More apps is certainly a good thing, and Kylix will undoubtedly generate some cool new Linux apps. I think that it is important to open Linux's doors to as many users as possible, and that _especially_ goes for users that are also programmers.
When it comes to Linux, the more the merrier.
However, I can't help but wonder which market Borland is aiming for with Kylix. Are they trying to persuade their Delphi coders to switch to Linux, or are they trying to persuade Linux hackers to switch to Delphi?
Not that it really matters to _me_. Kylix will undoubtedly mean more applications for Linux because it will make currently Windows-only Delphi projects portable to Linux. That is clearly a net win for Linux. However, creating Kylix seems like a lot of work just to create a Windows to Linux portability bridge for Delphi programs.
In other words, Borland is counting on seducing some existing and future Linux hackers (who are _not_ currently Delphi users) into using Delphi as their tool of choice. Otherwise porting to Linux would not grow the Delphi developer base at all.
So are there any non-Delphi users that would consider using a Linux port? I know that I certainly wouldn't. I am perfectly happy with the development tools that Linux currently provides for free. Not only are Linux tools affordable, but they also come with source code guaranteeing that I will _never_ be left high and dry by my tools vendor. I can understand why Delphi users are excited about Kylix, it opens new opportunities for them to leverage their Delphi skills, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Borland will be able to cash in on a Linux "boom."
It's really quite simple. ID Software did the work, they paid the money and they developed the software (Quake 1). They then licensed that software to the rest of the world under the GPL. They could have just as easily sunk the software to the bottom of the Pacific.
That's where your foster child analogy fails utterly. Quake 1 is ID Software's property and what Slade is doing is just as illegal as if he were making pirated copies of Windows 2000.
If Slade didn't like the license, then he should have written his own software from scratch. I can't make copies of MS Office and sell them to people at Costco, and Slade can _not_ distribute binary copies of Quake 1 derived software without distributing the source as well.
Straightforward as can be, ain't it?
GPLed software is just like commercial software in the fact that it is copyrighted material. In fact, it was just this type of behavior that the GPL was written to prevent. What gives Slade the right to rip-off ID Software? If everyone would just share source code then we would be able to cut lawyers clean out of the deal. Unfortunately there is always some doofus that wants to wreck it for everyone, and someone has to call in the attack dogs.
Exactly right. If there is one thing that annoys me about Mr. Katz is that he tends towards melodramatics. It's in everything that he does.
Geeks can't just be people who happen to enjoy playing with technology. No, they have to be downtrodden cast-outs. Frankly the more I read about Mr. Katz's "geeks" the more I become offended that the term might possibly apply to me.
I am not some sorry victim looking for salvation in an Emacs buffer.
His melodrama carries over into the rest of his narration as well. For example, I happen to live in Nampa ID. And while there is some agriculture that happens near Middleton, it certainly isn't the backwoods that Katz makes it out to be.
Heck, Middleton is 15 minutes from Boise, home of Hewlett Packard and Micron. Zilog is right down the street, and there is plenty of big business with the mandatory big networks of computers.
I am going to pretend, for a moment, that you are a serious poster, and that your series of remarks were meant as sincere criticisms of Linux.
That is a bit of a stretch, seeing as how your remarks about a "Linux registry setting," your juxtaposition of Mandrake and two of the BSDs, and your use of the words "rock solid," "scalable," and "NT Server" in the same sentence mark you as either a troll someone who has never used Linux.
Or, I suppose, a marketing guy. In which case your confusion on these matters makes sense:).
It seems to me that your own post proves that the Linux Marketing Juggernaut (LMG from now on) is kicking ass and taking names. After all, marketing is all about convincing people that a certain product is right for them.
If the LMG has convinced the pointy-haired bosses at your firm that they need to chuck their tried and true NT Servers for Linux, then you can bet your sweet life that there is some serious marketing going on. After all, Microsoft spends billions convincing these same pointy-haired types that Windows NT is the coolest thing since sliced bread, and yet the LMG (with an advertising budget several orders of magnitude less than MS) is winning the customers.
As for the Linux Windowing system, who cares if people don't know what it's called? It's not for sale separately anyhow. Linux is the name that your customers want to hear. The technical stuff is best left to the gearheads.
And before you blame Linux for poor name recognition perhaps you should take a look at the predicament that "Windows NT" is in. After spending ungodly amounts of money on Windows NT branding, Microsoft is chucking the NT monniker to the winds. What does your marketing savvy have to say about that? It sounds to me like Microsoft wants to remake NT's image, I wonder why?
