Actually, one of the problems with PostgreSQL (and I am a huge PostgreSQL fan) is that it really isn't possible to upgrade it in place like you can upgrade MySQL. The core developers have changed the on disk format of every single release that I am aware of (I have played with PostgreSQL since it was known as Postgres95). This means that an upgrade of PostgreSQL requires a dump to a very large text file and a reload. This process takes quite a bit of time, and is inherently dangerous.
There has been some talk on the PostgreSQL mailing lists about writing a tool that would read the various on-disk PostgreSQL formats and change them on the fly, thus allowing the user to upgrade in place. Instead of dumping your database to a text file, upgrading PostgreSQL, and reloading your database from the text file, you could simply shut down the postmaster, upgrade PostgreSQL, run the automatic fix-it tool, and restart your new postmaster. If RedHat has written such a tool for PostgreSQL that would be very cool (and well worth $2K a year IMHO).
In other words the trick isn't replacing rpm -i postgres-..., but rather the trick is replacing rpm -Uvh postgres-...
Microsoft is not out to test the validity of the GPL. The last thing that Microsoft wants is to set any precedent that would limit the power of copyright. After all, they rely on the power of copyright to limit the legal use of their software a lot more than the GPL does.
Other than that, I agree. What Microsoft says is always smoke and mirrors. Heck, I wouldn't believe them if they told me the sky was blue (because in the background they would probably be working on changing the color of the sky).
It's already been done. Mozilla will happily remember your usernames and passwords for as many sites as you like. If you wish you can password protect this information store (I believe that IE does something similar as well). This is a much better solution than putting all of the information about everyone in one huge database. Sure, some people will probably lose their passwords when their hard drives crash, and some will have their master password stolen by thieves. But I can guarantee you that if everyone's information was in one net connected database eventually someone would learn to steal that information from everyone (the only trick would be to steal the information slowly enough so that Microsoft wouldn't notice).
Of course, if you put me in charge of the database that would be a different thing altogether. I would never use it for nefarious purposes, and I would be very careful to make sure it never was stolen:).
The funny thing is that this could really work, but not if Microsoft insists on charging money for it. Heck, they should be giving away Windows XP and then hold everyone's data hostage.
Yikes! That's what I get for getting excited about a press report. $600K is not a whole lot of profit when you have $20 million in one time charges. Still, it looks much better for RedHat than for VA Linux. Their revenues are up, and they are able to partner with Dell, Compaq, and IBM instead of having to compete with them. Plus, RedHat isn't quite as extravagant with their money. Their big ticket purchase was Cygnus (who had a proven track record of actually making money, and a huge pile of gifted hackers). VA Linux, on the other hand, bought into the whole dot com buzz to a much larger extent. Most of their clients were dot coms, and they themselves have spent a substantial amount of money on web properties like Linux.comm, sourcefore, freshmeat, and (of course) slashdot. Until advertisers realize that online ads probably are at least as effective as print ads web properties are going to be hard pressed to make a profit. Even if their sites are popular (and their ads well targetted).
On a much lighter note, it would appear that RedHat, at least, is actually profitable.
What's more, they are making a profit at a time when everyone else is feeling a definite crunch.
VA Linux's business plan of selling servers to dot coms looked like a pretty good idea when VC funded flowed like a river, but now that times are tight the hardware market is pretty amazingly brutal.
It's not slashdot that I fear for, as much as I love it. Heck, my productivity would improve quite a bit without slashdot. I am much more concerned about sourceforge.net. There are a lot of important (and not so important) projects going on at sourceforge. I personally think that the Free Software movement would be dealt a substantial blow if we had to go back to relying on Anonymous FTP at sunsite (er... metalab, er... ibiblio).
I imagine that there is a pretty signficant cost associated with hosting sourceforge.
ESR was doing this more out of a desire to show what can be done with his nifty creation than to show what should be done. Apparently he wrote the entire interface on an airplane trip.
The cool part is that this particular interface is one of four that use his Python based backend configurator whatsit. In othe words the underlying software is designed to be useful, and the Zork interface only shows how flexible and powerful it is (and how easy it is to modify it so that it does what you would like).
And before you get all high and mighty about Microsoft and their business attitude, just remember that it was the folks at Microsoft that included a useable flight simulator in Excel. Compared to that particular stunt this hack is nothing. At least ESR's Zork kernel configurator is still useful as a kernel configuration tool.
I agree with your take on Mozilla. AOL is never going to be able to sell copies of mozilla. However, since that is not how they make money, it works out well for them.
Just imagine how badly their XP negotiations with Microsoft would be going right now if they didn't have the Mozilla trump card up their sleeve. They would be screwed. AOL needs an independent browser, and the GPL allows them to build one without fronting all of the costs themselves. If you look at the commits you would notice that their are plenty of hackers with email addresses from other companies. That is valuable work that AOL does not have to pay for. So the GPL is definitely working in AOL's favor.
And just because a piece of software is GPLed doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be a source of income. Cygnus was able to make money for years supporting gcc. They got greedy during the tech fever on the stock market, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their business plan before that was invalid.
In fact, there are lots of companies that wouldn't have even had a prayer of being successful without the GPL. No one was interested in yet another proprietary widget set. And yet thanks to the fact that they released under the GPL QT became popular with hackers and now TrollTech is able to sell proprietary licenses of their software to people who don't want to make free software (but still want to use QT).
