Okay, I'll feed the troll 'cuz I hate to see the little buggers starve to death...
although the source is open, the development team is not.
I seem to recall that only Linus Torvalds gets to bless kernel code with "officialdom". Funny, I heard that GNU operates in a similar way.
Furthermore the license allpws proprietary software to "steal" source code and use it.
The oldest FUD in the book. You cannot steal what is free. Try it sometime if you don't believe me. No matter how hard you try, you cannot take FreeBSD away from the FreeBSD Core Team. No matter how much you close, fold, spindle and mutilate it, it will still be there untouched and as pristine as before!
"Steal" is definitely not the right word.
What must be done is an opening up of the development process OR a GPL-style restriction on redistribution.
So, you're saying that they either need to be LESS restrictive or MORE restrictive? Which one is it!
Recently I became aware of two GPLd projects that are using some of my BSD licensed code. Fantastic! Great! Go Bulldogs! It didn't bother me one bit that my code was being used in alternately licensed projects. However, if the shoes were on the other foot, it could not have happened.
Whoever thought it was only for Linux? Linux is not GNU, and GNOME is a GNU project. If it can't run on any other platform besides Linux when happens when TGS is finally released?
I wasn't talking about the home consumer market, or the power users, or the developers. Reread my post again. I was talking about the hardware in businesses. You know, that box that the secretary was using WP 5.1 on to type up reports...
Unlike you, businesses don't throw away $1000 to $5000 investments just because Bill Gates says so. The CEO's Assistant may get the newest box at Office Depot, but his/her old box is still being used somewhere in the company. The old boxes only get replaced when they break. And remember, businesses include more than the Fortune 500. It includes the everything from IBM to the corner liquor store and the family farm.
I'm sorry, but I don't have the figures. It's been six years, so I doubt I can find that Business Week, as the trashman has long since come and gone. I know, I should keep all my old magazines for times such as these...
They think about what most of their users are likely to have as hardware and what features their users would like to see.
I don't know what the current figures are. But on the date that Windows 95 was released, the most common type of non-server computer hardware in businesses was... the 80286!
The entry of *new* customers into the market has been driving the Microsoft profits since 1981. Well, the market it levelling out, and in not too long of a time, this year or next, the majority of computer users will not be newbies. That's going to kick Microsoft right in the teeth. For once they're going to have to market to the second and third time owner of Windows instead of relying on preinstalls for the majority of their sales.
This is just continuing a trend that has been ongoing for two decades.
Most of you youngin's don't remember the early days of computing. Rest assured that it's not much different from today. You went and bought a brand new IBM PC with 48K RAM. Then you rudely discovered that all the programs needed 64K. So you upgraded and discovered that programs needed 256K, so you upgraded again. And again. To 640K, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. A mere six years ago 4MB to 8MB was sufficient for DOS/Win3.1. OS/2 was considered a memory hog because it wanted 16MB. Then you had to upgrade yet again, to 16MB, 32MB, 64MB, and 128MB. Six years and the memory considered "barely adequate" has doubled five times. At this rate you will need Four Gigabytes of RAM in the year 2008!
The developers (and their tool manufacturers) are at fault for ignoring the user. When they want to know what the minimum requirements should be, they don't find out what the users actually have. Instead they go to Circuit City and Best Buy and see what the less-than-two-day-old systems are shipping with.
Maybe it's just me, but doesn't it seem like the more controls are placed on the purchasing of guns, and the more certain types of guns are banned, that more school shootings occur? I'm not saying that their is a direct correlation, just that gun control isn't solving any problems.
Longtime readers may be aware that I have little to no problems with censorware. I believe that people should be able to do what everythey want on the net so long as they don't interfer with anyone elses right to do the same, and that they do so on their own machine. That terminal in the public library isn't mine, so I don't get to make the rules about what software can or cannot be installed.
But ignore all of that. This Texas bill has nothing whatsoever to do with censorware. It has everything to do with some buttinski politician exploring the seemingly limitless avenues personal political power. The bill could be mandating the installation of Linux on PCs, the use of asphalt shingles on doghouses, or flow limiters in toilets, but it would be every bit as evil.
I can understand why Garcia is ticked off that some unsolicited porn popped up on his monitor. But what I don't understand is why the wrath is targeted at the innocent retailer and consumer rather than being targeted at the actual culprit. It's time to start filing criminal charges at the pornspammers instead of imprisoning their victims.
I don't see how freenet could have avoided the abuses in the DeCSS or CPHACK cases. Jon could have released DeCSS anonymously with the services of freenet, but he could also have done it anonymously *without* freenet. He got in trouble because he chose to place his name and his license on his code.
Freenet isn't a free speech haven. It's a speakeasy.
Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Larry Wall, and Guido van Rossum are but four major authors of SuSE Linux that are not German. You see, SuSE did not write 98% of SuSE. They only took existing components and fit them together, along with some of their own. SuSE may have created the SuSE Linux operating system, but they didn't create the vast majority of components.
There's a big difference. When the Thirteen Colonies declared their independence, they did it because England was denying them their free speech. But free speech is not restricted on the internet as a whole (it might be in some small areas however). Imagine if one of those Thirteen Colonies had seceeded in 1786 on the basis that they wanted to create a free speech haven. It would have been absurd because they already had it!
I don't have to go to freenet to peddle my thoughts and speeches. I can already do that without fear of reprisal.
Suffice it to say that we used to be an engineering organization with an engineer/physician CEO. Now our Siemens CEO is a marketing dude, and our marketing department, dancing on their puppet strings, are creating our engineering *specs*. Gaaagh!
