Thing is, while 0.01% is orders of magnitude bigger than 0.0000001%, it still doesn't count for much.
I absolutely do not think Linux's success on the Desktop is guaranteed. In fact, I do not consider it to have started. When a customer installs 150+ seats with Linux for general office productivity purposes, that's when the battle starts.
But if I am a miller and I buy some of that seed to mill into flour, and decide "aww, hell, I'll have a go at this farming lark too", and so I plant that seed - well, what does that make me?
Or do the people who buy from the farmer also sign contracts saying what they can't do with their seed?
I think it is bad to make the windows version commercial only.
This is something MySQL does, and it is annoying. It seems to me it is usually done for three bad reasons.
1. Windows = corporate = they can afford it.
Well, that's not true, since far more home enthusiasts with an interest in 3D graphics use windows than use any other OS.
2. To cover the cost of porting to windows.
That is only justifiable to an extent. If you need to cover your porting costs by charging, why don't you cover your other costs by charging?
3. To discriminate against Windows users.
Well, its up to the author, of course, but pretty silly as far as I can see. As if Linux users are some kind of elite that are worthy of your program, while other OS's are used by twits who should just be charged to support the core development. If you view of users is that biased, it doesn't say much about you as an author.
4. I've got to make _some_ money off this
Sure. So charge for it, or charge for support, or charge for something, but don't do it on an OS basis.
I don't see where distributing binary only windows ports of what is otherwise open (in a loose sense) gets us. It just re-inforces the (completely unecessary and wrong) view that open source projects are *nix only by design, technology, and intent.
No, it doesn't say to ammend the GPL. It says to add a preface to your licensing terms that grants additional permissions.
As I (briefly) read it, this probably goes against the grain of the GPL's viral nature. One of the central tennets of the GPL is that GPL'd code can't be un-GPL'd, and such a preface would explicity say that yes, the code can be un-GPL's and be NCL'd instead.
I think this will cause Stallman et al. To say that this license if evil.
Personally, I think it is the most interesting license of the recent variants that we've seen. It's got problems, but it's not just a fake GPL with get-out clauses. It's a genuine attempt at a new kind of Open Source licence, and that's a good bit of diversity.
Anf finally, no, I don't see a problem with all these licenses. Evolution suggests that winners will emerge, and the poor ones will fail. Fine by me.
Yes, it's been around for a while - I've seen various implementations of it, although I think this is the best that I've seen in terms of features.
I wrote a nice backend in Perl that can feed one of these Java applets with the structures that it requires. It's nice to see a good way to mix Java and Perl - let Java do nice graphical client stuff, and have Perl/LWP doing what it's best at at the backend.
Those are good points, but I'm not sure the analogy is quite good...
"One who believes in free speech _ought not_ to speak in a way that hinders the free speech of others." That's OK, but what is NOT OK is:
"One who believes in free speech _ought not to be able to_ speak in a way that hinders the free speech of others."
Now, I think the GPL believes in the second statement. The first statement says that it is wrong (in a moral sense) to limit free speech of others. The GPL would go further an enforce that morality by making it impossible.
1. Still viral in nature (requires that derived documentation retains the same license) 2. Appears to have been designed on for documentation explaining the function and use of programs, which is not at all the same as documentation explaining, say, the finer points of socket programming in Perl.
So, the issue remains that: 1. The FSF has an unhealthy (in Tom's opion) fondness for viral licenses.
2. Neither the FSF nor anyone else is really thinking hard about copyright concerns for documentation that includes significant bodies of source code.
You say: "Perhaps that is also why copyright covers expressions of ideas rather than ideas themselves."
However, I think you will find that the distinction between an idea and its expression is so subtle, complex and disputed as to make your sentence (and, I dare say are large amount of copyright law) rather unhelpful.
And yes, clues are good things, but a miserable replacement for intelligence, and dare I say it, politeness?
Tom wanted a BSD/Artistic style license. FSF wants a GNU style license.
Tom objects to the viral nature of the GPL.
Tom's big objection was that if you GPL documentation, then you GPL code examples in that documentation. If those examples are GPL'd, then you can't use them if you want to release you work under, say, the BSD license.
That means, the GPL license PREVENTS you from doing as you wish with your code. That means, the GNU GPL does not promote freedom, because it restricts people's actions - namely in the act of releasing code under a different license.