The folks developing MySQL are another good example of how to make money off of a GPLed product. Who would be interested in yet another proprietary database (especially one as limited as MySQL). However, if you give it away for free, and sell service and support then your product has a good chance of becoming quite popular. And the fact that independent developers will help you improve the product doesn't hurt either.
Sure, there are a lot of developers working on Free Software that aren't ever going to get paid for it, but there are lots of hackers that are getting paid to hack on Free Software, and their are some fairly successful businesses that are using this model.
IBM, Sun, and HP care a lot about the GPL. After all, they could have released their software under some other free license, but they didn't. They wanted to make sure that they released the software under a license that would guarantee that their work could not be used against them. GPLed works are embrace and extend proof. It is impossible to add proprietary extensions to a piece of software when you have to release the source code along with the binaries. These big business know this, and so they use the GPL when they are giving out source. In fact, the GPL is the only free software license that these companies are likely to use. Don't look for BSD style licensed software from IBM or Sun anytime soon.
Not only is the GPL embrace and extend proof, it is also possible for the copyright holder to license the code under another license for people who are willing to pay. This is how the folks at TrollTech make a living with QT. QT is free for free software products, but commercial products have to pay for a commercial license.
The GPL will almost certainly harm software only shops that aren't interested in selling service and support as their primary business, but that's just the way things are. Only a small percentage of programmers actually work in this type of environment, and protecting these people's jobs is akin to protecting the jobs of buggy whip manufacturers after the automobile became popular. As free software becomes more and more competitive programmers that buck the trend will find themselves looking for new work.
But it isn't only free software that makes it hard to compete. Nowadays it is impossible to make money selling a web browser, but is that Netscape's fault for GPLing their browser, or is it Microsoft's fault for bundling their web browser with Windows. The answer is obvious, and it illustrates perfectly the plight of the commercial software developer. Too many of your competitors are willing to give software away.
This has actually already been done. You can print to either Quicken/Quickbook style checks or Microsoft money style checks (or you can create your own custom format).
Gnucash 1.6.0 really is getting to be a pretty full featured program. It's not much like the old X-Accountant program that you probably tried way back when.
Part of the reason that GPLed software is becoming more and more popular is that software developers the world over are starting to realize that none of us are going to be the next Bill Gates. The days when you can do a project that is significant enough to become a commercial product as a solo project (or even with a small group of hackers) is long past. And even if you do come out with a piece of software that has commercial promise their is no guarantee that one of the gigantic software houses (ie Microsoft) isn't going to simply clone your product, undercut your prices, and out market you. Heck, even large commercial software houses like Corel and Borland are having a hard time keeping their heads above water, and they have large software applications that people are willing to pay money for. Microsoft's "integration" is making it increasingly hard for their products to compete (because they don't integrate as well with the rest of the Microsoft stable of products).
And Microsoft gets bigger every year. They are continually on the look out for new market niches to dominate. With their purchase of Great Plains Microsoft is getting set to dominate the small business accounting world,.Net aims at Microsoft controlling a major portion of the web, etc. etc.
This is why companies like IBM, Sun, and HP are now pitching software into the GPL world. For example, Sun knows that the only chance that an Office suite has against Microsoft Office is if it is free, and guaranteed to remain that way forever. So OpenOffice has been released under the GPL for three reasons 1) so they can get some help from like minded hackers, and 2) they want to create a market for an office suite that works well with their Unix based hardware, 3) they hope to make office suites a commodity and cut off one of Microsoft's important revenue streams while growing demand for their Unix servers.
IBM is working on doing the same thing with web services. They are helping with Apache and SOAP because they want to be able to sell IBM servers running OS400 or AIX (or whatever) that are capable of working with.Net clients. Like Sun, they would like the help of like minded hackers, and they want to make sure that their hardware has a capable set of tools.
HP, on the other hand, has already created a neat set of tools (e-Speak or something) but no one has heard of it, or is interested in using it. They hope that releasing the source code will help it become a standard.
Even more importantly, with GPLed software you don't have to be a big company to make a difference. Independent coders all over the world can collaborate on software that they all can sell as a service. And hackers working for large non-software oriented corporations can work together on truly interoperable infrastructure.
You can try to be the next Bill Gates if you want, but the outlook for making that kind of money from commercial software (at this point in the race) is pretty slim. The competition simply has too much of a head start.
The my entire/etc/apt/sources.list consists of two lines:
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable non-US/main
Notice that I am not using Ximian's packages. I have used them in the past, but unstable has generally had the software I needed without the extra hassle of dealing with Ximian and their sometimes not quite Debian compliant packages. I ended up removing all of the ximian packages some time ago.
RedHat is a fine choice for a distribution, and Debian isn't for everyone. It seems to me that RedHat probably would be the way to go if you were primarily interested in Ximian's Gnome packages. At least with RedHat those packages are likely to be well tested.
Either way, there certainly is no evidence of DLL Hell. It is just a case of a program that has a lot of required libraries. To my mind this is the best sort of code reuse, and is definitely a good thing.
The difference is that in Linux you can use LD_LIBRARY_PATH so that you can guarantee that your application loads the dynamic libraries that you need. Couple that with a library versioning system that has major and minor revision numbers and that allows you to have several different versions of a library and you have a system that is basically DLL-Hell-proof.
The author of the original lwn.net article apparently simply doesn't know what the heck he is talking about. If the Linux system that you are using does not make adding new libraries a trivial undertaking then this needs to be filed as a bug. Gnucash 1.6.0 is a new release, and to run new releases you either have to know how to build and install software, or you have to wait until someone else does it for you.
