apt-get is the best there is when it comes to precompiled binaries for the generic i386. But this is the world of Open Source. You have the source code, so use it! With source code you can optimize all the software for YOUR hardware, configure the software how YOU want it, etc. The best tools for upgrading software from source is ports.
Binaries are great for quickly getting a system up and running. But once you've got the system up and running, switch to source code.
Except Debian isn't an operating system. The operating system will still be NetBSD. The Debian bits could be called the operating environment, but it certainly is not the software that directs and controls processes, manages access to hardware, etc.
Of course not! But that begs the point, since corporations are not allowed to kill anyway.
One definition of freedom is the ability to do whatever you want so long as your actions do not prevent anyone else from doing whatever they want. Murder definitely falls under preventing people from doing whatever they want.
Another definition of freedom is complete control over your own property, including your body, actions and thoughts. Murder is again not allowed because killing deprives someone of their property, namely their life.
yet corporations, which aren't even human entities, are allowed to cross all of the lines of reasonable behaviour which we tend to expect from other people.
Corporations are not allowed to murder. Neither are they allowed to partake of illegal recreation drugs.
Somehow, this fails to have been applied to corporations
There is only one freedom which corporations have with unincorporated businesses or individuals do not have: the freedom to ignore responsibility. A corporation is a fictitious legal entity whose sole purpose is to shield the corporation's stockholders and management from the consequences of their individual actions. This is wrong.
But other than that, a corporation should have every single freedom that you or I have.
Most X11 based applications have a crappy look and feel.
The fault of the application or it's underlying toolkit. Blame GTK+, Qt or Motif. Actually though I've seen some awesome widget themes for all of the above. Themes that are aethetically pleasing without being garish. My favorite is QNiX (and it's derivative Teax) for KDE. Clean, simple, pretty.
Everything from how the Windows decide where they want to be to really obnoxious icon placement just irks some people
That's the window manager. And I don't really know what you're complaining about, since the typical windowmanager for X11 is light years ahead of the window managing component of Windows in terms of usability. Take your pick of window placement policy and focus policy. You can make your better WMs behave just like you want them to. As for icon placement, just place them where you want them if your desktop even uses icons.
X is not a desktop. It is a low level graphical library. By design X does not tell the window manager how to layout windows or icons. It is policy-less. This is a Good Thing(tm). So direct your complaints to where they belong. If you don't like your WMs policies then use another WM. There are a million to choose from. Try Enlightenment, Windowmaker, Blackbox, KWin/KDE, Sawfish, or IceWM.
I don't like tiled, cornered, or cascaded windows, for example. I like Window memory and I like Icons to stay where I put them... I like my Task/Tool bars at the top of the screen (where they belong), but I don't like systems that let me put them there and then continue to ignore the fact that I'm not running default setting so some things don't look right or misalign themselves.
Then use smart or column/row window placement, don't autoarrange icons, and drag your taskbar to the top of the screen. KDE does all of this without unarranging your layout. If you want "window memory" then use the title bar menu and choose "store settings".
There's nothing wrong with X11. Nothing other than what a bit of tweaking can't fix. It works and it works well.
There is one major reason people bitch about X: t's big.
They're right that it is big and complex. That's they way it's supposed to be. X is a network GUI. You can run your application on one machine and have it display on another (or multiple machines). This is a very powerful feature. It's awesome. But it makes X big and complex.
If you're running a standalone desktop it doesn't do you any good. If you've come from the Windows world and think that standalone desktops are the only thing that exist, then you begin to question the sanity of using X at all. But Unix (including Linux) is not a standalone desktop OS. You simply CANNOT replace X11 because to many people are dependent upon it.
Adobe Framemaker doesn't exist on Linux or FreeBSD. But I use it on my FreeBSD box anyway. How? By logging in remotely to my Solaris box at work. Now I get to use the world's best desktop publisher at home on my PC. All because of X.
X11 isn't going to be replaced. But there is something that could happen. There could be an XFree86-Lite. An X with the same API as all the other X's, but designed and optimized for a non-networked standalone desktop. Strip out all the stuff that home PCs would never use. But make it compatible with the existing X. Hell, you could write it all as a kernel mod for all I care. But at least you would get your tiny weakling X for your desktop and I would still have my big and powerful X for my workstation and we could still use the same X applications.