It's not the only view point, but Tom is certainly not outrageous in his concerns.
It all becomes more interesting if you think of the GPL as applying to IDEAS within the documentation. Suppose the canonical Perl documentation is GPL's and it explains what a closure is in Perl. Does that mean you can't use closures unless you GPL the code with closures in?
This then becomes a debate on whether the GPL covers the _text_ (ASCII) of the documentation, or the sense of the documentation. At this point it becomes obvious to me that the GPL is not defined in such a way that it applies usefully to documentation.
With source code, the ASCII of the code is inextricably linked to the function the code performs. This is simply not true of documentation.
It's an important an interesting problem, that no one except Tom seemed to care about or understand, much.
Please don't call people idiots, and please use whole sentences. It makes you look smarter.
Anyway, last I checked *BSD systems use gcc. So, BSD did not create a C compiler. Also, the roots of BSD are in an academic organisation that paid people nice yearly salaries to work on code full time.
The fact remains that the kind of people who churn out jolly jelpful things like majordomo and xv and so forth are simply not in the same business as the people who created gcc.
And, many (most?) of those that created jolly helpful things like xv would not have been able to do so without gcc or another excellent 100% free c compiler.
Imagine if Perl was commercial. What would be the point in anyone creating Majordomo if you had to go out and buy Perl to run it? Instead, whoever wrote Majordomo would more likely have spent the money on a commercial listserver.
It is the fact that the _foundation_ software is free that has promoted the massive amount of software apps and utils built on those foundations. And it is the early, idealist groups like the FSF that built much of the foundations.
n lines of gcc is greater than n lines of utils
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Feature:Free Linux
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Hmm.. From what I remember of Free PC software, it was almost all free beer and no free speech (i.e. all binaries, no code).
The point is that the FSF built foundations. Writing a C compiler is hard. Lots of people who later wrote free code in C would not have done so if GCC hadn't been available. Also, if the FSF hadn't written GCC, I don't think anyone else would have done. It's a massive task that requires deep committment and competence. If zlib didn't exist someone would get fed up and write it. If gcc didn't exist, people would have bought more proprietary compilers.
Alas - you are behaving like a rational person and reading all the small print.
After working in the advertising industry, I can tell you that what counts is what the person sees in the first 1.25 seconds.
Your text "Certified implementation.." appears in knocked back (adspeak for 'made less obvious') text in smaller print to the side of the main article.
What the person sees is the Apache logo incorporated AS PART OF an Apple product (the logo is on the screen of a G4). This would break most companies' use of logo guidelines. Alas that Apache has none.
Also, the headline (what the managers remember) says "Mac OSx server proudly presents Apache". I've ignored the second line of the headline? Sure I have. So will the readers (subconsciously).
It's all very sad, but it's all very true.
10% code, but more than 10% motivation ?
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Sure, the FSF doesn't have so much of the code.
I think the FSF would reply that they started the whole idea, and kept it going during the long dark times of the 80's.
It's probably fair to say that if the FSF had never written a line of code, Linux would not exist, whereas if one of the other contributers (except Linus, obviously) had not written their code, someone else would have filled their place.
Of course that's not to say that those 'other' coders have contributed less to the body of code. It's simply a comment on how the Open Source tradition has been built, and who laid the foundations.
That said, I don't think the GNU/Linux thing makes any sense at all. The FSF should be credited, but not like that.
Also, while this GNU/Linux thing is indeed a very public and a very petty squabble, I think RMS and the FSF are going to be an increasingly important counterweight to what is happening with ESR et al. at the other end of the scale.
I see RMS as a constant against which measurements can be made:-)
Sorenson is one of the best codecs around. That's why Apple won't show the source or license it.
Apple are happy to open up the stuff they have that's no use. A bunch of badly written drivers, some mucked about BSD code.
Apple are just hoping some programmer out there comes along and fixes a few bugs for them. When it comes to giving back to the community by opening up the stuff they've done properly - quicktime, the GUI, etc. - oh, suddenly they aren't so keen.
At least Microsoft aren't asking a bunch of Linux programmers to help them do their dirty laundry.
I always thought Apple were kinda cuddly but incompetent - flashes of genius amongst lots of well-intentioned screw ups.
