What abuse are you talking about? They based their engine on top of free software, despite that they didn't have to. They improved it a lot and released their changes which helped it became enormously successful and is now used within almost every smartphone.
Google probably have more contributions. Great work Google.
Microsoft's contribution may be specific for running it on their VM, but there's nothing wrong with that. It's still a contribution. It's only a problem if you're down-to-the-BIOS everything has to be free. For the rest of us, running Linux on Hyper-V is a feature.
If you by useless mean allowed Google to base the Chrome browser on Apple's WebKit
WebKit is based on KHTML, and Apple didn't have a choice about the license since it's LGPL. Apple's conduct vis-a-vis the KHTML developers was unfriendly to say the least.
Of course they had a choice. It's not like they were forced to use KHTML. If they didn't wanted to contribute then they could have developed their own browser engine in-house and kept it closed for no one else to use, yet they decided to contribute to the greater good and share their innovations with the rest of the world.
If they contributed solely out of their own business interests, and their contributions add nothing of value other than compatibility with Microsoft's proprietary software, and nobody who doesn't want to use Microsoft's proprietary software will see any benefit whatsoever from any of the changes Microsoft contributed to the kernel, then yeah, I would say it's fair to rate Microsoft's contributions to the Linux kernel lower than those of a company like, say, Red Hat.
Speaking of Red Hat it looks like the guest support for Hyper-V is a fairly big feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9. I'm just speculating here, but it is likely that Microsoft's contribution adds business value to companies like Red Hat and eventually to their customers. So I don't get what is so bad with Microsoft contributing to open source.
If you by useless mean allowed Google to base the Chrome browser on Apple's WebKit then sure, very useless. Projects like FreeBSD must have found Apple's involvement in LLVM very useless, and I'm sure they found libdispatch useless as well.
So the corporations who are taking shortcuts by copying and improving FOSS code without releasing the improvements back to the FOSS community are actually engaging in piracy?
It depends on the license under which the FOSS is released. If that's not acceptable under the license then it could be possible to call it a form of piracy.
In that case it's interesting how piracy is just victimless copying when John Q. public does it but alluvasudden become 'stealing' when Company X is pirating FOSS code. After all John Q public would never have bought that CD, even if he hadn't been able to torrent it. But then would penniless startup X have bothered to produce product Y if they had not been able to take massive shortcuts by pirating and improving FOSS code? Illegal downloads result in some lost revenue for the artist, and one could say that re-release of FOSS code improved by some company constitutes recompense for the FOSS community so in a way the FOSS community, after doing a whole pile of volunteer work, is being cheated out of its 'compensation', (i.e. the improvements Company X is not releasing).
Sincerely,
Advocatus Diaboli
I don't understand what it is that you're saying. It doesn't matter if it's software or music, the license should be respected.
Linux's package managers are the best place for FOSS software.
I completely agree, but I would also put in a good word for compressed tar files on ftp.
App stores are based on the idea of sell you stuff.
Selling software is obviously i feature, but the main idea would rather be to consolidate software distribution channels.
When the only way you have to install software without void your warranty is the App Store, the idea is abuse the consumer.
It can also enrich the user by simplifying software distribution and installation, which could be a benefit to the user. The average iOS user has somewhere between 20 and 40 third party applications installed; many of which would never install any software at all on a regular computer, where they would obviously have much more "software freedom".
And here I thought that Linux's package managers were the best place for FOSS software. Guess I was wrong.
They are often not app stores, they are software archives which are usually not directly controlled by the software author. App stores are based on the idea that you publish a software product on the store for download in exchange for a fee or for free. You can submit updates at any time, sometimes with a review time. You can also stop distributing the software on the store if you so like.
The traditional Linux package manager is usually managed by the Linux distribution community. The original author is usually considered an external party, often called the "upstream". The original author has very little control over what happens with the software once it is distributed through the package manager. And it may also be modified or updated by the distribution independently of the original author.
I personally would never code open source software for Microsoft APP store to benefit... #deathtowidowsphone #longliveandroid
Microsoft has published some of its software as open source, including their F# compiler and several.NET libraries like Entity Framework and ASP.NET MVC. They have also contributed to the Linux kernel.