Cygnus made money (millions) for years before being bought by RedHat. On a smaller scale there are plenty of people making money with Linux.
However, like the Internet boom that you mention, the Linux stock market boom is primarily driven by the anticipation of profits. It's certainly a gamble, but not as far-fetched as it may seem.
For example, Microsoft currently is the most capitalized company in the whole world. They have ammassed this wealth by creating and selling and supporting software (an OS primarily, but more recently all kinds of software).
Linux represents a chance for other software manufacturers to get on this gravy train. Sure, in order to nullify Microsofts huge install base RedHat and others have to give away large parts of the software, but on the other hand they also get a hand in the development of said software.
The end result is software that is arguably better than Microsoft's at a price that absolutely can't be beat. If Linux becomes the de-facto standard OS the Linux companies stand to make a lot of money selling hardware, consulting, proprietary Linux software, and support.
Enough people think that this is a possible future than RedHat is now worth billions.
If Cruose starts having native code programs written for it, than the next time they want to make a "next big thing" jump, they have the ball and chain of carrying all the old instructions with them.
It seems to me that this unfortunate occurance has made Intel billions of dollars over the life of the x86 instruction set.
If I were making a fancy dan new processor you could bet your socks that I would be interested in getting developers and users hooked on my instruction set. Otherwise I have to spend all my time worrying about my competitors out-performing my chip. After all, if the instruction set is taken out of the equation then it all comes down to power consumption and raw performance.
Right now the Crusoe processor has to emulate the x86 instruction set because no one is interested in anything else. But the x86's days are numbered. Pretty soon it will be a whole new ball game. At first most people are going to be interested in running their old 32 bit software on their shiny new Crusoe or IA64 chips, but it won't take long for the battle lines of the new instruction set to be drawn.
It makes me wonder what Transmeta really hired Linus for. Say what you will Linux will be a big part of the software world for some time to come, and it's low cost, small footprint, and high stability make it an excellent choice for smaller embedded applications (like the ones that the Crusoe will be used in).
The fact that Linus is working for Transmeta means that they have a substantial amount of control over what happens in the Linux kernel...
Perhaps this just means that the people who are most interested in this check are Slashdot readers that don't normally use eBay. I personally find the offer very interesting. However, I have never used eBay before, and so were I to decide to bid on the check I would probably need to create an account.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who use computers daily who have never felt the need to check out eBay.
Right On! Katz's article was ridiculous. He went looking for a couple of downtrodden "geeks," in some hick place, and the fact that he could back-hand the Mormons clinched the deal.
I especially liked the part where our heros make fake IDs.
After all, that can't be geeks if they aren't using their computers to BREAK THE LAW.
It is this kind of story that makes me glad I finally gave in and learned to use Emacs.
Honestly, aren't all of you tired of re-learning to use your IDEs every time that some guy in Sales decides that it's time for a new version. I don't even have to change editors when I switch languages. Python, Java, C, C++, Tcl, Scheme, Pascal, you name it Emacs will eat it for breakfast. In fact, it probably has a mode for whatever type of text editting that you are interested in.
The same is true (of course) for vi.
The fact of the matter is that there is nothing wrong with the free tools that are available for Linux, and once you learn to use them you will probably wonder what in the heck you were doing paying for your old tools every six months.
There are almost certainly areas where it makes sense to purchase commercial software for Linux, but development tools really isn't one of these areas.
Let's imagine that you wrote a compiler and gave away the source code to the world. You created compiler flags and documentation so that people who wanted to use your compiler to create ANSI C compliant programs would be able to. You then ported your compiler to every architecture that has ever existed.
Oh, and you did all of this for free.
Now after all of this was said and done, you realized that your life would be a lot easier if you made a few modifications to your nifty compiler. The extensions would not be ANSI C compatible, but they could be turned off. After all, the chances of you using a different compiler than the one you created (which runs on every platform ever) are very slim.
So your compiler gets some nifty new extensions that make your life easier.
The Free Software Foundation does not owe you a ANSI C compiler. They wrote gcc so that they would have a compiler to use, and they just happened to share. I think that it is patently ridiculous to label this act as evil just because it is possible to write code that doesn't port cleanly to other compilers.
After all, why should the FSF care about some other C compiler. They aren't ever going to use anything but gcc.
You still haven't answered my question as to which other C compiler is doing a better job than gcc when it comes to standards compliance. From my experience all C compilers want to lock you down to one platform or another. At least gcc will compile binaries for whatever hardware you are interested in.
Of course, I can take gcc, slap my own copyright on top, and market it as JasonCC. All of this is perfectly legal providing that I release it under the GPL.
