Given the fact that Linux is certainly not easy for consumer users, what's the worst that can happen right at this moment?
Bunches of average people decide to wait for a bit longer to try Linux at home, or
Bunches of people try Linux at home now, find it absolutely perplexing, and vow never to try it again.
Personally, I'd rather they waited a bit longer, and I think Red Hat would prefer that too. They're looking at long-term acceptance and success, and that's very admirable, if you ask me. If focusing on the enterprise is what they need to do to keep paying people to work on free software, well, good for them.
An object can be unique in one way, or it can be unique in many ways. It can be unique in the same way that lots of other objects are unique, or it can be unique in a way that few other objects are unique. Every router is unique in at least one way, whether by IP address or location within the network. This particular router is unique in a way that is unique, which makes it "rather unique".
Grumble. I wish posters would only be pedantic about things that are CORRECT...
Taken from another viewpoint, why should artistic effort provide a revenue stream for descendants?
You write a successful book, your children can potentially live off the income from that book, while doing nothing themselves to help society in any way.
But if you build a bridge that allows millions of people to travel more easily between two locations, increasing trade and generally giving value to society, then you get paid once for your work. Nothing for your kids, nothing for the grandkids.
But maybe I'm just an idiot. Clearly writing an animated screenplay for "The Little Mermaid" is of far more value to society than increasing trade, or curing an epidemic, or building houses for people to live in, or growing food for people to eat. None of that stuff is really important, not compared to making movies.
I've always seen it as red to red. Plkug in the power connector, which is keyed and will only go in one way. If the red cable of the power conenctor is towards the data connector, then the red stripe on the data connector goes towards the power supply. If the red power wire is away from the data connector, then put the red stripe away from the power.
Well, I'd consider most mail programs using SMTP/POP/IMAP to be a different case to the Outlook/Exchange combo. Outlook's pretty much the only client that really uses all of Exchange's server features. The pair of them are a client/server pair.
If you're using Exchange, you want to be using Outlook. If you're using Outlook, you want to be using Exchange.
I know that these lazers are not as bad as nutron bombs, napalm and other things that were invented last century but the more of these new toys we invent, the further we get from those fun battles we used to have three thousend years ago with swords and bows and absolutely no civilian casualtys, the battles that made one into a man, not a radioactive ember.
What a wonderfully fantastical world you must inhabit if you believe there is such a thing as a "fun" battle. Three thousand years ago, combatants had nothing like modern medicine. Minor limb wounds often lead to gangrene, amputation and life as a cripple (and severly, painfully crippled, too) if not death. Most stomach injuries were fatal, along with practically any chest injury that got through the rib cage.
Armies travelled slowly on foot for the most part, taking food and female company from local farms by force. The idea of taking revenge on an entire race for the actions of small groups was commonplace. Roman soldiery would massacre whole communities of innocents in retribution for "barbarian" raids where a single Roman citizen was killed.
History is not a happy place. With all its faults, modern society is a safer and far more comfortable way to live.
I think what he's really referring to is the death of single-app clients. It's easier to use a generic web client that you can assume will be loaded on a user's workstation than to have a specialised client app loaded separately.
I wonder if he includes MS Outlook/Exchange in this thinking. One can only hope so.
Strangely enough, someone told me the other day that Australians actually have more lawsuits per capita than the US. I guess the difference is in the size of the settlements. Australian lawsuits usually paid out for actual expenses caused by the action/whatever being sued for, rather than the ridiculous sums that seem to come up in US cases.
This I find to be the most damning part of their whole stance. I always thought that legal cases are universally thrown out if there hasn't been a good-faith attempt by the plaintiff to resolve the situation without resorting to the courts.
The Linux people are saying: We're terribly sorry if some of your code has been stolen. Tell us what it is, and we'll take it out. SCO are refusing to accept this perfectly acceptable resoltion.
After all, it's not like they can prove that Linus, Red Hat, SuSe, etc actually wanted any infringing code in Linux. It's too easy for them to prove otherwise, with the development process being so open and thoroughly documented.
All of Forbe's coverage seems to be distinctly anti-Linux. They dismiss it as being too immature to replace Windows on the desktop, talk about the lack of support for add-on devices like cameras, complain about the difference between distributions, compare Linux with OS/2, etc.
They even quote someone's complaint of having to pay $10,000 for a mainframe installation of Linux. "It was supposed to be free!". They then cover themelves by saying that the ongoing costs work out a lot cheaper than alternatives, but then go on to reference the IDC TCO comparison from a few years ago.