Now I think they are just a bunch of tossers who want to cash in on anything and save their sorry asses. OS X isn't even BSD with a nice GUI. It's first and foremost BSD with Apple branding. And, now, apparently, Apache branding.
Hell, looking at the Apple site (http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/apache.html) you'd think they invented Apache, or funded it 100% themselves or something.
The way they go on about apache on their web pages is sickening. You'd think they were the first person to discover it. Hell, they aren't even the first big business. IBM was way before them.
Open Source at the moment fits in rather well with Apple's image - the whole 'slightly rebellious, but squeaky clean and terribly stylish "think differnt"' thing. It's all crap.
And they boast about how Apache 1.3.4 is a 'core component' of OS X. Sure... like it's somehow more core than every other BSD/Linux distro that bundles it.
I'm sorry, at least Microsoft are willing to say "We're big, ugly, and we aim to win by any means possible". Apple are just as ugly, want to be just as big, but are twice as slimey.
And, in the balance, Microsoft have produced more decent software than Apple. Scary, huh?
I agree that the durability of celluloid may be poor, but:
1. Sure, we will have the technology to use VHS tapes for a long time, but that technology won't be available to most people. If you find a shoebox in the attic marked 'photos', you can open it up and see if the photos are worth keeping.
If you find an old tape marked 'holiday video', and the tape won't run on any equipment you or your friends have, you probably aren't going to bother keeping it.
2. It's not the software, it's the hardware. Sure, just because in 15 years everything is in MPEG-8 format, I'm sure we'll be able to see MPEG-1 movies. However, just 10 short years ago I was saving text (digitally) onto audio cassettes from my Commodore 64. Recovering data from those audio sets so that I can print it from my PC is going ot be REMARKABLY hard.
Sure, Disney will make sure its digital works stay stored the the very latest mediums. But what happens when some little company makes a great little film (yes, outside of the US small companies can make films), and in 20 years time they go bust. Their archives will sit there on some outdated format, until they become unusable.
100 years from now, people will find reels of film in archives and be able to play them. Even if there were no projectors left, it would be trivial to design one that could play old films.
100 years from now when they find an unknown storage device with some label on, they will chuck it.
It's the same as those people taking videos and not photographs (or worse, taking digital photos). In 50 years when there are no VHS players in common use, people will just chuck out their grandparents recorded lives, because they can't see what's on that dusty old tape in the attic. With photographs, you can tell in an instant what it is, and it requires no playback device.
More or less the same with celluloid film.
A digital future leaves no past for our grandchildren.
Grammar posts only work if they are high up on the list. Grammar posts are also very important.
I hear people complaining that HTML is being degraded by things like MS Frontpage, and they get all upset about it. MS people foolishly say "But hey, it shows up OK in the browser, so who cares if it is correct". Wise/. folk know that there is much more to it than that, and they know that it is important to code (markup..) neatly and correctly.
The same is true of the English language. Yes, if you are ungrammatical, 99.8% of the time everyone will know what you mean. But bit by bit, the more subtle forms of expression degrade and become unuseable because people aren't used to parsing them. Slowly, English becomes less useful.
The good news is that new grammatical structures can and do get created to replace the degrading ones. However, that's not an _excuse_ to be lax about grammer. If you don't like subjunctives don't use them - but check to see if you have something better to replace them with...
Slashdot Mirror
It's funny how the US objects to paying UN taxes - the U.S. government doesn't even bother paying its membership fees for the UN....
Thing is, while 0.01% is orders of magnitude bigger than 0.0000001%, it still doesn't count for much.
I absolutely do not think Linux's success on the Desktop is guaranteed. In fact, I do not consider it to have started. When a customer installs 150+ seats with Linux for general office productivity purposes, that's when the battle starts.
Errr yeah. I thought that was the whole point of slashdot :-)
Yup, contracts are fine.
But if I am a miller and I buy some of that seed to mill into flour, and decide "aww, hell, I'll have a go at this farming lark too", and so I plant that seed - well, what does that make me?
Or do the people who buy from the farmer also sign contracts saying what they can't do with their seed?
It all sounds like a house of cards to me.
I think it is bad to make the windows version commercial only.
This is something MySQL does, and it is annoying. It seems to me it is usually done for three bad reasons.
