There may be a fair number of people who agree with this position, but it's never come close to being "accepted". In fact, anyone who knows the history of computing knows that originally most software was distributed under completely free licenses. That world was completely destroyed by proprietary software in the '70s and '80s and it was only the arrival of the GPL and GCC in particular which allowed, for example, the BSD operating systems to become self hosting and self sustaining.
Very true, BSD has a lot to thank GCC and the GNU project for. And not just BSD. It doesn't really matter which UNIX flavor you install today, most of them include or optionally provide the GNU userland.
Think about it. Why are these people trying to persuade you of something which is against your interests?
Which interests?
If you release your software under the BSD license you can never put it back under the AGPL. The opposite is never true. If there turns out to be a true benefit later, you can always opt to change over. The answer is simple. They want something from you. Make sure you get something in return before you give it out. Money maybe; better benefit for your and your children's future.
I'm not an expert on either of those licenses, but do you really mean that you can't change BSD to AGPL? In that case that's news to me.
Similar experience here but I started out with a cheat sheet that someone gave me, that got me going for a while. I remember the joy of getting a copy of QBasic, and not have to prefix every line with a line number.
True, but it's the desktop that is at risk. Last year Apple alone sold more iPads than the entire PC industry sold desktops. That's why Windows 8 is going tablet, because desktops is going away right now.
Re:There is only one possible course of action.
on
Windows: Not Doomed Yet
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· Score: 3, Funny
Of course there will be a transition phase where those vendors will have to change their behavior, but that's absolutely doable. People said the same thing about Flash, but it turns out that it wasn't much of a problem.
What they should really do is reconsider if applets really is that important anymore and just scrap the concept completely. At least that's where the problem seams to be most of the time.
Here's what I've noticed after two weeks doing an expert install: * base system looks awful. the console's font rendering is so old and ugly. I've seen some pretty looking screenshots around with sans and fixed fonts that look so nice and even on low res. Why can't debian use something like that ?
Agree, it just doesn't look great. But you can change it. Dpkg-reconfigure console-setup and switch to something more appropriate.
* Is that vim-tiny ?! what's wrong with vim ? Or is your 1.44 floppy not big enough ?!
Adds too many dependencies for the base if I remember correctly.
* Systemd shouldn't be an option, it should be the default. It's not just inane "modern" features. There's serious performance and design benefits.
That would be great, but unfortunately Systemd depends very heavily on Linux and Debian wants to be compatible with other kernels as well.
* where is my tmux ? why do I need to apt-get it ? I want my tmux !
Just install your tmux. It is in the repos.
* stop asking me about locales during install; it's en us utf8. I don't live in US and English isn't my native tongue and it's still en us utf8. ask me after the first login to set the locales but leave the default, the default.
Some people prefer otherwise. You can still change your per-user locale at any time.
* don't ask me about what to install. install the base system and ask me after the first login about installing the rest. it's a waste of time, space and resources doing anything else.
Waste of time? You must be stressed. Take a look at FAI, it sounds like you should automate this thing.
* I need sudo, I want sudo. why waste my time during install on something that can be changed with two commands after install ? just set it as default and add it to the post install.
Earlier you said that you wanted just the base, but it turns out that you actually want something else too. Have you thought about that other people might want something else too in their install, and that the base install is a good fit for most of them?
* mail? ha? is that a posix thing ? just put something minimal by default that doesn't bother me. just, go away...
Overall, my biggest problem is that lack of acknowledgement about the post install process. It's like the debian team lives under some strange illusion people don't go through a long post install to setup their system with the software they like. The default are not stable of time tested. They're just old. The entire installation process seems antiquated.
Which is exactly the kind of behavior you want from a stable distribution. The previous version included support for ext4 as well so that users could test it. It just wasn't the default.
I would go as far as saying that Red Hat actually works better on desktops. It's often tricky to get Debian to run well on brand new hardware if stable has been out for two-three years, since it will often require new drivers that aren't available in the Debian kernel. Red Hat on the other hand continuously backports a ton of stuff into their kernel and releases it as part of their point updates (about every 6-12 months). This means that you can often install Red Hat on hardware which Debian won't run on, even if the Debian distribution is newer. I have desktop machines which can run even RHEL 5 (kernel 2.6.18) just fine, while Debian 6 (kernel 2.6.32) don't even recognize half the hardware.