All in all, they seem to use old data against Linux to counter new data for Linux, and dismiss any improvements and efforts to solve the problems.
Forbes just doesn't have a clue about F/OSS, clearly.
13. What are the alternatives for customers with SCO UNIX applications that they would like to run on Linux?
A customer wishing to running a UNIX application on Linux could try to purchase or develop that same application natively on Linux without requiring SCO's libraries, but changing application formats could be a tenfold cost increase over licensing SCO's libraries.
It's only a tenfold increase? Gee, find another ten companies using the same software and go for it. It's cheaper. That's assuming that SuSe or Red Hat don't hire someone to just replace the libraries with GPL drop-ins, anyway.
Oh really? "Microsoft relies on the government-granted monopoly of copyright." And Open Source DOESN'T rely on copyright, how exactly? If you throw out copyright law then anyone is free to do anything, including taking your GPL source code, making a few changes, and selling that as a commerical closed source project.
Um, except that if you throw out copyright law, there is no longer such a thing as a closed source project. Anyone who ever gets to see the code can do what they want with it. Disassembling would be all you need to do, rather than reverse-engineering.
The GPL only "relies on copyright" because copyright exists. What GPL does is take works out of the copyright system, effectively.
Buy several dolls, stuff them in a backpack and keep going to your favourite features. If the number of people turning up to a particular feature is less than the number of people riding on/using it, then they'll try to improve the queue times or whatever.
Of course, if they only communicate via the IR in their noses, you'd have to put "breathing" holes in the backpack to poke their noses out of. It'd look pretty cool, I think.
Yes, but it is a disclaimer of warranty from the developer to a distributor. Since standard laws do not allow you to distribute software, I think that distributing GPL software would amount to assenting to the GPL.
The GPL does not apply to users, so it's pointless arguing about how the GPL doesn't protect developers from user claims. You don't need to agree to the GPL in order to use GPLed software. It is not a EULA.
My opinion would be that oly a distributor would be liable in the end. Minor developers are providing the software at no cost, so an end-user wouldn't be able to sue them for problems, or at least, they wouldn't be able to get very much. Their only redress would be to a reseller who made claims about the abilities of the software.
While it is a great idea to provide translations of the GPL and other OS and/or Free licences, the FSF makes it quite clear here that the English version of the GPL is the official version that actually applies legally.
I don't read German, so I may be missing something, but all the points I've seen mentioned are talking about a user's rights to claim for damages.
So what does that have to do with the GPL?
The GPL is a licence to distribute, not a licence to use.
Surely this would be a far tighter contractual arragement. If you want to distribute GPL software, you must agree to the licence, and thus the reseller indemnifies the developers.
You might be able to sue the person you bought your GPL software from (say SuSE), but you couldn't sue Linus, or if you did, Linus could sue SuSE in a counter-claim.
Well, my shatteredanvil address at big pond only started getting spam after I was forced to use it for Yahoo groups during the Yahoo/Excite fracas, so I don't think the addresses were sold, but harvested and sorted by domain, then username. It's a sensible way for spammers to do it. Send messages to a bunch of people at the same site, so all the routing is the same.
Also, I get some _extremely_ similar messages addressed to my excite account, using the same kind of alphabetical list. Whoever is generating these lists is almost definitely harvesting them.
I've found setting up rules which kill all messages sent to similar names does a pretty good job of clearing them.
He's not talking about making the computers blow themselves up, but rather authorising a particular class of aggrieved parties to take justice into their own hands. That's vigilanteism, and I thought everyone agreed that was a bad thing.
What's next? More along the lines of letting crossing guards fire bazookas at cars, or letting me smash my neighbour's garage door down because he won't return my tools.
On another point, Sen. Hatch is a song-writer, and is on/contolling a comittee looking into copyright enforcement. Isn't that a major conflict of interest? Don't you Americans have rules about that?
He is goal is to get people to use his distro rather than Microsoft, and so he gives it a name identical to the name of Microsoft's operating system except for one letter. No sane person can doubt that he was attempting to tie his product to Microsoft Windows by allusion and confusion, which violates Microsoft's trademark. Note that he is selling a direct replacement for Microsoft Windows under this name, which is different from using a form of the word "windows" somewhere in the name of your product.
Oh, come on. You're not trying to tell me that anyone could be confused enough to purchase "Lindows", thinking that it was actually "Windows" they were buying? That's the purpose of trademarks. Lindows does not damage the "Windows" trademark at all.
