But you miss the point. A lot of code written by companies and used by customers that are not guilty of anything, will break. The case is supposed to be about protecting the public's interest, and any remedy that doesn't do that should be rejected.
Making Windows more modular will in the short term break things. True. In the long run, it will tighten up both Windows and the other applications, removing problems.
As such, it's a very reasonable trade off that is in line with the public interest and the various anti-trust laws that Microsoft is guilty of violating and continues to violate -- harming the public interest.
In Windows, devices are controlled by things called "drivers", which are not part of the kernel. Windows NT (for example) has a driver subsystem that is part of (or linked to, I forget) the kernel.
So what you're describing is much easier to do with Windows.
While I agree mostly with what you've said -- both Windows and Linux have kernel based modular device support -- the ease of use part is not correct.
Under Linux, most distributions are pre-configured with the kernel consisting of modules. If you want to remove any module, you can without rebooting safely as long as it is not being used. Hotplug support and manual enabling/disabling of parts of the kernel using insmod/rmmod or runlevels make module management simple if not automatic.
Drivers under NT serve the same basic function as modules under Linux. NT Drivers are usually loaded at boot time and can not be unloaded. The exception are hot plug devices...just like they are under Linux.
But that will take serious time and effort. Because it's not DESIGNED that way. Like the Linux kernel is a monolithic kernel where you can't just say "I want this and that in stead of what's in it now". You have to do serious hacking and patching and TESTING, since it will make the system probably unstable.
You had me nodding through the second sentence.
The next sentence about the Linux kernel is not correct. True, the mainline Linux kernel is monolithic, but it can be stripped down into dynamically loading modules fairly easily. There are some logical dependencies in it such as USB devices requiring the USB subsystem, but none that cause stability problems if they are added in a specific combination. Each part is stable/unstable largely on it's own.
The Linux core that remains afte the modular parts are removed is in design still monolithic, but is about as small as a similar microkernel OS. In addition, there are non-monolythic ports of Linux to some processors.
In the case of IE, it is optional...on MacOS and WinCE. That MS can't/won't make even modest changes at the browser level for the Windows95+ and WindowsNT+ lines is laughable. They and others outside of Microsoft can and will if properly motivated; they've done it before, they're doing it now, and to pleed otherwise is just nonsense.
Just hearing it is sickening and depressing at the same time.
Promoting that phrase showed how little MS (and Gates specifically) knew about this Internet thing -- or it was intentional to cause confusion and like other attempts to weaken anything not invented at Microsoft. I vote for stupidity or simple envy wrapped up in a Freduan slip over mallace, though it's not a confident vote. Either way, truely scary.
Have you asked anybody how they feel about gcc, or did you just pull that out of thin air? I have seen people complain about gcc on more than one occasion, for its poor optimization and poor maintainability.
I noticed you didn't reply to what I wrote. Here's the point (reworded and updated);
Complaints have nothing to do with it. If the complainers wanted to fork GCC, they could give it a try. They could even try and roll thier own compiler, though there's no need to do that because
GCC is GPLed and the GPL supports forking. (That, and rolling your own compiler from scratch is a real PITA.)
Get enough of the complainers together and they could wrest the GCC 'monopoly' from the FSF. That anyone or any company does not do this does not mean that they can't. There are no legal, contractual, or social obstructions that are preventing this -- only will and effort. Besides, people complain about alot of things, it usually shows that they care, otherwise why waste the time.
Bottom line: MS's monopoly is heavily intrenched and has stood largely unchallenged for decades even with massive efforts from a variety of corporations, groups, individuals, and governments including two anti-trust trials. No other single software project is even similar...unless you want to go back to the begining of the 80s with IBM and mainframes and even that's debatable.
MS bundles things into the operating system and forces OEMs to include Windows. You have to buy Windows whether you like it or not. IBM and other companies take money from customers and use part of it to support GPL'd software. Many of their customers probably don't like the GPL, but companies don't have checkboxes for "please don't use proceeds from my purchase to promote the Free Software movement". The Free Software movement uses a more complicated maze than MS, but it's the same rat and the same cheese.
I had a few paragraphs of a reply to this, but wiped it out. You are either not serious, or have some unexpressed complaint that is the basis of your arguments. Without knowing what that complaint really is, we'll never come to any type of mutual and clear agreement.
