the entire point of using C++ in the first place. It also use the standard C++ library instead of duplicating it poorly, so you don't have to deal with multiple string types and the like. Since the application is a GUI frontend to a library written in standard C++, using the standard C++ library classes, this matter a lot. Qt is written for an ancient subset of C++, something closer to "C with Classes" than the C++ standard.
However, Qt is simple to use, well documented, and have stable API's. In practice, these make it much easier to use than Gtk--.
As an extra plus, Qt is GPL and therefore more gnulitically correct than Gtk--, which is only LGPL.
I believe the ABI for the compiler proper doesn't change (on most architechtures), but the ABI for the library *does*. The library was a total rerite, getiing it right at the first attempt was probably too much to hope for.
Have we already forgot the GIF fiasco?
It was well known that de-facto standard for file compression in the net, "compress", was covered by the Unisys compression patent. However, showed no interest in enforcing the patent outside hardware (modems and the like), and would informally tell people who asked that.
Nonetheless the FSF insisted on having a patent free compression format for use by GNU, and eventually settled on gzip. This made some people angry, it was annoying to have to deal with a new compression format, and they claimed the FSF was seeing ghosts and that Unisys would never change their policy.
However, as we all know, Unisys *did* change their policy, allthough the target wasn't compress (which meanwhile had lost most of its markedshare to gzip), but GIF which used the same algorithm internally, and had become a big thing thanks to the WWW. Thankfully, at that time we had gzip, and could create PNG fast using the same code.
The morale "they haven't enforced the patent yet" provide false security. Companies don't enforce software patents until it become economically profitable to do so, typically when the algorithm is in so common use that it will be expensive to switch to an alternative. What we need is a legally binding promise not to enforce the patent.
The only way proprietary licenses work is that men with gun from the governemnt are required by law to enforce them by gunpoint.
If one is against the proprietary license, the solution is simply that the state should *stop* sending men with guns to enforce them, i.e. *remove* the laws that make such licenses possible.
So ESR is the man who should defend why sending men with guns against civilians to enforce his ideas of interlectuel property is a proper task for the state.
RMS is in this issue the one who might want less interfering by the state in the matters of the citizens.
He just took over maintenance of GNU Emacs again by default, and I doubt he is seeking any additional programming challenges. Maintaining GNU Emacs is a full time job, it is one of the largest free software packages out there, much larger than the Gnome core, libs and applets combined according to this study.
then I can bind the to and to and be even more productive than today!
I have been using google to measure popularity for some time, the most relevant page here is my free software celebricies page. Google has some problems when used this way, the largest is that the hit count are very unstable. I have seen entries in my list go from 200 to 15.000 and back to 200 in a week, for no obvious reason. Another problem is that it is often hard to find a term that is specific enough, but not too specific. For example, Bill and Gates are both English words.
Sun was originally primarily a workstation vendor, their servers was just something for their workstations to connect to.
They have moved thei focus from workstations to servers recently, as NT and Linux have taken over the workstation market.
You experience with Sun is probably after this happened.
> This is shown even by Slashdot, which has
/. story when I started reading was "someone mentioned Linux somewhere! We are getting maintstream recogniztion now!".
> switched from "news for nerds" to an almost
> exclusively Linux-advocacy site.
Actually, it is the other way around. It has switched from an almost exclusively Linux-advocacy site, to a general "news from nerds" site. The prototypical
At least that is the development in the time I have read it. I'm willing to be corrected about even earlier times by someone with a lower user-id.
The time for numbers have passed. Use a short mnemnonic keyword instead, computers handle them just as well as numbers these days, and humans handle them way better.
With XP, you can have multiple desktops running as different users, and switch between them with a hotkey.
This is the one feature of my Debian box I miss most when using my NT 4.0 box. I don't think it is worth upgrading for, though. I'm pretty happy with NT 4.0 otherwise.
...with or without capitals.
Nope. Open Software was used in the 80'ties, Open Source was not used before the summit. In fact, it was explicitly chosen to have new unique term without the ambiguity associated with the term "free software".
It is sad to see revisionists attempt to hijack the term by changing history, but off course they can't provide any references to prior usage.
... so they can work on the same non-free fork.
Not according to the Open Source Definition. Since nobody have been able to point to use of the tem "Open Source" earlier than the O'Reilly summit defining it, they should be considered autoritative.
Of course, people will go reinvent terms when convenient. They (the summit people) even tried to trademark it, but the definition is too broad for that to work.
You shouldn't use one-person projects, free and especially not non-free, for critical purposes.
The free software projects that do compete with non-free software also involve many people, many of which livelihood depend on the software, because they work for companies that use the software.
Software projected started "to spite Microsoft" rarely produce anything useful enough to consider an alternative to a non-free product. They might be common measured in head counts, but rare measured in lines written or impact made.
- usability
Depend on the user.
- aesthetics
Subjective.
- integration with other software
Depend on the software. Perl, for example, integrate very well into Unix.
- performance
You *must* be joking.
- feature completeness
Right, "feature incomplete" is what I think of when I see Emacs 21.
- support
It might be possible to find examples where non-free software is better supported, I just can think of any. I have several times had to give up using non-free software I had paied for, and use an inferior free solution simply because the support for the non-free software sucked.
- documentation
Too variable to say conclusively, the Gtk and Gnome related projects such with regard to documentation, but I find Emacs documentation to be way better than any non-free product I have encountered.
- stability (at the application level -- not true for kernels)
The GNU tools are consistently more robust than their Unix counterparts, and the server software such as Apache, postfix and Samba all have an excellent reputation.
Possibly you are talking about Gnome/KDE applications here, who have a poor reputation (especially Gnome). I wouldn't know, I don't use any of them.
- ease of installation
Probably correct, although I haven't used any of the systems that are supposed to make it easy.
- support for hardware
If you limit that to "OS level support for the newest hardware on the ia32 platform" you might be right. It would be hard to find a non-free compiler that support as many targets as GCC, or a non-free operating system that is available at so diverse platforms as NetBSD.
- availability of software
Depend on the application area.
- total cost of ownership (TCO)
Obviously wrong for servers, unknown for dedicated clients, and not applicable for general purpose clients, where Microsoft have a de-facto monpoly.
...but not anti-free software. He is very happy with the BSDL type licenses.
Is Linuxgram a serious site? Their "about" claim how fact oriented and professional they are, but a lot of their content look like is has been written by rejects from the /. troll community.