I must respectfully disagree. I haven't used either OSX or WXP yet, but so far KDE blows the socks off of Win95/98/NT/2k in terms of user friendliness, usability and functionality.
I've used everything *but* Windows for the past twenty years. CPM, 44BSD, DOS, GeoWorks, OS/2, Linux, FreeBSD. But recently I've started using it. There were some games I wanted to use, and they're also making me use it at work now and then. Frankly, it sucks.
Most people who say Unix/Linux/BSD is too hard say so because they are used to Windows and not used to Unix. My situation is the opposite. I'm used to Unix but not to Windows. Windows is hard to use. It's inconsistant. It's clunky.
I can install most Linuces and every BSD with one single reboot at the end of the process. I can rebuild every piece of software except the kernel and never have to reboot. I upgraded from FreeBSD 4.4 to 4.5 with one reboot, and that included a fresh partitioning and format of the harddrive. Try that under Windows. I did a Windows install a couple of weeks ago and I had to reboot four times. Afterwards I had to reboot forevery driver and program I installed. This is ridiculous.
Under XFree86 I have to tell it what video card and monitor I have. That's easy. Under Windows it won't let you specify what your hardware is. It must guess instead. And it kept guessing wrong.
And configuration! Don't talk to me about ease of use until you've tried to configure a Windows system without knowing WindowsSpeak. Why do they hide all the necessary configuration stuff under layers and layers of badly designed dialogs? Why must it keep resetting all the values I type in by hand? Why can't they use plain English instead of their stupid euphemisms for god knows what? And what they hell's the difference between the hostname and the machine name, and is a group name the same as a domain name? Gah!
Finally, the desktop. Gnome and KDE win hands down. Frankly, the Windows desktop is a piece of shit. Windows under Windows won't snap to the edge or to other windows. You can't send them to the bottom of the window stack with a single mouse click. You don't have window rollups. You can't maximize vertically or horizontally. You don't have multiple desktops. Hell, it can't even display a JPG wallpaper without firing up an instance of Internet Explorer!
A few months ago my employer decided to standardize on Outlook. So our engineering department all got new PCs with Win2K installed next to their Solaris Sparc workstations. What a horrowshow! People who could write kernel drivers in their sleep couldn't figure this Windows thing out. The rest of the company looked at us like we were idiots because we didn't know what to do. IT was flabbergasted because we were asking questions they had never heard before.
"How do I ssh to stomper from Windows?" "How do I enable plaintext in Outlook?" "How do I turn on command completion in the DOS shell?" "Where's vi, emacs, gcc, pine..."
"How do I get a static IP like I've got on my Sparc?" "You don't need one." "Then how to I log on remotely to my PC?" "Why would you want to?" "Because I might be in the lab." "Aargh! Why can't you guys be like everyone else and just do what you're told!"
I guess that's the big difference right there. Windows users are content with being told what to do. Unix users are only content if they are in charge of their system. Maybe Windows is user friendly to sheep, but it ain't user friendly to most other species.
Yep, it's getting modded up because he's making a valid point. Too bad your mind is so closed you can't even recognize the fact that other people's opinions are just as valid as yours.
If we (MDK users/Linux community) don't give them a few bucks here and there, how the hell do you expect them to keep a office building open to even TRY to figure out how to keep their programmer's bellys full?
In plain english, what you are saying is "businesses need investments in order to get off the ground." That is true. Very true. But completely irrelevant.
Mandrake Club members are not making investments in MandrakeSoft. They are making donations. There's a very big difference between the two. Before I make an investment there are two things I must know: how will the company be making money in the future and what will be my rate of return?
Here's a true story. Once upon a time a bunch of companies swindled their investors in an elaborate ponzi scheme. These companies were called dot.coms. They would line up a bunch of investors, promise them fabulous returns, then spend their money on frills. When the money ran out, they lined up another group of investors, took their money, paid off their first group, and spent the rest. In the meantime the first group told everyone about the wonderful returns they were getting. Pretty soon the pyramid got too big for its base and the whole thing collapsed.
Mandrake's plan is a bit more honest, in that they aren't promising any returns on the donations. But the end result will be the same. They can't live on charity forever. They need to come up with a sound viable business plan, or they need to stop pretending and become a nonprofit like Debian.
I use RedHat, and religiously buy a new box with every release so they get money and it stays on retail shelves. I know I don't _have_ to...
This is called "donation". It's an act of charity. Charity as a business model is silly.
There's nothing wrong with donating to Redhat. I donate regularly to Slackware and FreeBSD through subscriptions. I even donated through PayPal after Windriver kicked Slackware out. But that doesn't mean that I harbor any beliefs that charity is a valid business model.
Here at Gael's Boutique we sell the world's finest flowers. But the flower market has been a bit soft lately. So we held a bake sale. Dear customer, we want to thank you. Because you donated to our bake sale, we are proud to say that our flower shop has finally made a profit.
