I agree, getting the proprietary office packages involved would be good in this situation. That is why I wrote MPL and LGPL, rather than GPL.
Both the MPL and LGPL can be used in closed source products. Only the filter code itself would have to rermain free, the rest of the code in the suite could still be closed and proprietary.
I believe this would give us the optimal situation, where everybody but Microsoft cooperates in releasing Microsofts lock on the file formats.
I'd prefer a MPL or LGPL on the filters. Like BSDL, it would still allow the filters to be used in proprietary products, but changes would have to be made public.
NPL or GPL would also be a good choice for the rest of the product, it would give Sun the extra rights I feel they would deserve, but still be an open source project.
This looks different from the usual Linux projects, which starts with an idea, generates code, and lastly attract commercial attention (if they succeed).
From the web site, li18nux looks like the kind of industry consortiums we knew from the commercial world, where a number of big companies get together to create some new technologi.
Notheing wrong with that, I just wonder how it will work in the Linux world.
I'd certainly like perfect vision and a straight back, thank you for the offer. However, it is not about erasing people or their handicaps, it is about not focing them on our children.
Believe me, even those people born today with a perfect health find plenty of struggle in life. Our children will too, even if the struggle will be for reaching the stars, rather than getting up the stairs.
I know that we are imperfect, but that doesn't mean we can't hide from the hard decisions, such as whether we want to pass our health problems to our children.
And no, I don't think the human species is or will ever be perfect. But it is evolving, changing, and thus being real. I don't want it traped in a dead end due to a self-sufficient cowardy.
I'm saying that, given a choice, I do not want to force my diseases and minor handicaps on my children. Which is what this discussion should be about. Whether we want to deny our children the chance for a better life than we got.
About "unfit" parents. They are already a problem today. Fathers who rape their infant daugthers, mothers who nearly drown their children as a punishment, drug abusers who get children that are born addicted (and hiv-positive). This wont change, as today there will be limits to what parents are allowed to do to their children.
It seems that your most besic fear is from taking responsibility. By arguing that we should deny the right to choose a better life for our children to *everybody*, you assume that you yourself will not have to make the choice. While this is convenient, it is a lie. By denying it to everybody, you are also forcing a choice on your children.
In our society, the technology will be available to the rich first. You can argue about whether or not this is "fair" or not, but that is the result of living in a capitalist society. However, already today some people are healthier, stronger, and brigther than others, and these people are more often than not a worthy contribution to our society. The opposite viewpoint, that nobody can be healthier, stronger, or brigther than the medium is not a society I' want to live in.
They will fuck as much as now (or more, if we can get rid of sexually transmitted diseases and social sexual stigmas), but there it will not result in pregnency until both the boy and the girl has got a fertility treatment. That ought to be one of the simpler medical and social advances.
I want my children to have the best genes possible. Why should they suffer for my own genetic deficits? Or suffer diseases that are easily avoided? Or be more stupid, weak or ugly than they have to, just because of my own angst for change?
This has nothing to do with "staying competitive". I certainly hope other parents will do the same, or better if they can afford it, as I do. My children will be better off if their contemporaries are better off. This is no different than education, I want my children to have the best possible education, but I also want them to live in a society where every child is offered good education.
Please note that most of technofobic sci-fi also predicts totalitarian states to keep their vision sufficiently dark. They are usually written by humanists, who feel the humans have reached perfection. Well, reading the newspaper I desperately hope that is not the case.
> Who predicted the ozone layer and greenhouse > effect (anyone notice how these two problems > are talked about so much less today then ten > years ago - it isn't because the situation is > any better today)?
The hole in the ozone layer isn't as much of a topic as it used to be, because we have already done what needed to be done. That is, developed and started using replacement for the chemichals that harmed the ozone layer. It is an environmental succes story.
The use of fossil fuels contribution to the greehouse effect is still a hot topic, at least here in Denmark. Mostly because it is used as an excuse for putting new taxes on the use of fossil fuel.
