Haha, those ones are great in the Open Source world, specially when talking about bugs. Open source developers usually are like "there are no bugs! no no noallaalalalla no bugs in my program no, the bug does not exsist, no memory leak no you are dreaming"... and suddenly, after someone *fixes* the bug they say "Oh yeah, remember that memory bug you disliked a lot?, well I have fixed it in this new version". Funny. Ok, I know you're trolling, but here goes anyway. I don't know of any OS projects that act that way about defects in their products. I'm sure you can site some obscure examples, but I guarantee you that any OS project that acts that way doesn't live very long. Competition exists in the OS world. If your product sucks, you won't have any users and won't attract any developers. So the result of your troll is really moot.
I use XP at home for my gaming system. After my experience with it at work, I will NOT be using Vista at home. I actually prefer Vista's user experience to XP, but Vista is just too much of a hog and it's too buggy. I posted elsewhere in this tree, look it up. There are problems with fundamental operations and MS isn't making it easy to get fixes. Maybe at SP1 it will be better (it's going to have to be because it's damn near unusable for me right now), but after working with it at work, I won't be touching it with a 10' pole.
Yeah, the network seems a bit wonky on my Vista machine. I have to reboot daily to make sure I don't run into any problems. It could b hardware, of course, but it is a Dell so I'd be surprised. I chose Vista for my desktop at work and I regret it due to the buginess, but I did need to see it for myself in action before I made the mistake of running it at home;-)
Not because Vista is particularily bad (it isn't) Have you even used Vista? A lot of people have pointed out other problems with it, but I'll just tell you that from my own experience, I like the user experience *better* than XP (but that isn't saying much, I like Windows 2000's user experience better than XP), but it is very buggy. There are defects in fundamental operations like copying files over the network using Windows Explorer (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942435/en-us). Luckily for me I'm an xcopy expert, but for other run-of-the-mill users, it's a real problem. Oh, by the way, that fix won't be available en-masse until SP1. For now, if you need a hotfix:
To resolve this problem, submit a request to Microsoft Online Customer Services to obtain the hotfix. What a crock. They send you a zip file that expires after a week. So every time we need to hotfix a vista machine in our office, we have to re-request the hot fix. Thank you very much Bill.
I now look at projects like Apache and PostgreSQL and suggest that a license with more Freedom Now see? You're still confused about who gets the freedom in GPL. You talk about a license that is more free, but the GPL is about giving the freedom to the person who obtains your software under the GPL.
Let's try a scenario. SoftwareA is developed and released under the GPL. CorpA take that software and put it in a product, abiding by the GPL. Let's say that CorpA also makes some changes and distributes those changes with their product (as per the GPL). Now, let's say that CorpA goes bankrupt and stops providing support for their product. And just now you hit a bug in the GPL software that is used in their product. The bug is fixed in the normal release by the owner of the software, but you know that CorpA has made some changes to that code. It is still completely possible that you could get the fix from another source and patch and fix it yourself (or pay someone else to do it for you). That is freedom. You are not now stuck with a broken product, you are given the means to continue using the product. The copyright owner of the software gave you that freedom because they released their software under the GPL.
Now imagine if that software were released under the Apache License and used by CorpB. But CorpB doesn't care about your rights, uses the software in their product, modified by themselves in an incompatible way with the normal release. They also choose not to redistribute the code because, hey, they don't have to. Sure, CorpB had more freedom with the Apache license, but who got screwed?
The FSF is about empowering *users* not people who want to take advantage of free code.
I'm not saying that the ASL is a bad license, in fact, I love it! Being a commercial developer, we use a lot of Apache software in our products. Being a small developer, we tend to contribute back to the project, not because we're altruistic, but because it's practical for us so we don't have to maintain all that code ourselves. But because I like and use Apache software does NOT mean in any way that I don't have a *ton* of respect for people who release their software under the GPL. I can't use it commercially, but I do get to use it myself. Hell, we use gcc to build our software and we run Linux all over the place in our office.
I have to say, I *do* think that Linux owes at least some of it's success to GNU and the GPL. I know there are developers who work on the kernel who *would not* work on it if it weren't GPL. I won't speculate as to whether it would have been successful or not, but it certainly does owe part of it's success to the GPL.
Sorry but this statement from RMS smells like religion to me "However, if you don't want to lose your freedom, you had better not follow him." So we should follow RMS instead? You may disagree but I don't follow RMS or Linux. I may disagree or agree with them on things but I don't follow them. How does it "smell" like religion, whatever that means? Are you claiming that the word "following" makes it religious? Because I'd read that as "following" an example, not "following" some deity or prophet.