Pancake or string, it you wind up the same in the end. Bad news for scifi authors needing a Grand Unified Loophole, but for the rest of us it's all the same.
Now if only someone would do the same for KDE and GNOME...
I haven't build GNOME in a long time, but I build KDE from source every release. I've never had a problem with it building. I'm using FreeBSD, so it's a completely painless affair, but when I used Slackware it was still a simple matter.
No, there isn't a unified KDE build system for just KDE. Perhaps there should be. But writing a build system for KDE that covers not only building KDE (the easy part) but accounts for and builds all dependencies is a significantly harder thing to do than write an apt-get or ports like system. The reason is that KDE runs on all unices, not just the one you're using. Writing such a system that works for Debian, SuSE, Solaris, IRIX and OpenBSD would be a nightmare. It's tantamount to writing the next generation of autoconf. This system would have to upgrade X11R6, libxml, audiofile, pcre, Qt and png, among others, on all possible systems. Just thinking about it staggers me.
So let the OS/distro handle this problem in small OS/distro size chunks.
You KNOW that your distro has a tool or set of tools to build the whole distro from scratch. That's how they make the distro to begin with. So maybe people should be bugging Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc., to make these tools available in a unified end-user format.
You don't have to compile your 2Gigs every night. Nor do you have to compile it all at install time. I don't think Sorceror will let you install from premade binaries, but that's irrelevant if you aren't using binaries.
Here's what you do on your distro (if it will let you compile from source without mangling the package system):
Monday: compile the kernel and glibc
Tuesday: compile gcc, binutisl, textutils
Wednesday: compile XFree86
Thursday: compile kde-libs, kde-base (or gnome equivs)
Friday: compile kde-network, kde-utils (or gnome equivs)
etc
etc
etc
The advantages of doing your own builds, summarized (you can get detailed advantages on the sorceror, gentoo and freebsd pages):
Significant performance increase
Customized package configuration (Dia without GNOME, Xmms with mods, etc)
Fewer dependency problems (let configure worry about which exact libs you have installed)
Binary packages are convenient during installation, but they shouldn't be the final product on your box. They're so you can get a system up and running fast. Afterwards you can rebuild everything in the background while you're posting your trolls.
Most of you Linux guys are fanatical about Open Source and Free Software. It's your mantra and credo. Yet you fear the words "./configure; make; make install" every bit as much as the clueless windoze lusers. Free Software is meaningless without source code. Without source it might as well be proprietary freeware. Source code is your power. Don't pheer the source!
A Free Operating System allows you to do whatever you want with it! You are in control. Your box is yours. So why is some release manager at Redhat or SuSE your sysadmin-by-proxy?
Did you try reading the documentation. You can add packages straight from the net. And check out portupgrade, an awesome tool I suspect will be a standard tool in the base system for 5.0. Personally, I prefer compiling ports from scratch to get i686 binaries instead of i386 binaries, but everyone's different.
5 hours to do an upgrade? You're talking about apps, but that sounds like a full system upgrade. Unless you need specific fixes, stick with -RELEASE and don't upgrade the base OS.
Plug and Play is about plugging in hardware and having it work with zero effort on the part of the user. isapnp is allows PnP hardware to work on Linux, but it involves considerably more than zero effort.
Although over a certain size they amount to the same thing, a lot of people still make a distinction between corporations and unions. Conservatives don't like unions and liberals don't like corporations, despite the existance of conservative unions and liberal corporations.
Both are legal entities that cannot vote but which have more influence in politics than individuals have. My plan for Campaign Finance Reform: zero limits on contributions, but they can only be made by qualified voters.
Campaign Finance Reform: individual contributions are capped while they put out a welcome mat at the back door for corporations and unions; finance candidates through tax revenues so that you are forced to finance the campaigns of those you wouldn't vote for if a gun were put to your head.
Microsoft Security: store all your personal information at One Redmond Way so that malicious corporations can't invade your privacy; argue that public disclosure of exploits and bugs are criminal acts.
I have to agree with your assessment of the name "extreme programming". Even worse, when you ask five different EP advocates what it's all about, you get five different answers.