To illustrate this, I spent a small portion of time this morning playing with Debian unstable's version of gnucash-1.6.0. I installed it with a simple 'apt-get install gnucash' and it painlessly downloaded gnucash and all of the required libs (that I didn't already have). After nearly an hour of playing things seem to be just fine (and gnucash is much improved over the 1.4 series).
Dynamic libraries are good. They are even good on Windows now that Windows 2000 has finally got their act together and allows multiple versions of the same DLL to be in memory at the same time. They have been useful on Linux for quite some time.
I found it a little bit ironic that I read the lwn.net article about Gnucash yesterday afternoon and this morning my daily 'apt-get update ; apt-get -dy dist-upgrade' of Debian unstable put a copy of gnucash-1.6.0 on my desktop. Also included in Debian unstable is Evolution 0.10, Mozilla 0.9.1, and Nautilus 1.0.3 they all seem to work together fairly well. It seems that a version of Netscape is also available, but I wouldn't know, I haven't used Netscape in some time.
Shared libraries are good. And shared libraries are especially good in Linux where it is a trivial thing to have different applications use different versions of the same dynamic libraries. With the next generation of Linux distributions all of these libraries will be included (probably by default), and so installing will be a piece of cake.
The primary reason that anyone cared about making Python's license GPL compatible is due to the fact that Python is a very popular embedded language. In fact, that's one of Python's major strengths. Before version 1.6 came out (with a GPL incompatible license) a whole pile of GPLed programs had already adopted Python as their embedded scripting language. However, with the new license they no longer could use the newer version of Python (because of the incompatible license). That meant that all of these projects were going to be stuck with version 1.5.2 of Python forever (several of them probably wished that they had followed the GNU standard and embedded guile instead).
Guido wanted to make sure that Python could still be embedded in GPLed software, and so the Python folks have been working really hard to sort the license stuff out.
As for why you would use the GPL as a license. Well, there are several reasons. Many free software hackers use the GPL for political reasons. They feel that the "freedom" that the GPL insures is worth the extra hassle. Other more pragmatic hackers use the GPL because it allows them to release the source code to their work and yet still maintain control of it. For example, it is becoming fairly common to release GPLed software under dual licenses. To people who want to use the source in Free Software the author shares the source under the GPL. However, if someone wants to use the same software in a commercial project then the author licenses the code to the individual or company under a commercial license. That way the hacker can make his software available to other free software hackers under a free license, but still charge commercial developers money for the same source.
It is important to note that Python is not releasing their source under the GPL. Their license is quite a bit more liberal than the GPL and allows the use of Python source in commercial closed source products. Their new license is simply GPL compatible, which means that GPL hackers will be able to upgrade.
My guess is that the reason your parents trust you is that you are trustworthy. I would also bet that either your parents are extremely naive (and lucky), or that you had already shown them from your actions that you could be trusted. My parents never followed me around making sure that I didn't do drugs, or what have you, because I showed them that I was trustworthy. I followed the rules they set, I tried to stay out of trouble, and I was respectful (for the most part).
Most kids that complain about parental controls do so because they are not trustworthy. The real reason that they complain is that their parents are cramping their style. They want their parents to "trust" them, but only because it would give them an opportunity to do something they have been forbidden to do.
So yes, how you react most definitely depends on the child. And sometimes there literally is nothing you can do. Some children turn out great no matter how stupid the parents are, and some children screw up no matter how much you love them and care for them. That's why having the government get involved with raising children is such a bad idea. Children are individuals, and need individual care.
Yes, but last time Intel had problems AMD wasn't breathing down their neck. While Intel's Pentium 60 was bad, AMD's offerings were worse. That is not the case anymore.
Another major difference is that this time there is a general softness in the PC market, and the best selling PCs are not the $2000 fire-breathers, but the sub $1000 value PCs (where AMD has done remarkably well).
It certainly is true that Intel still has Dell in the bag that could change at a moments notice. If Intel were to have a bad recall now Dell would switch in a moment. They would have little choice.
The fact that Intel has billions in the bank is nice, but nobody seriously thinks that they are likely to go out of business anytime soon. What is far more likely is that Intel will not be able to keep up the revenue growth that has pushed its stock price into the sky.
And when it comes to stock prices, the two for one deal you mentioned certainly can't help things. I don't even know if what you say is true, but if Intel is giving two for one deals then one of two things must be true. Either Intel is purchasing the second stock with some of their billions (basically a stock buy back) or they are diluting the value of the stock that their investors already own. Neither of these scenarios are good (in the long run).
You see, basically what Intel is saying (if this is true) is that their stock is really worth half of what it is currently listed (otherwise they wouldn't be giving stock away).
Exactly, censorship is dangerous in the same way that prohibition was. You can't make people do the "right" thing. Trying to force people to make intelligent choices only makes things worse.
However, this does not mean that alcohol isn't the root of a great deal of the more serious problems in the U.S., and it also doesn't mean that pornography is harmless. Some people can handle it, but many people only think that they can handle it.
In other words, I don't want the government to try and save me and my children, but I don't believe the media either when they try to tell me that pornography isn't harmful. It certainly is harmful, but the only thing that I can do about it is stay away from it myself, and try and keep its influence from my family. When we try and force others (even if we are right) we only make things worse.