1. Windows = corporate = they can afford it.
Well, that's not true, since far more home enthusiasts with an interest in 3D graphics use windows than use any other OS.
2. To cover the cost of porting to windows.
That is only justifiable to an extent. If you need to cover your porting costs by charging, why don't you cover your other costs by charging?
3. To discriminate against Windows users.
Well, its up to the author, of course, but pretty silly as far as I can see. As if Linux users are some kind of elite that are worthy of your program, while other OS's are used by twits who should just be charged to support the core development. If you view of users is that biased, it doesn't say much about you as an author.
4. I've got to make _some_ money off this
Sure. So charge for it, or charge for support, or charge for something, but don't do it on an OS basis.
I don't see where distributing binary only windows ports of what is otherwise open (in a loose sense) gets us. It just re-inforces the (completely unecessary and wrong) view that open source projects are *nix only by design, technology, and intent.
No, it doesn't say to ammend the GPL. It says to add a preface to your licensing terms that grants additional permissions.
As I (briefly) read it, this probably goes against the grain of the GPL's viral nature. One of the central tennets of the GPL is that GPL'd code can't be un-GPL'd, and such a preface would explicity say that yes, the code can be un-GPL's and be NCL'd instead.
I think this will cause Stallman et al. To say that this license if evil.
Personally, I think it is the most interesting license of the recent variants that we've seen. It's got problems, but it's not just a fake GPL with get-out clauses. It's a genuine attempt at a new kind of Open Source licence, and that's a good bit of diversity.
Anf finally, no, I don't see a problem with all these licenses. Evolution suggests that winners will emerge, and the poor ones will fail. Fine by me.
Yes, it's been around for a while - I've seen various implementations of it, although I think this is the best that I've seen in terms of features.
I wrote a nice backend in Perl that can feed one of these Java applets with the structures that it requires. It's nice to see a good way to mix Java and Perl - let Java do nice graphical client stuff, and have Perl/LWP doing what it's best at at the backend.
I'm not certain, but I think the benchmark test (which they did publish) does all sorts of stuff that MySQL can't even do.
Like, transactions, select into, select where in, and so forth.
Much (most?) of the reason MySQL is so fast is that it doesn't need to log everything it does, because it doesn't let you roll anything back.
Well, it ought to be more fun than the Lewis / Holyfield contest, anyway...
:-)
I bet is that MS will do it, although possibly not by very much. Seemed like a hell of a boast on Oracle's part...
Hmmm.
Those are good points, but I'm not sure the analogy is quite good...
"One who believes in free speech _ought not_ to speak in a way that hinders the free speech of others." That's OK, but what is NOT OK is:
"One who believes in free speech _ought not to be able to_ speak in a way that hinders the free speech of others."
Now, I think the GPL believes in the second statement. The first statement says that it is wrong (in a moral sense) to limit free speech of others. The GPL would go further an enforce that morality by making it impossible.
I think Tom objects to that imposition.
Intersting stuff tho...
Yes, but the license covering documentation is:
1. Still viral in nature (requires that derived documentation retains the same license)
2. Appears to have been designed on for documentation explaining the function and use of programs, which is not at all the same as documentation explaining, say, the finer points of socket programming in Perl.
So, the issue remains that:
1. The FSF has an unhealthy (in Tom's opion) fondness for viral licenses.
2. Neither the FSF nor anyone else is really thinking hard about copyright concerns for documentation that includes significant bodies of source code.
You say:
"Perhaps that is also why copyright covers expressions of ideas rather than ideas themselves."
However, I think you will find that the distinction between an idea and its expression is so subtle, complex and disputed as to make your sentence (and, I dare say are large amount of copyright law) rather unhelpful.
And yes, clues are good things, but a miserable replacement for intelligence, and dare I say it, politeness?
No, you are all missing the point of the thread.
Tom wanted a BSD/Artistic style license. FSF wants a GNU style license.
Tom objects to the viral nature of the GPL.
Tom's big objection was that if you GPL documentation, then you GPL code examples in that documentation. If those examples are GPL'd, then you can't use them if you want to release you work under, say, the BSD license.
That means, the GPL license PREVENTS you from doing as you wish with your code. That means, the GNU GPL does not promote freedom, because it restricts people's actions - namely in the act of releasing code under a different license.