Yes, it's quite accurate. Win 3.x time-sliced DOS programs relatively well. It was the Windows programs that used shared multi-tasking, where a crashed app locked up your system.
You've completely missed my point. That wasn't an analogy, it was a direct counter. In any non-literary endeavour (things that aren't covered by copyright), there is a correlation between effort applied and remuneration, and the amount a person gets paid is a fixed amount, or an amount that is decided at point of sale. Once that remuneration has been settled, that's it. You make something, you sell it - that's it. You provide a service, you get paid for doing so - that's it. Or should we start tithing portions of our incomes to our primary shool teachers?
Copyright goes against that, giving authors or whoever has purchased an author's copyrights potentially limitless remuneration for past effort.
In the days when making copies was an expensive affair, and copyright terms were limited to a short period, the concept of copyright was an effective means to assure that an author did at least get a reasonable return for his or her effort. That was one of the main reasons that copyright was invented, and remains the primary justification for its continued existence. It forces publishers to pay authors.
With the extensions of copyright being added on with seemingly no limit, and the rulings that copyrights can be sold to corporations, that situation has changed. Copyrights are no longer a tool to ensure fair remuneration for an author's effort. They became a corporate money-making tool some time ago, and they are now drifting into a tool for censorship and sociological control.
The ease of copying digital media means that the cost of being a publisher have dropped to virtually nothing, turning copyright from a law that controls businesses into a law that controls the populace. It was never designed for that, and it shows.
It's time for a change.
You say that the payment for effort for an author is none of my business, and to a certain extent, I agree with you. I don't care how much company X pays artist Y for their material.
What I care about is that there is a legal system in place that favours literary endeavours over service and physical endeavours, allowing one limitless remuneration, and the others finite remuneration. I consider that to be unjust. What is it about writing a book or a song that makes such activity worth limitless remuneration? Is the act of creating a sculpture a lesser creative task? Is working to build a road less useful to humanity?
Finite effort should lead to finite remuneration, in all endeavours.
Well, I for one think it is unjust that people who spend their time writing, singing, playing music, etc, should be paid over and over again for the same original effort. If I build a chair and sell it to someon, I've (presumably) been paid for my effort. I don't expect to continue to be paid everytime someone sits on that chair, or sells it to someone else.
Fair payment for effort taken, and quality of that effort is all well and good, and I do want the authors of the books I read and the music I like to listen to to be paid commensurate fees for their creative work.
I don't see any justification for a large company to extort royalty payments on the works of a long-dead author. No justification = unjust.
I'm not saying we can just throw away copyright. I feel we need to change the way that creative individuals are paid for their efforts, to bring it more in line with the rest of the population.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the fact that Linux is certainly not easy for consumer users, what's the worst that can happen right at this moment?
Bunches of average people decide to wait for a bit longer to try Linux at home, or
Bunches of people try Linux at home now, find it absolutely perplexing, and vow never to try it again.
Personally, I'd rather they waited a bit longer, and I think Red Hat would prefer that too. They're looking at long-term acceptance and success, and that's very admirable, if you ask me. If focusing on the enterprise is what they need to do to keep paying people to work on free software, well, good for them.
An object can be unique in one way, or it can be unique in many ways. It can be unique in the same way that lots of other objects are unique, or it can be unique in a way that few other objects are unique. Every router is unique in at least one way, whether by IP address or location within the network. This particular router is unique in a way that is unique, which makes it "rather unique".
Grumble. I wish posters would only be pedantic about things that are CORRECT...
Taken from another viewpoint, why should artistic effort provide a revenue stream for descendants?
You write a successful book, your children can potentially live off the income from that book, while doing nothing themselves to help society in any way.
But if you build a bridge that allows millions of people to travel more easily between two locations, increasing trade and generally giving value to society, then you get paid once for your work. Nothing for your kids, nothing for the grandkids.
But maybe I'm just an idiot. Clearly writing an animated screenplay for "The Little Mermaid" is of far more value to society than increasing trade, or curing an epidemic, or building houses for people to live in, or growing food for people to eat. None of that stuff is really important, not compared to making movies.
I've always seen it as red to red. Plkug in the power connector, which is keyed and will only go in one way. If the red cable of the power conenctor is towards the data connector, then the red stripe on the data connector goes towards the power supply. If the red power wire is away from the data connector, then put the red stripe away from the power.
Well, I'd consider most mail programs using SMTP/POP/IMAP to be a different case to the Outlook/Exchange combo. Outlook's pretty much the only client that really uses all of Exchange's server features. The pair of them are a client/server pair.