Also, going from a research topic to a new engine in all car models in just 5 years seems more than optimistic. And a total worldwide replacement for coal in only four years even more so.
MPL is mostly similar to the LGPL, i.e. you can link it with closed source projects, but changes to the MPL files themselves must be open.
NPL gives some extra rights to Netscape. They had to use this because of contracts with third parties, who were allowed to use future versions of Netscape Navigator source in total closed source products. But even if this hadn't been the case, I'd find it a fair reward for the work and money they have put into Mozilla.
Netscape is quite cooperative, for example they have released their Javascript implementation under a dual MPL/GPL license, presumably because some GPL'ed project needed it.
There are plenty of GPL'ed browser projects, but I think they are mostly a waste of time. Mozilla is both open source and free software by the RMS/BP/ESR definitions of the terms.
>In other words, give me the toolbox to build my >own browser, instead of a complete browser.
But that is what you have got! There are already several projects out there using only parts of the Mozilla toolbox, in particular the layout engine is popular.
However, we still need Mozilla as a flagship and showcase for the wonderful components of the toolbox.
> A good teacher always tells you, "We're making > such and such an assumption, which makes our > answer just an approximation, but it's a pretty > good approximation." etc.
Each statement can be true or false depending on which physical model you use. The physical models in which they are false (with the possible exception of #1) are a lot more useful than the physical models in which they are false. Which is why they are teached first.
None of the models are likely to be an accurate representation of a Universal Truth, allthough they may all be pretty good approximations.
The PPC _architechture_ is specified for both 32 bit and 64 bit (like MISP and SPARC). Motorola hasn't implemented the 64 bit version of the architechture, but I believe IBM has.
Would it be feasible for them to reimplement one of the existing 64 architechtures (Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, PPC) while keeping support for IA32 in the same chip?
That is my strategy. I write my application as a library, with no user interface. This means it can be easily added into other applications, and that it can have many different front-ends. Each front-end is a main() program, which links your application library and some UI library (Gtk, Qt, curses). It makes it easier to divide work, as different people can be responsible for each front-end.
ESR didn't answer the question, because he didn't accept the assumptions on which the question was founded: The existence of a growing chasm between followers of BSD and GPL. He, correctly, pointed out that it really only is small number of fanatics on both sides who refuse to cooperate.
Your point is somewhat different than Toms, about the practical (rather than cultural and political) problems of reusing software between the licenses. This is a real problem. My advice is: Ask the owner (if he can be identified) for an exception to the license, that allows you to incooperate his work in your project. You will find that most people are willing to cooperate.
The same reasons that make people and companies sign over ownership of changes to gcc to the FSF, and that make them contribute changes to software under the BSD license back under the same license, and that make them publish new modules for Mozilla under the MPL.
To avoid paying the stupidity tax. The stupidity tax is a term invented by the Mozilla team to describe the cost of having to constantly merge back changes from the mainline sources into your own project. The cost are very real, companies like HP pays significant amounts of money to Cygnus in order to have Cygnus merge their functionality back into the official product.
Of course, the stupidity tax only works when there are active development on the main code, so there _are_ changes to merge back. If a company have no intension of putting more effort into the code, they cannot rely on other people contributing their changes back to them.
In which of the application areas currently dominated by proprietary solutions do you think free software would work best? And which areas do you think free software are least likely to succeed in?
It probably has more to do with history than anything else. Apple _used_ to be into Linux (with MkLinux) until they bought NeXTSTEP, which already included a BSD on top of MACH. They have released the non-GUI part (Darwin) of MacOS X as free software, so I doubt that the GPL requirement to do that was significant in the decision.
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I agree, getting the proprietary office packages involved would be good in this situation. That is why I wrote MPL and LGPL, rather than GPL.
Both the MPL and LGPL can be used in closed source products. Only the filter code itself would have to rermain free, the rest of the code in the suite could still be closed and proprietary.
I believe this would give us the optimal situation, where everybody but Microsoft cooperates in releasing Microsofts lock on the file formats.
