What a wonderful excuse. "I am not being paid for writing this software, so screw you." I don't expect professionalism in hobbyist created software. I DO expect professionalism for software written by professional software engineers.
True, but did you also have to throw out analysis and design on the front end, and validation and verification on the back end, out along with the closed source model
Free of the time and resource constraints of commercial development, Open Source is one of the few areas where a real and effective waterfall development life cycle can occur. But instead they use some weird mutant spiral life cycle with only a "prototype" stage.
That's not a new marketing scheme. SGI has been doing a variation on it for years. Their internal motto is "We have the world's largest QA department," according to two ex-IRIX developers I work with.
Now, this may seem odd or broken, but it has a few charming advantages.
It also has several rude disadvantages. First, I am being treated as an unpaid QA employee. Second, when I find a problem and report it, I am flamed for not reporting it in the proper format or with the proper dump or trace. Third, my intelligence is insulted by labelling this software "stable" before any unit, system or integration testing has been done.
Hacking on software is fun, exciting and rewarding. But there are a few of us who just want to *use* the software. The last thing I want to do when I come home is to trace another core and file a problem report.
Why Open Source developers get paid for writing software, when the Open Source users don't get paid for testing software?
If you friend wished to share that information, it would be wrong of you to deny him. You've distributed that information, and now it wants to be free.
There was to be a second run of stickers under BSDi, but they never got around to it before they split up. So the existing stickers are all that are left, and there aren't that many of them. An inside source told me that they won't be included in the 4.4 Wimpriver set, so unless DN prints some new ones, they won't have them either.
The best place for these kinds of questions is freebsd-questions@freebsd.org. Warning: this is a high traffic mailing list. Archives are also available.
There's nothing inherently wrong with writing a Linux only (or FreeBSD) only application, if that's what you want.
I use Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris, so crossplatform software is important to me. It's a royal pain in the butt to have a different set of tools on each platform. For lower level system software it doesn't matter much. I don't care if the BSD ld won't compile on Solaris, because Solaris already has a dynamic linker. And sysinstall is as pointless on SuSE as YaST is on FreeBSD. But the higher level software *should* be portable.
I wasn't referring to the standard stuff that most configure scripts can sort out, but to the rare glibc-only calls. Fortunately most Linux applications do not use them, but I've stumbled across a couple that did.
Calm down calm down. Actually, I think Matt might even agree with you.
What he was talking about in the way of clustering was the sudden fascination with beowulf type clusters. These things are being marketed as high availability when clearly they are not.
Even though his pet peeve might not be my pet peeve, it still peeves me off. There are many kinds of linuxisms, even though I mentioned only one.
Li*nux*ism:
Pronunciation: 'lee-nuks-izm'
Function: noun
Date: 1998
: a theory holding that the community can know nothing but its own operating system and that its operating system is the only existent operating system. Compare with English "solipsism".
p.s. You have a Linuxism in your post. Can you find it?
It was interesting to read that Matt Dillon is supporting Rik van Riel's work on the VM in Linux.
I didn't get the sense that Matt was supporting Rik in this controversy. Rather, my impression was that Matt thought that a particular argument put forth by one camp was spurious. Big difference.
These linux-isms are popping up everywhere now, and just plain causing crossplatform (or at least differing unix platforms) problems.
For those who haven't figured it out yet, let me clue you in on a couple of facts:
1) The linux kernel is specific to Linux. If you make linux specific kernel calls then your program will only run under Linux. If you're writing a kernel module, then go for it. Otherwise forget it. It will only make you look stupid.
2) A Standard C Library (libc) is standard for every Unix and Unix-like operating system. For 99 systems out of 100, this libc will NOT come from GNU. If you write a program that makes use of glibc extensions, your program will not be portable. It will only make you look stupid.
Was I complaining about GNOME or KDE? No! Go reread my post. As for M$ making it a royal pain in the ass, I couldn't say. I haven't used Windows that much, but the few times I have it was very easy to change (the IE/NS conflict not withstanding).