I think that you would have to stretch "exclusive legal right" pretty far to say that the FSF has exclusive legal right over gcc. Heck, they don't even maintain it anymore Cygnus (meaning RedHat) does.
It takes the BSDL to make software truly proprietary (meaning you can create closed-incompatible, binary-only versions).
Yup. The "embrace and extend" philosophy exemplified in proprietary lock-in compilers like VC++ and gcc really suck dead donkey dick.
Perhaps you should look proprietary up in the dictionary before you apply it to gcc.
I would agree that gcc encourages people to use features that are not portable to other compilers, but that is a far cry from being proprietary. Ask the guys at Cygnus how much legal pressure they felt when the forked the gcc codebase if you have any doubts.
If you produced software that is supposed to used, then you should not care.
On the flip side, if the BSD advocate wanted to release the source code to his changes he shouldn't be concerned about whether or not the software was licensed under the GPL. After all, as long as the source code is "open" it makes no difference whether the license is GPL or BSDL.
The problems arise when someone wants to take the source code and make changes that are to be proprietary. The BSD licenses permit this, and the GPL and the LGPL licenses do not.
There are perfectly good reasons why a hacker might not want to have proprietary changes made to his software. The classic example is the addition of a proprietary extension that is incompatible with the original.
We've all seen proprietary "extensions" to open protocols and software, and we all hate them. They make our lives difficult, and get in the way of progress. The GPL makes these extensions impossible while the BSD style licenses actually encourages this sort of behavior. This is why GPL advocates "care" how their software is used. They have already given the user the right to use the software, and they have even given the user the right to modify the software. They simply haven't given you the right to make incompatible versions of the software.
Once again, unless you are planning to close the source code it makes no difference whether your code is released under the GPL or the BSD.
As for your comment about the changes belonging to the person who makes them, I agree. The person who writes the software should be able to choose the license for that software. If the author truly wants to be able to create proprietary extensions to the software then he/she is free to start from scratch.
If you produced software to push some cultish agenda, then many will stay away from your code.
And if you produced software so that you could lock your customers into a proprietary solution, then many will stay away from your binaries. If you produced software that is supposed to be "shared," then you should not care whether it is licensed under the GPL.
Yes, but of the people you know that like Linux how many of them did not get to work with it until just recently. I know in my case my Linux projects were almost completely under cover operations until just recently. My boss knew that there was some Linux running around, but his boss certainly did not, and the Linux boxes were only for "testing."
All it took was one spectacular WinMeltdown and several hugely successful IPOs and all of a sudden my Linux boxes are the official "solution."
Linux might not be in position to take over the desktop (yet), but it is well positioned to take over a huge chunk of Intel based Servers and Workstations. Linux is aimed squarely at Windows 2000's server market (and peripherally their Worskstation market), and they have got the price to beat:).
I honestly don't see how the UDI is going to help. I can't help but think that it's just commercial Unix vendors waking up to the fact that Linux actually supports more hardware than any of the commercial Unixes. When was the last time you sat down at your Linux box and said, "Darn, I really wish Linux had a driver for foo. SCO Unix has a driver for foo, I wish I could use that."
It simply doesn't happen.
Intel has come up with a clever hack that would allow Unix systems to share drivers, and now they want Linuxers to actually do the grunt work and write the drivers. It would be different if Intel had a whole bunch of UDI drivers for hardware that Linux didn't already support, but they don't. They are simply hoping to tap into Linux's talent pool.
As for the Linux port to the S/390, it appears that their are actually two of them. The reasons the non-IBM version was written can be found here. The same site says that the official IBM version was done "for political reasons."
While there is no question that the American military has been pushed into some questionable situations, it is also true that the world is probably a better place because of their stabilizing influence.
Would you rather there was ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, or perhaps you would have preferred the Iraqi's to overrun Kuwait? And let's not even get started on what would have happened if the Americans hadn't meddled in World War II.
Not too mention the fact that if the US Army did not exist then the United States would almost certainly be invaded. That may not seem like a big deal to you. But hey, I live here.
Perhaps it would strengthen your argument if you listed some of the places that you feel that the US should not be involved right now.
I agree. That was by far the most interesting part of the article. And I wouldn't personally bet on the U.S. being able to maintain a creative lead either. I am sure that there is plenty of talent world-wide that would be willing to work for less than your average U.S. based engineer.