Notice I put "steal" in quotes. I don't consider it stealing at all. But there seems to some sort of myth out there that non-copyleft free software can be stolen. It's quite silly really. Stallmanistas don't want us using the term "piracy", but "steal" is perfectly fine...
Brrzzztt! Wrong! I am not obliged to sign and mail back this license before I look at the spec. I am under no NDA. It's preposterous for Microsoft to say "now that you know what our specs are, you must agree to this license before you can implement them."
If Kodak told me *after* I had received their recipe what I can do with their recipe, I would tell them to go fly a kite. By making their recipe public they just destroyed any trade secrets they might have. I have no obligation to Kodak after they give me the recipe if I didn't agree to any before hand.
Even simpler, and much better. License it under the old BSD license with the advertisement clause. Then let Microsoft "steal" all they want. They would have to mention the Open Source version in all their related adds.
All that is required for a contract is "consideration".
There's much more to a contract than that. The contract must be negotiable, which is a fancy way of saying there must be at least one reasonable human being in each party, and it must be accepted by both parties.
Acceptance is the key here. In this particular case, there is, since you have to actually sign the contract and send it back in. But in the case of shrink-wrap, click-thru, and the distressingly common use-wrap, there is no valid acceptance. Clicking on a button in an install screen for software you already have the legal right to install does not constitute acceptance.
Do you think any court in the world would consider a rental agreement to be binding if the acceptance was based on the renter turning the front door of their apartment? Even if the rental terms where printed on that door, the whole idea is ludicrous.
I wonder exactly how many licences are actually affected.
Just two. GPL and LGPL. The way Microsoft worded that clause was to forbid any license that placed certain restrictions on software distributed with the implementation. Since no OSI or FSF license restricts non-derivative software distributed in aggregate, only those two specific licenses mentioned (GPL/LGPL) are forbidden.
FSF/GNU argues very strenuously that software should not be owned. If you don't own the software that you write, then why should you expect any compensation for it? It's like saying you don't own that apartment complex down the street, but still expect regularly monthly rents from the inhabitants.
But this is way off topic. The CIFS "license" attempts to restrict what you can do with the knowledge you gained from reading a document. In essence, it tries to place a patent-like restriction on a protocol.
There's a big loophole there. Although it specifically mentions the (L)GPL, it does not cover any other Free or Open Source license.
"that requires in any instance that other software distributed with"
They are talking about aggregation. So you can use any OSI or FSF approved license other than the GNU licenses, because none of those licenses make any claims on other software distributed with the software.
I say let's tweak Microsoft's noses a bit. Put Samba under the *old* BSD license, with the advertisement clause. Then if Microsoft wants to use that code in their own stuff (which is clearly their intent with this clause), then they have to credit Samba in all adds relating to CIFS.
This license sounds like it's bogus, fraudulent and illegal.
According to the "agreement", you have the right to read the document without signing this contract. In fact, by making this document publicly available, you DO have the legal right to read it. Microsoft has published it, and Copyright law is very clear about your rights with regards to published works.
You are not required to accept this license. Simply don't sign the form, and go ahead with your free implementation of the protocol.
Not at all. The water from my faucet is of a completely different quality than that provided by bottled water distributors.
If I want Arrowhead water, I have to buy it from Arrowhead. Even if I go direct to the source, I'll find that Arrowhead put a fence around the spring.
Redhat, on the other hand, is Free Beer. Even if Redhat refused to give it to me, I can still find dozens of sites that let me download exactly the same bits in exactly the same configuration.
There's a big difference here. A CD is meant to play in a CD player. A shotgun is meant to hunt birds.
Using the shotgun to blast your computer into small pieces is not the normal use of a shotgun. Putting a music CD into a CD player *is* the normal use of a shotgun.
Of course, in the future, the normal use of Celine Dion CDs will be to launch them as clay pidgeons and shoot them with your shotgun...
KDE 3.0 is Out Posted by CmdrTaco on 10:17 AM April 3rd, 2002 from the congrats-to-our-gumshoes dept.
Fred Furburger noted that KDE 3.0 is on mirrors-only site. There is no official announcement yet, but this looks like the real deal since it is on the mirrors-only site. Updated by HeUnique: No debian packages yet, because the mirrors-only site seems to be down. Don't know why...
Slashdot Mirror
I must respectfully disagree. I haven't used either OSX or WXP yet, but so far KDE blows the socks off of Win95/98/NT/2k in terms of user friendliness, usability and functionality.
I've used everything *but* Windows for the past twenty years. CPM, 44BSD, DOS, GeoWorks, OS/2, Linux, FreeBSD. But recently I've started using it. There were some games I wanted to use, and they're also making me use it at work now and then. Frankly, it sucks.