You know that *you* put the religious spin on it. You chose to read it that way. Don't make it a statement of fact then. Free Software is *not* a religion (puh-lease), it's a social movement. If you disagree with the freedoms that the FSF wants people to have, that's fine, state your opinion and move on. But don't attribute crap to something where it doesn't belong.
What about freedom of supporting my family by writting commericial software?
What about the ethics of supply and demand and making money for myself, boss, and family? It's quite simple, really. *DON'T* use the GPL then. Don't flame RMS, don't flame people who are FS advocates, just make your choice and go on. No one is holding a gun to your head and saying you *have* to choose GPL. Certainly, the FS advocates are idealist and would like you to make the *right choice* (according to them, note that it's simply a difference of opinion).
I am a commercial software developer. I think that Free Software is a great, great idea and I applaud everyone who has released their work, for me to use under the GPL. And I love the GPL because it protects my right to continue using that software even if the original developers decide to close the source and release it some other way. I also love the GPL because it protects contributions that I've made to Free Software to be available for everyone. And I respect the GPL's terms and don't try and subvert them, because, it simply is not my software with which I can do that.
BTW, there is noting in the GPL that precludes you from making money from your own software *even if* you release it under the GPL. If you created the software, you own the rights to do whatever you want with it. So the only way your argument could be taken seriously is if you decided that you wanted to take someone else's GPL'd software and wanted to make a living off of that (I'd call you a free loader). The GPL does protect against that, though it doesn't preclude you for trying to make money off of the software (e.g. by providing support services?).
Stallman has pretty draconian ideas of "freedom" lately No, he doesn't. There is a lot of misunderstanding these days about who the freedom is for and it's clear that you don't understand that yet. The freedoms in the GPL (v2 and v3) are for humanity to use the software as they see fit and to not be hindered in how they use the software (with restrictions on what you're allowed to do to someone to whom you've redistributed the software *if you're not the owner of the software via copyrights*). If you bear that in mind and actually read and understand the GPLv3, you will see that that goal is enabled by v3.
If you don't agree with it, fine, but understand *why* you disagree with it before you go spouting off an opinion on the matter.
And it's a good thing that Linus had a good, defensible license to back up how he releases his software. Otherwise *Linus* might be mired in defending Free Software, if he were so inclined to care about such a notion.
RMS *has* contributed despite what people like you say or think. I am not a hard-core follower of the FSF, but I'm not so blind that I can't see what RMS has done for software.
What rant? I've always found RMS to be completely reasonable and consistent in his lectures, speeches, essays, and other writings and communications.
Just because you don't agree with him, doesn't mean he is wrong. Also, even if he is wrong, he is not putting a gun to your head and making you follow his way. He just tries to persuade and he does it rather eloquently if you ask me.
Also, what's the deal with everyone criticizing his personal appearance? What does that have to do with anything? When did "fair looks" become the be-all end-all of everything.
I think that most people who criticize RMS, from what I can see, are a bunch of hypocrites.
So how am I going to 'lose' my software freedom by 'following' Linus? Presumably you will lose that freedom because the GPLv2 doesn't address patent protection, but GPLv3 does. What that means is someone could come along, get some GPLv2 software, redistribute it and get all the benefits inherent in that and then sue the people they redistributed to for patent infringement (or, better yet, sue those that didn't buy the software from them, sound familiar at all?). This limits the freedom of the people who are sued because they accepted GPLv2 software, but now they possibly can't use that software in a free way (i.e. they need to pay for patent protection). Agree with v3 or not, RMS is right about how v2 limits freedom more than v3.
I think it's people like you who turn this into religion, not the RMS's of the world. You completely exaggerate when you use your religious connotations. RMS doesn't ask anyone to use faith to accept what he's saying. He has strong convictions and they are completely based on his own experiences, there is nothing mystical in his vision, it's all completely practical. He's not saying anything that even remotely looks like religion to me. So stuff your religious zealotry bull shit. Sorry, but I tire of the extreme analogies that people are tending to on/. Maybe I'm just getting old/sigh
I simply don't understand RMS' idea of freedom. Yeah, you got that right, you really don't understand.
- We must use his license If you agree that you want your users to be able to use your software in a free way, you can choose to use the GPL for users that agree so that they may enhance and redistribute your software. *You* own the copyrights, it is *your* software, *you*, the owner of the copyrights are not bound by the GPL. You are just allowing others to redistribute your software using the GPL terms to ensure that your software remains free.
