If Stallman snapped his fingers and all proprietary software disappeared, it would be here again tomorrow. Let's say instead that he snapped his fingers and all copyright laws disappeared. What would happen?
We would still have proprietary software. Without copyright it won't be the same as the proprietary software today. But it will still be proprietary in everything but name. Copyright is merely a government recognition of a form of property. Eliminating copyright won't make that property go away anymore than eliminating trespass laws will eliminate the ownership of land. As long as a significant number of developers think "this is my software", you will always have software without accessible source code that is difficult (legally or practically) to copy and redistribute.
When I want documentation to be organized, I don't be structured markup or slavish adherance to style, or anything like that. I want the entire documentation *set* to be organized. When I need to fix a bug in a module, I want to be able to access the documentation for that bug right now, without having to spend days tracking it down, or only finding part of it.
It's get's tricky if it's your own code and you're currently working on it on off hours. It then becomes much more difficult to prove that you didn't work on it during work hours.
I had this potential situation come up, and I talked to the director of software and a lawyer in the IP department. It would have been okay if a coworker downloaded it from my site, but that I shouldn't work on it subsequently.
That's why I think that a separate licensing of your code to the corporation for the sum of one dollar makes sense.
Every wiki or related documentation site I have every found has been a mess of disorganization. Wiki may have its place in the overall documentation scheme, but it shouldn't be the centerpiece.
If they won't hire you because you have a private life, then perhaps you should look for a job elsewhere. My employer doesn't own the kitchen addition I made for my mother, so why should it own the program I wrote for her to organize her recipes?
Just strike it out, and change it to: company owns the rights to code written during working hours and in direct furtherance of any tasks assigned by the company
Amen! That's the clause in my employment agreement. When I started doing open source development, I pulled it out and double checked. If I create it at work it's theirs. If I create it at home, it's mine.
Of course, I just have to be careful not to use any of my open source code for anything at work. That would make it very easy for them to claim I worked on it at their expense. If you've written something you want to use at work, right up a separate contract and license it to your employer for one dollar, just to keep everything clean.
I have to label this a Bad Thing(tm). Oh I'm sure Crossover works, and with the proper configuration and hardware, probably works well. But that's what's bad about it.
I don't want to run Windows plugins on my Unix box. I want to run NATIVE plugins on my Unix box. If I can't get Open Source plugins, at least give me native plugins.
Crossover gives Apple/Sorensen, Macromedia, et al, zero incentive to release native plugins. That's not good. Crossover is setting in stone these proprietary plugins as standards, and no standard should be proprietary.
So why is the article under the "Your Rights Online" section?
Face it, he who owns the property gets to set the rules for it. If I refuse to let Timothy redecorate my bathroom for proper feng shui alignments, I am hardly infringing on his freedom of religion. Yet somehow if I don't allow him to use my computer to cruise for pr0n I am somehow infringing on his rights.
If you own that workstation in your cubicle, go do whatever you want with it. But if you boss owns it instead, then you had better follow his rules regarding it.
This isn't about "Your Rights Online", but rather "Your Employer's Rights Regarding Your Employer's Property".
Hemos: Of course, it's [GPL] been used for end user - OpenOffice, GAIM, and other projects.
Well duh! But that's really not germaine to the discussion now is it? You can count the number of people who have purchased OpenOffice on one hand. It's a free download damnit!
Shawn is trying to sell a product. He's trying to be a team player in the community. But he has suddenly realized that he can't do both.
Having used OS/2 at that time, Microsoft did not change their API, they extended it in order to make their system, finally, a vague sort-of 32 bit OS. The Win16 API was no problem at all to OS/2. The Win32s API was only a slight problem. But the Win32 API wasn't available for OS/2.
Even if the API's were open, it still wouldn't have made that big of a difference. You still couldn't run a 32bit Windows 95 program in a 32bit OS/2 virtual machine. At least not until VMWare came along.
But the people actually building stuff rarely if ever fight.
Get a Debian and FreeBSD user locked in the same closet and blood will flow out under the door. Lock a Debian and FreeBSD developer in the same closet and you'll get a new feature.
For those of you that bitch about the time between releases, just look at debian.
Man, what a cheap shot at Debian!
In any case, FreeBSD gets a new release every six months like clockwork. There may be a couple of Linux distros that have faster cycles, but most are in the six to nine month range.
Thank you for giving credit to the distros. That's the primary reason why Linux is not GNU/Linux: GNU didn't make the operating system, the distributions did. They were the ones that took a kernel, the gnu userland components sitting around waiting for an system, several BSD daemons and utilities, a bunch of stuff from a multitude of projects, including file systems, and their own necessary infrastructure, and FINALLY integrated them all into a complete operating system.