Most people who say Unix/Linux/BSD is too hard say so because they are used to Windows and not used to Unix. My situation is the opposite. I'm used to Unix but not to Windows. Windows is hard to use. It's inconsistant. It's clunky.
I can install most Linuces and every BSD with one single reboot at the end of the process. I can rebuild every piece of software except the kernel and never have to reboot. I upgraded from FreeBSD 4.4 to 4.5 with one reboot, and that included a fresh partitioning and format of the harddrive. Try that under Windows. I did a Windows install a couple of weeks ago and I had to reboot four times. Afterwards I had to reboot forevery driver and program I installed. This is ridiculous.
Under XFree86 I have to tell it what video card and monitor I have. That's easy. Under Windows it won't let you specify what your hardware is. It must guess instead. And it kept guessing wrong.
And configuration! Don't talk to me about ease of use until you've tried to configure a Windows system without knowing WindowsSpeak. Why do they hide all the necessary configuration stuff under layers and layers of badly designed dialogs? Why must it keep resetting all the values I type in by hand? Why can't they use plain English instead of their stupid euphemisms for god knows what? And what they hell's the difference between the hostname and the machine name, and is a group name the same as a domain name? Gah!
Finally, the desktop. Gnome and KDE win hands down. Frankly, the Windows desktop is a piece of shit. Windows under Windows won't snap to the edge or to other windows. You can't send them to the bottom of the window stack with a single mouse click. You don't have window rollups. You can't maximize vertically or horizontally. You don't have multiple desktops. Hell, it can't even display a JPG wallpaper without firing up an instance of Internet Explorer!
A few months ago my employer decided to standardize on Outlook. So our engineering department all got new PCs with Win2K installed next to their Solaris Sparc workstations. What a horrowshow! People who could write kernel drivers in their sleep couldn't figure this Windows thing out. The rest of the company looked at us like we were idiots because we didn't know what to do. IT was flabbergasted because we were asking questions they had never heard before.
"How do I ssh to stomper from Windows?"
"How do I enable plaintext in Outlook?"
"How do I turn on command completion in the DOS shell?"
"Where's vi, emacs, gcc, pine..."
"How do I get a static IP like I've got on my Sparc?" "You don't need one." "Then how to I log on remotely to my PC?" "Why would you want to?" "Because I might be in the lab." "Aargh! Why can't you guys be like everyone else and just do what you're told!"
I guess that's the big difference right there. Windows users are content with being told what to do. Unix users are only content if they are in charge of their system. Maybe Windows is user friendly to sheep, but it ain't user friendly to most other species.
Wow. and this is getting modded up...
Yep, it's getting modded up because he's making a valid point. Too bad your mind is so closed you can't even recognize the fact that other people's opinions are just as valid as yours.
If we (MDK users/Linux community) don't give them a few bucks here and there, how the hell do you expect them to keep a office building open to even TRY to figure out how to keep their programmer's bellys full?
In plain english, what you are saying is "businesses need investments in order to get off the ground." That is true. Very true. But completely irrelevant.
Mandrake Club members are not making investments in MandrakeSoft. They are making donations. There's a very big difference between the two. Before I make an investment there are two things I must know: how will the company be making money in the future and what will be my rate of return?
Here's a true story. Once upon a time a bunch of companies swindled their investors in an elaborate ponzi scheme. These companies were called dot.coms. They would line up a bunch of investors, promise them fabulous returns, then spend their money on frills. When the money ran out, they lined up another group of investors, took their money, paid off their first group, and spent the rest. In the meantime the first group told everyone about the wonderful returns they were getting. Pretty soon the pyramid got too big for its base and the whole thing collapsed.
Mandrake's plan is a bit more honest, in that they aren't promising any returns on the donations. But the end result will be the same. They can't live on charity forever. They need to come up with a sound viable business plan, or they need to stop pretending and become a nonprofit like Debian.
I use RedHat, and religiously buy a new box with every release so they get money and it stays on retail shelves. I know I don't _have_ to...
This is called "donation". It's an act of charity. Charity as a business model is silly.
There's nothing wrong with donating to Redhat. I donate regularly to Slackware and FreeBSD through subscriptions. I even donated through PayPal after Windriver kicked Slackware out. But that doesn't mean that I harbor any beliefs that charity is a valid business model.
They aren't making money off of free software. Nobody is. Mandrake is making money off of donations.
Here at Gael's Boutique we sell the world's finest flowers. But the flower market has been a bit soft lately. So we held a bake sale. Dear customer, we want to thank you. Because you donated to our bake sale, we are proud to say that our flower shop has finally made a profit.
Notice I put "steal" in quotes. I don't consider it stealing at all. But there seems to some sort of myth out there that non-copyleft free software can be stolen. It's quite silly really. Stallmanistas don't want us using the term "piracy", but "steal" is perfectly fine...
