You're right, the "OTOH" was misplaced. What I wanted to say was that MacOS X lost sacrifised some usability for eye-candy. If GNOME with its usability project avoids that, then it can end up more user-friendly long-term.
But of course MacOS X may change its appearant philosophy in the future.
Good question! What if portions of the GPL are declared to be bad, or if the whole GPL is declared invalid, does that mean that a new licence can be drawn up and all the existing projects can be allowed to relicence themselves under the new licence, or are they stuck as GPLed forever?
The GPL says that programs licensed under it can be regarded as licensed under that version or higher versions. What this means is that if the GPL was invalid, current GPL code would fall under standard copyright law (currently you can choose not to accept the GPL and use it under standard copyright either, but that grants you zero rights). The FSF could then release the successor to the GPL (which they are working on) and everything would be OK again.
But there's more, the GPL includes a statement that if part of the GPL was regarded as invalid in court then that shouldn't invalidate the rest of the license.
One more thing though, Linus has in the past changed Linux's license to GPL v2 and "no other version". This he was not allowed to do in the first place because he didn't ask permission to the many contributors, but if he wanted to bump the version number or say that it again falls under GPL vX or higher version he'd have to ask permission to everyone that has contributed since the license change. But of course everyone will again just let Linus get away with that.
GNOME and KDE will get there, it will just takes a bit more time. Looking at the GNOME usability project with a.o. the work Sun is putting into it, I'm confident that by version 3.0 GNOME will be a killer.
(b) you have an instant installed base familiar with the user interface
Not all that much people are familiar with Aqua.
The number of people familiar with GNOME and/or KDE is probably larger? I admit I don't have any numbers to back this up except for the fact that there are more machines out there running GNU/Linux rather than Macintosh, add to this that MacOS X was released not so long ago and I may just be right.
Either how, the number is probably not going to be worth the bother.
(c) you have many applications which can be ported possibly with a minimum of effort.
GnuStep should allow for this without actually porting Aqua. The advantage of this strategy is that you get to keep X:). (For those that for whatever reason believe X is bad/bloated/whatever, think about the drivers.)
But it does make sense. If people can rush off and build.Net clones, why not do someting actually useful?
Gimme a break..NET seems like a sound development platform and it's almost garantueed to be a huge success (it's Java with lots of extras plus MS is backing it).
People accomplish things
on
Linux and Mac OS X
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Worth quoting: 'It is amazing to me that an OS which was developed largely by volunteers (and which is essentially free) can run with unprecedented stability on the same hodgepodge of PC hardware on which another company has spent billions of dollars in R&D costs and is still unable to produce a product which can run for more than a few days without crashing -- and it costs hundreds of dollars.'"
For software development you only need some brains, time and a computer. Because of this and also thanks to a certain global communication tool, it's hardly suprising people accomplish grand things without coorporations backing them.
Really, people don't need management to accomplish something. Given the resources (money and time) people can and will do productive things for society.
The server that provides my e-mail is set up not to accept any incoming mail claiming to be from source addresses outside of the source server's domain.
I use two SMTP servers, being my ISP's one and my University's one (depending on where I am). Also I sometimes use exim to send mail from console. Does this mean I cannot contact you using my regular e-mail address (jdv@foobar.be)?
Have you ever checked how much legitimate e-mail you loose?
That's why a lot of street marchers will do a drug check before they go out to protest--no point in getting busted for anything uneccessary.
That shows how much control the government has over protesters. They can't do drugs because else the cops can abuse that (and they do abuse their power at protests). Furhtermore they can only protest within the bounderies that the government sets for them.
I can understand that not everyone that strongly disagrees with the system steps in line and taking matters into your own hands can be the right thing to do -- if your cause is right. The problem is that it's undemocratic to take matters into your own hands.
But you can't educate the whole world about your cause, 1/ the rich aren't going to care because they benifit too much from the system, they'll boycot you too (don't count on favorable news stories) 2/ for middle class the system doesn't appear to be broken, 3/ the poor know how powerful the rich and rulers are and won't believe you can change something.
Also you can't just change the ways for a small community. You need an almost global change if you want a non-capitalist system to exist, if you don't have that you just can't get the necessary resources (don't forget you can no longer count on any capitalist resources).