Numbers 1,3, and 4 don't address the FSF's monopoly since the FSF still holds the copyright.
The GPL does not restrict use, so copyright only becomes an issue if the GPL is violated. 1, 3, and 4 don't violate the GPL, so those uses -- those actions -- still can be performed by anybody or any company. The FSF is powerless to prevent these changes -- and that's the whole point of the GPL. It's about user's rights, not developers/corporate rights. (Note: This is a restatement of the intent of the GPL, not my personal single minded thoughts on the subject. The GPL is one of many tools.)
Number 2 is illegal under the GPL.
Also wrong. I wrote "Add seperate but different propriatory, BSD-style, or GPLed code." With the operative words being "Add seperate". There's nothing in the GPL that prevents taking two seperate programs -- one GPLed the other not -- and placing them in the same package. Most Linux distributions have propriatory parts in one form or another.
The issues come up with extentions of the original GPLed code...so if those extentions are also GPLed, there's no problem. If there are no extentions, and all the new stuff is in other programs, the GPL is not violated regaurdless of the licence used for that new stuff.
In either case, there is a 'monopoly' in GCC only because nobody cares to change that. If they did, the GPL would allow them to do so almost immediately. With enough backing -- social or corporate -- the actual monopoly would not exist for long. Microsoft's monopoly isn't even similar.
Your analogy is faulty. GCC is under the GPL. If you wanted to;
1. Fork it with GPLed extentions.
2. Add seperate but different propriatory, BSD-style, or GPLed code.
3. Sell it as-is.
4. Sell services for it.
...you or anyone else on the planet can. You can even call your package "The FSF are a bunch of loons and I'm going to bastardize GCC and they can't stop me". You could even do as your new GCC package's title asserts.
Now, if you are not capable of doing these tasks, there's no legal remedy that can be done to change that.
Unfortunately, the PCs Wallmart is selling without an OS don't have the same hardware as those they are selling with an OS. One example: All machines that are bundled with an OS get a monitor as well. There are other per-machine differences that make a comparison difficult at best.
Because of that, you can't figure out if the machines actually sell for less if no OS is bundled with them. Very annoying. (If anyone has figured it out, post a followup.)
Either way, it is promising that such a large retailer did start offering these blank systems.
Hell, when I went to college (back when programming ment touching two live wires together), I had a box of tapes -- all 100% copies. No originals. (Comes from having to decide between eating mac&cheese or putting $1.50 of gas in the car.)
When I graduated, paid off my student loans, I started to buy music.
This past year has convinced me that neither are totally ethical actions unless you know the seller.
Along those lines, I'm still amazed that one friend -- an ex-professional rock band member -- still gets ticked off that people are able to make backups of music CDs. The same person will ask me, without any reservations, to come over and install some commercial software on his machine. When I say gladly, if he buys it, he immediately looses interest.
...I use a few tactics to thwart the vast majority of this dreck personally.
First, the basics;
Turn off HTML email viewing.(*)
Turn off return reciept.
If you have your own domain, do not reply to innocent-sounding email that looks like it was sent to the wrong mail address. 9x out of 10 it wasn't. They are polling for your valid address and just want a response so they know who really should be spammed.
Next, the filters (personal, not network wide -- sorry!);
If the To:/Cc: fields are directly to one of your valid accounts (not a mailing list), allow it through.
If it is From:/To:/Cc: a known good address or list, allow it through.
All other mail is shuffled to Spam.
None of these filters will prevent spam from simply being mailed To: you directly. Yet, if you check your spam headers you'll see that only a small sampling actually do this -- they don't want to send out individual messages. It raises thier profile too much.
Also, yes, this will not catch the case where you are added innocently to a mailing list by an unknown sender. That's why I suggest that you do not delete the spam automatically. (I've determined that most folks who do this are people I don't want to talk to anyway, so it kind of works out even if the message isn't delivered.)
Now, if you want to apply more sophisticated filters, go ahead. A blank or missing "To:" field seems to be popular with spammers these days.
For me, I'm not going to bother. I fiddled around with those for about a year four years ago and ended up deleting good mail accidentially and learning more about Procmail -- not that learning about Procmail is a bad thing.
* To prevent someone from figuring out that your address is a good one, ofcourse. Viewing rendered HTML email may, depending on the viewer, give a hint that they have a valid address. Some mail programs do allow you to render the HTML without fetching resources from a remote server. When in doubt, do without.
