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This slashdot posting is one of several instances in which Miguel has publicly spread FUD against Portable.Net
Very interesting posting, and an eye-opener. I for one don't care about non-copyleft software, and I had assumed Mono was GNU LGPL.
So the question now becomes, I was planning on a Mono port of Alphora Dataphor, which unfortunately is proprietary, but it is the only package I found capable of doing what I want in the middle term. I haven't started anything yet, but I was under the impression that Mono was the way to go, with their implementations of a PostgreSQL adaptor and ASP.Net. Does DotGNU and Portable.Net could support such a port in, say, one or two years from now?
That said, in the middle of FUD that post has some interesting claims, like impractible goals of DotGNU and you reading Rotor code. And there isn't any specific answer attached to this... would you care to answer in detail now, or provide an URL?
Reading The Fine Article(R), I found it unsettling that people are seeing XAML as a potential substitute for both HTML and programming, and haven't yet articulated an answer, even if a derisive one.
If it was the first time I took a real look about XAML, from the first few paragraphs of MS' introduction to it, it is clear it amounts to storing UI and other application data (not organisational data used by the application, but data used to build the application itself) in XML, that is to say, hierarchically.
Just as every time one talks about XML and data in the same breath, or OO and data, this would be a throwback to 35 years ago before Codd had defined and published the Relational Model for database management.
This is specially worrying because we see many free software advocates, and most of new hackers, married to OO instead of fundamentally saner functional programming, even if it is a marriage of convenience just to get things like garbage collection that are included in current popular OO platforms; and it is specially disappointing given that Gnome now is giving thought to a saner if partial answer, namely Gnome Storage.
Marrying Gnome Storage with some functional programming over.Net or Java perhaps could by us some sanity back, but I feel it like a kludge unlikely to produce significantly better.
Going Java or.Net may be an intelligent way of trailing MS. But to really leapfrog it where now they have a huge advantage -- and that's not now the desktop as in an user environment or office automation apps or games, but custom software development for businesses with Oracle Developer, PowerBuilder, VB, Delphi and the like --, we have to present something fundamentally and conceptually better.
Something like a functional flavor of Alphora Dataphor integrated at the systems level since the installer could be the answer perhaps; while this would be a tall order for the near future, having it in sight for, say, twenty years in the future while implementing it step by step -- for example, first the D-compliant RDBMS interfaces, then an upwards- and downwards-scalable RDBMS engine with a quasi-SQL interface for backwards compatibility, then integration in the OS, then POSIX interoperability --, would give us the initiative and reduce MS to yet another platform direction change in the future, while we'd be able to keep our perfect POSIX backwards compatibility.
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Whether or not that is a bad choice is another issue.
And that's what I am arguing. That they have the right to do anything it is clear; to still have it called open source, free software, or simply to have it used at all is quite another thing.
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I prefer an official artwork that identifies an official build, because that makes it easier for me to avoid non-standard and possibly suborned copies.
This is ridiculous unless you never install from your distro. And in that case, the burden is on you to get it from a reputable source. So it is ridiculous in any way.
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that's all that reserving the artwork does: the artwork is an imprimatur, a symbol essentially equivalent to a signature, that identifies a build as official.
Not. Nope. Nyet. No. Non.
The artwork identifies the software. Usually free software has good enough quality that people don't have to worry about official builds. Mozilla's worries put them against the culture, if not the letter, of the community.
If they don't concede or compromising, they're shooting themselve in the foot, because not only Debian but other distributions too won't carry Firefox but something named differently, or fail to patch buggy software. Either way probably the trademark damage will be much bigger.
Backplane has all of the licensing downsides to MySQL
Well, I don't consider copyleft a downside. But the Backplane license does not seem even to be free.
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The appropriate approach would probably be to implement a Tutorial D language atop PostgreSQL. After all, that's the approach Dataphor takes; it implements D4 atop Oracle or DB/2.
Actually Dataphor isn't implmented on top of anything. It just uses an SQL DBMS. AFAIK they don't intend yet to have their own, nor integrate into any, DBMS engine; they are still doing homework on the tools. Right now they define Dataphor as a virtual RDBMS.