- The license restricts your rights when you modify// re-release the source Only if by you, you are referring to someone who has accepted the software under the terms of the GPL. In that case, if that person chooses to redistribute the software, they must abide by the terms of the GPL. If *you* refers to the owner of the copyrights, then, no, *you* are not bound by the terms of the GPL.
- No Windows allowed I'm not sure where you get this *at all*. Do you find the word 'Windows' anywhere in the GPL text? I'd definitely like to see that.
It seems to me that in a truly free system (much like we have now, in fact), these are decisions we'd be able to make on our own. RMS' claims that people who don't like his license aren't truly free come off much as those who question the patriotism of anti-war citizens. Hopefully now you have a better understanding, enough so that you realize this last bit doesn't make much sense. Take care!
it's a bad idea to install a huge framework just for a single program A couple of points about this comment:
1) More and more you're finding the JVM being distributed with the hardware/os. Only on Windows is this not the case. Sun and IBM all ship a JRE on their systems. And more and more Linux distributions will be now that Java is GPL.
2) Java is working on modularization. Java6 is going to be (at some point) shipping as a "kernel" (hate that term for java btw) that is quite small and will be able to download only what is needed by an application. http://weblogs.java.net/blog/enicholas/archive/200 7/05/java_kernel_unm.html is a good explanation of this. Not only that, but if you do ship a JRE with your product, you'll be able to tailor the runtime classes down to just what you need. I think this will help immensely to cut down the size of java programs in general.
Java is an evolving technology and it's evolving quite rapidly. I see a lot of generalizations about java that are a couple years old now. It's good that if you're going to be a critic of something that you actually keep current with it.
it's not compatible with Java, doesn't look like Java, doesn't smell like Java and, most important, doesn't require Java. Well, that's not entirely accurate, your summarization is a couple of years old I guess. Java6 ships with Rhino which is a javascript engine written in Java that does allow you to run Javascript on the JVM and it does allow you to interact with java objects. And, quite honestly, the syntax isn't all that different from java, but then again, java really isn't all that different from C, C++ or other languages. Certainly the differences aren't a huge barrier to keep people from using one and moving to the other.
Good. So we agree than, right? Strictly speaking with what you quoted, I guess we are if you say you agree with that quote. Though I'm not sure how that proves your point.
I seriously can't even comprehend you and, honestly, other GPL critics. If you have a project and you don't like the GPL, then *don't release your software under the GPL*. It's pretty simply.
If you like a piece of software and it's GPL, then you may redistribute it *under the provisions of the GPL*. It's not your software, why would you presume to criticize someone who gave their software to you freely as long as you agree to redistribute the software in accordance with the GPL? Because you can't steal their work?
I'm a commercial software developer. I love the GPL. I can't use any GPL work in my products, but I don't find that that is reason to criticize GPL developers. In fact, I quite honestly respect them. Sometimes I wish I could redistribute their software with mine, sometimes the developers understand this and we work something out. Sometimes we don't. At least, though, I had that option. And at least I have quite a library of free software that I can use without hindrance to get my work done (Linux?). The GPL has done way more good than harm. What has Microsoft done for me lately?
You would be a fool *not* to try to wiggle out of all the GPLv3 crap. It's quite simple, really. If you don't like the GPL, then *don't* redistribute GPL software. That wasn't so hard was it? If MS wants to continue to try and enforce their patents against GPL code, then it is probably in their best interest to *stop playing games with the GPL*. You see? It's not so hard. There is so obviously more going on here than poor ol' Microsoft not wanting to get caught up in the "GPLv3 crap" as you put it. They stuck their foot in, now they have to live with the consequences. Talk about gaming the system!
Capitalism is war for the most profit I'm so sick of everyone trumping up war for every justification. Capitalism is not a war. Stop turning every little thing into a war.
To change from SVN to another system, I need three things : I must be able to export my current SVN repository completely to the new system, it must support externals (for modular development), and it must integrate with trac. Monotone does have support for converting from SVN (I think Tailor can do that too).
Monotone can't do externals now, but there has been some talk about supporting multi-repo modules that would be very similar to SVN externals.
Monotone does have Trac support, assuming it's still being maintained.
Caveat, we're in the middle of implementing DVCS using monotone, moving away from CVS.