...consider that your own management might be setting your company up for a fall. By agreeing to this, they might be getting some payoff -- an executive position, stock, some other payment.
Either that, or your management is clueless about these types of transactions.
I was about to write the same thing. Well, a less harsh response, but still the same basic idea.
The larger company may be legitimate, but expect that they will 'suddenly' develop your product in a few months. They probably have prototypes, can't get over a few issues, and if they just had some inspiration -- like your source code -- they would figure it out.
I'd consider the strong possibility that they are just hunting around and this is a cheap way to do R&D.
Now, having said that, the truely slimy people may not be the ones you're dealing with. The execs or PMs somewhere else in the larger company may be waiting on the reports from the innocent folks -- who really don't have a clue that they are a pawn in this game -- who have been asked to talk to your group directly. Still, I'd expect some to be suspect.
I don't believe people are _that_ afraid to try an OSS office suite. Maybe a little intimidated, but not truely scared.
With Word, it's not fear, it's simple uncertianty, apathy, and resignation. The attitude is this: Since Open/StarOffice isn't Word (and to a lesser degree Powerpoint and Excel), it's simply wrong. When it becomes Microsoft Office or takes MSOffice's dominate place it will then be OK.
Here's an example; I gave copies of SO5.2 to friends. They all tried it, liked it (though it is slow to load), and a couple found that it didn't do a perfect job converting Word docs. When, in all honesty, I pointed out that it didn't execute Word macros, the universial response was "Then what is it good for?"
Keep in mind that not one of these people ever said they used documents with macros, and they also knew the downside to macro viruses. Not being word -- not being clearly better and more popular than word -- was enough to cause scoffing. To them, it is broken.
Reciently, I mentioned SO6 and OpenOffice 1.0 as comming in the next few months. The response, once again, was an unenthusiastic "Oh".
The same people will gripe about Microsoft and will not lift a finger to do anything about it. They gripe about MS more then I do.
Similar comments were made about Wine even when I met the challenge of getting specific Windows applications running under it.
Originally, I wrote that they were like abused wives, but that's not it. There's something else going on.
How many people are using Linux **right now** as they view this page.
Or even better:
How many people are using IE right now?
Write with Word?
If you gripe about MS and still use all thier tools, I don't want to hear about it. Change your behavior first, even if you only make a few simple changes. Then, you'll have something that is worth listening to.
I can understand having Windows pushed on you because of corporate dictates, but most people do have some latitude. Why do you use IE and Word and have not been given a corporate mandate to do so?
Mozilla is excellent. SO/OO are practical tools for most jobs. SO6/OO1 should be much more competitive if StarOffice 6 beta1 is any indication.
Personally, since I do use it, I find it quite handy. I just don't have a need to run Lightwave. If I did, it is likely that in a few months it would be practical for me to do so. I don't, so I don't care.
As for investing in other parts of Unix, well, I consider Wine to be an investment in Unix. If it gets more people to use Unix, then it's an excelent investment.
Your opinions of other non-Wine projects also seems to be a bit strange. But what do I know.;}
Though I agree with the idea that record companies aren't the elite "doers of good" in the industry, the fact remains that many geeks (myself included) have basically been fucking over the artists by downloading free music. Admit it. The first time you saw someone download something from Napster/GNUtella/whatever, you had a pang in your gut that said "Isn't there something wrong with this?" It's called guilt.
Er, nope. Every song on my hard drive is also in my CD collection.
Now, do I feel angry over the practices of the record labels -- and dirty by association? Ubetcha.
How did you get lightwave to run without the dongle? or does the preview release not require one?
First off, if you haven't looked in the Wine Application Database, go there. Plenty of helpful hints. http://appdb.codeweavers.com
Also, take a look at Blender if you haven't yet. www.blender3d.com It might not be Lightwave, but it has some parts that are quite nice and a thriving community willing to help.
Now, the Lightwave details.
The demo version I used came from a Lightwave tutorial book. It looks like it's the full version minus some data files and (under Windows) will drop into 'demo' mode if the dongle doesn't exist.
To install it, I first installed under Windows then copied the entire Lightwave directory to the Wine file area (for me/usr/share/wine-c). I'm sure that this is not complete, but I'm not a Lightwave user so I didn't investigate anything that might be missing.