I'd prefer a MPL or LGPL on the filters. Like BSDL, it would still allow the filters to be used in proprietary products, but changes would have to be made public.
NPL or GPL would also be a good choice for the rest of the product, it would give Sun the extra rights I feel they would deserve, but still be an open source project.
This looks different from the usual Linux projects, which starts with an idea, generates code, and lastly attract commercial attention (if they succeed).
From the web site, li18nux looks like the kind of industry consortiums we knew from the commercial world, where a number of big companies get together to create some new technologi.
Notheing wrong with that, I just wonder how it will work in the Linux world.
1. There is no silver bullet. But a large scale adaption of Unicode will solve more problems than it creates.
2. You forgot to include large parts of Africa and South Asia in the part of the world where educated people speak English.
I'd certainly like perfect vision and a straight back, thank you for the offer. However, it is not about erasing people or their handicaps, it is about not focing them on our children.
Believe me, even those people born today with a perfect health find plenty of struggle in life. Our children will too, even if the struggle will be for reaching the stars, rather than getting up the stairs.
I know that we are imperfect, but that doesn't mean we can't hide from the hard decisions, such as whether we want to pass our health problems to our children.
And no, I don't think the human species is or will ever be perfect. But it is evolving, changing, and thus being real. I don't want it traped in a dead end due to a self-sufficient
cowardy.
I'm saying that, given a choice, I do not want to force my diseases and minor handicaps on my children. Which is what this discussion should be about. Whether we want to deny our children the chance for a better life than we got.
About "unfit" parents. They are already a problem today. Fathers who rape their infant daugthers, mothers who nearly drown their children as a punishment, drug abusers who get children that are born addicted (and hiv-positive). This wont change, as today there will be limits to what parents are allowed to do to their children.
It seems that your most besic fear is from taking responsibility. By arguing that we should deny the right to choose a better life for our children to *everybody*, you assume that you yourself will not have to make the choice. While this is convenient, it is a lie. By denying it to everybody, you are also forcing a choice on your children.
In our society, the technology will be available to the rich first. You can argue about whether or not this is "fair" or not, but that is the result of living in a capitalist society. However, already today some people are healthier, stronger, and brigther than others, and these people are more often than not a worthy contribution to our society. The opposite viewpoint, that nobody can be healthier, stronger, or brigther than the medium is not a society I' want to live in.
They will fuck as much as now (or more, if we can get rid of sexually transmitted diseases and social sexual stigmas), but there it will not result in pregnency until both the boy and the girl has got a fertility treatment. That ought to be one of the simpler medical and social advances.
> Who draws that line?
The parents.
You may love your diseases and minor handicaps, but I don't love mine. Given the choice, I'd rather not force them on my children.
I want my children to have the best genes possible. Why should they suffer for my own genetic deficits? Or suffer diseases that are easily avoided? Or be more stupid, weak or ugly than they have to, just because of my own angst for change?
This has nothing to do with "staying competitive". I certainly hope other parents will do the same, or better if they can afford it, as I do. My children will be better off if their contemporaries are better off. This is no different than education, I want my children to have the best possible education, but I also want them to live in a society where every child is offered good education.
Please note that most of technofobic sci-fi also predicts totalitarian states to keep their vision sufficiently dark. They are usually written by humanists, who feel the humans have reached perfection. Well, reading the newspaper I desperately hope that is not the case.
> Who predicted the ozone layer and greenhouse
> effect (anyone notice how these two problems
> are talked about so much less today then ten
> years ago - it isn't because the situation is
> any better today)?
The hole in the ozone layer isn't as much of a topic as it used to be, because we have already done what needed to be done. That is, developed and started using replacement for the chemichals that harmed the ozone layer. It is an environmental succes story.
The use of fossil fuels contribution to the greehouse effect is still a hot topic, at least here in Denmark. Mostly because it is used as an excuse for putting new taxes on the use of fossil fuel.
I thought that idea was dead.