One common thread seems to emerge though, and that is an intense focus on coding. Face it folks, coding is the *easy* part of programming.
I was always dismayed to see in stores the boxed set with the "Complete FreeBSD" book with an older version of the OS. I hope now they can get the latest versions into a box along with Greg Lehey's new FreeBSD book. Plus, if you're a Linux fan, try out FreeBSD just for the ports collection.
It would be nice, but I don't expect it to happen. FreeBSD has a new release every six months. It's more economical to print the books and stamp the CDs in large batches. So until FreeBSD starts selling above a certain rate, it's too expensive to do a print/press/box run every six months. It's feasible to do it with just the CDs, because there is a higher demand and there subscription program allows them to accurately predict how many they need.
My point was not so much that kernel code is different from systems or application code, but that the *domain* is so different.
An analogy can be made with the English language. You may be the most fluent English speaker ever, written dissertations on Shakespeare, Jonson and Chaucer, but the first time you read an insurance policy you say to yourself "that sure looks like English, but damn it, it just won't parse!"
If they are paying me as providing a service, does is matter if I write code to help fulfill that service?
I guess it depends on the contract, specifically, what they are paying you for. If it's for a "service" or "solution", then the code isn't necessarily theirs. After all, many consultants do the same thing with off the shelf software. But if the solution *is* the code, your legal standing is questionable. The best thing to do would be to create a contract in advance that sets the terms you want. You may want to check out GNU to see if they know of anyone with standard contracts of this sort. I would also check out www.goingware.com for some legal pointers on contracting.
In terms of "one-stop-ness", there's not much difference between FreeBSD and Debian. On either system you can upgrade from the bottom up with a single command.
However, I prefer the "flavor" of FreeBSD's one-stop-ness. The entire OS is integrated into one source tree. There's a single version for the kernel, libc, userland, core documentation, etc.
Now, I'm scared. Honestly, after reading through that introduction, I'm scared to touch kernel code. Hell, I'm scared to look at it.
That's kernel code for you:-)
You can be the best programmer in the world, know assembly/C/C++ inside and out, and all that jazz, but when you hit kernel code it's like a different reality.
It is now official - C/Net has confirmed: *BSD is alive and thriving
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered AC crowd when C/Net reported that FreeBSD is going home. Wind River and FreeBSD Mall Inc. published a joint press-release today announcing the sale of Wind River's FreeBSD assets to Bob Bruce, founder of Walnut Creek CDROM--the company that in 1993 first published FreeBSD. This was the company that almost a decade ago declared to the world that *BSD is alive and thriving!
The FreeBSD Mall web site has been redesigned, with many new products, including FreeBSD CDs, books, polo shirts, microfiber jackets, boxer shorts, bumper stickers, lapel pins, several different styles of t-shirts, mouse pads, travel mugs, buttons, sticker sheets, plate logos, denim shirts, CD cases, and paid support options.
FreeBSD and its close relatives NetBSD and OpenBSD all are open-source projects, meaning that anyone can see, change and distribute the underlying source code.
With the main FreeBSD distribution back in the hands of the record holding Free Software distributor Bob Bruce, trolls posting that *BSD is dead had better keep the "anonymous" in "anonymous coward."
Nothing is impossible for those who set their minds to it.
A world without proprietary software would be nice. But it's not worth the price of telling other people what they can do with the software they wrote.
We're not talking about their software, we're talking about your software or software developed by the Open Source community.
If it's software that I wrote, then I will have either released it under the BSD license, or have been paid good bucks to write it for someone else. Either way I have no problem. If I did not write it, and it is proprietary, then I have only myself to blame if I don't like the licensing terms, since I was the one of my own free will who chose it.
I didn't mean 'take' in the sense of physically displace. I meant 'take' as in 'use as the basis for a derivative work.'
And what in blazes is wrong with that? Everywhere I look I see GPL software that has used other software as its basis. If it's okay for GNU to do, then it's okay for everyone else. The sooner GNU dumps their crazy double standard the quicker the mainstream will take them seriously.
It's as simple as that. You're helping somebody else get rich off of your altruistic efforts.
And just what is wrong with that? If GNU is all about people NOT getting rich, then they should be honest about it and just say so.
Microsoft can use your code to help further their empire.