So, what's a fellow to do? Ignore the situation and try to live an apathetic life? Be a good rebel and do a few protests a year, ignore that the media reports only the few windows that were broken, be happy when politicians say you were good boys and girls because you didn't cause damage? Violence does get a message accross, sure most people will be angry at those vandals-protestors but a minority will investigate and join your cause.
(Note that in this post I'm not so much talking about raisethefist.)
With todays 100Gig drives often most data belongs to the user. If you're backing up your 75Gig colleciton of music and music you might as well back up your system files too. Of course this isn't the average case today but it might as well be in the near future.
How does that help? To be save you'd have to check the source code and install scripts. Seeing what files you end up with isn't going to help you against a trojan.
Let's say I run a infected binary in/usr/local/bin as my desktop login. I loose my stuff. You can argue that this is just as bad, but my system is still not compromised.
So what do you use your computer for? Perhaps you only use it for admin stuff but many more people use their computers for creating documents, when they lose all their precious work they're not going to care if the machine still boots.
Once you get beyond the Big Brother nature of Walmarts, Best Buy's, etc., they do an excellent at providing wealth to all. Good items are now affordable for poorer people to purchase. And salaries within society are equalized.
Well, if there's no more unemployment people are going to have less reason to do a good job when producing goods for some rich capitalist, after all they could just go on to another job; it is in the interest of the rich that unemployment exist.
But further you miss the point, it is mostly the third world that is deprived and that will forever be deprived as long as capitalism is here. It is the IMF and world bank that want to keep third world countries poor.
If I am reading you right, you seem to think that given enough time that a communist system will work. You really need to ask yourself the question: "Why haven't you seen a communist system work in a large country for an extended period of time?".
Because it's not in the interest of capitalists. That's not to say I believe all capitalists are inherintly evil, capitalism has been a part of our culture for I don't know how long, it's understandable that many capitalists themselves don't see the problem with the system as it works for them.
But slavery has been exceptable for a long time too, and at that time people didn't say "hey -- we're exploiting those people. Let's stop doing that" en masse.
The comparision to slavery isn't that far fetched I believe, in the Roman age there were few rich ones and many slaves and the rich men and women had created a really fine system for themselves. But slavery was ended because the suppressed revolted and because the exploiters didn't like being bad people (which many of them might not have thought about before). It is to be expected that one day the poor in our society will stand up to capitalist that dictactated their lives so far with abstract notions and rules such as money, patents and private ownership. When that day comes I espect many capitalists themselves to realize what is wrong.
So the question really isn't if socialism/communism is going to work. The issue is that there are classes in our society and they must be abolished -- that can only be done by removing all monopolies on ideas, land and natural resources and deciding democraticly over them. You believe in democracy I assume?
I know you espected me to defend what is commonly called communism but I really can't because I don't believe in that system. It's a class based system with no seperation between government and monopolists, which is very bad.
In conclusion, what I really meant to say in my previous post was that communism might work if the state doesn't get corrupt, i.e. that the people themselves may really do good work. Socialism might be the answer. Note that Marckx himself also wanted an evolution towards a governmentless society.
I'm a bit sceptical about this. One of my roommates (damn that word is strange, how about dorm mate?) comes from a former African communist country (or socialist as he and Marckx would call it) and speaks about that in a very positive way. I've also read nice things about the quality of work done in communist countries, which is something I also see in free software vs. commercial software.
In the end I think it's not possible to draw conclusions about the communist system because it hasn't been tried long enough and because of lack of support of capitalist countries (not that you could espect anything else). You can't instate communism/socialism in a poor country and espect to have all problems resolved in half a century if there's no help from the outside to bootstrap their society into first world 20/21st century wealth.
That's not to say there haven't been successes with planned economies but I'd espect an immediate result of instating equality in a poor country (with very rich and very poor people) to be that the average wealth drops phenominally. A possitive result would be that there should be no more hunger and everyone can get a decent education. Over time quality education and adaptation by the previous rich (as far as they don't flee elsewhere) should get society further in the long run... ignoring for a moment that communism does have a ruling class which tends to get corrupt but true socialism should solve that.