I guess if all your developers are in one location, you can get away with centralized revision control. But, even we, a small company, are finding the usefulness of a true DVCS to go beyond what we thought would be "nice to have." Our developers are spread across the US, UK, and Germany and CVCS is killing us. Certainly DVCS isn't for everyone, but for us it's working out very well. I highly doubt you're going to find that now and forever, commercial software vendors are always going to be happy with CVCS.
I have to agree with you. After having switched away from CVS and SVN (to monotone), it sure is nice not having that garbage messing up my work space. Granted, you *can* deal with it, it's only a bit tedious, but since I've moved to monotone, it's *so* nice *not having to deal with it at all.*
A small point to be sure, but every time I check out an OS SVN based project, I find myself cursing at this damn convention for one reason or another.
There are really worse things than SVN. Fortunately, there are also better systems than SVN as well;-) Check out Monotone, Git, darcs and a few others.
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I use XP at home for my gaming system. After my experience with it at work, I will NOT be using Vista at home. I actually prefer Vista's user experience to XP, but Vista is just too much of a hog and it's too buggy. I posted elsewhere in this tree, look it up. There are problems with fundamental operations and MS isn't making it easy to get fixes. Maybe at SP1 it will be better (it's going to have to be because it's damn near unusable for me right now), but after working with it at work, I won't be touching it with a 10' pole.
Yeah, the network seems a bit wonky on my Vista machine. I have to reboot daily to make sure I don't run into any problems. It could b hardware, of course, but it is a Dell so I'd be surprised. I chose Vista for my desktop at work and I regret it due to the buginess, but I did need to see it for myself in action before I made the mistake of running it at home ;-)
Yes, thanks for clarifying falconwolf, I knew as soon as I hit submit that I'd messed something up :-P
Let's try a scenario. SoftwareA is developed and released under the GPL. CorpA take that software and put it in a product, abiding by the GPL. Let's say that CorpA also makes some changes and distributes those changes with their product (as per the GPL). Now, let's say that CorpA goes bankrupt and stops providing support for their product. And just now you hit a bug in the GPL software that is used in their product. The bug is fixed in the normal release by the owner of the software, but you know that CorpA has made some changes to that code. It is still completely possible that you could get the fix from another source and patch and fix it yourself (or pay someone else to do it for you). That is freedom. You are not now stuck with a broken product, you are given the means to continue using the product. The copyright owner of the software gave you that freedom because they released their software under the GPL.
Now imagine if that software were released under the Apache License and used by CorpB. But CorpB doesn't care about your rights, uses the software in their product, modified by themselves in an incompatible way with the normal release. They also choose not to redistribute the code because, hey, they don't have to. Sure, CorpB had more freedom with the Apache license, but who got screwed?
The FSF is about empowering *users* not people who want to take advantage of free code.
I'm not saying that the ASL is a bad license, in fact, I love it! Being a commercial developer, we use a lot of Apache software in our products. Being a small developer, we tend to contribute back to the project, not because we're altruistic, but because it's practical for us so we don't have to maintain all that code ourselves. But because I like and use Apache software does NOT mean in any way that I don't have a *ton* of respect for people who release their software under the GPL. I can't use it commercially, but I do get to use it myself. Hell, we use gcc to build our software and we run Linux all over the place in our office.
I have to say, I *do* think that Linux owes at least some of it's success to GNU and the GPL. I know there are developers who work on the kernel who *would not* work on it if it weren't GPL. I won't speculate as to whether it would have been successful or not, but it certainly does owe part of it's success to the GPL.
So we should follow RMS instead?
You may disagree but I don't follow RMS or Linux. I may disagree or agree with them on things but I don't follow them. How does it "smell" like religion, whatever that means? Are you claiming that the word "following" makes it religious? Because I'd read that as "following" an example, not "following" some deity or prophet.
You know that *you* put the religious spin on it. You chose to read it that way. Don't make it a statement of fact then. Free Software is *not* a religion (puh-lease), it's a social movement. If you disagree with the freedoms that the FSF wants people to have, that's fine, state your opinion and move on. But don't attribute crap to something where it doesn't belong.
What about the ethics of supply and demand and making money for myself, boss, and family? It's quite simple, really. *DON'T* use the GPL then. Don't flame RMS, don't flame people who are FS advocates, just make your choice and go on. No one is holding a gun to your head and saying you *have* to choose GPL. Certainly, the FS advocates are idealist and would like you to make the *right choice* (according to them, note that it's simply a difference of opinion).