Yeah, so what? Seriously, so what? If you're against Microsoft profiting off of my code, be aware that if I used the GPL then Redhat could profit just as easily off of it. And if your against Microsoft withholding my own source code from me, be aware that they can do no such thing as I still possess it and am the legal copyright holder. And finally, if you're concerned that Microsoft will withhold the source code for the derivative work (minus my own code), I have no claim to it anyway since I did not write it. If "software should not be owned", then derivative software should be owned that much less.
Frankly, it's stupid using Big Bad Names(tm) like Microsoft and Adobe in order to scare me into using the GPL. Are you implying that without megacorporations proprietary software would be okay?
If I'm doing Open Source consulting for the purpose of making a living while writing free software, I don't want some other consulting firm using my free code and turning it proprietary to be used in their own solution. That is free-riding. And that would be an economic incentive for me to never release my code
I don't know what kind of consulting you do, but you had better get your act together before you get your ass sued off. Code that you write as a contractor for a client is the legal property of the client. It is not yours to release however you want. You can, of course, stipulate in the contract that the client will license the code back to you (under the GPL as an example), so for your legal health I hope you have.
Lets put it this way: The only people who bash the GPL are those who do not believe that all software can and should be free.
I fully agree. Which is why I prefer the BSD license, because I don't think that eliminating all proprietary software is in any way practical.
As immoral as I might think proprietary software to be, it is even more immoral for me to tell some other person what they can or cannot do with their software, especially if they wrote it.
I don't want somebody else taking my code, improving it a little, and then selling it as non-free software.
Nobody can take your code. They just can't. It's physically and metaphysically impossible. No matter how much they download from your ftp site, your original software is still there, untouched and undamaged.
Slashdot Mirror
Linux have better support for multimedia devices than FreeBSD
:-)
A valid reason. But don't go to overboard in demanding multimedia support, or you'll end up using Windows
Debian have more prepackaged software than FreeBSD
FreeBSD has 99% of what Debian has. Of that remaining 1%, they're 99% Linux-only programs. Who needs linuxconf on *BSD anyway?
apt-get is the best there is when it comes to precompiled binaries for the generic i386. But this is the world of Open Source. You have the source code, so use it! With source code you can optimize all the software for YOUR hardware, configure the software how YOU want it, etc. The best tools for upgrading software from source is ports.
Binaries are great for quickly getting a system up and running. But once you've got the system up and running, switch to source code.
Except Debian isn't an operating system. The operating system will still be NetBSD. The Debian bits could be called the operating environment, but it certainly is not the software that directs and controls processes, manages access to hardware, etc.
Should murderers be free to kill?
Of course not! But that begs the point, since corporations are not allowed to kill anyway.
One definition of freedom is the ability to do whatever you want so long as your actions do not prevent anyone else from doing whatever they want. Murder definitely falls under preventing people from doing whatever they want.
Another definition of freedom is complete control over your own property, including your body, actions and thoughts. Murder is again not allowed because killing deprives someone of their property, namely their life.
yet corporations, which aren't even human entities, are allowed to cross all of the lines of reasonable behaviour which we tend to expect from other people.
Corporations are not allowed to murder. Neither are they allowed to partake of illegal recreation drugs.
Somehow, this fails to have been applied to corporations
There is only one freedom which corporations have with unincorporated businesses or individuals do not have: the freedom to ignore responsibility. A corporation is a fictitious legal entity whose sole purpose is to shield the corporation's stockholders and management from the consequences of their individual actions. This is wrong.
But other than that, a corporation should have every single freedom that you or I have.
i myself have large reservations about capitalism as it is applied in North America, particularly in the freedoms whihc it allows to Corporations
Bad freedom. Bad bad freedom. [wap wap wap with rolled up newspaper] Bad freedom!
Most X11 based applications have a crappy look and feel.
The fault of the application or it's underlying toolkit. Blame GTK+, Qt or Motif. Actually though I've seen some awesome widget themes for all of the above. Themes that are aethetically pleasing without being garish. My favorite is QNiX (and it's derivative Teax) for KDE. Clean, simple, pretty.