In the past one of the things that has held up our less fortunate brethren is the lack of state of the art hardware, but that too could soon become a thing of the past. First of all, the price for an entry level system has dropped through the floor. And secondly, with the increasing reach of the Internet it is no longer necessary to have physical access to the hardware that you are programming. Any 386 will run vi acceptably. Add a modem, some tools like CVS, and ssh access to a fast machine somewhere and you are in business.
Distributions are rated for newbies because it's the newbies that need "reviews." Think about it, experienced Linux users already know the relative merits of the different distributions.
That's why Debian and Slackware continue to be used by actual Linuxers despite the fact that they generally get dinged by "reviews." Slackware is the most Unix-like (and some people actually like that!), and it has some far out installs (zipslack, bigslack, umsdos support, etc.). Debian, on the other hand, is without a doubt the most difficult Linux to install, but that is simply because it was designed to only be installed once and then simply upgraded forevermore.
Personally, I am glad for reviews like the one on C|NET. I think that they did a good job of differentiating the various distributions from the newbies point-of-view. Once the newbie gets some experience then it is very likely that they will want to see what the other distributions are all about. After all, one of the favorite past-times of the Linux community is distro-bashing, and they, no doubt, will want to be able to become involved in this important community activity:).
I am a pretty hard-core Emacs user, but even _I_ must admit that vim is a good choice for editting those pesky.php documents. It has intelligent syntax highlighting for PHP, it's fast, your fingers need never leave home row, and once you learn vi's eccentricities you will never again be able to type in anything else.
Denial of Service attacks are easily an order of magnitude less serious than losing sensitive information.
Not to mention the fact that while it is difficult to trace someone's location over the internet given enough time it is _not_ impossible. You could theoretically get into some pretty big trouble for very little gain.
There are ways around this as well. You can mount most of the partitions as read only (with the exception of/home/var/tmp), and you can mount those partitions so that they fsync automatically.
Or you could simply use the Linux FAT32 filesystem drivers and put these partitions on a FAT32 drive. After all, it's good enough for consumers _now_.
Caching the filesystem in memory is a _feature_ for what I use it for, but you _can_ turn it off, and you certainly can protect the parts of the hard drive that contain your kernel and boot loader.
Most of the people that are of the opinion that Linux isn't ready for the consumer simply do not have the Linux experience necessary to really know what can be done with Linux. They assume that Dell will do as crappy a job of installing Linux as they have, and therefore conclude that Linux is unusable for the unwashed masses.
Yes, Linux support costs money. But is support for a trimmed down bullet-proofed version of Linux going to be any more expensive than supporting Windows 98?
My guess is that _long term_ supporting Linux would be a major money saver. This is especially true of Linux client machines. Heck most of the hard drive can be mounted read only for crying out loud. Cut out all of the server stuff, configure a Window manager with buttons for all of the applications that you are shipping and then sit back and relax.
Heck, you can even preconfigure their dial-up networking and sell the machine with Internet service included.
Yes, but Microsoft's strength has always been that you can't use a PC without paying a tax to them. PC's without Windows are, by definition, eating into Windows market share.
Now of course these companies are not planning on ditching Windows completely, but less than a year ago you couldn't buy a computer with Windows. That is most certainly a step in the right direction.
Besides, once the OEMs start selling Windowless PCs they will soon come to realize that they have a higher profit margin on the non-Windows PC. If these things sell at _all_ the incentive to sell Windows PCs will plummet.
So Dell would have to write some documentation and set up a couple of things so that they would be bulletproof. Just because _you_ don't know how to do it does not mean that it can't be done.
The fact of the matter is that most of the stuff you are talking about would be _trivial_ to fix if you were sure exactly what the machine was going to be used for.
A big part of the problem with Linux is that it can be configured to do too much stuff. Cut out all of the server stuff and you can make incredibly resilient client machines that are as easy to use as any Windows box around. It wouldn't have IE (which I would agree is a nicer browser), but it wouldn't crash every fifteen minutes either, and it would cost less.
Microsoft has become the most capitalized company in the world by selling and operating system. It would be worth _billions_ to the hardware OEMs to cut them out of the deal. I imagine that you could get some pretty fancy documentation for that kind of money.
Who is it that falls for these "announcements." Of course AMD is working on a 1GHz chip, that's what chip manufacturers do.
I can understand, a little anyway, why it makes sense for software manufacturers to promote vapor ware. After all, they are trying to keep you from buying into their competitors completely incompatible system. AMD and Intel, on the other hand are making products that are essentially drop in replacements for each other.
Does the average consumer care where his wheat was grown? Heck no. Soon they won't care who made their processor either. It will all be about speed and price.