If you're using Exchange, you want to be using Outlook. If you're using Outlook, you want to be using Exchange.
This isn't the case for most other mail apps.
What a wonderfully fantastical world you must inhabit if you believe there is such a thing as a "fun" battle. Three thousand years ago, combatants had nothing like modern medicine. Minor limb wounds often lead to gangrene, amputation and life as a cripple (and severly, painfully crippled, too) if not death. Most stomach injuries were fatal, along with practically any chest injury that got through the rib cage.
Armies travelled slowly on foot for the most part, taking food and female company from local farms by force. The idea of taking revenge on an entire race for the actions of small groups was commonplace. Roman soldiery would massacre whole communities of innocents in retribution for "barbarian" raids where a single Roman citizen was killed.
History is not a happy place. With all its faults, modern society is a safer and far more comfortable way to live.
I think what he's really referring to is the death of single-app clients. It's easier to use a generic web client that you can assume will be loaded on a user's workstation than to have a specialised client app loaded separately.
I wonder if he includes MS Outlook/Exchange in this thinking. One can only hope so.
Combine free-standing holograph technology with Powerpoint, and there's a desktop app that'd likely require more than 4GiB of RAM.
Sure, it's all experimental at the moment, but it is being worked on.
Strangely enough, someone told me the other day that Australians actually have more lawsuits per capita than the US. I guess the difference is in the size of the settlements. Australian lawsuits usually paid out for actual expenses caused by the action/whatever being sued for, rather than the ridiculous sums that seem to come up in US cases.
DR-DOS was a product that was actually selling for a long time, and was even being pre-loaded before MS killed them with shonky license deals.
Be just never got off the ground, because MS already had the licence deals in place. It's harder to place value on a potential.
This I find to be the most damning part of their whole stance. I always thought that legal cases are universally thrown out if there hasn't been a good-faith attempt by the plaintiff to resolve the situation without resorting to the courts.
The Linux people are saying: We're terribly sorry if some of your code has been stolen. Tell us what it is, and we'll take it out. SCO are refusing to accept this perfectly acceptable resoltion.
After all, it's not like they can prove that Linus, Red Hat, SuSe, etc actually wanted any infringing code in Linux. It's too easy for them to prove otherwise, with the development process being so open and thoroughly documented.
All of Forbe's coverage seems to be distinctly anti-Linux. They dismiss it as being too immature to replace Windows on the desktop, talk about the lack of support for add-on devices like cameras, complain about the difference between distributions, compare Linux with OS/2, etc.
They even quote someone's complaint of having to pay $10,000 for a mainframe installation of Linux. "It was supposed to be free!". They then cover themelves by saying that the ongoing costs work out a lot cheaper than alternatives, but then go on to reference the IDC TCO comparison from a few years ago.
All in all, they seem to use old data against Linux to counter new data for Linux, and dismiss any improvements and efforts to solve the problems.
Forbes just doesn't have a clue about F/OSS, clearly.
It's only a tenfold increase? Gee, find another ten companies using the same software and go for it. It's cheaper. That's assuming that SuSe or Red Hat don't hire someone to just replace the libraries with GPL drop-ins, anyway.
Um, except that if you throw out copyright law, there is no longer such a thing as a closed source project. Anyone who ever gets to see the code can do what they want with it. Disassembling would be all you need to do, rather than reverse-engineering.
The GPL only "relies on copyright" because copyright exists. What GPL does is take works out of the copyright system, effectively.
Buy several dolls, stuff them in a backpack and keep going to your favourite features. If the number of people turning up to a particular feature is less than the number of people riding on/using it, then they'll try to improve the queue times or whatever.
Of course, if they only communicate via the IR in their noses, you'd have to put "breathing" holes in the backpack to poke their noses out of. It'd look pretty cool, I think.
Eat less.
Yes, but it is a disclaimer of warranty from the developer to a distributor. Since standard laws do not allow you to distribute software, I think that distributing GPL software would amount to assenting to the GPL.
The GPL does not apply to users, so it's pointless arguing about how the GPL doesn't protect developers from user claims. You don't need to agree to the GPL in order to use GPLed software. It is not a EULA.
My opinion would be that oly a distributor would be liable in the end. Minor developers are providing the software at no cost, so an end-user wouldn't be able to sue them for problems, or at least, they wouldn't be able to get very much. Their only redress would be to a reseller who made claims about the abilities of the software.
While it is a great idea to provide translations of the GPL and other OS and/or Free licences, the FSF makes it quite clear here that the English version of the GPL is the official version that actually applies legally.
