I would think that people would use the HURD for exactly the same reason that people were using Linux when it first started; not because it was stable, not becuase it was reliable, not because it was practicle in any way shape or form, but rather because it was a cool chance to hack on some source code. Personally, I think it would be cool to have a heterogeneous network of computers running all kinds of different operating systems: Linux, BSD, Solaris, HURD, Mac OS, etc, and even Windows. Oh, and a palm, too.
Without copyright law, Microsoft would be able to take the latest Linux source, make a whole bunch of UI changes, and release it as "Microsoft Linux", without letting anyone have the source to their changes.
Not true. The following is more accurate:
Without copyright law, Microsoft would be able to take the latest Linux source, make a whole bunch of UI changes, and release it as "Microsoft Linux", without being able to prevent anyone from attempting to obtain the source to their changes.
It is copyright law that would allow Microsoft to prevent anyone from attempting to obtain the source of their changes. For example, without copyright law, there would be no legal restrictions on reverse engineering.
Perhaps you meant to write:
With current U.S. copyright law, if the Linux source was not copyrighted (or rather copylefted), Microsoft would be able to take the latest Linux source, make a whole bunch of UI changes, and release it as "Microsoft Linux", without letting anyone have the source to their changes.
Notice, too, that I added the qualification U.S. copyright law since I doubt that all countries share the same concepts regarding "copyrights"; by this I mean legal systems that share the same view of copyrights defined in U.S. law, since it was the birth-country of the GPL, and not only just U.S. copyright law.
The simplest way to make a program free is to put it in the public domain (18k characters), uncopyrighted. This allows people to share the program and their improvements, if they are so minded. But it also allows uncooperative people to convert the program into proprietary software (18k characters). They can make changes, many or few, and distribute the result as a proprietary product. People who receive the program in that modified form do not have the freedom that the original author gave them; the middleman has stripped it away.
In my opinion, a problem with the current U.S. copyright law can be found in the following definition of public domain (from Merriam-Webster OnLine).
Main Entry: public domain
Function: noun Date: 1832 1 : land owned directly by the government 2 : the realm embracing property rights that belong to the community at large, are unprotected by copyright or patent, and are subject to appropriation by anyone
In particular, I have a problem with the second definition. My own "common sense" definition of public domain would read as follows.
2: the realm embracing property rights that belong to the community at large, are unprotected by copyright or patent held by any individual person, and are
not subject to appropriation by any one person because they belong to the community at large
We have Locke to thank for the idea that public domain merely means that the thing in the public domain is waiting for any owner to come plant a flag in it. If you are a libertarian and think that Locke is the end-all and be-all of the philosophies of freedom, then you'll have no problem with this. However, I do not agree that Locke is The Answer nor do I find the definition of public domain based on his notions of property rights to be "natural" or intuitive. I think that there might be some benefits to the notion of reforming copyright laws such that it would allow for "my" alternative second definition of "public domain". Of course, the GPL is an attempt to invent a public domain according to "my alternative" second definition, which does not exist in the current world of copyright law, which is why it is not called a copyright but rather a copyleft.
nod> The article described something that went beyond just symbolic links. It actively looks for duplication in files, etc. Sounds like they're trying to fight WinBloat looking for redundancy after the fact instead of just not introducing it into the code in the first place .
In favorite programming languages, operating systems, editors, et cetera... to each his/her own. However...
I don't really see the point of having operator overloading. The advantage of being able to overload them is fully consumed by the resulting confusing code. I don't want my + operator to be overloaded. I don't want to work on code where I have to look up what the + operator actually means. If assumptions I have about such simple things as + and - no longer hold true I can't do my work properly.
I think operator overloading has provided a valuable tool for allowing code to define types which can be used anywhere that a builtin type can be used and in exactly the same way that a builtin type can be used. For example, I personally can not stand having to switch between java.lang.Integer and int in Java code. One can not overload the operators for the builtin types and so the meaning for these types is set-in-stone. Why would it surprise you to have to search for the meaning of an operator for a user-defined type? And why should the use of something like TYPE::operator+ be any more confusing than something like TYPE::plus(). For example, consider if one were to define a class for complex numbers in Java and one wanted to be able to add them together. Without operator overloading, one would have to do something similiar to
public class Complex {
void plus(Complex rhs) { // Do stuff here } }
Why is this any more clear than the C++ approach of using operator+? However, the true advantage of the overloaded operator for C++ is that one can, for example, write a generic function such as std::accumulate which will work on ints as well as Complex, etc. One could not do this in Java.