Unfortunately, the whole copy protection scheme doesn't work under Wine in demo mode for both Modler and Lightwave. The other bundled programs seem to work fine without the dongle.
The solution: Get a crack.
The unfortunate truth about Wine and copy protection is that with the exception of a small list of games under Transgaming's WineX, the copy protection schemes will usually fail and the programs won't run -- no matter how fresh out of the box your legitimate copy is. Also, even with the crack, and the original CD mounted in the drive, some programs still balk and refuse to run -- as if the crack wasn't even applied. Very annoying after paying $100+ for some programs. Serves me right.
No, I don't trust the cracks. If I were using Lightwave professionally, I'd have to wait for the dialog box focus issue to be resolved and then carefully investigate the changes any crack applied to the binary. Wine does allow you to isolate different applications, so that's one way to lower the security risks.
As for Poser, you might want to look for a crack. I can't say it would work (my track record is poor with this), but it is one thing you have to deal with first.
If you're using a serial dongle with Poser, it might work as-is. Ask on the wine-devel list to see if there are any issues with serial devices that could be causing the dongle fits. Hell, go bug the dongle maker. Maybe they know.
Theoretical -- may be flawed, IANAL, comments/corrections appereciated -- example;
Version.5 of FooMaster is under the BSD licence. It has two primary files named main.c and other.c.
The primary developer (or anyone since it's under BSD) decides to re-licence FooMaster under the GPL. The re-licenced program has a version number of.51 and later.
Another developer, has been making changes to main.c and selling the result as FooMaster Plus.
FooMaster.60 comes out with many changes. Almost all of the changes are in other.c not main.c.
The FooMaster Plus developer gets other.c from FooMaster.60 (GPL) and incorporates it into FooMaster Plus. Since FooMaster Plus does not use any modified files that are GPLed, no propriatory closed source code is required to be released.
Yet, if asked by people who recieve FooMaster Plus (for free or at a cost) to release the source code, other.c will have to be forked over (for free or at a reasonable cost per GPL). main.c, (from the BSD branch), could remain closed if the FooMaster Plus developer decided to do so.
Another nit: If the corporation licenced thier software under the GPL or LGPL, that's thier choice. The GPL/LGPL, like any licence, has limits in how it works and should not be accepted blindly. That does not mean that there can't be other licences on the same code, or that the company can't take that code and make it commercial once again.
Take a look at TuxRacer, as an example; started out GPL, main programmer got a few submissions, main programmer decided to re-release it as a closed source game, replaced the submitted changes with his own and relicenced the result. This is entirely valid under the GPL.
Its not "stealing". The BSD license gives corporations the freedom to make money from their development efforts, unlike the GPL.
I'm with you on the 'not stealing' part.
I disagree on the GPL equals no money part.
There's nothing in the GPL or LGPL the prevents selling software. There's nothing in either licence that prevents distribution with commercial or even BSD parts. One example: Caldera -- they sell a per-seat licence for thier Linux disto..
Let's say Wine is LGPLed at midnight GMT tonight. As I understand it, anyone could take code from the pre-LGPL Wine and pick and choose what to grab out of the latest-and-greatest-LGPLed Wine.
From the POV of the licences, they could make massive changes to one or two files (from the pre-LGPL branch) and then import the remaining parts from the LGPL branch. At that point, they have violated no licences and are not required to release any source regaurdless of how the binary is distributed.
That way, the commercial project could take advantage of having mostly current code while keeping it all propriatory.
Will that last? I'd bet that over time this would start to get ugly and code management used to ensure that the licences weren't violated would be quite a chore. Without specifics, how much time is hard to predict.
Slashdot Mirror
Making Windows more modular will in the short term break things. True. In the long run, it will tighten up both Windows and the other applications, removing problems.
As such, it's a very reasonable trade off that is in line with the public interest and the various anti-trust laws that Microsoft is guilty of violating and continues to violate -- harming the public interest.
So what you're describing is much easier to do with Windows.
While I agree mostly with what you've said -- both Windows and Linux have kernel based modular device support -- the ease of use part is not correct.
Under Linux, most distributions are pre-configured with the kernel consisting of modules. If you want to remove any module, you can without rebooting safely as long as it is not being used. Hotplug support and manual enabling/disabling of parts of the kernel using insmod/rmmod or runlevels make module management simple if not automatic.
