The GPL doesn't cover things that are solely your ideas. It has to be a derived work to covered under the GPL and if is a derived work it ain't solely your idea.
However there are some major categories that don't work like that. The biggest would be a lot of consumer applications, like games and such. If you design the app well, with good tutorials and intuitive interfaces, people don't need anything else to make it work. Thus if you make it free software, where they are free to simply give it away, then they've no need to pay you for it.
Consider that Gnome, KDE and OpenOffice are 3 office suites. Consider that for most components of the office suite there are even more available options. For example in word processing: Abiword, Lyx, Ted, TeXmacs, Bean.... So it seems they do get created.
Really the problem are things with short life expectancies. In terms of games, there are have always been tons of open source games. What's been missing is really high end stuff, that is highly labor intensive work and is only useful for a small number of years.
His crusade was piece by piece to lay the groundwork for a free OS, and then when that happened to piece by piece lay the groundwork for a free application stack.
When was Stallman against Dell installing Linux ? When was Stallman against Debian becoming a meta-distribution with others creating a desktop version (what Canonical does)?
The history of corporate contributions to GPL vs. BSD is pretty clear. Corporations feel more confident contributing to GPLed projects since they no competitor can create an "embrace and extend" version. Generally those companies are not software companies i.e. they are: in another industry, hardware, software service companies. Also software companies that want to sell "maintained" versions do nicely with GPL. Software companies can do collaborative contribute more to BSD projects for the reasons you mention. But in the end there are more non software companies or companies not interested collaboration than those that are by a large factor.
Departmental Server -- Clearly Linux has been hugely successful here.
Embedded -- Again an area where Linux is a major player and Windows has lost share over the last decade.
Desktop -- There was no notion of a free desktop for unskilled end users 15 years ago. Linux has made remarkable progress here. Market share still sucks but Linux is a reasonable player as the recent netbook success shows.
Supercomputing -- 389 of the 500 top supercomputers are Linux based
Mainframe computing -- Linux is making some inroads here via. Linux on Z/OS.
In terms of release often Pugs has been producing versions of Perl.
As for Parrot the problem is not that Parrot is not open source but that it is very very behind schedule. Feb 2001 Conway gets a grant to get Parrot finished. Supposedly 1.0 of Parrot is out in March of 2009.
As for the reasons for skeptical there were serious problems with the much easier Python implementation. Perl 6 is very innovative, Python is much more innovative. They are making progress but so far they have not gotten through all the road blocks by any stretch. This might have been too much of a leap. I hope not, Perl is still my second favorite language.
If you just want Perl6 you can use it today with Pugs. That is the "release often" and it finished.
If you want a real release candidate the problem is Parrot. Perl6 attempted some very complex stuff with the runtime, that so far has been challenging to implement. There is no guarantee these problems will get solved.
Wow that is interesting, thank you. For GHC to be moving away from Darcs is a serious blow. Linux had the same issues so that seems to mean that the GHC feature set isn't good enough for large applications. But the real advantages of distribution happen with large applications.
I can understand the advantage of using distributed version control. But given all the Haskell people involved (who came in via Pugs) I'm surprised they went with Git vs. Darcs.
Does anyone know if speed is as large of an issue as it is for Linux kernel or was there another reason?
Or they go back to forcing upgrades. For example break backward compatibility with file formats and offer a low cost solution.
So for example Word 2010 is included for say $5 with all new computers, uses a file format with some neat features (say email automatic versioning, or do not reformat for print) and this format is not supported by Office 2000. Or they include XBox compatibility/emulation with Windows 7 but Windows 7 won't run older versions of office....
1) Lots of businesses are Microsoft only shops. There are large costs savings for small-mid business in just having Microsoft technology people on staff. A unified environment is cheaper for them.
2) Access -> SQL server is very smooth. Frequently databases start their evolution as something someone builds for themselves, then it becomes a departmental tool outsides of IT. As it becomes more critical they start to want IT support...
3) SQL server is actually not a bad RDMS. I'm an Oracle guy myself but for all but the most complex 5% MySQL, Postgres, DB2, SQLServer, Oracle are all basically the same same.