I agree about PostgreSQL. After all, it was once a RDBMS; it would be but a return to its roots. But the Alphora people didn't have a good impression of PostgreSQL, based on some v6 deficiency. OTOH Backplane seems an interesting approach to distribution, and could be useful if freed. Obviously what applies to Backplane at the physical level applies equally to Dataphor at the logical: it just should be free.
On the other hand vendors couldn't care less if we demand changes. I still remember when Oracle issued a press release claiming it was the inventor of relational databases. I immediately fired back demanding a retraction. They never did, several years after you could still find the aforesaid release in their database.
Now imagine if we asked them to stop lying about SQL being relational...
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Good storytelling doesn't require you to repeat every small detail
Sure, Tolkien is not about details. But the books are so rich, not necessarily on details but in depth, that the movies came out as quite shallow.
Perhaps the theatre has managed to get some depth. But then the story will be so changed it should really be called something else. Go read the books, just take your time and be sure to read The Hobbit first. In a few months come back and tell me your judgement.
3.5h? Don't kid. The movies already suffered from six books (The Hobbit plus the five-books, usually three-volumes The Lord of The Rings) being too condensed.
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implying that modernity is better than what the Japanese used to have.
You yourself cited the Rape of Nanking. 'Nough said.
As for not having children, I can't understand how that wouldn't be decadence. Perhaps you think whomever did the Rape of Nanking shouldn't proliferate in the first place?
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the bubble baths need assistance so the machines aren't displacing workers
Basic economics: if you make a machine, is that because it has become cheaper to project, build and operate it than to pay enough qualified workers.
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stereotyping all Japanese as decadent
Don't put words in my mouth.
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Japan has plenty of unemployed workers right now
Only if they don't want to do lesser jobs. Japan is still importing workers, despite a ten-year stagnation. That should give you a measure of populational decline.
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It's not that there isn't any children. It's that the
population isn't expanding rapidly as it was after
ww2.
Check your numbers. For the population to be at least stable,
there must be 2.2 children per woman, in order to make for early
deaths, infertility and so on. The OECD (rich Europe) countries are
typically now between 1.2 and 1.7 children per woman.
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a personal helper is very expensive
That is the point. There are millions of poor people that would be
happy enough to be personal servants if only they had food and
shelter. Even in protectionist Europe has absurdly high costs of
life, it wouldn't be that expensive. End protectionism, and
at the same time that poverty in the world would diminish, so would
costs of life, and taxes. Then for quite some generations everyone in
rich countries would be able to have servants if they wished, until
poverty was finally erradicated.
Obviously that is daydreaming. People are bad, and would
substitute some other evil for protectionism. Dictatorships,
Islamism, whatever would help preserve proverty. But in Economy,
there are so many factors one must think ceteris paribus.
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unlike in some certain countries into which foreign
manual labour workforce can be brought in very cheaply and then dumped
back to where they came from...
As far as they are informed of the rules -- and that's not always
true --, better than not giving the jobs in the first place.
This SSI stuff sounds interesting, but I'd like to see his stuff compared to OpenSSI.
Now the Backplane SQL DBMS seems interesting, but...
First, they make the common mistake of calling SQL relational. This in itself will prevent them becoming significantly better at the logic level, which is a pity.
Second, it looks very interesting as far as the backend goes. But the question here as always is, why create something from scratch? Couldn't, say, PostgreSQL, which was born on BSD anyway, be retrofitted with their stuff? Won't Oracle or IBM leapfrog them if they prove successuful?
Third, looks like we have yet another BitKeeper in the making... gratis for free software, but not free itself. Makes me want to stick with PostgreSQL for now.
If I wanted something proprietary, I'd go Alphora Dataphor, which at least is fully relational and not yet another SQL.
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It had to do with a person having a legitimate conversation with his dad about the perceptions of operating software.
Either way hobby and meeting in the middle were mischaracterisations.
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In the mainstream (which *nix is not) perception is reality.
Why is it that people have to think that the desktop is the world?
Unix is mainstream. Telephone operators run on Unix. Accounting and finances, manufacture and science run on Unix. Schools and community centres, help desks and offices have Unix in hosts and terminals, engineering, cinema and research in workstations. People build their careers on it, both professional and academical. How is that not mainstream? How is that reality less important than desktop users' misperceptions?
Sorry, Hollywood ain't the world. And BTW, it runs GNU/Linux.
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someone can mount a counter-suit on behalf of the Linux community, and somehow defeat the MSFT legal juggernaut.