Drivers under NT serve the same basic function as modules under Linux. NT Drivers are usually loaded at boot time and can not be unloaded. The exception are hot plug devices...just like they are under Linux.
You had me nodding through the second sentence.
The next sentence about the Linux kernel is not correct. True, the mainline Linux kernel is monolithic, but it can be stripped down into dynamically loading modules fairly easily. There are some logical dependencies in it such as USB devices requiring the USB subsystem, but none that cause stability problems if they are added in a specific combination. Each part is stable/unstable largely on it's own.
The Linux core that remains afte the modular parts are removed is in design still monolithic, but is about as small as a similar microkernel OS. In addition, there are non-monolythic ports of Linux to some processors.
In the case of IE, it is optional...on MacOS and WinCE. That MS can't/won't make even modest changes at the browser level for the Windows95+ and WindowsNT+ lines is laughable. They and others outside of Microsoft can and will if properly motivated; they've done it before, they're doing it now, and to pleed otherwise is just nonsense.
That said, send some jobs over here. We need em!
Just hearing it is sickening and depressing at the same time.
Promoting that phrase showed how little MS (and Gates specifically) knew about this Internet thing -- or it was intentional to cause confusion and like other attempts to weaken anything not invented at Microsoft. I vote for stupidity or simple envy wrapped up in a Freduan slip over mallace, though it's not a confident vote. Either way, truely scary.
Good comments. I'd mod it up but I don't have points.
I noticed you didn't reply to what I wrote. Here's the point (reworded and updated);
Get enough of the complainers together and they could wrest the GCC 'monopoly' from the FSF. That anyone or any company does not do this does not mean that they can't. There are no legal, contractual, or social obstructions that are preventing this -- only will and effort. Besides, people complain about alot of things, it usually shows that they care, otherwise why waste the time.
Bottom line: MS's monopoly is heavily intrenched and has stood largely unchallenged for decades even with massive efforts from a variety of corporations, groups, individuals, and governments including two anti-trust trials. No other single software project is even similar...unless you want to go back to the begining of the 80s with IBM and mainframes and even that's debatable.
MS bundles things into the operating system and forces OEMs to include Windows. You have to buy Windows whether you like it or not. IBM and other companies take money from customers and use part of it to support GPL'd software. Many of their customers probably don't like the GPL, but companies don't have checkboxes for "please don't use proceeds from my purchase to promote the Free Software movement". The Free Software movement uses a more complicated maze than MS, but it's the same rat and the same cheese.
I had a few paragraphs of a reply to this, but wiped it out. You are either not serious, or have some unexpressed complaint that is the basis of your arguments. Without knowing what that complaint really is, we'll never come to any type of mutual and clear agreement.
The GPL does not restrict use, so copyright only becomes an issue if the GPL is violated. 1, 3, and 4 don't violate the GPL, so those uses -- those actions -- still can be performed by anybody or any company. The FSF is powerless to prevent these changes -- and that's the whole point of the GPL. It's about user's rights, not developers/corporate rights. (Note: This is a restatement of the intent of the GPL, not my personal single minded thoughts on the subject. The GPL is one of many tools.)
Number 2 is illegal under the GPL.
Also wrong. I wrote "Add seperate but different propriatory, BSD-style, or GPLed code." With the operative words being "Add seperate". There's nothing in the GPL that prevents taking two seperate programs -- one GPLed the other not -- and placing them in the same package. Most Linux distributions have propriatory parts in one form or another.
The issues come up with extentions of the original GPLed code...so if those extentions are also GPLed, there's no problem. If there are no extentions, and all the new stuff is in other programs, the GPL is not violated regaurdless of the licence used for that new stuff.
In either case, there is a 'monopoly' in GCC only because nobody cares to change that. If they did, the GPL would allow them to do so almost immediately. With enough backing -- social or corporate -- the actual monopoly would not exist for long. Microsoft's monopoly isn't even similar.
Unfortunately, there's no way to absolutely confirm it without poping open the case.
1. Fork it with GPLed extentions.
2. Add seperate but different propriatory, BSD-style, or GPLed code.
3. Sell it as-is.
4. Sell services for it.
...you or anyone else on the planet can. You can even call your package "The FSF are a bunch of loons and I'm going to bastardize GCC and they can't stop me". You could even do as your new GCC package's title asserts.