I can't say anything about 1.2.13, but my point has been that there has been progress not that earlier kernels were unusable. As for recompile I remember Debian for example used to have dozens of kernels you had to pick from on their install CD. RH wasn't using the modular features yet. So maybe it was possible but it wasn't done.
I don't know if we are disagreeing I was just telling the gp that there has been major progress, not that earlier kernels were completely unusable.
For example I got stung because I had a 120m floppy drive (superdisk). That didn't work until late in the 2.1 series. Didn't mean I couldn't use Linux but I couldn't back anything up effectively, so I had to save stuff off to a FAT partition and load windows.
No I'm not failing to understand. What I'm saying is that Meeks contributed this code already he can't complain about "stealing code". People in open source don't talk about old contributions being "code stealing" that implies some sort of terminating license.
They were great. Sun and Oracle were right. The problem is that corporate America lacked vision. The amount you can save on real estate more on IT is amazing.
I'm assuming you don't me very high end pre-2000. Then yeah it is painful. You need to use office suites from the era. On the other hand WordPerfect-8 for Linux flies on a 1999 computer as it worked well in 1995. Abiword is reasonable on that environment.
So if you want Wordperfect, an old Caldera desktop or commercial version of Corel Linux. There also some releases of Mandrake that might have it. And yes you do want to install an old Linux it depends on support libraries that haven't been part of gcc for a decade.
If you look back there where serious players in XFree who were talking about breaking off into a fork which induced them to kick some people off commit. Those people represented Suse and RedHat. That caused public outrage and a the fork to actually form. XFree86 then changed the license so their code couldn't get pulled into the fork and it was after that that distributions like debian sided with the Suse / Redhat guys.
What would really different and "better" be? If you want more power Excel is the world's most popular functional programming language. There are lots of those. If you want cooler graphics, numbers.
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The GPL doesn't cover things that are solely your ideas. It has to be a derived work to covered under the GPL and if is a derived work it ain't solely your idea.
Consider that Gnome, KDE and OpenOffice are 3 office suites. Consider that for most components of the office suite there are even more available options. For example in word processing: Abiword, Lyx, Ted, TeXmacs, Bean.... So it seems they do get created.
Really the problem are things with short life expectancies. In terms of games, there are have always been tons of open source games. What's been missing is really high end stuff, that is highly labor intensive work and is only useful for a small number of years.
His crusade was piece by piece to lay the groundwork for a free OS, and then when that happened to piece by piece lay the groundwork for a free application stack.
When was Stallman against Dell installing Linux ? When was Stallman against Debian becoming a meta-distribution with others creating a desktop version (what Canonical does)?
The history of corporate contributions to GPL vs. BSD is pretty clear. Corporations feel more confident contributing to GPLed projects since they no competitor can create an "embrace and extend" version. Generally those companies are not software companies i.e. they are: in another industry, hardware, software service companies. Also software companies that want to sell "maintained" versions do nicely with GPL. Software companies can do collaborative contribute more to BSD projects for the reasons you mention. But in the end there are more non software companies or companies not interested collaboration than those that are by a large factor.
He just said users and you brought up developers.
Baloney.
There are 5 main areas of computers:
Departmental Server -- Clearly Linux has been hugely successful here.
Embedded -- Again an area where Linux is a major player and Windows has lost share over the last decade.
Desktop -- There was no notion of a free desktop for unskilled end users 15 years ago. Linux has made remarkable progress here. Market share still sucks but Linux is a reasonable player as the recent netbook success shows.
Supercomputing -- 389 of the 500 top supercomputers are Linux based
Mainframe computing -- Linux is making some inroads here via. Linux on Z/OS.
Yes I meant the Darcs feature set. GHC has worked for large applications, though there are some problems there as well.
In terms of release often Pugs has been producing versions of Perl.
As for Parrot the problem is not that Parrot is not open source but that it is very very behind schedule. Feb 2001 Conway gets a grant to get Parrot finished. Supposedly 1.0 of Parrot is out in March of 2009.