The difference is that it isn't the government that is doing the censoring. It's perfectly legal for private citizens to say, "I will not play that filth in my movie theater," or for stores to say, "I will not sell violent video games."
Believe it or not most people (the customers) think that NC-17 rated films shouldn't be shown in "decent" movie theaters. Disney and the rest of the movie producers know this, and so they throw their weight around to guarantee that the truly adult movies stay where only adults are likely to go. The government is not involved at all. They don't rate the shows, and they don't enforce the ratings. The fact of the matter is that the MPAA has just as much freedom to say "this movie is indecent" as you have to make (and watch) movies that are indecent. However, since you don't own any movie theaters (I imagine) you can't force the theater owner to show the kind of movies you would like to see. It's his theater, and he will do as he pleases. This undoubtedly means that he will kowtow the MPAA line (because this is the most lucrative path), but that doesn't make it a free speech issue.
Remember children, it doesn't have anything to do with "freedom of speech" unless the government is involved. On my property I make the rules as to what is "proper" speech, and if you don't like it you can leave.
No, the original poster has hit the nail square on the head. Keeping a record of where the child surfed is far better than simply signing up with some CyberPatrol. First of all you get to decide what is appropriate or not for your own children (instead of relying on someone else). Besides, squid at leats gives the child the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't block web sites (unless you tell it to) it merely logs where you have been without blocking off potentially useful parts of the web. It allows you and your child to decide together what is appropriate and what is not.
Parents should know where there children are surfing. The Internet is a fabulous tool, but it is far from benign. If you think that everything out there on the Internet is suitable for 11 year olds, then I pray you never have children.
Even more interesting is the fact that both JWZ and RMS are (or were) both huge Emacs hackers (ever hear of Lucid Emacs).
Now, I am a huge Emacs fan, but I have seen way too many Emacs users with serious RSI problems to think that this isn't more than coincidental. So next time you need to hit some obscure key chord to get emacs to do something cool remember to take it easy, and don't put your fingers in an uncomfortable position.
That's what comes of having billions in the bank, and being patient enough to let your investments pay off. Even so, it doesn't always work. WebTV was still a poor investment (although if you count UltimateTV they are still working on it).
The fact of the matter is that no one is going to beat Microsoft at their own game. If you develop software for Windows eventually you will get screwed. Every year Microsoft picks a couple of software niches and targets them for domination. For example, now that Great Plains has been bought out by Microsoft you can bet that the other small business accounting systems are going to be hard pressed to compete. Microsoft will undoubtedly come out with a server package that includes Great Plains and that is less expensive (probably considerably less expensive) than the competition.
This is bad for Microsoft's competitors, but it is great news for small business owners. It is exactly what they want.
This cycle has been repeated over and over again, and by this time it should be clear to software developers everywhere that the only way to beat Microsoft is to change the rules. That's part of the reason that Microsoft has become so crticial of Free Software. They see Free Software as the one software development strategy that is immune to their current tactics. Free Software development doesn't rely on the resources of one company to flourish. There's no one to bankrupt, there is no one to buy, and there is no possible way that you can win a price war.
It is almost certainly true that no company that bases their fortune on Free Software is ever going to be as profitable (or as powerful) as Microsoft. But at least there is potential for success. With commercial software, especially in the Windows world, it is only a matter of time before Microsoft destroys you.
If many (or most) Windows installations are 'pirated', and Microsoft can coerce people into paying for more of the installations they make, then their revenues go up. Since most of their money will come from the coroporations which are tied to Microsoft through complex site licenses, revenues are almost guaranteed to go up.
Of course, it could just as easily work out that people will simply stick with the versions that they are using now. Microsoft's biggest competitor isn't Linux, or Corel, or Sun. Their biggest competition comes from previous versions of their own software. This is especially important because Microsoft knows that part of the reason that they can charge huge money for their office suite is due to the network effect of being the market leader. In order to easily share information businesses and individuals currently need to be on the same version (or similar versions) of MS Office. If no one upgrades to new versions of MS Office then Microsoft all of a sudden has to battle the same type of market penetration problems that Sun has had with Star Office. Their new versions simply won't be the "standard."
Similarly, if people can't 'pirate' their Windows or Office, and those people (who wouldn't pay anyways) migrate to Free alternatives, Microsoft can point to the growth in the Free userbase as proof as a vibrant and growing competition.
Microsoft doesn't want the alternatives to grow. They aren't going to have problems with the DOJ, and they know it. However, losing users to free software alternatives is a serious longterm risk. Microsoft lives by getting its customers to upgrade. But with each upgrade Microsoft upgrade GNU/Linux becomes a more and more attractive proposition. When I first started using Linux in 1995 you had to really want to use Linux on your desktop. Nowadays, it's much more comfortable. Windows has made some improvements in that time as well, but it has not advanced nearly as drastically as Linux. And Linux is much more cost effective a solution than Windows.
Now, I am not saying that Linux is ready to take over the desktop (yet), but it is giving Windows some competition and Linux's price will always work in its favor. Microsoft really can't afford to be upsetting their customer base at this point, and yet that is precisely what they are doing. I don't expect to see a lot of customers switching to Linux when Windows XP rolls out, but I do expect to see a lot of them sticking with what they already own. And for Microsoft, that's nearly as bad.
Companies that make alliances with Microsoft get screwed. Companies that get bought by Microsoft do just fine.