Now, if you are not capable of doing these tasks, there's no legal remedy that can be done to change that.
Because of that, you can't figure out if the machines actually sell for less if no OS is bundled with them. Very annoying. (If anyone has figured it out, post a followup.)
Either way, it is promising that such a large retailer did start offering these blank systems.
When I graduated, paid off my student loans, I started to buy music.
This past year has convinced me that neither are totally ethical actions unless you know the seller.
Along those lines, I'm still amazed that one friend -- an ex-professional rock band member -- still gets ticked off that people are able to make backups of music CDs. The same person will ask me, without any reservations, to come over and install some commercial software on his machine. When I say gladly, if he buys it, he immediately looses interest.
First, the basics;
Turn off return reciept.
If you have your own domain, do not reply to innocent-sounding email that looks like it was sent to the wrong mail address. 9x out of 10 it wasn't. They are polling for your valid address and just want a response so they know who really should be spammed.
Next, the filters (personal, not network wide -- sorry!);
If it is From:/To:/Cc: a known good address or list, allow it through.
All other mail is shuffled to Spam.
None of these filters will prevent spam from simply being mailed To: you directly. Yet, if you check your spam headers you'll see that only a small sampling actually do this -- they don't want to send out individual messages. It raises thier profile too much.
Also, yes, this will not catch the case where you are added innocently to a mailing list by an unknown sender. That's why I suggest that you do not delete the spam automatically. (I've determined that most folks who do this are people I don't want to talk to anyway, so it kind of works out even if the message isn't delivered.)
Now, if you want to apply more sophisticated filters, go ahead. A blank or missing "To:" field seems to be popular with spammers these days.
For me, I'm not going to bother. I fiddled around with those for about a year four years ago and ended up deleting good mail accidentially and learning more about Procmail -- not that learning about Procmail is a bad thing.
* To prevent someone from figuring out that your address is a good one, ofcourse. Viewing rendered HTML email may, depending on the viewer, give a hint that they have a valid address. Some mail programs do allow you to render the HTML without fetching resources from a remote server. When in doubt, do without.
Either that, or your management is clueless about these types of transactions.
The larger company may be legitimate, but expect that they will 'suddenly' develop your product in a few months. They probably have prototypes, can't get over a few issues, and if they just had some inspiration -- like your source code -- they would figure it out.
I'd consider the strong possibility that they are just hunting around and this is a cheap way to do R&D.
Now, having said that, the truely slimy people may not be the ones you're dealing with. The execs or PMs somewhere else in the larger company may be waiting on the reports from the innocent folks -- who really don't have a clue that they are a pawn in this game -- who have been asked to talk to your group directly. Still, I'd expect some to be suspect.
With Word, it's not fear, it's simple uncertianty, apathy, and resignation. The attitude is this: Since Open/StarOffice isn't Word (and to a lesser degree Powerpoint and Excel), it's simply wrong. When it becomes Microsoft Office or takes MSOffice's dominate place it will then be OK.
Here's an example; I gave copies of SO5.2 to friends. They all tried it, liked it (though it is slow to load), and a couple found that it didn't do a perfect job converting Word docs. When, in all honesty, I pointed out that it didn't execute Word macros, the universial response was "Then what is it good for?"
Keep in mind that not one of these people ever said they used documents with macros, and they also knew the downside to macro viruses. Not being word -- not being clearly better and more popular than word -- was enough to cause scoffing. To them, it is broken.
Reciently, I mentioned SO6 and OpenOffice 1.0 as comming in the next few months. The response, once again, was an unenthusiastic "Oh".
The same people will gripe about Microsoft and will not lift a finger to do anything about it. They gripe about MS more then I do.
Similar comments were made about Wine even when I met the challenge of getting specific Windows applications running under it.
Originally, I wrote that they were like abused wives, but that's not it. There's something else going on.
Or even better:
How many people are using IE right now?
Write with Word?
If you gripe about MS and still use all thier tools, I don't want to hear about it. Change your behavior first, even if you only make a few simple changes. Then, you'll have something that is worth listening to.
I can understand having Windows pushed on you because of corporate dictates, but most people do have some latitude. Why do you use IE and Word and have not been given a corporate mandate to do so?
Mozilla is excellent. SO/OO are practical tools for most jobs. SO6/OO1 should be much more competitive if StarOffice 6 beta1 is any indication.