Everything from how the Windows decide where they want to be to really obnoxious icon placement just irks some people
That's the window manager. And I don't really know what you're complaining about, since the typical windowmanager for X11 is light years ahead of the window managing component of Windows in terms of usability. Take your pick of window placement policy and focus policy. You can make your better WMs behave just like you want them to. As for icon placement, just place them where you want them if your desktop even uses icons.
X is not a desktop. It is a low level graphical library. By design X does not tell the window manager how to layout windows or icons. It is policy-less. This is a Good Thing(tm). So direct your complaints to where they belong. If you don't like your WMs policies then use another WM. There are a million to choose from. Try Enlightenment, Windowmaker, Blackbox, KWin/KDE, Sawfish, or IceWM.
I don't like tiled, cornered, or cascaded windows, for example. I like Window memory and I like Icons to stay where I put them... I like my Task/Tool bars at the top of the screen (where they belong), but I don't like systems that let me put them there and then continue to ignore the fact that I'm not running default setting so some things don't look right or misalign themselves.
Then use smart or column/row window placement, don't autoarrange icons, and drag your taskbar to the top of the screen. KDE does all of this without unarranging your layout. If you want "window memory" then use the title bar menu and choose "store settings".
There's nothing wrong with X11. Nothing other than what a bit of tweaking can't fix. It works and it works well.
There is one major reason people bitch about X: t's big.
They're right that it is big and complex. That's they way it's supposed to be. X is a network GUI. You can run your application on one machine and have it display on another (or multiple machines). This is a very powerful feature. It's awesome. But it makes X big and complex.
If you're running a standalone desktop it doesn't do you any good. If you've come from the Windows world and think that standalone desktops are the only thing that exist, then you begin to question the sanity of using X at all. But Unix (including Linux) is not a standalone desktop OS. You simply CANNOT replace X11 because to many people are dependent upon it.
Adobe Framemaker doesn't exist on Linux or FreeBSD. But I use it on my FreeBSD box anyway. How? By logging in remotely to my Solaris box at work. Now I get to use the world's best desktop publisher at home on my PC. All because of X.
X11 isn't going to be replaced. But there is something that could happen. There could be an XFree86-Lite. An X with the same API as all the other X's, but designed and optimized for a non-networked standalone desktop. Strip out all the stuff that home PCs would never use. But make it compatible with the existing X. Hell, you could write it all as a kernel mod for all I care. But at least you would get your tiny weakling X for your desktop and I would still have my big and powerful X for my workstation and we could still use the same X applications.
Pancake or string, it you wind up the same in the end. Bad news for scifi authors needing a Grand Unified Loophole, but for the rest of us it's all the same.
Now if only someone would do the same for KDE and GNOME...
I haven't build GNOME in a long time, but I build KDE from source every release. I've never had a problem with it building. I'm using FreeBSD, so it's a completely painless affair, but when I used Slackware it was still a simple matter.
No, there isn't a unified KDE build system for just KDE. Perhaps there should be. But writing a build system for KDE that covers not only building KDE (the easy part) but accounts for and builds all dependencies is a significantly harder thing to do than write an apt-get or ports like system. The reason is that KDE runs on all unices, not just the one you're using. Writing such a system that works for Debian, SuSE, Solaris, IRIX and OpenBSD would be a nightmare. It's tantamount to writing the next generation of autoconf. This system would have to upgrade X11R6, libxml, audiofile, pcre, Qt and png, among others, on all possible systems. Just thinking about it staggers me.
So let the OS/distro handle this problem in small OS/distro size chunks.
You KNOW that your distro has a tool or set of tools to build the whole distro from scratch. That's how they make the distro to begin with. So maybe people should be bugging Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc., to make these tools available in a unified end-user format.
You don't have to compile your 2Gigs every night. Nor do you have to compile it all at install time. I don't think Sorceror will let you install from premade binaries, but that's irrelevant if you aren't using binaries.
Here's what you do on your distro (if it will let you compile from source without mangling the package system):
Monday: compile the kernel and glibc
Tuesday: compile gcc, binutisl, textutils
Wednesday: compile XFree86
Thursday: compile kde-libs, kde-base (or gnome equivs)
Friday: compile kde-network, kde-utils (or gnome equivs)
etc
etc
etc
The advantages of doing your own builds, summarized (you can get detailed advantages on the sorceror, gentoo and freebsd pages):
Significant performance increase
Customized package configuration (Dia without GNOME, Xmms with mods, etc)
Fewer dependency problems (let configure worry about which exact libs you have installed)
Binary packages are convenient during installation, but they shouldn't be the final product on your box. They're so you can get a system up and running fast. Afterwards you can rebuild everything in the background while you're posting your trolls.