As an example. Microsoft is planning on bundling their own CD burning software with Windows XP. Can you imagine what this will do to the value of Roxio's CD burning software? Somehow I can't imagine that the alliance with Microsoft worked out well for Roxio.
I repeat. Companies that make alliances with Microsoft get screwed.
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Actually, one of the problems with PostgreSQL (and I am a huge PostgreSQL fan) is that it really isn't possible to upgrade it in place like you can upgrade MySQL. The core developers have changed the on disk format of every single release that I am aware of (I have played with PostgreSQL since it was known as Postgres95). This means that an upgrade of PostgreSQL requires a dump to a very large text file and a reload. This process takes quite a bit of time, and is inherently dangerous.
There has been some talk on the PostgreSQL mailing lists about writing a tool that would read the various on-disk PostgreSQL formats and change them on the fly, thus allowing the user to upgrade in place. Instead of dumping your database to a text file, upgrading PostgreSQL, and reloading your database from the text file, you could simply shut down the postmaster, upgrade PostgreSQL, run the automatic fix-it tool, and restart your new postmaster. If RedHat has written such a tool for PostgreSQL that would be very cool (and well worth $2K a year IMHO).
In other words the trick isn't replacing rpm -i postgres-..., but rather the trick is replacing rpm -Uvh postgres-...
Microsoft is not out to test the validity of the GPL. The last thing that Microsoft wants is to set any precedent that would limit the power of copyright. After all, they rely on the power of copyright to limit the legal use of their software a lot more than the GPL does.
Other than that, I agree. What Microsoft says is always smoke and mirrors. Heck, I wouldn't believe them if they told me the sky was blue (because in the background they would probably be working on changing the color of the sky).
It's already been done. Mozilla will happily remember your usernames and passwords for as many sites as you like. If you wish you can password protect this information store (I believe that IE does something similar as well). This is a much better solution than putting all of the information about everyone in one huge database. Sure, some people will probably lose their passwords when their hard drives crash, and some will have their master password stolen by thieves. But I can guarantee you that if everyone's information was in one net connected database eventually someone would learn to steal that information from everyone (the only trick would be to steal the information slowly enough so that Microsoft wouldn't notice).
Of course, if you put me in charge of the database that would be a different thing altogether. I would never use it for nefarious purposes, and I would be very careful to make sure it never was stolen :).
The funny thing is that this could really work, but not if Microsoft insists on charging money for it. Heck, they should be giving away Windows XP and then hold everyone's data hostage.
Yikes! That's what I get for getting excited about a press report. $600K is not a whole lot of profit when you have $20 million in one time charges. Still, it looks much better for RedHat than for VA Linux. Their revenues are up, and they are able to partner with Dell, Compaq, and IBM instead of having to compete with them. Plus, RedHat isn't quite as extravagant with their money. Their big ticket purchase was Cygnus (who had a proven track record of actually making money, and a huge pile of gifted hackers). VA Linux, on the other hand, bought into the whole dot com buzz to a much larger extent. Most of their clients were dot coms, and they themselves have spent a substantial amount of money on web properties like Linux.comm, sourcefore, freshmeat, and (of course) slashdot. Until advertisers realize that online ads probably are at least as effective as print ads web properties are going to be hard pressed to make a profit. Even if their sites are popular (and their ads well targetted).
On a much lighter note, it would appear that RedHat, at least, is actually profitable. What's more, they are making a profit at a time when everyone else is feeling a definite crunch.
VA Linux's business plan of selling servers to dot coms looked like a pretty good idea when VC funded flowed like a river, but now that times are tight the hardware market is pretty amazingly brutal.
It's not slashdot that I fear for, as much as I love it. Heck, my productivity would improve quite a bit without slashdot. I am much more concerned about sourceforge.net. There are a lot of important (and not so important) projects going on at sourceforge. I personally think that the Free Software movement would be dealt a substantial blow if we had to go back to relying on Anonymous FTP at sunsite (er... metalab, er... ibiblio).
I imagine that there is a pretty signficant cost associated with hosting sourceforge.
ESR was doing this more out of a desire to show what can be done with his nifty creation than to show what should be done. Apparently he wrote the entire interface on an airplane trip.
The cool part is that this particular interface is one of four that use his Python based backend configurator whatsit. In othe words the underlying software is designed to be useful, and the Zork interface only shows how flexible and powerful it is (and how easy it is to modify it so that it does what you would like).
And before you get all high and mighty about Microsoft and their business attitude, just remember that it was the folks at Microsoft that included a useable flight simulator in Excel. Compared to that particular stunt this hack is nothing. At least ESR's Zork kernel configurator is still useful as a kernel configuration tool.
I agree with your take on Mozilla. AOL is never going to be able to sell copies of mozilla. However, since that is not how they make money, it works out well for them.
Just imagine how badly their XP negotiations with Microsoft would be going right now if they didn't have the Mozilla trump card up their sleeve. They would be screwed. AOL needs an independent browser, and the GPL allows them to build one without fronting all of the costs themselves. If you look at the commits you would notice that their are plenty of hackers with email addresses from other companies. That is valuable work that AOL does not have to pay for. So the GPL is definitely working in AOL's favor.
And just because a piece of software is GPLed doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be a source of income. Cygnus was able to make money for years supporting gcc. They got greedy during the tech fever on the stock market, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their business plan before that was invalid.
In fact, there are lots of companies that wouldn't have even had a prayer of being successful without the GPL. No one was interested in yet another proprietary widget set. And yet thanks to the fact that they released under the GPL QT became popular with hackers and now TrollTech is able to sell proprietary licenses of their software to people who don't want to make free software (but still want to use QT).