I don't read German, so I may be missing something, but all the points I've seen mentioned are talking about a user's rights to claim for damages.
So what does that have to do with the GPL?
The GPL is a licence to distribute, not a licence to use.
Surely this would be a far tighter contractual arragement. If you want to distribute GPL software, you must agree to the licence, and thus the reseller indemnifies the developers.
You might be able to sue the person you bought your GPL software from (say SuSE), but you couldn't sue Linus, or if you did, Linus could sue SuSE in a counter-claim.
Well, my shatteredanvil address at big pond only started getting spam after I was forced to use it for Yahoo groups during the Yahoo/Excite fracas, so I don't think the addresses were sold, but harvested and sorted by domain, then username. It's a sensible way for spammers to do it. Send messages to a bunch of people at the same site, so all the routing is the same.
Also, I get some _extremely_ similar messages addressed to my excite account, using the same kind of alphabetical list. Whoever is generating these lists is almost definitely harvesting them.
I've found setting up rules which kill all messages sent to similar names does a pretty good job of clearing them.
He's not talking about making the computers blow themselves up, but rather authorising a particular class of aggrieved parties to take justice into their own hands. That's vigilanteism, and I thought everyone agreed that was a bad thing.
What's next? More along the lines of letting crossing guards fire bazookas at cars, or letting me smash my neighbour's garage door down because he won't return my tools.
On another point, Sen. Hatch is a song-writer, and is on/contolling a comittee looking into copyright enforcement. Isn't that a major conflict of interest? Don't you Americans have rules about that?
Oh, come on. You're not trying to tell me that anyone could be confused enough to purchase "Lindows", thinking that it was actually "Windows" they were buying? That's the purpose of trademarks. Lindows does not damage the "Windows" trademark at all.
...fully pre-emptive MS-DOS multitasking
Yes, it's quite accurate. Win 3.x time-sliced DOS programs relatively well. It was the Windows programs that used shared multi-tasking, where a crashed app locked up your system.
You've completely missed my point. That wasn't an analogy, it was a direct counter. In any non-literary endeavour (things that aren't covered by copyright), there is a correlation between effort applied and remuneration, and the amount a person gets paid is a fixed amount, or an amount that is decided at point of sale. Once that remuneration has been settled, that's it. You make something, you sell it - that's it. You provide a service, you get paid for doing so - that's it. Or should we start tithing portions of our incomes to our primary shool teachers?
Copyright goes against that, giving authors or whoever has purchased an author's copyrights potentially limitless remuneration for past effort.
In the days when making copies was an expensive affair, and copyright terms were limited to a short period, the concept of copyright was an effective means to assure that an author did at least get a reasonable return for his or her effort. That was one of the main reasons that copyright was invented, and remains the primary justification for its continued existence. It forces publishers to pay authors.
With the extensions of copyright being added on with seemingly no limit, and the rulings that copyrights can be sold to corporations, that situation has changed. Copyrights are no longer a tool to ensure fair remuneration for an author's effort. They became a corporate money-making tool some time ago, and they are now drifting into a tool for censorship and sociological control.
The ease of copying digital media means that the cost of being a publisher have dropped to virtually nothing, turning copyright from a law that controls businesses into a law that controls the populace. It was never designed for that, and it shows.
It's time for a change.
You say that the payment for effort for an author is none of my business, and to a certain extent, I agree with you. I don't care how much company X pays artist Y for their material.
What I care about is that there is a legal system in place that favours literary endeavours over service and physical endeavours, allowing one limitless remuneration, and the others finite remuneration. I consider that to be unjust. What is it about writing a book or a song that makes such activity worth limitless remuneration? Is the act of creating a sculpture a lesser creative task? Is working to build a road less useful to humanity?
Finite effort should lead to finite remuneration, in all endeavours.
Well, I for one think it is unjust that people who spend their time writing, singing, playing music, etc, should be paid over and over again for the same original effort. If I build a chair and sell it to someon, I've (presumably) been paid for my effort. I don't expect to continue to be paid everytime someone sits on that chair, or sells it to someone else.
Fair payment for effort taken, and quality of that effort is all well and good, and I do want the authors of the books I read and the music I like to listen to to be paid commensurate fees for their creative work.
I don't see any justification for a large company to extort royalty payments on the works of a long-dead author. No justification = unjust.
I'm not saying we can just throw away copyright. I feel we need to change the way that creative individuals are paid for their efforts, to bring it more in line with the rest of the population.