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More apps is certainly a good thing, and Kylix will undoubtedly generate some cool new Linux apps. I think that it is important to open Linux's doors to as many users as possible, and that _especially_ goes for users that are also programmers.
When it comes to Linux, the more the merrier.
However, I can't help but wonder which market Borland is aiming for with Kylix. Are they trying to persuade their Delphi coders to switch to Linux, or are they trying to persuade Linux hackers to switch to Delphi?
Not that it really matters to _me_. Kylix will undoubtedly mean more applications for Linux because it will make currently Windows-only Delphi projects portable to Linux. That is clearly a net win for Linux. However, creating Kylix seems like a lot of work just to create a Windows to Linux portability bridge for Delphi programs.
In other words, Borland is counting on seducing some existing and future Linux hackers (who are _not_ currently Delphi users) into using Delphi as their tool of choice. Otherwise porting to Linux would not grow the Delphi developer base at all.
So are there any non-Delphi users that would consider using a Linux port? I know that I certainly wouldn't. I am perfectly happy with the development tools that Linux currently provides for free. Not only are Linux tools affordable, but they also come with source code guaranteeing that I will _never_ be left high and dry by my tools vendor. I can understand why Delphi users are excited about Kylix, it opens new opportunities for them to leverage their Delphi skills, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Borland will be able to cash in on a Linux "boom."
It's really quite simple. ID Software did the work, they paid the money and they developed the software (Quake 1). They then licensed that software to the rest of the world under the GPL. They could have just as easily sunk the software to the bottom of the Pacific.
That's where your foster child analogy fails utterly. Quake 1 is ID Software's property and what Slade is doing is just as illegal as if he were making pirated copies of Windows 2000.
If Slade didn't like the license, then he should have written his own software from scratch. I can't make copies of MS Office and sell them to people at Costco, and Slade can _not_ distribute binary copies of Quake 1 derived software without distributing the source as well.
Straightforward as can be, ain't it?
GPLed software is just like commercial software in the fact that it is copyrighted material. In fact, it was just this type of behavior that the GPL was written to prevent. What gives Slade the right to rip-off ID Software? If everyone would just share source code then we would be able to cut lawyers clean out of the deal. Unfortunately there is always some doofus that wants to wreck it for everyone, and someone has to call in the attack dogs.
It's a crying shame.
Exactly right. If there is one thing that annoys me about Mr. Katz is that he tends towards melodramatics. It's in everything that he does.
Geeks can't just be people who happen to enjoy playing with technology. No, they have to be downtrodden cast-outs. Frankly the more I read about Mr. Katz's "geeks" the more I become offended that the term might possibly apply to me.
I am not some sorry victim looking for salvation in an Emacs buffer.
His melodrama carries over into the rest of his narration as well. For example, I happen to live in Nampa ID. And while there is some agriculture that happens near Middleton, it certainly isn't the backwoods that Katz makes it out to be.
Heck, Middleton is 15 minutes from Boise, home of Hewlett Packard and Micron. Zilog is right down the street, and there is plenty of big business with the mandatory big networks of computers.
I am going to pretend, for a moment, that you are a serious poster, and that your series of remarks were meant as sincere criticisms of Linux.
:).
That is a bit of a stretch, seeing as how your remarks about a "Linux registry setting," your juxtaposition of Mandrake and two of the BSDs, and your use of the words "rock solid," "scalable," and "NT Server" in the same sentence mark you as either a troll someone who has never used Linux.
Or, I suppose, a marketing guy. In which case your confusion on these matters makes sense
It seems to me that your own post proves that the Linux Marketing Juggernaut (LMG from now on) is kicking ass and taking names. After all, marketing is all about convincing people that a certain product is right for them.
If the LMG has convinced the pointy-haired bosses at your firm that they need to chuck their tried and true NT Servers for Linux, then you can bet your sweet life that there is some serious marketing going on. After all, Microsoft spends billions convincing these same pointy-haired types that Windows NT is the coolest thing since sliced bread, and yet the LMG (with an advertising budget several orders of magnitude less than MS) is winning the customers.
As for the Linux Windowing system, who cares if people don't know what it's called? It's not for sale separately anyhow. Linux is the name that your customers want to hear. The technical stuff is best left to the gearheads.
And before you blame Linux for poor name recognition perhaps you should take a look at the predicament that "Windows NT" is in. After spending ungodly amounts of money on Windows NT branding, Microsoft is chucking the NT monniker to the winds. What does your marketing savvy have to say about that? It sounds to me like Microsoft wants to remake NT's image, I wonder why?