Most of you Linux guys are fanatical about Open Source and Free Software. It's your mantra and credo. Yet you fear the words "./configure; make; make install" every bit as much as the clueless windoze lusers. Free Software is meaningless without source code. Without source it might as well be proprietary freeware. Source code is your power. Don't pheer the source!
A Free Operating System allows you to do whatever you want with it! You are in control. Your box is yours. So why is some release manager at Redhat or SuSE your sysadmin-by-proxy?
Did you try reading the documentation. You can add packages straight from the net. And check out portupgrade, an awesome tool I suspect will be a standard tool in the base system for 5.0. Personally, I prefer compiling ports from scratch to get i686 binaries instead of i386 binaries, but everyone's different.
5 hours to do an upgrade? You're talking about apps, but that sounds like a full system upgrade. Unless you need specific fixes, stick with -RELEASE and don't upgrade the base OS.
Linux supports PnP with tools like isapnp.
Giggling uncontrollably...
Plug and Play is about plugging in hardware and having it work with zero effort on the part of the user. isapnp is allows PnP hardware to work on Linux, but it involves considerably more than zero effort.
Whoo Wee! You get a proprietary driver!
Although over a certain size they amount to the same thing, a lot of people still make a distinction between corporations and unions. Conservatives don't like unions and liberals don't like corporations, despite the existance of conservative unions and liberal corporations.
Both are legal entities that cannot vote but which have more influence in politics than individuals have. My plan for Campaign Finance Reform: zero limits on contributions, but they can only be made by qualified voters.
Campaign Finance Reform: individual contributions are capped while they put out a welcome mat at the back door for corporations and unions; finance candidates through tax revenues so that you are forced to finance the campaigns of those you wouldn't vote for if a gun were put to your head.
Microsoft Security: store all your personal information at One Redmond Way so that malicious corporations can't invade your privacy; argue that public disclosure of exploits and bugs are criminal acts.
I have to agree with your assessment of the name "extreme programming". Even worse, when you ask five different EP advocates what it's all about, you get five different answers.
One common thread seems to emerge though, and that is an intense focus on coding. Face it folks, coding is the *easy* part of programming.
I was always dismayed to see in stores the boxed set with the "Complete FreeBSD" book with an older version of the OS. I hope now they can get the latest versions into a box along with Greg Lehey's new FreeBSD book. Plus, if you're a Linux fan, try out FreeBSD just for the ports collection.
It would be nice, but I don't expect it to happen. FreeBSD has a new release every six months. It's more economical to print the books and stamp the CDs in large batches. So until FreeBSD starts selling above a certain rate, it's too expensive to do a print/press/box run every six months. It's feasible to do it with just the CDs, because there is a higher demand and there subscription program allows them to accurately predict how many they need.
What if the code wasn't paid for *entirely* with public funds? What if it was funded 50% public and 50% private?
My point was not so much that kernel code is different from systems or application code, but that the *domain* is so different.
An analogy can be made with the English language. You may be the most fluent English speaker ever, written dissertations on Shakespeare, Jonson and Chaucer, but the first time you read an insurance policy you say to yourself "that sure looks like English, but damn it, it just won't parse!"
If they are paying me as providing a service, does is matter if I write code to help fulfill that service?
I guess it depends on the contract, specifically, what they are paying you for. If it's for a "service" or "solution", then the code isn't necessarily theirs. After all, many consultants do the same thing with off the shelf software. But if the solution *is* the code, your legal standing is questionable. The best thing to do would be to create a contract in advance that sets the terms you want. You may want to check out GNU to see if they know of anyone with standard contracts of this sort. I would also check out www.goingware.com for some legal pointers on contracting.
In terms of "one-stop-ness", there's not much difference between FreeBSD and Debian. On either system you can upgrade from the bottom up with a single command.
However, I prefer the "flavor" of FreeBSD's one-stop-ness. The entire OS is integrated into one source tree. There's a single version for the kernel, libc, userland, core documentation, etc.
