It makes lots of sense -- from a purely economic view -- to support the development of free software. That can easily end up saving tax-payer money.
In this case however, the idea probably is that a better software infrastructure will promote business in general, which is the purpose of this particular branch of government.
> *smile* but Motorola was asked for the changes > to GCC that shipped on the machine. Hence the > statement from Motorola that 'they had a > seperate licence from FSF'
Actually, there never was such a statement. You are simply testing the bullshit-o-meter on/.
> Anyone with access to Motorola Cell Phone > transmitters wanna try again and document > this?:-)
How would that be possible, when you are simply making things up?
I use my wife's first name for all my accounts. For those sites that does not accept "Amanda" as a password, I use the names of my kids ("Allan" and "Ann"), and also write the password down on a yellow label stuck to my monitor (together with the site/account name of course), as well as in a file named PASSWORDS in my home directory. Just in case the label fall off.
This has worked well until now, I have never had to ask the admins to remind me what my password is.
The only non-free software on the CD is the install program. This means that you can install it on as many platforms you want, and that you can put all the software (except the install program) on ftp if that is what you want. Free speach, not free beer.
They maintain binutils and gdb for the FSF. They are the single largest contributer to gcc, and the head of the gcc team is a Cygnus employee.
Their main revenue comes from selling support for gcc (and the GNU tools) to various makers of embedded devices, including ports to new hardware.
They have started selling boxed packages, such as GnuPRO, CodeFusion, and Cygwin. GnuPRO and Cygwin are just packeded versions of free tools, CodeFusion is proprietary.
Cygnus is mostly selling support for free software
on
Red Hat Buying Cygnus?
·
· Score: 2
They have a couple of proprietary products, but I doubt they make them much money.
So I don't think this would affect Red Hat much. Maybe they would make the proprietary Cygnus products free software, that would not cost them much.
Emphasising the Linux version is fair, honest and simply good journalism. Because that is the OS the readers of this site are expected to be most interested in. Just like a MS oriented site would be expected to emphasize the availability of a MS Windows version (as opposed to the old DOS version). Good journalists knows their audience, and select and present the news that are of most interest to their audience.
I'm not sure I buy the "Postscript-enabled Proprietary Applications" argument, though. What's to stop these app developers from providing support for some other common interface (say PPM) and saying to people, "Hey, you can get Postscript support really easy by doing this:..."
The Alladin License forbids them to bundle gs with the application. They can of course tell their customers to download and install gs themselves, but that would not be what customers expects from a commercial product.
I believe Namesys want to sell ReiserFS to people who sell proprietary OS'es. People who sell propritary products that runs on top of a free OS is not part of their market target. It would be a very difficult target to hit anyway, the only solution I can think of would essentially mean that namesys would have to sell their own OS, perhaps based on one of the free BSD's.
I think you confuse some issues. Alladin has had _two_ business models. The old was to use GPL and sell exceptions. The new is to use a more restrictive license for new versions, sell exceptions, and release old versions under the GPL.
That some printer manufacturers didn't want to obey the GPL was not a problem for Alladin, it was a feature. It meant these manufactures would want to buy an exception from Alladin. When they buy an exception, the GPL become irrelevant to the customer. The problem was developers of "postscript enabled proprietary applications" who _hadn't_ any problem with the GPL, because they didn't link with gs, they just used it as a standalone program. They would not pay Alladin, instead they would distribute the source to gs. The new Alladin license was designed to prevent this.
Namesys will not need to change their license, because their potential customers will not be able to use a similar loophole.
Alladin used to do that with Ghostscript. RMS had no problems with this business model, and I haven't heard of anyone who wanted to fork the project for this reason. It would also be silly, as you would have to remerge the enhancements from the trunk back to your branch.
With Ghostscript the GPL was not restrictive enough. Proprietary software would simply call the gs executable in a separate process. That is why Alladin eventually switched to a more restrictive license. Namesys should have no such problems, you can't run a filesystem stand-alone.