As for the reasons for skeptical there were serious problems with the much easier Python implementation. Perl 6 is very innovative, Python is much more innovative. They are making progress but so far they have not gotten through all the road blocks by any stretch. This might have been too much of a leap. I hope not, Perl is still my second favorite language.
If you just want Perl6 you can use it today with Pugs. That is the "release often" and it finished.
If you want a real release candidate the problem is Parrot. Perl6 attempted some very complex stuff with the runtime, that so far has been challenging to implement. There is no guarantee these problems will get solved.
Wow that is interesting, thank you. For GHC to be moving away from Darcs is a serious blow. Linux had the same issues so that seems to mean that the GHC feature set isn't good enough for large applications. But the real advantages of distribution happen with large applications.
Excellent information!
I can understand the advantage of using distributed version control. But given all the Haskell people involved (who came in via Pugs) I'm surprised they went with Git vs. Darcs.
Does anyone know if speed is as large of an issue as it is for Linux kernel or was there another reason?
Who uses those? Enterprises that run Linux servers, the kinds of places that might want Lotus Notes.
Or they go back to forcing upgrades. For example break backward compatibility with file formats and offer a low cost solution.
So for example Word 2010 is included for say $5 with all new computers, uses a file format with some neat features (say email automatic versioning, or do not reformat for print) and this format is not supported by Office 2000. Or they include XBox compatibility /emulation with Windows 7 but Windows 7 won't run older versions of office....
1) Lots of businesses are Microsoft only shops. There are large costs savings for small-mid business in just having Microsoft technology people on staff. A unified environment is cheaper for them.
2) Access -> SQL server is very smooth. Frequently databases start their evolution as something someone builds for themselves, then it becomes a departmental tool outsides of IT. As it becomes more critical they start to want IT support...
3) SQL server is actually not a bad RDMS. I'm an Oracle guy myself but for all but the most complex 5% MySQL, Postgres, DB2, SQLServer, Oracle are all basically the same same.
OK that makes sense regarding the initrd. Good info.
The benefit to themselves should have been a generous work from home policy and/or a flex schedule policy.
I can't say anything about 1.2.13, but my point has been that there has been progress not that earlier kernels were unusable. As for recompile I remember Debian for example used to have dozens of kernels you had to pick from on their install CD. RH wasn't using the modular features yet. So maybe it was possible but it wasn't done.
I don't know if we are disagreeing I was just telling the gp that there has been major progress, not that earlier kernels were completely unusable.
For example I got stung because I had a 120m floppy drive (superdisk). That didn't work until late in the 2.1 series. Didn't mean I couldn't use Linux but I couldn't back anything up effectively, so I had to save stuff off to a FAT partition and load windows.
No I'm not failing to understand. What I'm saying is that Meeks contributed this code already he can't complain about "stealing code". People in open source don't talk about old contributions being "code stealing" that implies some sort of terminating license.
They were great. Sun and Oracle were right. The problem is that corporate America lacked vision. The amount you can save on real estate more on IT is amazing.
It is still a very very good idea.
I'm assuming you don't me very high end pre-2000. Then yeah it is painful. You need to use office suites from the era. On the other hand WordPerfect-8 for Linux flies on a 1999 computer as it worked well in 1995. Abiword is reasonable on that environment.
So if you want Wordperfect, an old Caldera desktop or commercial version of Corel Linux. There also some releases of Mandrake that might have it. And yes you do want to install an old Linux it depends on support libraries that haven't been part of gcc for a decade.
It already exists and is included. Write a document in the word processor: File -> export -> Format = Latex2e
Open office exports to TeX
If you look back there where serious players in XFree who were talking about breaking off into a fork which induced them to kick some people off commit. Those people represented Suse and RedHat. That caused public outrage and a the fork to actually form. XFree86 then changed the license so their code couldn't get pulled into the fork and it was after that that distributions like debian sided with the Suse / Redhat guys.
So the story is a bit more complicated.
What would really different and "better" be? If you want more power Excel is the world's most popular functional programming language. There are lots of those. If you want cooler graphics, numbers.
What are you exactly asking for?