Now, I'm scared. Honestly, after reading through that introduction, I'm scared to touch kernel code. Hell, I'm scared to look at it.
:-)
That's kernel code for you
You can be the best programmer in the world, know assembly/C/C++ inside and out, and all that jazz, but when you hit kernel code it's like a different reality.
It is now official - C/Net has confirmed: *BSD is alive and thriving
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered AC crowd when C/Net reported that FreeBSD is going home. Wind River and FreeBSD Mall Inc. published a joint press-release today announcing the sale of Wind River's FreeBSD assets to Bob Bruce, founder of Walnut Creek CDROM--the company that in 1993 first published FreeBSD. This was the company that almost a decade ago declared to the world that *BSD is alive and thriving!
The FreeBSD Mall web site has been redesigned, with many new products, including FreeBSD CDs, books, polo shirts, microfiber jackets, boxer shorts, bumper stickers, lapel pins, several different styles of t-shirts, mouse pads, travel mugs, buttons, sticker sheets, plate logos, denim shirts, CD cases, and paid support options.
FreeBSD and its close relatives NetBSD and OpenBSD all are open-source projects, meaning that anyone can see, change and distribute the underlying source code.
With the main FreeBSD distribution back in the hands of the record holding Free Software distributor Bob Bruce, trolls posting that *BSD is dead had better keep the "anonymous" in "anonymous coward."
Fact: *BSD is alive and thriving!
Nothing is impossible for those who set their minds to it.
A world without proprietary software would be nice. But it's not worth the price of telling other people what they can do with the software they wrote.
We're not talking about their software, we're talking about your software or software developed by the Open Source community.
If it's software that I wrote, then I will have either released it under the BSD license, or have been paid good bucks to write it for someone else. Either way I have no problem. If I did not write it, and it is proprietary, then I have only myself to blame if I don't like the licensing terms, since I was the one of my own free will who chose it.
I didn't mean 'take' in the sense of physically displace. I meant 'take' as in 'use as the basis for a derivative work.'
And what in blazes is wrong with that? Everywhere I look I see GPL software that has used other software as its basis. If it's okay for GNU to do, then it's okay for everyone else. The sooner GNU dumps their crazy double standard the quicker the mainstream will take them seriously.
It's as simple as that. You're helping somebody else get rich off of your altruistic efforts.
And just what is wrong with that? If GNU is all about people NOT getting rich, then they should be honest about it and just say so.
Microsoft can use your code to help further their empire.
Yeah, so what? Seriously, so what? If you're against Microsoft profiting off of my code, be aware that if I used the GPL then Redhat could profit just as easily off of it. And if your against Microsoft withholding my own source code from me, be aware that they can do no such thing as I still possess it and am the legal copyright holder. And finally, if you're concerned that Microsoft will withhold the source code for the derivative work (minus my own code), I have no claim to it anyway since I did not write it. If "software should not be owned", then derivative software should be owned that much less.
Frankly, it's stupid using Big Bad Names(tm) like Microsoft and Adobe in order to scare me into using the GPL. Are you implying that without megacorporations proprietary software would be okay?
If I'm doing Open Source consulting for the purpose of making a living while writing free software, I don't want some other consulting firm using my free code and turning it proprietary to be used in their own solution. That is free-riding. And that would be an economic incentive for me to never release my code
I don't know what kind of consulting you do, but you had better get your act together before you get your ass sued off. Code that you write as a contractor for a client is the legal property of the client. It is not yours to release however you want. You can, of course, stipulate in the contract that the client will license the code back to you (under the GPL as an example), so for your legal health I hope you have.
Lets put it this way: The only people who bash the GPL are those who do not believe that all software can and should be free.
I fully agree. Which is why I prefer the BSD license, because I don't think that eliminating all proprietary software is in any way practical.
As immoral as I might think proprietary software to be, it is even more immoral for me to tell some other person what they can or cannot do with their software, especially if they wrote it.
I don't want somebody else taking my code, improving it a little, and then selling it as non-free software.
Nobody can take your code. They just can't. It's physically and metaphysically impossible. No matter how much they download from your ftp site, your original software is still there, untouched and undamaged.