Another thing is the C compatibility. I don't see the point of it. True, in isolated situations it may be handy to be able to quickly port old C code (but then why not redesign it while you are at it?). In most situations though you are better of resuing the old code base in the form of libraries (as you do in Java with native methods).
I think that compatability with C is very useful. I have just finished working on a project in which we were writing Java code which needed to make use of various C/C++ libraries for which we were unable to find a Java replacement and for which we were unable to devote the time to write a Java version. True, the Java Native Interface allows Java code to incorporate C/C++ code but I find writing JNI code to be a couple of orders of magnitude more difficult than simply using
extern "C"/* something or other */
and running with it. And the reality is that there is a lot of C code and C libraries out there which provide a lot of useful functionality and are of significant complexity and/or magnitude such that reimplementing them all over again would be expensive both in terms of time spent and salaries paid.
On the other hand there are many features in it that you only get in c++ if you are a skilled and disciplined programmer. Take for instance a simple concept: package. The package construct allows you to group classes into packages. Packages can be nested and the package is part of the class name (which makes it possible to have class names with the same name in different packages). Of course this simple feature can (and should) be imitated for large C++ projects but its just not as straight forward as in Java.
Actually, I believe that the ANSI/ISO C++ addition of the namespace provides the same degree of functionality as does the Java package. In addition, I wish that there was a Java equivalent to the C++ feature of being able to provide an alias for a namespace.
However, I think that our main differences of opinion on C++ and Java can be summerized by your following statement
My main problem with C++ is not that it lacks features but that provides to much of them. Java as a language is much simpler [...]
My main problem with Java is that it tries to force the coder into its own narrow view of what is "the right way" to program. When designing and implementing a solution to a problem, TIMTOWTDI. Which solution is the best frequently depends on any number of different circumstances and so having an number of different options available is a strength, not a weakness. C++ allows different ways to do MI while Java only allows interfaces. C++ can do everything Java does with an interface and more. Why is this a weakness of C++? Stroustrup mentioned his having made a conscious decision to make C++ a multi-paradigm programming language. However, Java allows for only "one true way" and that way is object orientation. Why is this a weakness of C++? In C++, the default is for explicit memory management via new/delete. However, if one wants to use garbage collection, it is possible to incorporate it. However, with Java one can only use garbage collection and can not opt to use explicit memory management if it would be useful. Why is this a weakness of C++? Since when does greater flexiblity, adaptability, and more options mean worse, weaker, and less desirable. <pause> Hopefully I won't be guilty of committing a programming analogy of the blunder that social-Darwinism commits by misapplying theories in the wrong domain but <breath> doesn't evolutionary theory give a useful example of why flexibility, adaptability, and having lots of options is a good thing?
As far as I see it, the only true advantage that Java has over C++ is the free availability of an enmorous class library for networking, database access, et cetera, and the fact that it is an interpreted language allows for more dynamic, run-time bindings than does C++; e.g. the Java URLClassLoader. However, C++ has class libraries that match the Java libraries in functionality (e.g., RogueWave, the Adapative Communications Environment (ACE), et cetera) and some of them (e.g., ACE) are also free.
So, while C++ may be more complicated than Java, I believe that this added complexity is due to C++ being a much richer language than Java and not because C++ is poorly designed or "chaotic". No language is perfect but I believe that C++ does a good job.
AFAIK, Communism is rooted in the idea that the working man would rise up and overthrow the ruling class, distributing the fruits of labor equally to fellow proletariat.