The folks developing MySQL are another good example of how to make money off of a GPLed product. Who would be interested in yet another proprietary database (especially one as limited as MySQL). However, if you give it away for free, and sell service and support then your product has a good chance of becoming quite popular. And the fact that independent developers will help you improve the product doesn't hurt either.
Sure, there are a lot of developers working on Free Software that aren't ever going to get paid for it, but there are lots of hackers that are getting paid to hack on Free Software, and their are some fairly successful businesses that are using this model.
IBM, Sun, and HP care a lot about the GPL. After all, they could have released their software under some other free license, but they didn't. They wanted to make sure that they released the software under a license that would guarantee that their work could not be used against them. GPLed works are embrace and extend proof. It is impossible to add proprietary extensions to a piece of software when you have to release the source code along with the binaries. These big business know this, and so they use the GPL when they are giving out source. In fact, the GPL is the only free software license that these companies are likely to use. Don't look for BSD style licensed software from IBM or Sun anytime soon.
Not only is the GPL embrace and extend proof, it is also possible for the copyright holder to license the code under another license for people who are willing to pay. This is how the folks at TrollTech make a living with QT. QT is free for free software products, but commercial products have to pay for a commercial license.
The GPL will almost certainly harm software only shops that aren't interested in selling service and support as their primary business, but that's just the way things are. Only a small percentage of programmers actually work in this type of environment, and protecting these people's jobs is akin to protecting the jobs of buggy whip manufacturers after the automobile became popular. As free software becomes more and more competitive programmers that buck the trend will find themselves looking for new work.
But it isn't only free software that makes it hard to compete. Nowadays it is impossible to make money selling a web browser, but is that Netscape's fault for GPLing their browser, or is it Microsoft's fault for bundling their web browser with Windows. The answer is obvious, and it illustrates perfectly the plight of the commercial software developer. Too many of your competitors are willing to give software away.
This has actually already been done. You can print to either Quicken/Quickbook style checks or Microsoft money style checks (or you can create your own custom format).
Gnucash 1.6.0 really is getting to be a pretty full featured program. It's not much like the old X-Accountant program that you probably tried way back when.
Part of the reason that GPLed software is becoming more and more popular is that software developers the world over are starting to realize that none of us are going to be the next Bill Gates. The days when you can do a project that is significant enough to become a commercial product as a solo project (or even with a small group of hackers) is long past. And even if you do come out with a piece of software that has commercial promise their is no guarantee that one of the gigantic software houses (ie Microsoft) isn't going to simply clone your product, undercut your prices, and out market you. Heck, even large commercial software houses like Corel and Borland are having a hard time keeping their heads above water, and they have large software applications that people are willing to pay money for. Microsoft's "integration" is making it increasingly hard for their products to compete (because they don't integrate as well with the rest of the Microsoft stable of products).
And Microsoft gets bigger every year. They are continually on the look out for new market niches to dominate. With their purchase of Great Plains Microsoft is getting set to dominate the small business accounting world, .Net aims at Microsoft controlling a major portion of the web, etc. etc.
This is why companies like IBM, Sun, and HP are now pitching software into the GPL world. For example, Sun knows that the only chance that an Office suite has against Microsoft Office is if it is free, and guaranteed to remain that way forever. So OpenOffice has been released under the GPL for three reasons 1) so they can get some help from like minded hackers, and 2) they want to create a market for an office suite that works well with their Unix based hardware, 3) they hope to make office suites a commodity and cut off one of Microsoft's important revenue streams while growing demand for their Unix servers.
IBM is working on doing the same thing with web services. They are helping with Apache and SOAP because they want to be able to sell IBM servers running OS400 or AIX (or whatever) that are capable of working with .Net clients. Like Sun, they would like the help of like minded hackers, and they want to make sure that their hardware has a capable set of tools.
HP, on the other hand, has already created a neat set of tools (e-Speak or something) but no one has heard of it, or is interested in using it. They hope that releasing the source code will help it become a standard.
Even more importantly, with GPLed software you don't have to be a big company to make a difference. Independent coders all over the world can collaborate on software that they all can sell as a service. And hackers working for large non-software oriented corporations can work together on truly interoperable infrastructure.
You can try to be the next Bill Gates if you want, but the outlook for making that kind of money from commercial software (at this point in the race) is pretty slim. The competition simply has too much of a head start.
The my entire /etc/apt/sources.list consists of two lines:
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable non-US/main
Notice that I am not using Ximian's packages. I have used them in the past, but unstable has generally had the software I needed without the extra hassle of dealing with Ximian and their sometimes not quite Debian compliant packages. I ended up removing all of the ximian packages some time ago.
RedHat is a fine choice for a distribution, and Debian isn't for everyone. It seems to me that RedHat probably would be the way to go if you were primarily interested in Ximian's Gnome packages. At least with RedHat those packages are likely to be well tested.
Either way, there certainly is no evidence of DLL Hell. It is just a case of a program that has a lot of required libraries. To my mind this is the best sort of code reuse, and is definitely a good thing.
The difference is that in Linux you can use LD_LIBRARY_PATH so that you can guarantee that your application loads the dynamic libraries that you need. Couple that with a library versioning system that has major and minor revision numbers and that allows you to have several different versions of a library and you have a system that is basically DLL-Hell-proof.