For instance: if I select bash as my default shell, it would be nice if I got some sort of freaking.bashrc SOMEWHERE on the system!
The primary reason for this is that bash itself does not come with.bash_profile or.bashrc files. It is not the FreeBSD way to alter any ported software package beyond the minimum needed to port it or correct bugs.
That said, you do have a.shrc file installed by default in your home directory. bash should be using this by default in the absence of a.bashrc file, but unfortunately it does not. The solution is absurdly simple. Link.shrc to.bashrc and be finished.
If you want window maker as your desktop environment, good luck.
Huh? Windowmaker is one of the default window manager you can choose during installation (the others being KDE, GNOME/Sawfish, GNOME/Enlightenment, Afterstep and fvwm).
The FreeBSD installer is hard for new people, thats why linux distros take the time to develop nice graphical installers with online help.
First of all, not all Linux distros have gone to a GUI installer. The two notable exceptions are Slackware and Debian.
Second, a text mode installer will work on 100% of target machines. A GUI installer will not. So you still need to keep around a text based installer. The next version of the FreeBSD installer will be a library with two (or) more front end interfaces. Aside: I think a CGI front end would be cool for installing remotely.
Third, the text based FreeBSD has excellent help. I actually prefer text mode installers because I can read a whole page of help, instead of constantly scrolling down a tiny 640x480 text widget made even smaller with borders and scrollbar.
Finally, and I don't mean this sarcastically, users who won't use FreeBSD because they don't like, or are afraid of, the text mode installer are not the target audience. They just might be happier elsewhere. Once past the installer there will be a myriad places where the command line will have to be used. If they are uncomfortable with the command line, then I would suggest OSX.
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Games and aimless academic studies ARE economic activities! Just ask any economist.
Economics isn't about the movement of wealth, it's about the actions of people. In a very real sense, it's applied sociology.
If Stallman snapped his fingers and all proprietary software disappeared, it would be here again tomorrow. Let's say instead that he snapped his fingers and all copyright laws disappeared. What would happen?
We would still have proprietary software. Without copyright it won't be the same as the proprietary software today. But it will still be proprietary in everything but name. Copyright is merely a government recognition of a form of property. Eliminating copyright won't make that property go away anymore than eliminating trespass laws will eliminate the ownership of land. As long as a significant number of developers think "this is my software", you will always have software without accessible source code that is difficult (legally or practically) to copy and redistribute.
When I want documentation to be organized, I don't be structured markup or slavish adherance to style, or anything like that. I want the entire documentation *set* to be organized. When I need to fix a bug in a module, I want to be able to access the documentation for that bug right now, without having to spend days tracking it down, or only finding part of it.
No matter how good the documenation is, it is utterly useless if you can't find it.
It's get's tricky if it's your own code and you're currently working on it on off hours. It then becomes much more difficult to prove that you didn't work on it during work hours.
I had this potential situation come up, and I talked to the director of software and a lawyer in the IP department. It would have been okay if a coworker downloaded it from my site, but that I shouldn't work on it subsequently.
That's why I think that a separate licensing of your code to the corporation for the sum of one dollar makes sense.
Every wiki or related documentation site I have every found has been a mess of disorganization. Wiki may have its place in the overall documentation scheme, but it shouldn't be the centerpiece.
If they won't hire you because you have a private life, then perhaps you should look for a job elsewhere. My employer doesn't own the kitchen addition I made for my mother, so why should it own the program I wrote for her to organize her recipes?
Just strike it out, and change it to: company owns the rights to code written during working hours and in direct furtherance of any tasks assigned by the company
Amen! That's the clause in my employment agreement. When I started doing open source development, I pulled it out and double checked. If I create it at work it's theirs. If I create it at home, it's mine.
Of course, I just have to be careful not to use any of my open source code for anything at work. That would make it very easy for them to claim I worked on it at their expense. If you've written something you want to use at work, right up a separate contract and license it to your employer for one dollar, just to keep everything clean.
I have to label this a Bad Thing(tm). Oh I'm sure Crossover works, and with the proper configuration and hardware, probably works well. But that's what's bad about it.
I don't want to run Windows plugins on my Unix box. I want to run NATIVE plugins on my Unix box. If I can't get Open Source plugins, at least give me native plugins.
Crossover gives Apple/Sorensen, Macromedia, et al, zero incentive to release native plugins. That's not good. Crossover is setting in stone these proprietary plugins as standards, and no standard should be proprietary.
Computer #1: 8086
Computer #2: Pentium 100
Computer #3: AMD K6-2
Computer #4: AMD Athlon
The only one that came with an OS at all was #1, which had a MSDOS-3.3 floppy in the box.