Cygnus made money (millions) for years before being bought by RedHat. On a smaller scale there are plenty of people making money with Linux.
However, like the Internet boom that you mention, the Linux stock market boom is primarily driven by the anticipation of profits. It's certainly a gamble, but not as far-fetched as it may seem.
For example, Microsoft currently is the most capitalized company in the whole world. They have ammassed this wealth by creating and selling and supporting software (an OS primarily, but more recently all kinds of software).
Linux represents a chance for other software manufacturers to get on this gravy train. Sure, in order to nullify Microsofts huge install base RedHat and others have to give away large parts of the software, but on the other hand they also get a hand in the development of said software.
The end result is software that is arguably better than Microsoft's at a price that absolutely can't be beat. If Linux becomes the de-facto standard OS the Linux companies stand to make a lot of money selling hardware, consulting, proprietary Linux software, and support.
Enough people think that this is a possible future than RedHat is now worth billions.
If Cruose starts having native code programs written for it, than the next time they want to make a "next big thing" jump, they have the ball and chain of carrying all the old instructions with them.
It seems to me that this unfortunate occurance has made Intel billions of dollars over the life of the x86 instruction set.
If I were making a fancy dan new processor you could bet your socks that I would be interested in getting developers and users hooked on my instruction set. Otherwise I have to spend all my time worrying about my competitors out-performing my chip. After all, if the instruction set is taken out of the equation then it all comes down to power consumption and raw performance.
Right now the Crusoe processor has to emulate the x86 instruction set because no one is interested in anything else. But the x86's days are numbered. Pretty soon it will be a whole new ball game. At first most people are going to be interested in running their old 32 bit software on their shiny new Crusoe or IA64 chips, but it won't take long for the battle lines of the new instruction set to be drawn.
It makes me wonder what Transmeta really hired Linus for. Say what you will Linux will be a big part of the software world for some time to come, and it's low cost, small footprint, and high stability make it an excellent choice for smaller embedded applications (like the ones that the Crusoe will be used in).
The fact that Linus is working for Transmeta means that they have a substantial amount of control over what happens in the Linux kernel...
We live in interesting times.
Perhaps this just means that the people who are most interested in this check are Slashdot readers that don't normally use eBay. I personally find the offer very interesting. However, I have never used eBay before, and so were I to decide to bid on the check I would probably need to create an account.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who use computers daily who have never felt the need to check out eBay.
Right On! Katz's article was ridiculous. He went looking for a couple of downtrodden "geeks," in some hick place, and the fact that he could back-hand the Mormons clinched the deal.
I especially liked the part where our heros make fake IDs.
After all, that can't be geeks if they aren't using their computers to BREAK THE LAW.
It is this kind of story that makes me glad I finally gave in and learned to use Emacs.
Honestly, aren't all of you tired of re-learning to use your IDEs every time that some guy in Sales decides that it's time for a new version. I don't even have to change editors when I switch languages. Python, Java, C, C++, Tcl, Scheme, Pascal, you name it Emacs will eat it for breakfast. In fact, it probably has a mode for whatever type of text editting that you are interested in.
The same is true (of course) for vi.
The fact of the matter is that there is nothing wrong with the free tools that are available for Linux, and once you learn to use them you will probably wonder what in the heck you were doing paying for your old tools every six months.
There are almost certainly areas where it makes sense to purchase commercial software for Linux, but development tools really isn't one of these areas.
Let's imagine that you wrote a compiler and gave away the source code to the world. You created compiler flags and documentation so that people who wanted to use your compiler to create ANSI C compliant programs would be able to. You then ported your compiler to every architecture that has ever existed.
Oh, and you did all of this for free.
Now after all of this was said and done, you realized that your life would be a lot easier if you made a few modifications to your nifty compiler. The extensions would not be ANSI C compatible, but they could be turned off. After all, the chances of you using a different compiler than the one you created (which runs on every platform ever) are very slim.
So your compiler gets some nifty new extensions that make your life easier.
The Free Software Foundation does not owe you a ANSI C compiler. They wrote gcc so that they would have a compiler to use, and they just happened to share. I think that it is patently ridiculous to label this act as evil just because it is possible to write code that doesn't port cleanly to other compilers.
After all, why should the FSF care about some other C compiler. They aren't ever going to use anything but gcc.
You still haven't answered my question as to which other C compiler is doing a better job than gcc when it comes to standards compliance. From my experience all C compilers want to lock you down to one platform or another. At least gcc will compile binaries for whatever hardware you are interested in.
Of course, I can take gcc, slap my own copyright on top, and market it as JasonCC. All of this is perfectly legal providing that I release it under the GPL.