Hardly. Sun have always supported standard technologies and documented interfaces. The MS tactics wouldn't fit their culture.
If MS hadn't been around, DR might have had a similar position (having licensed CP/M to IBM for the PC). Allthough it is unlikely, they didn't have the same kind of business leaders as MS. The most likely effect would be that IBM would still dominate the computer market.
MSIE is the better product now, but that is irrelevant. Better products have never won in the PC market. The time the masses switched to MSIE was when the browser became bundled with the OS.
We do help by link from "/.". The more obviously absurd the polls are, the less likely they are to be taken seriously. And even for those who still takes them seriously, the/.'ed results are no more misleading than the un-/.'ed results. So they are no worse off. Also, the polls *do* have a positive value, they are fun./. would be more boring without its wonderful polls.
The program you mentioned misses the point. It doesn't matter if the poll is spammed or not, self selected surveys are always useless.
Win9x should just die, it would be cruel to build a company around it. And what about the server company owning NT? Would they be prevented from selling a workstation product?
And regarding the browser... well, I'm of the unpopular opinion that the browser technology _should_ be build into the OS, and have advocated that (for Emacs) before MS made it their policy. You should be able to type an URL anywhere you can type a filename, and applications should be able to rely on html display being available for e.g. help files or forms.
Documenting the interfaces and allow the network engine and display engine to be replacable would be a good idea, regardless.
Around 2/3 believe that either MS doesn't hold a monopoly, or that its monopoly hasn't harmed anyone. Yet, over half believe that it should be punished one way or another.
You make a good case for the six companies, and all of them would remain among the largest players in the field.
I don't think #1 (server-os) and #3 (workstation-os) breakup is reasonable, though. They share too much technology. What would you think about breaking Linux development up into server and workstation? Nah. I'm unsure about #2 (internet content tools). How would it work as a company? They have themselves made it hard to make money selling a web-browser. And the technology _is_ pretty much integrated in the os by now.
Maybe #1, #2, and #3 should form one new company. I agree that your suggestions #4 (office, applications), #5 (hardware), and #6 (wince) ought to run separately. And their ISP (MSN) should also form a separate company, perhaps together with the MS "content" ownership.
That would be 5 new companies, each of them with clear separate markets, and each of them strong players in their respective markets. They ought to be able to thrive.
Some less than cluefull people believe in Internet pools. By/.'ing the pools we either enlighten these people, or make them believe in another falsehood than they would otherwise have done. Thus,/.'ing a Internet pool can never do wrong, only good.
Besides, there is a non-negligible entertainment effect in the pools. Complaining about them would be showing significant amount of stick-in-the-assness. Much better to join the fun.
They provide no useful information whatsoever, and can thus not be "skewed"./. should link to them whenever it increases their entertainment value. It actually helps their information value, because currently they have a negative information value as some people actually believe they bear some resemblance to the popular opinion. The/. effect can help show these unenlightened people the folly of their belief.
> And how exactly did they do that? By making a > better product? What that isnt allowed?
Why don't you read the actual findings, it is all explained there nicely. In plain text. Of course "making a better product" is allowed. But that wasn't how MS won the browser war. They won it by tying their browser to a product where they have a monopoly.
You are a young one, aren't you? I don't know which place you get your revisionist Microsoft history, but a lot of us was there at the time, and we know it for what it is.
Slashdot Mirror
It makes lots of sense -- from a purely economic view -- to support the development of free software. That can easily end up saving tax-payer money.
In this case however, the idea probably is that a better software infrastructure will promote business in general, which is the purpose of this particular branch of government.
> *smile* but Motorola was asked for the changes
/.
:-)
> to GCC that shipped on the machine. Hence the
> statement from Motorola that 'they had a
> seperate licence from FSF'
Actually, there never was such a statement. You are simply testing the bullshit-o-meter on
> Anyone with access to Motorola Cell Phone
> transmitters wanna try again and document
> this?