I wish it was that simple. We've tested it and it just doesn't work. We want to be able to install a system today, tomorrow or even a few years from now and reliably get the same result. You need stable packages to do that.
The times of crippled multimedia support in Debian are finally over!
It says crippled, which isn't the same as broken. All they sya there is that the multimedia support has been improved.
Bleeding edge can work just fine, just be careful what you install.
When I install something it is installed in parallell on hundreds or even thousands of machines. It is kind of important that we can rely on that the software we use continue to not only work well but work well consistently.
Let's say that you want the same user accounts on all your machines. Then you often use some kind of directory service in larger installations, and LDAP serves that purpose very well.
Yep, they've taken all the names of the characters in Toy Story 1. Well, except for Buggy, but thye didn't think that would be appropriate. So now they have moved to characters from Toy Story 2.
The point of Debian is not to get the latest goodies quickly, but that what you get will work and continue to work well as long as it is supported. Unfortuneately it's not supported for very long time, but it's still very impressive given that it's essentially just a non-profit project.
The argument in question is that the code itself can't be made non-free. Derivitives of it can be non-free, but the code itself is forever free. The existence of non-free distributed forks doesn't do anything to the upstream. It's as free as it always was.
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Torvalds only cares about the kernel, and some diving app. A distribution can chose any userland it wants.
There may be a fair number of people who agree with this position, but it's never come close to being "accepted". In fact, anyone who knows the history of computing knows that originally most software was distributed under completely free licenses. That world was completely destroyed by proprietary software in the '70s and '80s and it was only the arrival of the GPL and GCC in particular which allowed, for example, the BSD operating systems to become self hosting and self sustaining.
Very true, BSD has a lot to thank GCC and the GNU project for. And not just BSD. It doesn't really matter which UNIX flavor you install today, most of them include or optionally provide the GNU userland.
Think about it. Why are these people trying to persuade you of something which is against your interests?
Which interests?
If you release your software under the BSD license you can never put it back under the AGPL. The opposite is never true. If there turns out to be a true benefit later, you can always opt to change over. The answer is simple. They want something from you. Make sure you get something in return before you give it out. Money maybe; better benefit for your and your children's future.
I'm not an expert on either of those licenses, but do you really mean that you can't change BSD to AGPL? In that case that's news to me.
Maybe the IDE vendors should release their software under a compatible license. Profit!
Similar experience here but I started out with a cheat sheet that someone gave me, that got me going for a while. I remember the joy of getting a copy of QBasic, and not have to prefix every line with a line number.
True, but it's the desktop that is at risk. Last year Apple alone sold more iPads than the entire PC industry sold desktops. That's why Windows 8 is going tablet, because desktops is going away right now.
Is there a difference?
Of course there will be a transition phase where those vendors will have to change their behavior, but that's absolutely doable. People said the same thing about Flash, but it turns out that it wasn't much of a problem.
I'm pretty sure that bank would switch to something more sane if Java 8 came out with no support whatsoever for applets.
What they should really do is reconsider if applets really is that important anymore and just scrap the concept completely. At least that's where the problem seams to be most of the time.
Because you want to test that they and everything that depends on it work well first.
Here's what I've noticed after two weeks doing an expert install:
* base system looks awful. the console's font rendering is so old and ugly. I've seen some pretty looking screenshots around with sans and fixed fonts that look so nice and even on low res. Why can't debian use something like that ?
Agree, it just doesn't look great. But you can change it. Dpkg-reconfigure console-setup and switch to something more appropriate.
* Is that vim-tiny ?! what's wrong with vim ? Or is your 1.44 floppy not big enough ?!
Adds too many dependencies for the base if I remember correctly.
* Systemd shouldn't be an option, it should be the default. It's not just inane "modern" features. There's serious performance and design benefits.
That would be great, but unfortunately Systemd depends very heavily on Linux and Debian wants to be compatible with other kernels as well.