Brrzzztt! Wrong! I am not obliged to sign and mail back this license before I look at the spec. I am under no NDA. It's preposterous for Microsoft to say "now that you know what our specs are, you must agree to this license before you can implement them."
If Kodak told me *after* I had received their recipe what I can do with their recipe, I would tell them to go fly a kite. By making their recipe public they just destroyed any trade secrets they might have. I have no obligation to Kodak after they give me the recipe if I didn't agree to any before hand.
Even simpler, and much better. License it under the old BSD license with the advertisement clause. Then let Microsoft "steal" all they want. They would have to mention the Open Source version in all their related adds.
All that is required for a contract is "consideration".
There's much more to a contract than that. The contract must be negotiable, which is a fancy way of saying there must be at least one reasonable human being in each party, and it must be accepted by both parties.
Acceptance is the key here. In this particular case, there is, since you have to actually sign the contract and send it back in. But in the case of shrink-wrap, click-thru, and the distressingly common use-wrap, there is no valid acceptance. Clicking on a button in an install screen for software you already have the legal right to install does not constitute acceptance.
Do you think any court in the world would consider a rental agreement to be binding if the acceptance was based on the renter turning the front door of their apartment? Even if the rental terms where printed on that door, the whole idea is ludicrous.
I wonder exactly how many licences are actually affected.
Just two. GPL and LGPL. The way Microsoft worded that clause was to forbid any license that placed certain restrictions on software distributed with the implementation. Since no OSI or FSF license restricts non-derivative software distributed in aggregate, only those two specific licenses mentioned (GPL/LGPL) are forbidden.
FSF/GNU argues very strenuously that software should not be owned. If you don't own the software that you write, then why should you expect any compensation for it? It's like saying you don't own that apartment complex down the street, but still expect regularly monthly rents from the inhabitants.
But this is way off topic. The CIFS "license" attempts to restrict what you can do with the knowledge you gained from reading a document. In essence, it tries to place a patent-like restriction on a protocol.
There's a big loophole there. Although it specifically mentions the (L)GPL, it does not cover any other Free or Open Source license.
"that requires in any instance that other software distributed with"
They are talking about aggregation. So you can use any OSI or FSF approved license other than the GNU licenses, because none of those licenses make any claims on other software distributed with the software.
I say let's tweak Microsoft's noses a bit. Put Samba under the *old* BSD license, with the advertisement clause. Then if Microsoft wants to use that code in their own stuff (which is clearly their intent with this clause), then they have to credit Samba in all adds relating to CIFS.
This license sounds like it's bogus, fraudulent and illegal.
According to the "agreement", you have the right to read the document without signing this contract. In fact, by making this document publicly available, you DO have the legal right to read it. Microsoft has published it, and Copyright law is very clear about your rights with regards to published works.
You are not required to accept this license. Simply don't sign the form, and go ahead with your free implementation of the protocol.
2nd: Why hunt birds? did they anything wrong for you or are you hungry?
Because shotguns have proven to be inferior for the purposes of hunting elk. They are better suited to hunting birds.
:-)
My Bad :-) Change "shotgun" to "CD" and you'll have what I meant.
I can think of about four or five software patents in history that might have been justified. But RSA is not one of them.
The can have my FreeBSD when they pry it out of my cold dead fingers.
Not at all. The water from my faucet is of a completely different quality than that provided by bottled water distributors.
If I want Arrowhead water, I have to buy it from Arrowhead. Even if I go direct to the source, I'll find that Arrowhead put a fence around the spring.
Redhat, on the other hand, is Free Beer. Even if Redhat refused to give it to me, I can still find dozens of sites that let me download exactly the same bits in exactly the same configuration.
Well damn! I guess Slashdot is starting to get slow in its old age :-)
There's a big difference here. A CD is meant to play in a CD player. A shotgun is meant to hunt birds.
Using the shotgun to blast your computer into small pieces is not the normal use of a shotgun. Putting a music CD into a CD player *is* the normal use of a shotgun.
Of course, in the future, the normal use of Celine Dion CDs will be to launch them as clay pidgeons and shoot them with your shotgun...
I don't even want to know where she goes on Saturday nights with a name like that.
Good! I have no desire to patronize sites like this anyway.
Bottled water is not free. If it was there wouldn't be so many people out there selling it.
Well, since KDE3.0 was only officially released a few hours ago, I don't see how Redhat can have packages ready for it yet.
I suspect what you're referring to is KDE3.0-RC3. In other words, not the final release.
Posted by CmdrTaco on 10:17 AM April 3rd, 2002
from the congrats-to-our-gumshoes dept.
Fred Furburger noted that KDE 3.0 is on mirrors-only site. There is no official announcement yet, but this looks like the real deal since it is on the mirrors-only site. Updated by HeUnique: No debian packages yet, because the mirrors-only site seems to be down. Don't know why...