So how exactly is Inprise supporting the community? Last time I checked, giving a peice of software away for free didn't make it "free" in the GNU sense. I suppose that according to Inprise, Internet Explorer supports the open source community too, eh?
So I suppose that now I'll have to pay a fee before I can excersize my constitutional right to free speach? Sorry, but a royalty-based GPL sounds an awful lot like the poll taxes of the 19th century south: inequitable, inefficient, unfair, and ultimately unconstitutional.
BTW, any charging of royalties for the use of code makes that code closed-source. Think of what AT&T did with USG UNIX. They let pretty much anybody have a source code license, but the cost was a barrier of entry to most independent developers.
I'm going to start off by saying what many of you already have: Metcalfe obviously doesn't understand that the Crusoe doesn't support windows because it was designed for a Microsoft OS, but rather because it was designed for compatibility with existing x86 code. If the world ran the way he thinks it does, Motorola's PowerPC chips would be designed for MacOS only, leaving IBM's AIX in the dust. The reality is that Motorola, Transmeta, and any other company you care to name doesn't make chips for a specific OS.
Next, the UNIX fragmentation issue. UNIX became a half-open/half-proprietary mess because it started off proprietary with AT&T, and even the valiant efforts of BSD could easily be corporatized because of the weak licensing. So, we have open source Unices and closed source ones, with merely inadequate standardization efforts (POSIX was the best one, and even with that can you run Solaris code on Linux? I thought not.) The GPL doesn't have those weaknesses. We've seen in the past with the various hardware ports of Linux that all the forks wind up being reunited. All roads lead to Linus (at least where the Kernel's involved).
So anyway, now we can get to the issue of code morphing software. This is software that handles things that in any other processor would be done in hardware. Do you see Intel GPL'ing the blueprints for the P3? I didn't think so. Most of the value of the Crusoe chip comes from the software, not the very simple hardware.
But that doesn't mean that the code morphing software shouldn't be open-sourced. That also doesn't mean that Intel, AMD, Sun, and Motorola should keep their chip designs a secret. We haven't seen it yet, but wouldn't open-source hardware be cool? I want a fab plant in my basement churning out Athlons! (OK, so I can't afford a fab plant, but I can dream, can't I?)
If Transmeta were to open-source the code-morphing software, we would probably see modified versions allowing us to run IA64, PowerPC, Sparc, or Alpha code. And we'd see even better x86 support. All on the same ultra low-cost chip. Cool, huh?
BTW, Open Source may not be the only development model that's good for the developer, or even the consumer, but it is the only one that's good for the soul.;)
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I was trying to draw a comparison with a "Free Beer" Microsoft product, not necesarilly a C++ compiler, considering that VC++ has a hefty license fee.
So how exactly is Inprise supporting the community? Last time I checked, giving a peice of software away for free didn't make it "free" in the GNU sense. I suppose that according to Inprise, Internet Explorer supports the open source community too, eh?
I'll stick with GCC.
So I suppose that now I'll have to pay a fee before I can excersize my constitutional right to free speach? Sorry, but a royalty-based GPL sounds an awful lot like the poll taxes of the 19th century south: inequitable, inefficient, unfair, and ultimately unconstitutional.
BTW, any charging of royalties for the use of code makes that code closed-source. Think of what AT&T did with USG UNIX. They let pretty much anybody have a source code license, but the cost was a barrier of entry to most independent developers.
The best things in life are free (both kinds)
I'm going to start off by saying what many of you already have: Metcalfe obviously doesn't understand that the Crusoe doesn't support windows because it was designed for a Microsoft OS, but rather because it was designed for compatibility with existing x86 code. If the world ran the way he thinks it does, Motorola's PowerPC chips would be designed for MacOS only, leaving IBM's AIX in the dust. The reality is that Motorola, Transmeta, and any other company you care to name doesn't make chips for a specific OS.
;)
Next, the UNIX fragmentation issue. UNIX became a half-open/half-proprietary mess because it started off proprietary with AT&T, and even the valiant efforts of BSD could easily be corporatized because of the weak licensing. So, we have open source Unices and closed source ones, with merely inadequate standardization efforts (POSIX was the best one, and even with that can you run Solaris code on Linux? I thought not.) The GPL doesn't have those weaknesses. We've seen in the past with the various hardware ports of Linux that all the forks wind up being reunited. All roads lead to Linus (at least where the Kernel's involved).
So anyway, now we can get to the issue of code morphing software. This is software that handles things that in any other processor would be done in hardware. Do you see Intel GPL'ing the blueprints for the P3? I didn't think so. Most of the value of the Crusoe chip comes from the software, not the very simple hardware.
But that doesn't mean that the code morphing software shouldn't be open-sourced. That also doesn't mean that Intel, AMD, Sun, and Motorola should keep their chip designs a secret. We haven't seen it yet, but wouldn't open-source hardware be cool? I want a fab plant in my basement churning out Athlons! (OK, so I can't afford a fab plant, but I can dream, can't I?)
If Transmeta were to open-source the code-morphing software, we would probably see modified versions allowing us to run IA64, PowerPC, Sparc, or Alpha code. And we'd see even better x86 support. All on the same ultra low-cost chip. Cool, huh?
BTW, Open Source may not be the only development model that's good for the developer, or even the consumer, but it is the only one that's good for the soul.