I don't claim to be an expert on Marxist theory, but I believe that your nutshell version of Marxism is overly simplistic. For example, one of the Marxist ideals is that the means of production would be owned by those doing the production. In other words, in a typical factory, a worker comes to the plant that s/he does not own, works on equipment that s/he does not own, and, thusly, the end product does not belong to the worker. To a degree, there are certain elements of the GPL and other of the licenses that are usually described as Open Source that fit this ideal. When Joe Byte writes a program, that program can not be claimed by some "factory owner", e.g. Bill Gates and Microsoft. Relative to society at large, a programmer might not be the archtypical proletariat worker. However, in the computer industry, the programmer is the worker. In addition, I don't believe that Marx tried to limit his economics to the procution based economy of the industrial revolution but to imagine a post-industrial economy and so pointing out that the typical programmer does not fit the "blue collar" proletariat labor mold does not in-and-of-itself remove the possibility of a Marxist analysis. I'm not trying to posit that the fit of Marxism and Free (Ideas) Software is exact, but near enough the mark to merit discussion and thought. Worth at least more than a dismissive "Bah!" or a incredulous "Humbug!".
I must agree with the comments noted in the review from others: The idea that the "gift culture" is communism is hogwash.
That is begging the question. ESR (and others) claim that Free (Ideas) Software is gift culture. The counter claim is that Free (Ideas) Software is Marxist. To posit that "gift culture" is not Marxist is like saying that libertarians are not Marxist. While this is a true statement, it is also a no-op. Or are we all supposed to see that it is so obvious that Free (Ideas) Software is gift culture that we treat the double quotes as some kind of interpolation operator and replace "gift culture" with its obvious substitution, 'Open Source'? Well, you should've written that as "$esr->{GIFT_CULTURE}" or else how are we to know?
I could kill 15 people in a crowded building (like a school, been in one recently?) with a *HAMMER*. Hell, I could probably use a *ROCK*.
Well, yeah, you might be able to kill 15 people in a crowded building, but you've got mad kung-fu skills. I mean, you could probably kill dozens of people with a simple pair of chopsticks. However, I think that after I smacked my first victim on the head with my hammer, the others would start hassling me and, in general, being pretty uncooperative about the whole business. But <sigh>, I've always been something of a pantywaist when it comes to killing hordes with common household instruments. After all, you know what they say:
God made man.
Smith & Wess^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCommon household instruments, office supplies, paper clips, and random scraps of cloth made them equal.
I couldn't agree more. Mean old hippy longhairs! Now you've gone and made ESR's eyes wet with crocodile tears. Can't a man try and paint his own thinly veiled ideologies on the works of others without their taking offense? He was only trying to help, the poor thing. If you don't like his bazzar, then you can just leave, and if you give him any crap on the way out the door, I hope he knocks you upside the head with a little bit of the old Second Ammendment, if you get my drift. And don't give me any of this crap about how people were all working on collaborative development projects long before ESR came along and planted his trademark in it and started misrepresenting ideas at it, you pansy liberals; ideas originally expressed in more scholarly works such as Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. And just because you might think that his socio-economic philosophy is ill conceived doesn't mean you should bite his head off for trying to make a point on your behalf. He is only human and just because you might think he is full of #@%! doesn't mean you shouldn't thank him for trying to help you out, ungrateful pinko scum. Some of us actually agree with the man so if you don't like it, you can just leave it! You're refusal to agree with us is tearing this family apart and I won't stand for it any longer. Your father loves you, don't you realize that? Now you'd best just sit down at this table and try to pretend like you're actually part of this family or I'm going to disown you! I swear I will!
Wouldn't the fact that the MOSIX group, part of the Computer Science System Group of Hebrew University's Computer Science Institute, is located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem, Israel make it quite a bit more difficult to file a lawsuit? Regardless of the difficulties of the whole question of "who's responsibility it is", there is also the whole international <pause> thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I would think that people would use the HURD for exactly the same reason that people were using Linux when it first started; not because it was stable, not becuase it was reliable, not because it was practicle in any way shape or form, but rather because it was a cool chance to hack on some source code. Personally, I think it would be cool to have a heterogeneous network of computers running all kinds of different operating systems: Linux, BSD, Solaris, HURD, Mac OS, etc, and even Windows. Oh, and a palm, too.
Reasons? We don't need no stinking reasons!
Not true. The following is more accurate:
It is copyright law that would allow Microsoft to prevent anyone from attempting to obtain the source of their changes. For example, without copyright law, there would be no legal restrictions on reverse engineering.