How would that be possible, when you are simply making things up?
I use my wife's first name for all my accounts. For those sites that does not accept "Amanda" as a password, I use the names of my kids ("Allan" and "Ann"), and also write the password down on a yellow label stuck to my monitor (together with the site/account name of course), as well as in a file named PASSWORDS in my home directory. Just in case the label fall off.
This has worked well until now, I have never had to ask the admins to remind me what my password is.
> There is something wrong with communism.
Yes.
> It doesn't work period.
Right. Or at least, it has never been demonstrated as working in a self-sufficient society.
> There is no way supply and demand can be
> regulated by the government. That is why
> capitalism works and communism doesn't.
No, that is why marked economy works, and planned economy doesn't. Planned economy is not equivalent to communism.
> There is no way a society can work efficiently
> while being ruled by a government which makes
> every decision for you.
True, but irrelevant.
> In the US you can read what you want.
Mostly true, but irrelevant.
> Yes they are regulated, but the media in the US
> is free to say what they want (unless national
> security).
Or involves sex.
> In China you would be massacred for speaking
> out against the government and I'm sure the
> same goes for any other communist country.
There has never been a communist country. Good arguments can be made for the claim that there cannot be a communist country.
The only non-free software on the CD is the install program. This means that you can install it on as many platforms you want, and that you can put all the software (except the install program) on ftp if that is what you want. Free speach, not free beer.
It is *not* just b20.1, but a later version.
They maintain binutils and gdb for the FSF. They are the single largest contributer to gcc, and the head of the gcc team is a Cygnus employee.
Their main revenue comes from selling support for gcc (and the GNU tools) to various makers of embedded devices, including ports to new hardware.
They have started selling boxed packages, such as GnuPRO, CodeFusion, and Cygwin. GnuPRO and Cygwin are just packeded versions of free tools, CodeFusion is proprietary.
They have a couple of proprietary products, but I doubt they make them much money.
So I don't think this would affect Red Hat much. Maybe they would make the proprietary Cygnus products free software, that would not cost them much.
Emphasising the Linux version is fair, honest and simply good journalism. Because that is the OS the readers of this site are expected to be most interested in. Just like a MS oriented site would be expected to emphasize the availability of a MS Windows version (as opposed to the old DOS version). Good journalists knows their audience, and select and present the news that are of most interest to their audience.
Eh? Did Linus ever use djgcc?
I'd suggest donating the royality to The League for Programming Freedom. Especially if the patent in question is a software patent.
Was I the only one who expected to see an announcement of a £99 digital TV of questionable quality, when reading about the "Sinclair effort".
The Alladin License forbids them to bundle gs with the application. They can of course tell their customers to download and install gs themselves, but that would not be what customers expects from a commercial product.
I believe Namesys want to sell ReiserFS to people who sell proprietary OS'es. People who sell propritary products that runs on top of a free OS is not part of their market target. It would be a very difficult target to hit anyway, the only solution I can think of would essentially mean that namesys would have to sell their own OS, perhaps based on one of the free BSD's.
I think you confuse some issues. Alladin has had _two_ business models. The old was to use GPL and sell exceptions. The new is to use a more restrictive license for new versions, sell exceptions, and release old versions under the GPL.
That some printer manufacturers didn't want to obey the GPL was not a problem for Alladin, it was a feature. It meant these manufactures would want to buy an exception from Alladin. When they buy an exception, the GPL become irrelevant to the customer. The problem was developers of "postscript enabled proprietary applications" who _hadn't_ any problem with the GPL, because they didn't link with gs, they just used it as a standalone program. They would not pay Alladin, instead they would distribute the source to gs. The new Alladin license was designed to prevent this.
Namesys will not need to change their license, because their potential customers will not be able to use a similar loophole.
According to netcraft, Apache has 54% market share, IIS 25%, and Netscape 7%.