Microsft and Open Soure clearly mix; what could be said is that Microsoft is not (yet) open source first.
They do, but we have found that it's unfortunately not as well maintained as the stable kernel. So we try to be more selective about which hardware we buy.
There are good and bad things with every distribution and overall we are very happy with the quality of Debian. Apart from the kernel we have very few issues with it. Ubuntu is an interesting alternative and we have used it occasionally. One of the things that Ubuntu does better is that they backport the kernel for each successive release back to the LTS, so you can get new drivers even if you want to stay on that branch. Right now it's not a serious problem for us and we're not looking into switching away from Debian due to that any time soon.
Red Hat actually updates a few packages to newer version. Typical things are certain desktop software like Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice. You will occationally also get complele new packages, like OpenJDK 7 in this release.
Debian on the other hand has a hard policy of updating as little as possible, which is actually sometimes problematic on desktops. We have a lot Debian desktops deployed in our organization; currently running on the latest stable release, squeeze from about two years ago. It's actually a problem for us when we want to buy new hardware because the squeeze kernel may not completely support it, and we don't really want to run testing in a production environment. In comparison Red Hat backports a ton of drivers which means that even something as old as RHEL 5 may work just fine on relatively modern hardware.
Fedora 18 features an installer that is rewritten and redesigned from the ground up. It replaces the old 13+ year old installer from previous versions of Fedora. You can learn more about it at the new installer informational page on the Fedora wiki.
That's 13+ years of refinement. There was very little that was wrong with it.
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What abuse are you talking about? They based their engine on top of free software, despite that they didn't have to. They improved it a lot and released their changes which helped it became enormously successful and is now used within almost every smartphone.
How is that ridiculous and offensive?
Google probably have more contributions. Great work Google.
Microsoft's contribution may be specific for running it on their VM, but there's nothing wrong with that. It's still a contribution. It's only a problem if you're down-to-the-BIOS everything has to be free. For the rest of us, running Linux on Hyper-V is a feature.
And why is that wrong? It does help FOSS. It makes Linux into a better alternative for those who wants to run it on top of Hyper-V.
WebKit is based on KHTML, and Apple didn't have a choice about the license since it's LGPL. Apple's conduct vis-a-vis the KHTML developers was unfriendly to say the least.
Of course they had a choice. It's not like they were forced to use KHTML. If they didn't wanted to contribute then they could have developed their own browser engine in-house and kept it closed for no one else to use, yet they decided to contribute to the greater good and share their innovations with the rest of the world.
If they contributed solely out of their own business interests, and their contributions add nothing of value other than compatibility with Microsoft's proprietary software, and nobody who doesn't want to use Microsoft's proprietary software will see any benefit whatsoever from any of the changes Microsoft contributed to the kernel, then yeah, I would say it's fair to rate Microsoft's contributions to the Linux kernel lower than those of a company like, say, Red Hat.
Speaking of Red Hat it looks like the guest support for Hyper-V is a fairly big feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9. I'm just speculating here, but it is likely that Microsoft's contribution adds business value to companies like Red Hat and eventually to their customers. So I don't get what is so bad with Microsoft contributing to open source.
If you by useless mean allowed Google to base the Chrome browser on Apple's WebKit then sure, very useless. Projects like FreeBSD must have found Apple's involvement in LLVM very useless, and I'm sure they found libdispatch useless as well.
So the corporations who are taking shortcuts by copying and improving FOSS code without releasing the improvements back to the FOSS community are actually engaging in piracy?
It depends on the license under which the FOSS is released. If that's not acceptable under the license then it could be possible to call it a form of piracy.
In that case it's interesting how piracy is just victimless copying when John Q. public does it but alluvasudden become 'stealing' when Company X is pirating FOSS code. After all John Q public would never have bought that CD, even if he hadn't been able to torrent it. But then would penniless startup X have bothered to produce product Y if they had not been able to take massive shortcuts by pirating and improving FOSS code? Illegal downloads result in some lost revenue for the artist, and one could say that re-release of FOSS code improved by some company constitutes recompense for the FOSS community so in a way the FOSS community, after doing a whole pile of volunteer work, is being cheated out of its 'compensation', (i.e. the improvements Company X is not releasing).