It's not the only view point, but Tom is certainly not outrageous in his concerns.
It all becomes more interesting if you think of the GPL as applying to IDEAS within the documentation. Suppose the canonical Perl documentation is GPL's and it explains what a closure is in Perl. Does that mean you can't use closures unless you GPL the code with closures in?
This then becomes a debate on whether the GPL covers the _text_ (ASCII) of the documentation, or the sense of the documentation. At this point it becomes obvious to me that the GPL is not defined in such a way that it applies usefully to documentation.
With source code, the ASCII of the code is inextricably linked to the function the code performs. This is simply not true of documentation.
It's an important an interesting problem, that no one except Tom seemed to care about or understand, much.
Please don't call people idiots, and please use whole sentences. It makes you look smarter.
Anyway, last I checked *BSD systems use gcc. So, BSD did not create a C compiler. Also, the roots of BSD are in an academic organisation that paid people nice yearly salaries to work on code full time.
The fact remains that the kind of people who churn out jolly jelpful things like majordomo and xv and so forth are simply not in the same business as the people who created gcc.
And, many (most?) of those that created jolly helpful things like xv would not have been able to do so without gcc or another excellent 100% free c compiler.
Imagine if Perl was commercial. What would be the point in anyone creating Majordomo if you had to go out and buy Perl to run it? Instead, whoever wrote Majordomo would more likely have spent the money on a commercial listserver.
It is the fact that the _foundation_ software is free that has promoted the massive amount of software apps and utils built on those foundations. And it is the early, idealist groups like the FSF that built much of the foundations.
Hmm.. From what I remember of Free PC software, it was almost all free beer and no free speech (i.e. all binaries, no code).
The point is that the FSF built foundations. Writing a C compiler is hard. Lots of people who later wrote free code in C would not have done so if GCC hadn't been available. Also, if the FSF hadn't written GCC, I don't think anyone else would have done. It's a massive task that requires deep committment and competence. If zlib didn't exist someone would get fed up and write it. If gcc didn't exist, people would have bought more proprietary compilers.
Alas - you are behaving like a rational person and reading all the small print.
After working in the advertising industry, I can tell you that what counts is what the person sees in the first 1.25 seconds.
Your text "Certified implementation.." appears in knocked back (adspeak for 'made less obvious') text in smaller print to the side of the main article.
What the person sees is the Apache logo incorporated AS PART OF an Apple product (the logo is on the screen of a G4). This would break most companies' use of logo guidelines. Alas that Apache has none.
Also, the headline (what the managers remember) says "Mac OSx server proudly presents Apache".
I've ignored the second line of the headline? Sure I have. So will the readers (subconsciously).
It's all very sad, but it's all very true.
Sure, the FSF doesn't have so much of the code.
:-)
I think the FSF would reply that they started the whole idea, and kept it going during the long dark times of the 80's.
It's probably fair to say that if the FSF had never written a line of code, Linux would not exist, whereas if one of the other contributers (except Linus, obviously) had not written their code, someone else would have filled their place.
Of course that's not to say that those 'other' coders have contributed less to the body of code. It's simply a comment on how the Open Source tradition has been built, and who laid the foundations.
That said, I don't think the GNU/Linux thing makes any sense at all. The FSF should be credited, but not like that.
Also, while this GNU/Linux thing is indeed a very public and a very petty squabble, I think RMS and the FSF are going to be an increasingly important counterweight to what is happening with ESR et al. at the other end of the scale.
I see RMS as a constant against which measurements can be made
they are better.
Sorenson is one of the best codecs around. That's why Apple won't show the source or license it.
Apple are happy to open up the stuff they have that's no use. A bunch of badly written drivers, some mucked about BSD code.
Apple are just hoping some programmer out there comes along and fixes a few bugs for them. When it comes to giving back to the community by opening up the stuff they've done properly - quicktime, the GUI, etc. - oh, suddenly they aren't so keen.
At least Microsoft aren't asking a bunch of Linux programmers to help them do their dirty laundry.
I always thought Apple were kinda cuddly but incompetent - flashes of genius amongst lots of well-intentioned screw ups.
Now I think they are just a bunch of tossers who want to cash in on anything and save their sorry asses. OS X isn't even BSD with a nice GUI. It's first and foremost BSD with Apple branding. And, now, apparently, Apache branding.