I am a commercial software developer. I think that Free Software is a great, great idea and I applaud everyone who has released their work, for me to use under the GPL. And I love the GPL because it protects my right to continue using that software even if the original developers decide to close the source and release it some other way. I also love the GPL because it protects contributions that I've made to Free Software to be available for everyone. And I respect the GPL's terms and don't try and subvert them, because, it simply is not my software with which I can do that.
BTW, there is noting in the GPL that precludes you from making money from your own software *even if* you release it under the GPL. If you created the software, you own the rights to do whatever you want with it. So the only way your argument could be taken seriously is if you decided that you wanted to take someone else's GPL'd software and wanted to make a living off of that (I'd call you a free loader). The GPL does protect against that, though it doesn't preclude you for trying to make money off of the software (e.g. by providing support services?).
If you don't agree with it, fine, but understand *why* you disagree with it before you go spouting off an opinion on the matter.
Cheers!
And it's a good thing that Linus had a good, defensible license to back up how he releases his software. Otherwise *Linus* might be mired in defending Free Software, if he were so inclined to care about such a notion.
RMS *has* contributed despite what people like you say or think. I am not a hard-core follower of the FSF, but I'm not so blind that I can't see what RMS has done for software.
Just because you don't agree with him, doesn't mean he is wrong. Also, even if he is wrong, he is not putting a gun to your head and making you follow his way. He just tries to persuade and he does it rather eloquently if you ask me.
Also, what's the deal with everyone criticizing his personal appearance? What does that have to do with anything? When did "fair looks" become the be-all end-all of everything.
I think that most people who criticize RMS, from what I can see, are a bunch of hypocrites.
Have a Nice Day,
Gerry B. Well said.
I think it's people like you who turn this into religion, not the RMS's of the world. You completely exaggerate when you use your religious connotations. RMS doesn't ask anyone to use faith to accept what he's saying. He has strong convictions and they are completely based on his own experiences, there is nothing mystical in his vision, it's all completely practical. He's not saying anything that even remotely looks like religion to me. So stuff your religious zealotry bull shit. Sorry, but I tire of the extreme analogies that people are tending to on /. Maybe I'm just getting old /sigh
1) More and more you're finding the JVM being distributed with the hardware/os. Only on Windows is this not the case. Sun and IBM all ship a JRE on their systems. And more and more Linux distributions will be now that Java is GPL.
2) Java is working on modularization. Java6 is going to be (at some point) shipping as a "kernel" (hate that term for java btw) that is quite small and will be able to download only what is needed by an application. http://weblogs.java.net/blog/enicholas/archive/20
Java is an evolving technology and it's evolving quite rapidly. I see a lot of generalizations about java that are a couple years old now. It's good that if you're going to be a critic of something that you actually keep current with it.
I seriously can't even comprehend you and, honestly, other GPL critics. If you have a project and you don't like the GPL, then *don't release your software under the GPL*. It's pretty simply.
If you like a piece of software and it's GPL, then you may redistribute it *under the provisions of the GPL*. It's not your software, why would you presume to criticize someone who gave their software to you freely as long as you agree to redistribute the software in accordance with the GPL? Because you can't steal their work?
I'm a commercial software developer. I love the GPL. I can't use any GPL work in my products, but I don't find that that is reason to criticize GPL developers. In fact, I quite honestly respect them. Sometimes I wish I could redistribute their software with mine, sometimes the developers understand this and we work something out. Sometimes we don't. At least, though, I had that option. And at least I have quite a library of free software that I can use without hindrance to get my work done (Linux?). The GPL has done way more good than harm. What has Microsoft done for me lately?
Monotone can't do externals now, but there has been some talk about supporting multi-repo modules that would be very similar to SVN externals.
Monotone does have Trac support, assuming it's still being maintained.
Caveat, we're in the middle of implementing DVCS using monotone, moving away from CVS.
I guess if all your developers are in one location, you can get away with centralized revision control. But, even we, a small company, are finding the usefulness of a true DVCS to go beyond what we thought would be "nice to have." Our developers are spread across the US, UK, and Germany and CVCS is killing us. Certainly DVCS isn't for everyone, but for us it's working out very well. I highly doubt you're going to find that now and forever, commercial software vendors are always going to be happy with CVCS.
I have to agree with you. After having switched away from CVS and SVN (to monotone), it sure is nice not having that garbage messing up my work space. Granted, you *can* deal with it, it's only a bit tedious, but since I've moved to monotone, it's *so* nice *not having to deal with it at all.*
A small point to be sure, but every time I check out an OS SVN based project, I find myself cursing at this damn convention for one reason or another.