The author of the original lwn.net article apparently simply doesn't know what the heck he is talking about. If the Linux system that you are using does not make adding new libraries a trivial undertaking then this needs to be filed as a bug. Gnucash 1.6.0 is a new release, and to run new releases you either have to know how to build and install software, or you have to wait until someone else does it for you.
To illustrate this, I spent a small portion of time this morning playing with Debian unstable's version of gnucash-1.6.0. I installed it with a simple 'apt-get install gnucash' and it painlessly downloaded gnucash and all of the required libs (that I didn't already have). After nearly an hour of playing things seem to be just fine (and gnucash is much improved over the 1.4 series).
Dynamic libraries are good. They are even good on Windows now that Windows 2000 has finally got their act together and allows multiple versions of the same DLL to be in memory at the same time. They have been useful on Linux for quite some time.
I found it a little bit ironic that I read the lwn.net article about Gnucash yesterday afternoon and this morning my daily 'apt-get update ; apt-get -dy dist-upgrade' of Debian unstable put a copy of gnucash-1.6.0 on my desktop. Also included in Debian unstable is Evolution 0.10, Mozilla 0.9.1, and Nautilus 1.0.3 they all seem to work together fairly well. It seems that a version of Netscape is also available, but I wouldn't know, I haven't used Netscape in some time.
Shared libraries are good. And shared libraries are especially good in Linux where it is a trivial thing to have different applications use different versions of the same dynamic libraries. With the next generation of Linux distributions all of these libraries will be included (probably by default), and so installing will be a piece of cake.
The primary reason that anyone cared about making Python's license GPL compatible is due to the fact that Python is a very popular embedded language. In fact, that's one of Python's major strengths. Before version 1.6 came out (with a GPL incompatible license) a whole pile of GPLed programs had already adopted Python as their embedded scripting language. However, with the new license they no longer could use the newer version of Python (because of the incompatible license). That meant that all of these projects were going to be stuck with version 1.5.2 of Python forever (several of them probably wished that they had followed the GNU standard and embedded guile instead).
Guido wanted to make sure that Python could still be embedded in GPLed software, and so the Python folks have been working really hard to sort the license stuff out.
As for why you would use the GPL as a license. Well, there are several reasons. Many free software hackers use the GPL for political reasons. They feel that the "freedom" that the GPL insures is worth the extra hassle. Other more pragmatic hackers use the GPL because it allows them to release the source code to their work and yet still maintain control of it. For example, it is becoming fairly common to release GPLed software under dual licenses. To people who want to use the source in Free Software the author shares the source under the GPL. However, if someone wants to use the same software in a commercial project then the author licenses the code to the individual or company under a commercial license. That way the hacker can make his software available to other free software hackers under a free license, but still charge commercial developers money for the same source.
It is important to note that Python is not releasing their source under the GPL. Their license is quite a bit more liberal than the GPL and allows the use of Python source in commercial closed source products. Their new license is simply GPL compatible, which means that GPL hackers will be able to upgrade.
That's good news for everyone.
LOL. That's hilarious. I thought that sounded like a weird deal.
My guess is that the reason your parents trust you is that you are trustworthy. I would also bet that either your parents are extremely naive (and lucky), or that you had already shown them from your actions that you could be trusted. My parents never followed me around making sure that I didn't do drugs, or what have you, because I showed them that I was trustworthy. I followed the rules they set, I tried to stay out of trouble, and I was respectful (for the most part).
Most kids that complain about parental controls do so because they are not trustworthy. The real reason that they complain is that their parents are cramping their style. They want their parents to "trust" them, but only because it would give them an opportunity to do something they have been forbidden to do.
So yes, how you react most definitely depends on the child. And sometimes there literally is nothing you can do. Some children turn out great no matter how stupid the parents are, and some children screw up no matter how much you love them and care for them. That's why having the government get involved with raising children is such a bad idea. Children are individuals, and need individual care.
Yes, but last time Intel had problems AMD wasn't breathing down their neck. While Intel's Pentium 60 was bad, AMD's offerings were worse. That is not the case anymore.
Another major difference is that this time there is a general softness in the PC market, and the best selling PCs are not the $2000 fire-breathers, but the sub $1000 value PCs (where AMD has done remarkably well).
It certainly is true that Intel still has Dell in the bag that could change at a moments notice. If Intel were to have a bad recall now Dell would switch in a moment. They would have little choice.
The fact that Intel has billions in the bank is nice, but nobody seriously thinks that they are likely to go out of business anytime soon. What is far more likely is that Intel will not be able to keep up the revenue growth that has pushed its stock price into the sky.
And when it comes to stock prices, the two for one deal you mentioned certainly can't help things. I don't even know if what you say is true, but if Intel is giving two for one deals then one of two things must be true. Either Intel is purchasing the second stock with some of their billions (basically a stock buy back) or they are diluting the value of the stock that their investors already own. Neither of these scenarios are good (in the long run).
You see, basically what Intel is saying (if this is true) is that their stock is really worth half of what it is currently listed (otherwise they wouldn't be giving stock away).
Exactly, censorship is dangerous in the same way that prohibition was. You can't make people do the "right" thing. Trying to force people to make intelligent choices only makes things worse.
However, this does not mean that alcohol isn't the root of a great deal of the more serious problems in the U.S., and it also doesn't mean that pornography is harmless. Some people can handle it, but many people only think that they can handle it.