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> That won't happen during Bush administration
Isn't anyone else but the Federal Government of the USNA able to countersuit MSFT?
Yes, but can it improve enough? The article discusses cultural differences resulting in different architectures with different capabilities. It does not argue that MS Windows can't improve, but it certainly hints that it can't catch up enough.
Note how MS WXP isn't significantly better than MS W2K.
Slashdot Mirror
Very interesting posting, and an eye-opener. I for one don't care about non-copyleft software, and I had assumed Mono was GNU LGPL.
So the question now becomes, I was planning on a Mono port of Alphora Dataphor, which unfortunately is proprietary, but it is the only package I found capable of doing what I want in the middle term. I haven't started anything yet, but I was under the impression that Mono was the way to go, with their implementations of a PostgreSQL adaptor and ASP.Net. Does DotGNU and Portable.Net could support such a port in, say, one or two years from now?
That said, in the middle of FUD that post has some interesting claims, like impractible goals of DotGNU and you reading Rotor code. And there isn't any specific answer attached to this... would you care to answer in detail now, or provide an URL?
Thanks for the eye-opener.
References?
Rant:
Reading The Fine Article(R), I found it unsettling that people are seeing XAML as a potential substitute for both HTML and programming, and haven't yet articulated an answer, even if a derisive one.
If it was the first time I took a real look about XAML, from the first few paragraphs of MS' introduction to it, it is clear it amounts to storing UI and other application data (not organisational data used by the application, but data used to build the application itself) in XML, that is to say, hierarchically.
Just as every time one talks about XML and data in the same breath, or OO and data, this would be a throwback to 35 years ago before Codd had defined and published the Relational Model for database management.
This is specially worrying because we see many free software advocates, and most of new hackers, married to OO instead of fundamentally saner functional programming, even if it is a marriage of convenience just to get things like garbage collection that are included in current popular OO platforms; and it is specially disappointing given that Gnome now is giving thought to a saner if partial answer, namely Gnome Storage.
Marrying Gnome Storage with some functional programming over .Net or Java perhaps could by us some sanity back, but I feel it like a kludge unlikely to produce significantly better.
Going Java or .Net may be an intelligent way of trailing MS. But to really leapfrog it where now they have a huge advantage -- and that's not now the desktop as in an user environment or office automation apps or games, but custom software development for businesses with Oracle Developer, PowerBuilder, VB, Delphi and the like --, we have to present something fundamentally and conceptually better.
Something like a functional flavor of Alphora Dataphor integrated at the systems level since the installer could be the answer perhaps; while this would be a tall order for the near future, having it in sight for, say, twenty years in the future while implementing it step by step -- for example, first the D-compliant RDBMS interfaces, then an upwards- and downwards-scalable RDBMS engine with a quasi-SQL interface for backwards compatibility, then integration in the OS, then POSIX interoperability --, would give us the initiative and reduce MS to yet another platform direction change in the future, while we'd be able to keep our perfect POSIX backwards compatibility.
References? Who's precisely hostile, and how?
And that's what I am arguing. That they have the right to do anything it is clear; to still have it called open source, free software, or simply to have it used at all is quite another thing.
This is ridiculous unless you never install from your distro. And in that case, the burden is on you to get it from a reputable source. So it is ridiculous in any way.
Interesting... references?
But this does not negate they are definetly not Linux libraries.
Not. Nope. Nyet. No. Non.
The artwork identifies the software. Usually free software has good enough quality that people don't have to worry about official builds. Mozilla's worries put them against the culture, if not the letter, of the community.
If they don't concede or compromising, they're shooting themselve in the foot, because not only Debian but other distributions too won't carry Firefox but something named differently, or fail to patch buggy software. Either way probably the trademark damage will be much bigger.
RTFineA.
Only these aren't Linux libraries, but GNU ones.
No matter how do you call the GNU/Linux OS, these libraries are under the GNU Project umbrella, they have little to do with Linus Torvalds.
Moreover since they've been adopted by the BSDs and Unices as well, and even run on CygWin, they could also be properly called POSIX-based libraries.
Am I the only one irritated when improvements get called innovations?
Well, I don't consider copyleft a downside. But the Backplane license does not seem even to be free.