* where is my tmux ? why do I need to apt-get it ? I want my tmux !
Just install your tmux. It is in the repos.
* stop asking me about locales during install; it's en us utf8. I don't live in US and English isn't my native tongue and it's still en us utf8. ask me after the first login to set the locales but leave the default, the default.
Some people prefer otherwise. You can still change your per-user locale at any time.
* don't ask me about what to install. install the base system and ask me after the first login about installing the rest. it's a waste of time, space and resources doing anything else.
Waste of time? You must be stressed. Take a look at FAI, it sounds like you should automate this thing.
* I need sudo, I want sudo. why waste my time during install on something that can be changed with two commands after install ? just set it as default and add it to the post install.
Earlier you said that you wanted just the base, but it turns out that you actually want something else too. Have you thought about that other people might want something else too in their install, and that the base install is a good fit for most of them?
* mail? ha? is that a posix thing ? just put something minimal by default that doesn't bother me. just, go away...
Overall, my biggest problem is that lack of acknowledgement about the post install process. It's like the debian team lives under some strange illusion people don't go through a long post install to setup their system with the software they like. The default are not stable of time tested. They're just old. The entire installation process seems antiquated.
Just, clean this up please.
You seem like a very happy person.
Security updates usually don't break compatibility, and when they do it is clearly advertised.
Which is exactly the kind of behavior you want from a stable distribution. The previous version included support for ext4 as well so that users could test it. It just wasn't the default.
I would go as far as saying that Red Hat actually works better on desktops. It's often tricky to get Debian to run well on brand new hardware if stable has been out for two-three years, since it will often require new drivers that aren't available in the Debian kernel. Red Hat on the other hand continuously backports a ton of stuff into their kernel and releases it as part of their point updates (about every 6-12 months). This means that you can often install Red Hat on hardware which Debian won't run on, even if the Debian distribution is newer. I have desktop machines which can run even RHEL 5 (kernel 2.6.18) just fine, while Debian 6 (kernel 2.6.32) don't even recognize half the hardware.
I wish it was that simple. We've tested it and it just doesn't work. We want to be able to install a system today, tomorrow or even a few years from now and reliably get the same result. You need stable packages to do that.
It uses the EDITOR and VISUAL environment variables, and falls back to vi if they're unset.
I have quite a lot of Debian workstations that I also want to just work, otherwise the users using them won't be very productive that day.
I'm actually just quoting the post:
The times of crippled multimedia support in Debian are finally over!
It says crippled, which isn't the same as broken. All they sya there is that the multimedia support has been improved.
Bleeding edge can work just fine, just be careful what you install.
When I install something it is installed in parallell on hundreds or even thousands of machines. It is kind of important that we can rely on that the software we use continue to not only work well but work well consistently.
Let's say that you want the same user accounts on all your machines. Then you often use some kind of directory service in larger installations, and LDAP serves that purpose very well.
I pick tested and works well any day over bleeding edge.
And what do you mean by broken media support?
The Linux flavour will use Linux 3.2 with a couple of backported features.
http://womble.decadent.org.uk/blog/whats-in-the-linux-kernel-for-debian-70-wheezy-part-1.html
http://womble.decadent.org.uk/blog/whats-in-the-linux-kernel-for-debian-70-wheezy-part-2.html
http://womble.decadent.org.uk/blog/whats-in-the-linux-kernel-for-debian-70-wheezy-part-3.html
Yep, they've taken all the names of the characters in Toy Story 1. Well, except for Buggy, but thye didn't think that would be appropriate. So now they have moved to characters from Toy Story 2.
The point of Debian is not to get the latest goodies quickly, but that what you get will work and continue to work well as long as it is supported. Unfortuneately it's not supported for very long time, but it's still very impressive given that it's essentially just a non-profit project.
The GPL (and no open-source license that I know of) can protect developers from other people taking their work and selling it for profit.
There's nothing to protect from. Someone else selling something for profit is not dangerous or destructive for you.
The argument in question is that the code itself can't be made non-free. Derivitives of it can be non-free, but the code itself is forever free. The existence of non-free distributed forks doesn't do anything to the upstream. It's as free as it always was.