Well, you just saved me some time in writing this up. Good job...
If you don't use it, yes. Wine is useless to you.
Personally, since I do use it, I find it quite handy. I just don't have a need to run Lightwave. If I did, it is likely that in a few months it would be practical for me to do so. I don't, so I don't care.
As for investing in other parts of Unix, well, I consider Wine to be an investment in Unix. If it gets more people to use Unix, then it's an excelent investment.
Your opinions of other non-Wine projects also seems to be a bit strange. But what do I know. ;}
Er, nope. Every song on my hard drive is also in my CD collection.
Now, do I feel angry over the practices of the record labels -- and dirty by association? Ubetcha.
First off, if you haven't looked in the Wine Application Database, go there. Plenty of helpful hints. http://appdb.codeweavers.com
Also, take a look at Blender if you haven't yet. www.blender3d.com It might not be Lightwave, but it has some parts that are quite nice and a thriving community willing to help.
Now, the Lightwave details.
The demo version I used came from a Lightwave tutorial book. It looks like it's the full version minus some data files and (under Windows) will drop into 'demo' mode if the dongle doesn't exist.
To install it, I first installed under Windows then copied the entire Lightwave directory to the Wine file area (for me /usr/share/wine-c). I'm sure that this is not complete, but I'm not a Lightwave user so I didn't investigate anything that might be missing.
Unfortunately, the whole copy protection scheme doesn't work under Wine in demo mode for both Modler and Lightwave. The other bundled programs seem to work fine without the dongle.
The solution: Get a crack.
The unfortunate truth about Wine and copy protection is that with the exception of a small list of games under Transgaming's WineX, the copy protection schemes will usually fail and the programs won't run -- no matter how fresh out of the box your legitimate copy is. Also, even with the crack, and the original CD mounted in the drive, some programs still balk and refuse to run -- as if the crack wasn't even applied. Very annoying after paying $100+ for some programs. Serves me right.
No, I don't trust the cracks. If I were using Lightwave professionally, I'd have to wait for the dialog box focus issue to be resolved and then carefully investigate the changes any crack applied to the binary. Wine does allow you to isolate different applications, so that's one way to lower the security risks.
As for Poser, you might want to look for a crack. I can't say it would work (my track record is poor with this), but it is one thing you have to deal with first.
If you're using a serial dongle with Poser, it might work as-is. Ask on the wine-devel list to see if there are any issues with serial devices that could be causing the dongle fits. Hell, go bug the dongle maker. Maybe they know.
Version .5 of FooMaster is under the BSD licence. It has two primary files named main.c and other.c.
The primary developer (or anyone since it's under BSD) decides to re-licence FooMaster under the GPL. The re-licenced program has a version number of .51 and later.
Another developer, has been making changes to main.c and selling the result as FooMaster Plus.
FooMaster .60 comes out with many changes. Almost all of the changes are in other.c not main.c.
The FooMaster Plus developer gets other.c from FooMaster .60 (GPL) and incorporates it into FooMaster Plus. Since FooMaster Plus does not use any modified files that are GPLed, no propriatory closed source code is required to be released.
Yet, if asked by people who recieve FooMaster Plus (for free or at a cost) to release the source code, other.c will have to be forked over (for free or at a reasonable cost per GPL). main.c, (from the BSD branch), could remain closed if the FooMaster Plus developer decided to do so.
Take a look at TuxRacer, as an example; started out GPL, main programmer got a few submissions, main programmer decided to re-release it as a closed source game, replaced the submitted changes with his own and relicenced the result. This is entirely valid under the GPL.
I'm with you on the 'not stealing' part.
I disagree on the GPL equals no money part.
There's nothing in the GPL or LGPL the prevents selling software. There's nothing in either licence that prevents distribution with commercial or even BSD parts. One example: Caldera -- they sell a per-seat licence for thier Linux disto..
From the POV of the licences, they could make massive changes to one or two files (from the pre-LGPL branch) and then import the remaining parts from the LGPL branch. At that point, they have violated no licences and are not required to release any source regaurdless of how the binary is distributed.
That way, the commercial project could take advantage of having mostly current code while keeping it all propriatory.
Will that last? I'd bet that over time this would start to get ugly and code management used to ensure that the licences weren't violated would be quite a chore. Without specifics, how much time is hard to predict.
Corrections appreciated.