In other words, I don't want the government to try and save me and my children, but I don't believe the media either when they try to tell me that pornography isn't harmful. It certainly is harmful, but the only thing that I can do about it is stay away from it myself, and try and keep its influence from my family. When we try and force others (even if we are right) we only make things worse.
The difference is that it isn't the government that is doing the censoring. It's perfectly legal for private citizens to say, "I will not play that filth in my movie theater," or for stores to say, "I will not sell violent video games."
Believe it or not most people (the customers) think that NC-17 rated films shouldn't be shown in "decent" movie theaters. Disney and the rest of the movie producers know this, and so they throw their weight around to guarantee that the truly adult movies stay where only adults are likely to go. The government is not involved at all. They don't rate the shows, and they don't enforce the ratings. The fact of the matter is that the MPAA has just as much freedom to say "this movie is indecent" as you have to make (and watch) movies that are indecent. However, since you don't own any movie theaters (I imagine) you can't force the theater owner to show the kind of movies you would like to see. It's his theater, and he will do as he pleases. This undoubtedly means that he will kowtow the MPAA line (because this is the most lucrative path), but that doesn't make it a free speech issue.
Remember children, it doesn't have anything to do with "freedom of speech" unless the government is involved. On my property I make the rules as to what is "proper" speech, and if you don't like it you can leave.
No, the original poster has hit the nail square on the head. Keeping a record of where the child surfed is far better than simply signing up with some CyberPatrol. First of all you get to decide what is appropriate or not for your own children (instead of relying on someone else). Besides, squid at leats gives the child the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't block web sites (unless you tell it to) it merely logs where you have been without blocking off potentially useful parts of the web. It allows you and your child to decide together what is appropriate and what is not.
Parents should know where there children are surfing. The Internet is a fabulous tool, but it is far from benign. If you think that everything out there on the Internet is suitable for 11 year olds, then I pray you never have children.
Even more interesting is the fact that both JWZ and RMS are (or were) both huge Emacs hackers (ever hear of Lucid Emacs).
Now, I am a huge Emacs fan, but I have seen way too many Emacs users with serious RSI problems to think that this isn't more than coincidental. So next time you need to hit some obscure key chord to get emacs to do something cool remember to take it easy, and don't put your fingers in an uncomfortable position.
That's what comes of having billions in the bank, and being patient enough to let your investments pay off. Even so, it doesn't always work. WebTV was still a poor investment (although if you count UltimateTV they are still working on it).
The fact of the matter is that no one is going to beat Microsoft at their own game. If you develop software for Windows eventually you will get screwed. Every year Microsoft picks a couple of software niches and targets them for domination. For example, now that Great Plains has been bought out by Microsoft you can bet that the other small business accounting systems are going to be hard pressed to compete. Microsoft will undoubtedly come out with a server package that includes Great Plains and that is less expensive (probably considerably less expensive) than the competition.
This is bad for Microsoft's competitors, but it is great news for small business owners. It is exactly what they want.
This cycle has been repeated over and over again, and by this time it should be clear to software developers everywhere that the only way to beat Microsoft is to change the rules. That's part of the reason that Microsoft has become so crticial of Free Software. They see Free Software as the one software development strategy that is immune to their current tactics. Free Software development doesn't rely on the resources of one company to flourish. There's no one to bankrupt, there is no one to buy, and there is no possible way that you can win a price war.
It is almost certainly true that no company that bases their fortune on Free Software is ever going to be as profitable (or as powerful) as Microsoft. But at least there is potential for success. With commercial software, especially in the Windows world, it is only a matter of time before Microsoft destroys you.
Of course, it could just as easily work out that people will simply stick with the versions that they are using now. Microsoft's biggest competitor isn't Linux, or Corel, or Sun. Their biggest competition comes from previous versions of their own software. This is especially important because Microsoft knows that part of the reason that they can charge huge money for their office suite is due to the network effect of being the market leader. In order to easily share information businesses and individuals currently need to be on the same version (or similar versions) of MS Office. If no one upgrades to new versions of MS Office then Microsoft all of a sudden has to battle the same type of market penetration problems that Sun has had with Star Office. Their new versions simply won't be the "standard."
Microsoft doesn't want the alternatives to grow. They aren't going to have problems with the DOJ, and they know it. However, losing users to free software alternatives is a serious longterm risk. Microsoft lives by getting its customers to upgrade. But with each upgrade Microsoft upgrade GNU/Linux becomes a more and more attractive proposition. When I first started using Linux in 1995 you had to really want to use Linux on your desktop. Nowadays, it's much more comfortable. Windows has made some improvements in that time as well, but it has not advanced nearly as drastically as Linux. And Linux is much more cost effective a solution than Windows.
Now, I am not saying that Linux is ready to take over the desktop (yet), but it is giving Windows some competition and Linux's price will always work in its favor. Microsoft really can't afford to be upsetting their customer base at this point, and yet that is precisely what they are doing. I don't expect to see a lot of customers switching to Linux when Windows XP rolls out, but I do expect to see a lot of them sticking with what they already own. And for Microsoft, that's nearly as bad.
Companies that make alliances with Microsoft get screwed. Companies that get bought by Microsoft do just fine.
As an example. Microsoft is planning on bundling their own CD burning software with Windows XP. Can you imagine what this will do to the value of Roxio's CD burning software? Somehow I can't imagine that the alliance with Microsoft worked out well for Roxio.
I repeat. Companies that make alliances with Microsoft get screwed.