I think that you would have to stretch "exclusive legal right" pretty far to say that the FSF has exclusive legal right over gcc. Heck, they don't even maintain it anymore Cygnus (meaning RedHat) does.
It takes the BSDL to make software truly proprietary (meaning you can create closed-incompatible, binary-only versions).
Yup. The "embrace and extend" philosophy exemplified in proprietary lock-in compilers like VC++ and gcc really suck dead donkey dick.
Perhaps you should look proprietary up in the dictionary before you apply it to gcc.
I would agree that gcc encourages people to use features that are not portable to other compilers, but that is a far cry from being proprietary. Ask the guys at Cygnus how much legal pressure they felt when the forked the gcc codebase if you have any doubts.
His changes are his work...not yours.
If you produced software that is supposed to used, then you should not care.
On the flip side, if the BSD advocate wanted to release the source code to his changes he shouldn't be concerned about whether or not the software was licensed under the GPL. After all, as long as the source code is "open" it makes no difference whether the license is GPL or BSDL.
The problems arise when someone wants to take the source code and make changes that are to be proprietary. The BSD licenses permit this, and the GPL and the LGPL licenses do not.
There are perfectly good reasons why a hacker might not want to have proprietary changes made to his software. The classic example is the addition of a proprietary extension that is incompatible with the original.
We've all seen proprietary "extensions" to open protocols and software, and we all hate them. They make our lives difficult, and get in the way of progress. The GPL makes these extensions impossible while the BSD style licenses actually encourages this sort of behavior. This is why GPL advocates "care" how their software is used. They have already given the user the right to use the software, and they have even given the user the right to modify the software. They simply haven't given you the right to make incompatible versions of the software.
Once again, unless you are planning to close the source code it makes no difference whether your code is released under the GPL or the BSD.
As for your comment about the changes belonging to the person who makes them, I agree. The person who writes the software should be able to choose the license for that software. If the author truly wants to be able to create proprietary extensions to the software then he/she is free to start from scratch.
If you produced software to push some cultish agenda, then many will stay away from your code.
And if you produced software so that you could lock your customers into a proprietary solution, then many will stay away from your binaries. If you produced software that is supposed to be "shared," then you should not care whether it is licensed under the GPL.
Yes, but of the people you know that like Linux how many of them did not get to work with it until just recently. I know in my case my Linux projects were almost completely under cover operations until just recently. My boss knew that there was some Linux running around, but his boss certainly did not, and the Linux boxes were only for "testing."
:).
All it took was one spectacular WinMeltdown and several hugely successful IPOs and all of a sudden my Linux boxes are the official "solution."
Linux might not be in position to take over the desktop (yet), but it is well positioned to take over a huge chunk of Intel based Servers and Workstations. Linux is aimed squarely at Windows 2000's server market (and peripherally their Worskstation market), and they have got the price to beat
I honestly don't see how the UDI is going to help. I can't help but think that it's just commercial Unix vendors waking up to the fact that Linux actually supports more hardware than any of the commercial Unixes. When was the last time you sat down at your Linux box and said, "Darn, I really wish Linux had a driver for foo. SCO Unix has a driver for foo, I wish I could use that."
It simply doesn't happen.
Intel has come up with a clever hack that would allow Unix systems to share drivers, and now they want Linuxers to actually do the grunt work and write the drivers. It would be different if Intel had a whole bunch of UDI drivers for hardware that Linux didn't already support, but they don't. They are simply hoping to tap into Linux's talent pool.
As for the Linux port to the S/390, it appears that their are actually two of them. The reasons the non-IBM version was written can be found here. The same site says that the official IBM version was done "for political reasons."
While there is no question that the American military has been pushed into some questionable situations, it is also true that the world is probably a better place because of their stabilizing influence.
Would you rather there was ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, or perhaps you would have preferred the Iraqi's to overrun Kuwait? And let's not even get started on what would have happened if the Americans hadn't meddled in World War II.
Not too mention the fact that if the US Army did not exist then the United States would almost certainly be invaded. That may not seem like a big deal to you. But hey, I live here.
Perhaps it would strengthen your argument if you listed some of the places that you feel that the US should not be involved right now.
I agree. That was by far the most interesting part of the article. And I wouldn't personally bet on the U.S. being able to maintain a creative lead either. I am sure that there is plenty of talent world-wide that would be willing to work for less than your average U.S. based engineer.