Alladin used to do that with Ghostscript. RMS had no problems with this business model, and I haven't heard of anyone who wanted to fork the project for this reason. It would also be silly, as you would have to remerge the enhancements from the trunk back to your branch.
With Ghostscript the GPL was not restrictive enough. Proprietary software would simply call the gs executable in a separate process. That is why Alladin eventually switched to a more restrictive license. Namesys should have no such problems, you can't run a filesystem stand-alone.
Hardly. Sun have always supported standard technologies and documented interfaces. The MS tactics wouldn't fit their culture.
If MS hadn't been around, DR might have had a similar position (having licensed CP/M to IBM for the PC). Allthough it is unlikely, they didn't have the same kind of business leaders as MS. The most likely effect would be that IBM would still dominate the computer market.
MSIE is the better product now, but that is irrelevant. Better products have never won in the PC market. The time the masses switched to MSIE was when the browser became bundled with the OS.
We do help by link from "/.". The more obviously absurd the polls are, the less likely they are to be taken seriously. And even for those who still takes them seriously, the /.'ed results are no more misleading than the un-/.'ed results. So they are no worse off. Also, the polls *do* have a positive value, they are fun. /. would be more boring without its wonderful polls.
The program you mentioned misses the point. It doesn't matter if the poll is spammed or not, self selected surveys are always useless.
Win9x should just die, it would be cruel to build a company around it. And what about the server company owning NT? Would they be prevented from selling a workstation product?
And regarding the browser... well, I'm of the unpopular opinion that the browser technology _should_ be build into the OS, and have advocated that (for Emacs) before MS made it their policy. You should be able to type an URL anywhere you can type a filename, and applications should be able to rely on html display being available for e.g. help files or forms.
Documenting the interfaces and allow the network engine and display engine to be replacable would be a good idea, regardless.
are fun.
Around 2/3 believe that either MS doesn't hold a monopoly, or that its monopoly hasn't harmed anyone. Yet, over half believe that it should be punished one way or another.
ESR is a libertarian. To a libertarian, the market is always right and the government is always wrong. These are the two axioms of libetarianism.
You make a good case for the six companies, and all of them would remain among the largest players in the field.
I don't think #1 (server-os) and #3 (workstation-os) breakup is reasonable, though. They share too much technology. What would you think about breaking Linux development up into server and workstation? Nah. I'm unsure about #2 (internet content tools). How would it work as a company? They have themselves made it hard to make money selling a web-browser. And the technology _is_ pretty much integrated in the os by now.
Maybe #1, #2, and #3 should form one new company. I agree that your suggestions #4 (office, applications), #5 (hardware), and #6 (wince) ought to run separately. And their ISP (MSN) should also form a separate company, perhaps together with the MS "content" ownership.
That would be 5 new companies, each of them with clear separate markets, and each of them strong players in their respective markets. They ought to be able to thrive.
Some less than cluefull people believe in Internet pools. By /.'ing the pools we either enlighten these people, or make them believe in another falsehood than they would otherwise have done. Thus, /.'ing a Internet pool can never do wrong, only good.
Besides, there is a non-negligible entertainment effect in the pools. Complaining about them would be showing significant amount of stick-in-the-assness. Much better to join the fun.
They provide no useful information whatsoever, and can thus not be "skewed". /. should link to them whenever it increases their entertainment value. It actually helps their information value, because currently they have a negative information value as some people actually believe they bear some resemblance to the popular opinion. The /. effect can help show these unenlightened people the folly of their belief.
> > Cut off Netscape's air supply.
> And how exactly did they do that? By making a
> better product? What that isnt allowed?
Why don't you read the actual findings, it is all explained there nicely. In plain text. Of course "making a better product" is allowed. But that wasn't how MS won the browser war. They won it by tying their browser to a product where they have a monopoly.
You are a young one, aren't you? I don't know which place you get your revisionist Microsoft history, but a lot of us was there at the time, and we know it for what it is.