Perhaps you meant to write:
Notice, too, that I added the qualification U.S. copyright law since I doubt that all countries share the same concepts regarding "copyrights"; by this I mean legal systems that share the same view of copyrights defined in U.S. law, since it was the birth-country of the GPL, and not only just U.S. copyright law.
That is why the Free Software Foundation begins its description of copyleft with the following:
In my opinion, a problem with the current U.S. copyright law can be found in the following definition of public domain (from Merriam-Webster OnLine).
In particular, I have a problem with the second definition. My own "common sense" definition of public domain would read as follows.
We have Locke to thank for the idea that public domain merely means that the thing in the public domain is waiting for any owner to come plant a flag in it. If you are a libertarian and think that Locke is the end-all and be-all of the philosophies of freedom, then you'll have no problem with this. However, I do not agree that Locke is The Answer nor do I find the definition of public domain based on his notions of property rights to be "natural" or intuitive. I think that there might be some benefits to the notion of reforming copyright laws such that it would allow for "my" alternative second definition of "public domain". Of course, the GPL is an attempt to invent a public domain according to "my alternative" second definition, which does not exist in the current world of copyright law, which is why it is not called a copyright but rather a copyleft.
But not to pick a nit...
nod> The article described something that went beyond just symbolic links. It actively looks for duplication in files, etc. Sounds like they're trying to fight WinBloat looking for redundancy after the fact instead of just not introducing it into the code in the first place .
In favorite programming languages, operating systems, editors, et cetera... to each his/her own. However...
I think operator overloading has provided a valuable tool for allowing code to define types which can be used anywhere that a builtin type can be used and in exactly the same way that a builtin type can be used. For example, I personally can not stand having to switch between java.lang.Integer and int in Java code. One can not overload the operators for the builtin types and so the meaning for these types is set-in-stone. Why would it surprise you to have to search for the meaning of an operator for a user-defined type? And why should the use of something like TYPE::operator+ be any more confusing than something like TYPE::plus(). For example, consider if one were to define a class for complex numbers in Java and one wanted to be able to add them together. Without operator overloading, one would have to do something similiar to
Why is this any more clear than the C++ approach of using operator+? However, the true advantage of the overloaded operator for C++ is that one can, for example, write a generic function such as std::accumulate which will work on ints as well as Complex, etc. One could not do this in Java.
I think that compatability with C is very useful. I have just finished working on a project in which we were writing Java code which needed to make use of various C/C++ libraries for which we were unable to find a Java replacement and for which we were unable to devote the time to write a Java version. True, the Java Native Interface allows Java code to incorporate C/C++ code but I find writing JNI code to be a couple of orders of magnitude more difficult than simply using
and running with it. And the reality is that there is a lot of C code and C libraries out there which provide a lot of useful functionality and are of significant complexity and/or magnitude such that reimplementing them all over again would be expensive both in terms of time spent and salaries paid.
Actually, I believe that the ANSI/ISO C++ addition of the namespace provides the same degree of functionality as does the Java package. In addition, I wish that there was a Java equivalent to the C++ feature of being able to provide an alias for a namespace.
However, I think that our main differences of opinion on C++ and Java can be summerized by your following statement
My main problem with Java is that it tries to force the coder into its own narrow view of what is "the right way" to program. When designing and implementing a solution to a problem, TIMTOWTDI. Which solution is the best frequently depends on any number of different circumstances and so having an number of different options available is a strength, not a weakness. C++ allows different ways to do MI while Java only allows interfaces. C++ can do everything Java does with an interface and more. Why is this a weakness of C++? Stroustrup mentioned his having made a conscious decision to make C++ a multi-paradigm programming language. However, Java allows for only "one true way" and that way is object orientation. Why is this a weakness of C++? In C++, the default is for explicit memory management via new/delete. However, if one wants to use garbage collection, it is possible to incorporate it. However, with Java one can only use garbage collection and can not opt to use explicit memory management if it would be useful. Why is this a weakness of C++? Since when does greater flexiblity, adaptability, and more options mean worse, weaker, and less desirable. <pause> Hopefully I won't be guilty of committing a programming analogy of the blunder that social-Darwinism commits by misapplying theories in the wrong domain but <breath> doesn't evolutionary theory give a useful example of why flexibility, adaptability, and having lots of options is a good thing?