In the past one of the things that has held up our less fortunate brethren is the lack of state of the art hardware, but that too could soon become a thing of the past. First of all, the price for an entry level system has dropped through the floor. And secondly, with the increasing reach of the Internet it is no longer necessary to have physical access to the hardware that you are programming. Any 386 will run vi acceptably. Add a modem, some tools like CVS, and ssh access to a fast machine somewhere and you are in business.
We live in interesting times.
Distributions are rated for newbies because it's the newbies that need "reviews." Think about it, experienced Linux users already know the relative merits of the different distributions.
:).
That's why Debian and Slackware continue to be used by actual Linuxers despite the fact that they generally get dinged by "reviews." Slackware is the most Unix-like (and some people actually like that!), and it has some far out installs (zipslack, bigslack, umsdos support, etc.). Debian, on the other hand, is without a doubt the most difficult Linux to install, but that is simply because it was designed to only be installed once and then simply upgraded forevermore.
Personally, I am glad for reviews like the one on C|NET. I think that they did a good job of differentiating the various distributions from the newbies point-of-view. Once the newbie gets some experience then it is very likely that they will want to see what the other distributions are all about. After all, one of the favorite past-times of the Linux community is distro-bashing, and they, no doubt, will want to be able to become involved in this important community activity
I am a pretty hard-core Emacs user, but even _I_ must admit that vim is a good choice for editting those pesky .php documents. It has intelligent syntax highlighting for PHP, it's fast, your fingers need never leave home row, and once you learn vi's eccentricities you will never again be able to type in anything else.
Denial of Service attacks are easily an order of magnitude less serious than losing sensitive information.
Not to mention the fact that while it is difficult to trace someone's location over the internet given enough time it is _not_ impossible. You could theoretically get into some pretty big trouble for very little gain.
There are ways around this as well. You can mount most of the partitions as read only (with the exception of /home /var /tmp), and you can mount those partitions so that they fsync automatically.
Or you could simply use the Linux FAT32 filesystem drivers and put these partitions on a FAT32 drive. After all, it's good enough for consumers _now_.
Caching the filesystem in memory is a _feature_ for what I use it for, but you _can_ turn it off, and you certainly can protect the parts of the hard drive that contain your kernel and boot loader.
Most of the people that are of the opinion that Linux isn't ready for the consumer simply do not have the Linux experience necessary to really know what can be done with Linux. They assume that Dell will do as crappy a job of installing Linux as they have, and therefore conclude that Linux is unusable for the unwashed masses.
Yes, Linux support costs money. But is support for a trimmed down bullet-proofed version of Linux going to be any more expensive than supporting Windows 98?
My guess is that _long term_ supporting Linux would be a major money saver. This is especially true of Linux client machines. Heck most of the hard drive can be mounted read only for crying out loud. Cut out all of the server stuff, configure a Window manager with buttons for all of the applications that you are shipping and then sit back and relax.
Heck, you can even preconfigure their dial-up networking and sell the machine with Internet service included.
Yes, but Microsoft's strength has always been that you can't use a PC without paying a tax to them. PC's without Windows are, by definition, eating into Windows market share.
Now of course these companies are not planning on ditching Windows completely, but less than a year ago you couldn't buy a computer with Windows. That is most certainly a step in the right direction.
Besides, once the OEMs start selling Windowless PCs they will soon come to realize that they have a higher profit margin on the non-Windows PC. If these things sell at _all_ the incentive to sell Windows PCs will plummet.
So Dell would have to write some documentation and set up a couple of things so that they would be bulletproof. Just because _you_ don't know how to do it does not mean that it can't be done.
The fact of the matter is that most of the stuff you are talking about would be _trivial_ to fix if you were sure exactly what the machine was going to be used for.
A big part of the problem with Linux is that it can be configured to do too much stuff. Cut out all of the server stuff and you can make incredibly resilient client machines that are as easy to use as any Windows box around. It wouldn't have IE (which I would agree is a nicer browser), but it wouldn't crash every fifteen minutes either, and it would cost less.
Microsoft has become the most capitalized company in the world by selling and operating system. It would be worth _billions_ to the hardware OEMs to cut them out of the deal. I imagine that you could get some pretty fancy documentation for that kind of money.
Who is it that falls for these "announcements." Of course AMD is working on a 1GHz chip, that's what chip manufacturers do.
I can understand, a little anyway, why it makes sense for software manufacturers to promote vapor ware. After all, they are trying to keep you from buying into their competitors completely incompatible system. AMD and Intel, on the other hand are making products that are essentially drop in replacements for each other.
Does the average consumer care where his wheat was grown? Heck no. Soon they won't care who made their processor either. It will all be about speed and price.