However, my point is that capitalism is the best thing yet. I know it has *serious* drawbacks. But I take it any day over communism, pure socialism, or anything else history has to show us. I hope for the day when scarce resources are a thing of the past and we no longer need capitalism to keep people and companies in check.
I don't think scare resources are a problem. After all the very rich have the money to claim these resources for themselves yet they don't do that, and I do not believe that's because of "with power/money comes responsibility" as capitalists like to say.
I realize that many companies are totally unethical (I dislike MS vehemently), but at least our system keeps them in check to some level. Capitalism makes for a great life because it caters to people's greed. On the whole, people want to work and innovate because they want $.
I'm not sure I understand how capitalism keeps people in check? Isn't this the job of governments?
Or if you mean that capitalism works because it gives an intensity for people to work, to that I'd reply that it gives this intensity only to the worker class, the majority of the rich also tend to work while they don't need the money (which from your point of view is especially strange for children of the rich).
BTW, by your logic you could also say slavery works because it gives an intensity for people to work, and this would be true if it weren't that in slavery people work because of fear for punnishment as in capitalism people work because of fear for poverty - why can't they do work for enjoyment as the rich do?
Capitalism works because it accepts this fact at our society's current stage of development. Most other systems that have been tried give people too much ethical credit
I also don't think socialism gives people to much ethical credit. I've heard many of the working (older) adults around me say that they'd feel useless if they didn't work and I've heard the same people claim that they'd keep on working if they won the lotery - at a slower pace alas but that could compensate nicely with those unemployed that want to work.
Further I'd like to remark that capitalism does in fact not work - it's a broken system for the vast majority of people on this planet because it relies too much on exploitation and unemployment (because you want people to be scared of getting fired).
I'm looking forward to hear some insight from you. Oh yeah, try the link that my sig is, it complements this post:).
Hmm, the article says he's the richest man of Australia but you say that everything he touches turns into shit. Care to elaborate? How did he get his money for example?
Well, I can't speak for all European countries but Belgium here has a very high rate of people using cable or ADSL for internet, meaning no fee per megabyte or minute (cable users have a 10GB cap though). Heck, how long does it take to download your spam on a regular charged-by-the-minute telephone? I really expect this to have been a non-issue.
Your comment about paying per SMS message makes no sense to me as it's the spammer that has to pay, not the recipient. Care to elaborate?
OTOH my Dell Inspiron has a 15" monitor with 1400x1050 (with 1600x1200 being available too) and large enough keys to use it as a desktop machine (in fact, that's what I use it for at the dorm). Perhaps laptops will soon be able to replace desktop machines for regular users?
I take it that if you want to play really safe you'd have to encrypt your swap partition too, after all, any file you recently opened may get swapped to disk.
It would be convinient if you could have multiple entries in fstab share the same password, for now a little shell script will do (also because Aurora doesn't support text input yet).
For some time now I've seen this trend towards more heavyweight applications rather than small, lean applications that are used in conjunction. Now, this isn't a bad thing per sé since shared libraries or components can be used to share code.
It also has an advantage for desktop users because these heavyweight applications have the unique possibility of using paradigms different than windows for managing documents/tools reducing the window clutter on the desktop. E.g. in a PIM several related applications are presented in one window (where if needed the different components can often be opened in a seperate window anyway); in an IDE it is common to have a form editor, code editor, class browser, debugger all in one window.
But there are other approaches that can be taken. I've read dialog windows in MacOS X stick to their owner which is nice because it reduces the amount of windows you have to manage. X window managers could probably implement this feauture pretty easy.
But more can be done, e.g. it would be nice if there was a Nautilus-like panel on the right side of the screen in which things like music players, instant messengers, calendars, RDF-boxes, etc. could be embeded (these would be Bonobo components or KParts). An idea would be to model the panel after Nautilus' sidebar, only when hiding a tab the panel should disappear completely except for the tabs at the bottom of the screen.
In conclusion, it would be nice if the desktop environments started to work more towards reducing the number of open windows rather than taking the GLADE appraoch where there's a window for the menu and tool bars, a toolbox window, a property window and a window per form. (Yes, I know of workspaces but that ruins the advantage of windows even more.)