Sincerely, Advocatus Diaboli
I don't understand what it is that you're saying. It doesn't matter if it's software or music, the license should be respected.
The GPLv3 is a non starter in the enterprise world.
That must be why Android is such a commercial failure, eh?
Linux itself is famously only GPLv2, and Android itself is under Apache.
They contributed code that only benefitted their product.
Nothing wrong with that.
Linux's package managers are the best place for FOSS software.
I completely agree, but I would also put in a good word for compressed tar files on ftp.
App stores are based on the idea of sell you stuff.
Selling software is obviously i feature, but the main idea would rather be to consolidate software distribution channels.
When the only way you have to install software without void your warranty is the App Store, the idea is abuse the consumer.
It can also enrich the user by simplifying software distribution and installation, which could be a benefit to the user. The average iOS user has somewhere between 20 and 40 third party applications installed; many of which would never install any software at all on a regular computer, where they would obviously have much more "software freedom".
That's a bit deceptive. Microsoft contributed code needed for its VMs to host Linux, nothing more.
I don't see what's deceptive about it. You either contribute or you don't; they did.
"Stealing implies that you don't keep your copy. You still do." is that the same for downloading music?
The act of downloading music is not called stealing. If the download is done illegally then it may be called copying or sometimes more loosely piracy.
And here I thought that Linux's package managers were the best place for FOSS software. Guess I was wrong.
They are often not app stores, they are software archives which are usually not directly controlled by the software author. App stores are based on the idea that you publish a software product on the store for download in exchange for a fee or for free. You can submit updates at any time, sometimes with a review time. You can also stop distributing the software on the store if you so like.
The traditional Linux package manager is usually managed by the Linux distribution community. The original author is usually considered an external party, often called the "upstream". The original author has very little control over what happens with the software once it is distributed through the package manager. And it may also be modified or updated by the distribution independently of the original author.
I see what you mean but don't really buy it. Stealing implies that you don't keep your copy. You still do.
I personally would never code open source software for Microsoft APP store to benefit... #deathtowidowsphone #longliveandroid
Microsoft has published some of its software as open source, including their F# compiler and several .NET libraries like Entity Framework and ASP.NET MVC. They have also contributed to the Linux kernel.
Microsft and Open Soure clearly mix; what could be said is that Microsoft is not (yet) open source first.
They want all the FOSS stuff first to have the first crack at stealing your code. That's what they've always been good at
Stealing FOSS code? What does that even mean?
Is it possible that these warheads can reach the USA?
I don't think they store the data on DVDs.
or Safari for iOS before iOS 6
That's because Safari for iOS did not support uploading files before iOS 6, at all.
They do, but we have found that it's unfortunately not as well maintained as the stable kernel. So we try to be more selective about which hardware we buy.
There are good and bad things with every distribution and overall we are very happy with the quality of Debian. Apart from the kernel we have very few issues with it. Ubuntu is an interesting alternative and we have used it occasionally. One of the things that Ubuntu does better is that they backport the kernel for each successive release back to the LTS, so you can get new drivers even if you want to stay on that branch. Right now it's not a serious problem for us and we're not looking into switching away from Debian due to that any time soon.
Red Hat actually updates a few packages to newer version. Typical things are certain desktop software like Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice. You will occationally also get complele new packages, like OpenJDK 7 in this release.
Debian on the other hand has a hard policy of updating as little as possible, which is actually sometimes problematic on desktops. We have a lot Debian desktops deployed in our organization; currently running on the latest stable release, squeeze from about two years ago. It's actually a problem for us when we want to buy new hardware because the squeeze kernel may not completely support it, and we don't really want to run testing in a production environment. In comparison Red Hat backports a ton of drivers which means that even something as old as RHEL 5 may work just fine on relatively modern hardware.
Fedora 18 features an installer that is rewritten and redesigned from the ground up. It replaces the old 13+ year old installer from previous versions of Fedora. You can learn more about it at the new installer informational page on the Fedora wiki.
That's 13+ years of refinement. There was very little that was wrong with it.
Then you would have looked somewhat better. Now you're worse than Dropbox.
Apple has tried to switch to case-sensitive by default for years, and actively called out Adobe on their developer conference as the big blocker.