As far as I see it, the only true advantage that Java has over C++ is the free availability of an enmorous class library for networking, database access, et cetera, and the fact that it is an interpreted language allows for more dynamic, run-time bindings than does C++; e.g. the Java URLClassLoader. However, C++ has class libraries that match the Java libraries in functionality (e.g., RogueWave, the Adapative Communications Environment (ACE), et cetera) and some of them (e.g., ACE) are also free.
So, while C++ may be more complicated than Java, I believe that this added complexity is due to C++ being a much richer language than Java and not because C++ is poorly designed or "chaotic". No language is perfect but I believe that C++ does a good job.
I don't claim to be an expert on Marxist theory, but I believe that your nutshell version of Marxism is overly simplistic. For example, one of the Marxist ideals is that the means of production would be owned by those doing the production. In other words, in a typical factory, a worker comes to the plant that s/he does not own, works on equipment that s/he does not own, and, thusly, the end product does not belong to the worker. To a degree, there are certain elements of the GPL and other of the licenses that are usually described as Open Source that fit this ideal. When Joe Byte writes a program, that program can not be claimed by some "factory owner", e.g. Bill Gates and Microsoft. Relative to society at large, a programmer might not be the archtypical proletariat worker. However, in the computer industry, the programmer is the worker. In addition, I don't believe that Marx tried to limit his economics to the procution based economy of the industrial revolution but to imagine a post-industrial economy and so pointing out that the typical programmer does not fit the "blue collar" proletariat labor mold does not in-and-of-itself remove the possibility of a Marxist analysis. I'm not trying to posit that the fit of Marxism and Free (Ideas) Software is exact, but near enough the mark to merit discussion and thought. Worth at least more than a dismissive "Bah!" or a incredulous "Humbug!".
That is begging the question. ESR (and others) claim that Free (Ideas) Software is gift culture. The counter claim is that Free (Ideas) Software is Marxist. To posit that "gift culture" is not Marxist is like saying that libertarians are not Marxist. While this is a true statement, it is also a no-op. Or are we all supposed to see that it is so obvious that Free (Ideas) Software is gift culture that we treat the double quotes as some kind of interpolation operator and replace "gift culture" with its obvious substitution, 'Open Source'? Well, you should've written that as "$esr->{GIFT_CULTURE}" or else how are we to know?
Well, yeah, you might be able to kill 15 people in a crowded building, but you've got mad kung-fu skills. I mean, you could probably kill dozens of people with a simple pair of chopsticks. However, I think that after I smacked my first victim on the head with my hammer, the others would start hassling me and, in general, being pretty uncooperative about the whole business. But <sigh>, I've always been something of a pantywaist when it comes to killing hordes with common household instruments. After all, you know what they say:
I couldn't agree more. Mean old hippy longhairs! Now you've gone and made ESR's eyes wet with crocodile tears. Can't a man try and paint his own thinly veiled ideologies on the works of others without their taking offense? He was only trying to help, the poor thing. If you don't like his bazzar, then you can just leave, and if you give him any crap on the way out the door, I hope he knocks you upside the head with a little bit of the old Second Ammendment, if you get my drift. And don't give me any of this crap about how people were all working on collaborative development projects long before ESR came along and planted his trademark in it and started misrepresenting ideas at it, you pansy liberals; ideas originally expressed in more scholarly works such as Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. And just because you might think that his socio-economic philosophy is ill conceived doesn't mean you should bite his head off for trying to make a point on your behalf. He is only human and just because you might think he is full of #@%! doesn't mean you shouldn't thank him for trying to help you out, ungrateful pinko scum. Some of us actually agree with the man so if you don't like it, you can just leave it! You're refusal to agree with us is tearing this family apart and I won't stand for it any longer. Your father loves you, don't you realize that? Now you'd best just sit down at this table and try to pretend like you're actually part of this family or I'm going to disown you! I swear I will!
Wouldn't the fact that the MOSIX group, part of the Computer Science System Group of Hebrew University's Computer Science Institute, is located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem, Israel make it quite a bit more difficult to file a lawsuit? Regardless of the difficulties of the whole question of "who's responsibility it is", there is also the whole international <pause> thing.