Actually Dataphor isn't implmented on top of anything. It just uses an SQL DBMS. AFAIK they don't intend yet to have their own, nor integrate into any, DBMS engine; they are still doing homework on the tools. Right now they define Dataphor as a virtual RDBMS.
I agree about PostgreSQL. After all, it was once a RDBMS; it would be but a return to its roots. But the Alphora people didn't have a good impression of PostgreSQL, based on some v6 deficiency. OTOH Backplane seems an interesting approach to distribution, and could be useful if freed. Obviously what applies to Backplane at the physical level applies equally to Dataphor at the logical: it just should be free.
Then it is a marketing coup, not theatre.
Sad, true.
So they should not try, or give it another title.
On the other hand vendors couldn't care less if we demand changes. I still remember when Oracle issued a press release claiming it was the inventor of relational databases. I immediately fired back demanding a retraction. They never did, several years after you could still find the aforesaid release in their database.
Now imagine if we asked them to stop lying about SQL being relational...
Sure, Tolkien is not about details. But the books are so rich, not necessarily on details but in depth, that the movies came out as quite shallow.
Perhaps the theatre has managed to get some depth. But then the story will be so changed it should really be called something else. Go read the books, just take your time and be sure to read The Hobbit first. In a few months come back and tell me your judgement.
3.5h? Don't kid. The movies already suffered from six books (The Hobbit plus the five-books, usually three-volumes The Lord of The Rings) being too condensed.
Because it is one less user and supporter of free software.
You yourself cited the Rape of Nanking. 'Nough said.
As for not having children, I can't understand how that wouldn't be decadence. Perhaps you think whomever did the Rape of Nanking shouldn't proliferate in the first place?
Basic economics: if you make a machine, is that because it has become cheaper to project, build and operate it than to pay enough qualified workers.
Don't put words in my mouth.
Only if they don't want to do lesser jobs. Japan is still importing workers, despite a ten-year stagnation. That should give you a measure of populational decline.
Check your numbers. For the population to be at least stable, there must be 2.2 children per woman, in order to make for early deaths, infertility and so on. The OECD (rich Europe) countries are typically now between 1.2 and 1.7 children per woman.
That is the point. There are millions of poor people that would be happy enough to be personal servants if only they had food and shelter. Even in protectionist Europe has absurdly high costs of life, it wouldn't be that expensive. End protectionism, and at the same time that poverty in the world would diminish, so would costs of life, and taxes. Then for quite some generations everyone in rich countries would be able to have servants if they wished, until poverty was finally erradicated.
Obviously that is daydreaming. People are bad, and would substitute some other evil for protectionism. Dictatorships, Islamism, whatever would help preserve proverty. But in Economy, there are so many factors one must think ceteris paribus.
As far as they are informed of the rules -- and that's not always true --, better than not giving the jobs in the first place.
This SSI stuff sounds interesting, but I'd like to see his stuff compared to OpenSSI. Now the Backplane SQL DBMS seems interesting, but... First, they make the common mistake of calling SQL relational. This in itself will prevent them becoming significantly better at the logic level, which is a pity. Second, it looks very interesting as far as the backend goes. But the question here as always is, why create something from scratch? Couldn't, say, PostgreSQL, which was born on BSD anyway, be retrofitted with their stuff? Won't Oracle or IBM leapfrog them if they prove successuful? Third, looks like we have yet another BitKeeper in the making... gratis for free software, but not free itself. Makes me want to stick with PostgreSQL for now. If I wanted something proprietary, I'd go Alphora Dataphor, which at least is fully relational and not yet another SQL.
Either way hobby and meeting in the middle were mischaracterisations.
Why is it that people have to think that the desktop is the world?
Unix is mainstream. Telephone operators run on Unix. Accounting and finances, manufacture and science run on Unix. Schools and community centres, help desks and offices have Unix in hosts and terminals, engineering, cinema and research in workstations. People build their careers on it, both professional and academical. How is that not mainstream? How is that reality less important than desktop users' misperceptions?
Sorry, Hollywood ain't the world. And BTW, it runs GNU/Linux.
A car actually costs something to produce, and you can't use two cars at the same time.
Yes, but can it improve enough? The article discusses cultural differences resulting in different architectures with different capabilities. It does not argue that MS Windows can't improve, but it certainly hints that it can't catch up enough.
Note how MS WXP isn't significantly better than MS W2K.