Yeah, I'm still not sure what the goal of "GNU-Darwin" is.
As near as I can figure, Proclus doesn't think the BSD license is free enough, so he's making an exact clone of OpenPackages with a more restrictive license. Or maybe he thinks that "open" doesn't emphasise freedom enough, so he changed the prefix to one that doesn't contain the letters 'f', 'r', or 'e'.
I could see someone trying to make a better OpenPackages than OpenPackages, or trying doing the OpenPackages idea in a new and different way. But from where I sit, I see near exact duplication of effort.
That used to be the way of doing things about five years ago. OS/2 Warp (the best desktop ever made) was specifically designed around this idea. They called it a document-centric interface. You treat the document as an object, and then manipulate that object with the editor object, printer object, etc.
We seem to be getting away from that model, and entering the related but subtly different "filemanager-centric" model. Click on the document and if the click doesn't do what you wanted it to do then complain to tech support.
I'm not talking about Windows here, I'm talking about GNOME and KDE. Why can't I drag my text file on top of the XEmacs icon on the panel or kicker and have it automatically open up in XEmacs?
Metadata was done elegantly by OS/2 Warp. They had a particularly nice feature in that you could configure a particular document to open with a particular application. Fine-grained file types.
Of course, it had the problem that Salon was bitching about: the users still have to have more than two braincells if they want to change default applications.
Slashdot Mirror
The GPL protects your freedom by removing your rights to do with your own software as you wish.
Wall, Van Rossum, McKusick, de Icaza, de Raadt, Dawes, Raymond, Perens, yada, yada, yada ad infinitum.
Wow! Sounds like the GPL. "We protect your freedom by restricting you."
I never got paid for any OSS work I did.
What a wonderful excuse. "I am not being paid for writing this software, so screw you." I don't expect professionalism in hobbyist created software. I DO expect professionalism for software written by professional software engineers.
don't consider a release to be stable just because its in the so-called stable series.
So, does "stable" not mean "stable"? Now I'm really confused. Next you'll be telling me that black is white and restriction is freedom.
Open source is a paradigm shift.
True, but did you also have to throw out analysis and design on the front end, and validation and verification on the back end, out along with the closed source model
Free of the time and resource constraints of commercial development, Open Source is one of the few areas where a real and effective waterfall development life cycle can occur. But instead they use some weird mutant spiral life cycle with only a "prototype" stage.
That's not a new marketing scheme. SGI has been doing a variation on it for years. Their internal motto is "We have the world's largest QA department," according to two ex-IRIX developers I work with.
I've got one unused set of stickers from 4.3. The bidding starts at $50.
Now, this may seem odd or broken, but it has a few charming advantages.
It also has several rude disadvantages. First, I am being treated as an unpaid QA employee. Second, when I find a problem and report it, I am flamed for not reporting it in the proper format or with the proper dump or trace. Third, my intelligence is insulted by labelling this software "stable" before any unit, system or integration testing has been done.
Hacking on software is fun, exciting and rewarding. But there are a few of us who just want to *use* the software. The last thing I want to do when I come home is to trace another core and file a problem report.
Why Open Source developers get paid for writing software, when the Open Source users don't get paid for testing software?
If you friend wished to share that information, it would be wrong of you to deny him. You've distributed that information, and now it wants to be free.
There was to be a second run of stickers under BSDi, but they never got around to it before they split up. So the existing stickers are all that are left, and there aren't that many of them. An inside source told me that they won't be included in the 4.4 Wimpriver set, so unless DN prints some new ones, they won't have them either.
The best place for these kinds of questions is freebsd-questions@freebsd.org. Warning: this is a high traffic mailing list. Archives are also available.
There's nothing inherently wrong with writing a Linux only (or FreeBSD) only application, if that's what you want.