Hell, looking at the Apple site (http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/apache.html) you'd think they invented Apache, or funded it 100% themselves or something.
Wankers.
The way they go on about apache on their web pages is sickening. You'd think they were the first person to discover it. Hell, they aren't even the first big business. IBM was way before them.
Open Source at the moment fits in rather well with Apple's image - the whole 'slightly rebellious, but squeaky clean and terribly stylish "think differnt"' thing. It's all crap.
And they boast about how Apache 1.3.4 is a 'core component' of OS X. Sure... like it's somehow more core than every other BSD/Linux distro that bundles it.
I'm sorry, at least Microsoft are willing to say "We're big, ugly, and we aim to win by any means possible". Apple are just as ugly, want to be just as big, but are twice as slimey.
And, in the balance, Microsoft have produced more decent software than Apple. Scary, huh?
The problem is, Apple and its user base has no history AT ALL of running and supporting *nix type applications.
Sure, a bunch of Mac fans are going to get really into it, but I can't see old-style *nix people getting very excited.
Oh, and:
" Mac OS X Server requires 64MB of RAM, 1GB hard drive and a CD-ROM drive. "
This is conisderably greater than the published min Spec of NT4.0 (Let alone Linux)
I've played with OS X on an G3. It's not exciting.
Sorenson is the best codec out there by a mile at the moment.
It is really annoying when closed source is not only closed by also _better_
Are there any OS codec projects? It's a pretty tough field...
I agree that the durability of celluloid may be poor, but:
1. Sure, we will have the technology to use VHS tapes for a long time, but that technology won't be available to most people. If you find a shoebox in the attic marked 'photos', you can open it up and see if the photos are worth keeping.
If you find an old tape marked 'holiday video', and the tape won't run on any equipment you or your friends have, you probably aren't going to bother keeping it.
2. It's not the software, it's the hardware. Sure, just because in 15 years everything is in MPEG-8 format, I'm sure we'll be able to see MPEG-1 movies. However, just 10 short years ago I was saving text (digitally) onto audio cassettes from my Commodore 64. Recovering data from those audio sets so that I can print it from my PC is going ot be REMARKABLY hard.
Sure, Disney will make sure its digital works stay stored the the very latest mediums. But what happens when some little company makes a great little film (yes, outside of the US small companies can make films), and in 20 years time they go bust. Their archives will sit there on some outdated format, until they become unusable.
"The future of film is doesn't have any film in it. Isn't that excellent?"
no no no no no no.
Film is:
1 durable
2 device independant
3 cross platform
4 has minimum machine spec requirements (light, lense)
100 years from now, people will find reels of film in archives and be able to play them. Even if there were no projectors left, it would be trivial to design one that could play old films.
100 years from now when they find an unknown storage device with some label on, they will chuck it.
It's the same as those people taking videos and not photographs (or worse, taking digital photos). In 50 years when there are no VHS players in common use, people will just chuck out their grandparents recorded lives, because they can't see what's on that dusty old tape in the attic. With photographs, you can tell in an instant what it is, and it requires no playback device.
More or less the same with celluloid film.
A digital future leaves no past for our grandchildren.
so long as it doesn't displace other stuff.
/., but there is not limitless room.
I think there is room for op-ed pieces on
So, go for it I say.
Can we set the ordering. All my fave ones are down at the bottom, and the boring ones at the top :-(
Thanks!
/. folk know that there is much more to it than that, and they know that it is important to code (markup..) neatly and correctly.
Grammar posts only work if they are high up on the list. Grammar posts are also very important.
I hear people complaining that HTML is being degraded by things like MS Frontpage, and they get all upset about it. MS people foolishly say "But hey, it shows up OK in the browser, so who cares if it is correct". Wise
The same is true of the English language. Yes, if you are ungrammatical, 99.8% of the time everyone will know what you mean. But bit by bit, the more subtle forms of expression degrade and become unuseable because people aren't used to parsing them. Slowly, English becomes less useful.
The good news is that new grammatical structures can and do get created to replace the degrading ones. However, that's not an _excuse_ to be lax about grammer. If you don't like subjunctives don't use them - but check to see if you have something better to replace them with...