If the people in violation want to help you resolve the issue then you shouldn't cry about it on Slashdot, that's lack of respect. Same goes for when e.g. Microsoft does it.
Slashdot Mirror
But of course MacOS X may change its appearant philosophy in the future.
But there's more, the GPL includes a statement that if part of the GPL was regarded as invalid in court then that shouldn't invalidate the rest of the license.
One more thing though, Linus has in the past changed Linux's license to GPL v2 and "no other version". This he was not allowed to do in the first place because he didn't ask permission to the many contributors, but if he wanted to bump the version number or say that it again falls under GPL vX or higher version he'd have to ask permission to everyone that has contributed since the license change. But of course everyone will again just let Linus get away with that.
Two things. 1/ I don't believe that, 2/ we're talking about the desktop here, not the underlying system.
MacOS X OTOH has had a lot of critism.
Not all that much people are familiar with Aqua.The number of people familiar with GNOME and/or KDE is probably larger? I admit I don't have any numbers to back this up except for the fact that there are more machines out there running GNU/Linux rather than Macintosh, add to this that MacOS X was released not so long ago and I may just be right.
Either how, the number is probably not going to be worth the bother.
GnuStep should allow for this without actually porting Aqua. The advantage of this strategy is that you get to keep XReally, people don't need management to accomplish something. Given the resources (money and time) people can and will do productive things for society.
Have you ever checked how much legitimate e-mail you loose?
I can understand that not everyone that strongly disagrees with the system steps in line and taking matters into your own hands can be the right thing to do -- if your cause is right. The problem is that it's undemocratic to take matters into your own hands.
But you can't educate the whole world about your cause, 1/ the rich aren't going to care because they benifit too much from the system, they'll boycot you too (don't count on favorable news stories) 2/ for middle class the system doesn't appear to be broken, 3/ the poor know how powerful the rich and rulers are and won't believe you can change something.
Also you can't just change the ways for a small community. You need an almost global change if you want a non-capitalist system to exist, if you don't have that you just can't get the necessary resources (don't forget you can no longer count on any capitalist resources).
So, what's a fellow to do? Ignore the situation and try to live an apathetic life? Be a good rebel and do a few protests a year, ignore that the media reports only the few windows that were broken, be happy when politicians say you were good boys and girls because you didn't cause damage? Violence does get a message accross, sure most people will be angry at those vandals-protestors but a minority will investigate and join your cause.
(Note that in this post I'm not so much talking about raisethefist.)
With todays 100Gig drives often most data belongs to the user. If you're backing up your 75Gig colleciton of music and music you might as well back up your system files too. Of course this isn't the average case today but it might as well be in the near future.
(Personally I believe the Unix security system is just as bad as Windows concerning virus-protection for users.)
How does that help? To be save you'd have to check the source code and install scripts. Seeing what files you end up with isn't going to help you against a trojan.
But further you miss the point, it is mostly the third world that is deprived and that will forever be deprived as long as capitalism is here. It is the IMF and world bank that want to keep third world countries poor.
Hey -- i don't even know what it's about. Where am I anyway?
But slavery has been exceptable for a long time too, and at that time people didn't say "hey -- we're exploiting those people. Let's stop doing that" en masse.
The comparision to slavery isn't that far fetched I believe, in the Roman age there were few rich ones and many slaves and the rich men and women had created a really fine system for themselves. But slavery was ended because the suppressed revolted and because the exploiters didn't like being bad people (which many of them might not have thought about before). It is to be expected that one day the poor in our society will stand up to capitalist that dictactated their lives so far with abstract notions and rules such as money, patents and private ownership. When that day comes I espect many capitalists themselves to realize what is wrong.
So the question really isn't if socialism/communism is going to work. The issue is that there are classes in our society and they must be abolished -- that can only be done by removing all monopolies on ideas, land and natural resources and deciding democraticly over them. You believe in democracy I assume?
I know you espected me to defend what is commonly called communism but I really can't because I don't believe in that system. It's a class based system with no seperation between government and monopolists, which is very bad.
In conclusion, what I really meant to say in my previous post was that communism might work if the state doesn't get corrupt, i.e. that the people themselves may really do good work. Socialism might be the answer. Note that Marckx himself also wanted an evolution towards a governmentless society.