I use Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris, so crossplatform software is important to me. It's a royal pain in the butt to have a different set of tools on each platform. For lower level system software it doesn't matter much. I don't care if the BSD ld won't compile on Solaris, because Solaris already has a dynamic linker. And sysinstall is as pointless on SuSE as YaST is on FreeBSD. But the higher level software *should* be portable.
I wasn't referring to the standard stuff that most configure scripts can sort out, but to the rare glibc-only calls. Fortunately most Linux applications do not use them, but I've stumbled across a couple that did.
Calm down calm down. Actually, I think Matt might even agree with you.
What he was talking about in the way of clustering was the sudden fascination with beowulf type clusters. These things are being marketed as high availability when clearly they are not.
Then why call them Linux programs if they're compiled for BSD?!?! I guess my sarcasm is too subtle for some people. Next time I'll use a bat.
Even though his pet peeve might not be my pet peeve, it still peeves me off. There are many kinds of linuxisms, even though I mentioned only one.
Li*nux*ism:
Pronunciation: 'lee-nuks-izm'
Function: noun
Date: 1998
: a theory holding that the community can know nothing but its own operating system and that its operating system is the only existent operating system. Compare with English "solipsism".
p.s. You have a Linuxism in your post. Can you find it?
Since you can run Windows applications on Linux using WINE, would it be proper to say that "Microsoft Word is a Linux application"?
It was interesting to read that Matt Dillon is supporting Rik van Riel's work on the VM in Linux.
I didn't get the sense that Matt was supporting Rik in this controversy. Rather, my impression was that Matt thought that a particular argument put forth by one camp was spurious. Big difference.
These linux-isms are popping up everywhere now, and just plain causing crossplatform (or at least differing unix platforms) problems.
For those who haven't figured it out yet, let me clue you in on a couple of facts:
1) The linux kernel is specific to Linux. If you make linux specific kernel calls then your program will only run under Linux. If you're writing a kernel module, then go for it. Otherwise forget it. It will only make you look stupid.
2) A Standard C Library (libc) is standard for every Unix and Unix-like operating system. For 99 systems out of 100, this libc will NOT come from GNU. If you write a program that makes use of glibc extensions, your program will not be portable. It will only make you look stupid.
You want to see real rants, go to Linuxtoday and any recent article on Windriver dumping FreeBSD.
Was I complaining about GNOME or KDE? No! Go reread my post. As for M$ making it a royal pain in the ass, I couldn't say. I haven't used Windows that much, but the few times I have it was very easy to change (the IE/NS conflict not withstanding).
Yeah, I'm still not sure what the goal of "GNU-Darwin" is.
As near as I can figure, Proclus doesn't think the BSD license is free enough, so he's making an exact clone of OpenPackages with a more restrictive license. Or maybe he thinks that "open" doesn't emphasise freedom enough, so he changed the prefix to one that doesn't contain the letters 'f', 'r', or 'e'.
I could see someone trying to make a better OpenPackages than OpenPackages, or trying doing the OpenPackages idea in a new and different way. But from where I sit, I see near exact duplication of effort.
That used to be the way of doing things about five years ago. OS/2 Warp (the best desktop ever made) was specifically designed around this idea. They called it a document-centric interface. You treat the document as an object, and then manipulate that object with the editor object, printer object, etc.
We seem to be getting away from that model, and entering the related but subtly different "filemanager-centric" model. Click on the document and if the click doesn't do what you wanted it to do then complain to tech support.
I'm not talking about Windows here, I'm talking about GNOME and KDE. Why can't I drag my text file on top of the XEmacs icon on the panel or kicker and have it automatically open up in XEmacs?
Metadata was done elegantly by OS/2 Warp. They had a particularly nice feature in that you could configure a particular document to open with a particular application. Fine-grained file types.
Of course, it had the problem that Salon was bitching about: the users still have to have more than two braincells if they want to change default applications.