Honestly, if you guys don't know how to buy a computer without Windows, then you just don't know how to buy computers.
So why is the article under the "Your Rights Online" section?
Face it, he who owns the property gets to set the rules for it. If I refuse to let Timothy redecorate my bathroom for proper feng shui alignments, I am hardly infringing on his freedom of religion. Yet somehow if I don't allow him to use my computer to cruise for pr0n I am somehow infringing on his rights.
If you own that workstation in your cubicle, go do whatever you want with it. But if you boss owns it instead, then you had better follow his rules regarding it.
This isn't about "Your Rights Online", but rather "Your Employer's Rights Regarding Your Employer's Property".
Hemos: Of course, it's [GPL] been used for end user - OpenOffice, GAIM, and other projects.
Well duh! But that's really not germaine to the discussion now is it? You can count the number of people who have purchased OpenOffice on one hand. It's a free download damnit!
Shawn is trying to sell a product. He's trying to be a team player in the community. But he has suddenly realized that he can't do both.
Having used OS/2 at that time, Microsoft did not change their API, they extended it in order to make their system, finally, a vague sort-of 32 bit OS. The Win16 API was no problem at all to OS/2. The Win32s API was only a slight problem. But the Win32 API wasn't available for OS/2.
Even if the API's were open, it still wouldn't have made that big of a difference. You still couldn't run a 32bit Windows 95 program in a 32bit OS/2 virtual machine. At least not until VMWare came along.
It's a different business model. Covalent is selling a service, the Kompany is selling a software product.
Nope. Never owned on Apple. My computers have been an 8086, Pentium I, AMD K6-2, and AMD Athlon.
what they did to make Windows 95 apps NOT run under OS/2 was anti-competitive and illegal.
You mean upgrading a 16 bit API to a 32 bit API is now illegal?
How weird. I've had four computers in my life and none of them came with Windows.
It has always bothered me how much money the government needs to spend to enforce simple laws like the Sherman Antitrust act.
Anti-trust is simple?!?!?!
The users fight each other all the time.
But the people actually building stuff rarely if ever fight.
Get a Debian and FreeBSD user locked in the same closet and blood will flow out under the door. Lock a Debian and FreeBSD developer in the same closet and you'll get a new feature.
A) Aggregation is not incorporation
B) Only GNU considers compilers and editors to be OS components
For those of you that bitch about the time between releases, just look at debian.
Man, what a cheap shot at Debian!
In any case, FreeBSD gets a new release every six months like clockwork. There may be a couple of Linux distros that have faster cycles, but most are in the six to nine month range.
If even that's too slow for you use cvsup.
Thank you for giving credit to the distros. That's the primary reason why Linux is not GNU/Linux: GNU didn't make the operating system, the distributions did. They were the ones that took a kernel, the gnu userland components sitting around waiting for an system, several BSD daemons and utilities, a bunch of stuff from a multitude of projects, including file systems, and their own necessary infrastructure, and FINALLY integrated them all into a complete operating system.
For instance: if I select bash as my default shell, it would be nice if I got some sort of freaking .bashrc SOMEWHERE on the system!
.bash_profile or .bashrc files. It is not the FreeBSD way to alter any ported software package beyond the minimum needed to port it or correct bugs.
.shrc file installed by default in your home directory. bash should be using this by default in the absence of a .bashrc file, but unfortunately it does not. The solution is absurdly simple. Link .shrc to .bashrc and be finished.
The primary reason for this is that bash itself does not come with
That said, you do have a
If you want window maker as your desktop
environment, good luck.
Huh? Windowmaker is one of the default window manager you can choose during installation (the others being KDE, GNOME/Sawfish, GNOME/Enlightenment, Afterstep and fvwm).
The FreeBSD installer is hard for new people, thats why linux distros take the time to develop nice graphical installers with online help.
.
First of all, not all Linux distros have gone to a GUI installer. The two notable exceptions are Slackware and Debian.
Second, a text mode installer will work on 100% of target machines. A GUI installer will not. So you still need to keep around a text based installer. The next version of the FreeBSD installer will be a library with two (or) more front end interfaces. Aside: I think a CGI front end would be cool for installing remotely.
Third, the text based FreeBSD has excellent help. I actually prefer text mode installers because I can read a whole page of help, instead of constantly scrolling down a tiny 640x480 text widget made even smaller with borders and scrollbar
Finally, and I don't mean this sarcastically, users who won't use FreeBSD because they don't like, or are afraid of, the text mode installer are not the target audience. They just might be happier elsewhere. Once past the installer there will be a myriad places where the command line will have to be used. If they are uncomfortable with the command line, then I would suggest OSX.
Actually, the same argument can be made about gcc. How do you build the sources to a compiler without a compiler?