In the end I think it's not possible to draw conclusions about the communist system because it hasn't been tried long enough and because of lack of support of capitalist countries (not that you could espect anything else). You can't instate communism/socialism in a poor country and espect to have all problems resolved in half a century if there's no help from the outside to bootstrap their society into first world 20/21st century wealth.
That's not to say there haven't been successes with planned economies but I'd espect an immediate result of instating equality in a poor country (with very rich and very poor people) to be that the average wealth drops phenominally. A possitive result would be that there should be no more hunger and everyone can get a decent education. Over time quality education and adaptation by the previous rich (as far as they don't flee elsewhere) should get society further in the long run... ignoring for a moment that communism does have a ruling class which tends to get corrupt but true socialism should solve that.
I don't think scare resources are a problem. After all the very rich have the money to claim these resources for themselves yet they don't do that, and I do not believe that's because of "with power/money comes responsibility" as capitalists like to say.
I'm not sure I understand how capitalism keeps people in check? Isn't this the job of governments?
Or if you mean that capitalism works because it gives an intensity for people to work, to that I'd reply that it gives this intensity only to the worker class, the majority of the rich also tend to work while they don't need the money (which from your point of view is especially strange for children of the rich).
BTW, by your logic you could also say slavery works because it gives an intensity for people to work, and this would be true if it weren't that in slavery people work because of fear for punnishment as in capitalism people work because of fear for poverty - why can't they do work for enjoyment as the rich do?
I also don't think socialism gives people to much ethical credit. I've heard many of the working (older) adults around me say that they'd feel useless if they didn't work and I've heard the same people claim that they'd keep on working if they won the lotery - at a slower pace alas but that could compensate nicely with those unemployed that want to work.Further I'd like to remark that capitalism does in fact not work - it's a broken system for the vast majority of people on this planet because it relies too much on exploitation and unemployment (because you want people to be scared of getting fired).
I'm looking forward to hear some insight from you. Oh yeah, try the link that my sig is, it complements this post :).
Hmm, the article says he's the richest man of Australia but you say that everything he touches turns into shit. Care to elaborate? How did he get his money for example?
Your comment about paying per SMS message makes no sense to me as it's the spammer that has to pay, not the recipient. Care to elaborate?
OTOH my Dell Inspiron has a 15" monitor with 1400x1050 (with 1600x1200 being available too) and large enough keys to use it as a desktop machine (in fact, that's what I use it for at the dorm). Perhaps laptops will soon be able to replace desktop machines for regular users?
It would be convinient if you could have multiple entries in fstab share the same password, for now a little shell script will do (also because Aurora doesn't support text input yet).
It also has an advantage for desktop users because these heavyweight applications have the unique possibility of using paradigms different than windows for managing documents/tools reducing the window clutter on the desktop. E.g. in a PIM several related applications are presented in one window (where if needed the different components can often be opened in a seperate window anyway); in an IDE it is common to have a form editor, code editor, class browser, debugger all in one window.
But there are other approaches that can be taken. I've read dialog windows in MacOS X stick to their owner which is nice because it reduces the amount of windows you have to manage. X window managers could probably implement this feauture pretty easy.
But more can be done, e.g. it would be nice if there was a Nautilus-like panel on the right side of the screen in which things like music players, instant messengers, calendars, RDF-boxes, etc. could be embeded (these would be Bonobo components or KParts). An idea would be to model the panel after Nautilus' sidebar, only when hiding a tab the panel should disappear completely except for the tabs at the bottom of the screen.
In conclusion, it would be nice if the desktop environments started to work more towards reducing the number of open windows rather than taking the GLADE appraoch where there's a window for the menu and tool bars, a toolbox window, a property window and a window per form. (Yes, I know of workspaces but that ruins the advantage of windows even more.)
Let the meta-moderation begin! Seriously, my comment shouldn't have been moderate up to 5 like it was. The redundant-moderation is silly though.
Since it looks like Søren and Red Hat are working to resolve the issue already, I don't see how it matters.
If the people in violation want to help you resolve the issue then you shouldn't cry about it on Slashdot, that's lack of respect. Same goes for when e.g. Microsoft does it.