Also, going from a research topic to a new engine in all car models in just 5 years seems more than optimistic. And a total worldwide replacement for coal in only four years even more so.
MPL is mostly similar to the LGPL, i.e. you can link it with closed source projects, but changes to the MPL files themselves must be open.
NPL gives some extra rights to Netscape. They had to use this because of contracts with third parties, who were allowed to use future versions of Netscape Navigator source in total closed source products. But even if this hadn't been the case, I'd find it a fair reward for the work and money they have put into Mozilla.
Netscape is quite cooperative, for example they have released their Javascript implementation under a dual MPL/GPL license, presumably because some GPL'ed project needed it.
There are plenty of GPL'ed browser projects, but I think they are mostly a waste of time. Mozilla is both open source and free software by the RMS/BP/ESR definitions of the terms.
>In other words, give me the toolbox to build my
>own browser, instead of a complete browser.
But that is what you have got! There are already several projects out there using only parts of the Mozilla toolbox, in particular the layout engine is popular.
However, we still need Mozilla as a flagship and showcase for the wonderful components of the toolbox.
> A good teacher always tells you, "We're making
> such and such an assumption, which makes our
> answer just an approximation, but it's a pretty
> good approximation." etc.
And then he lose 95% of the pupils.
Each statement can be true or false depending on which physical model you use. The physical models in which they are false (with the possible exception of #1) are a lot more useful than the physical models in which they are false. Which is why they are teached first.
None of the models are likely to be an accurate representation of a Universal Truth, allthough they may all be pretty good approximations.
But Sony don't want to enter existing workstation markets, so they will not quite face the same problem. They want to create new markets.
The PPC _architechture_ is specified for both 32 bit and 64 bit (like MISP and SPARC). Motorola hasn't implemented the 64 bit version of the architechture, but I believe IBM has.
See here.
More details are available in this other article.
Apparently, the Win95, NT and DOS reference is to a Ultra5 with a SunPCi card.
Would it be feasible for them to reimplement one of the existing 64 architechtures (Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, PPC) while keeping support for IA32 in the same chip?
That is my strategy. I write my application as a library, with no user interface. This means it can be easily added into other applications, and that it can have many different front-ends. Each front-end is a main() program, which links your application library and some UI library (Gtk, Qt, curses). It makes it easier to divide work, as different people can be responsible for each front-end.
ESR didn't answer the question, because he didn't accept the assumptions on which the question was founded: The existence of a growing chasm between followers of BSD and GPL. He, correctly, pointed out that it really only is small number of fanatics on both sides who refuse to cooperate.
Your point is somewhat different than Toms, about the practical (rather than cultural and political) problems of reusing software between the licenses. This is a real problem. My advice is: Ask the owner (if he can be identified) for an exception to the license, that allows you to incooperate his work in your project. You will find that most people are willing to cooperate.
The same reasons that make people and companies sign over ownership of changes to gcc to the FSF, and that make them contribute changes to software under the BSD license back under the same license, and that make them publish new modules for Mozilla under the MPL.
To avoid paying the stupidity tax. The stupidity tax is a term invented by the Mozilla team to describe the cost of having to constantly merge back changes from the mainline sources into your own project. The cost are very real, companies like HP pays significant amounts of money to Cygnus in order to have Cygnus merge their functionality back into the official product.
Of course, the stupidity tax only works when there are active development on the main code, so there _are_ changes to merge back. If a company have no intension of putting more effort into the code, they cannot rely on other people contributing their changes back to them.
In which of the application areas currently dominated by proprietary solutions do you think free software would work best? And which areas do you think free software are least likely to succeed in?
Or are there no way to guess?
> Apple has turned to BSD not Linux.
It probably has more to do with history than anything else. Apple _used_ to be into Linux (with MkLinux) until they bought NeXTSTEP, which already included a BSD on top of MACH. They have released the non-GUI part (Darwin) of MacOS X as free software, so I doubt that the GPL requirement to do that was significant in the decision.