We were best of breed, the most respected company of our type. And we got bought out by number eight in a field of nine competitors.
Never having to answer the question "Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?": Priceless.
A strange thing happened to free speech a few decades ago. The majority of people took free speech for granted, and a small minority tried to take advantage of that. Then some college kids said enough is enough, and tried to fix things. But being college kids, their brains were the consistancy of tapioca. They meant well but they screwed up big time...
You see, they had this very strange notion that free speech needed an official place to be excercised. So they designated official "free speech areas". If you wanted to protest the war in Vietnam, you went to a designated free speech area and said your piece. Apparently they didn't believe that free speech was allowed on the street corners. The result of that movement is today's political correctness, and the heart of political correctness is UC Berkeley, home of the free speech movement.
Freenet is going down that same path. They're designating an official place to practice free speech. Apparently, they to do not understand that free speech on the internet is for everyone everywhere. If free speech is ever fully taken away from us, it will be in part the fault of freenet and their unfree notion that freedom needs to be corraled inside a fence instead of being excercised anywhere and everywhere.
Don't count on Siemens having the nerve to say no to Microsoft. If you look at the most recent Dr. Dobbs, they are the featured "client" of Microsoft NT Embedded. Also, I work for a company that just got aquired (peacefully) by Siemens AG. We were a long time user of LynxOS for realtime embedded medical software. The word has now come from above that we will discontinue the use of LynxOS, and use Syngo(tm), which is Siemens Medical Software divisions' WinNT/2K based ActiveX framework.
Okay, so the US is only 5% of the population but produces 25% of the CO2. Is that good or bad? You don't know! Maybe that 25% emissions is *low* for the level of US industrialization. Don't dismiss the previous post as sarcasm, there's a lot of truth there.
Maybe Hoovaloo and Lin Chang aren't (significant) CO2 producers. And maybe Thog the slash-and-burn farmer in the Amazon rainforest isn't either, but he *does* have a significant effect on CO2 levels.
If you use glibc, linux and Xfree86 extensions in your program, then it will *only* run on Linux.
Take a look at the FreeBSD ports and start counting how many applications *require* glibc installed just to compile the software. Obviously, there are scads of developers that are indeed using non-portable extensions.
This is only a stopgap standard for use by the lazy. What needs to be done is to make Linux conform the the *current* standards already out there, instead of continuing to ensure that Linux apps will only run on Linux systems.
Conform to the ISO/ANSI Standard C Library instead of glibc-2.2.
Conform to POSIX instead of Linux-2.2.14.
Conform to X11R6 instead of XFree86-3.3.5.
A few pieces of software will need to be system specific, but the vast majority of Open Source code should be cleanly rebuildable on all Unix like operating systems, including *BSD, Solaris, HPUX, IRIX, etc.
Hi, Bob.
Hi, Lenny. Say, did you get the new gcc?
Yeah, it's cost me $500. Can you believe that?
Hey! I paid $500 also. What a ripoff!
Tell you what, next version I'll buy it then sell you a copy of $250...
Which is why the term is "open source" as opposed to just "open". If only RMS had picked the term "free source" way back when, a whole bunch of confusion could have been avoided.
Using the word "free" in reference to source code means the same thing as "open". Only human beings can be free in the sense of "free speech". What's the difference between "free speech" and "open speech" anyway? After all, it's not the software nor the speech that are free, but the coder and the speaker. "free speech" places the emphasis on the speaker and "open speech" places it on the speech itself, but it's still the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I'll feed the troll 'cuz I hate to see the little buggers starve to death...
although the source is open, the development team is not.
I seem to recall that only Linus Torvalds gets to bless kernel code with "officialdom". Funny, I heard that GNU operates in a similar way.
Furthermore the license allpws proprietary software to "steal" source code and use it.
The oldest FUD in the book. You cannot steal what is free. Try it sometime if you don't believe me. No matter how hard you try, you cannot take FreeBSD away from the FreeBSD Core Team. No matter how much you close, fold, spindle and mutilate it, it will still be there untouched and as pristine as before!
"Steal" is definitely not the right word.
What must be done is an opening up of the development process OR a GPL-style restriction on redistribution.
So, you're saying that they either need to be LESS restrictive or MORE restrictive? Which one is it!
Recently I became aware of two GPLd projects that are using some of my BSD licensed code. Fantastic! Great! Go Bulldogs! It didn't bother me one bit that my code was being used in alternately licensed projects. However, if the shoes were on the other foot, it could not have happened.
And GNOME is different how?
What is it with you and BSD? Why should you even care what other people are running? Did Theo insult you or something?
You spend so much time dissing BSD that it's like you're trying to compensate for some unknown inadequacy. Small dick? Small brain? What?
Whoever thought it was only for Linux? Linux is not GNU, and GNOME is a GNU project. If it can't run on any other platform besides Linux when happens when TGS is finally released?
I wasn't talking about the home consumer market, or the power users, or the developers. Reread my post again. I was talking about the hardware in businesses. You know, that box that the secretary was using WP 5.1 on to type up reports...
Unlike you, businesses don't throw away $1000 to $5000 investments just because Bill Gates says so. The CEO's Assistant may get the newest box at Office Depot, but his/her old box is still being used somewhere in the company. The old boxes only get replaced when they break. And remember, businesses include more than the Fortune 500. It includes the everything from IBM to the corner liquor store and the family farm.
I'm sorry, but I don't have the figures. It's been six years, so I doubt I can find that Business Week, as the trashman has long since come and gone. I know, I should keep all my old magazines for times such as these...
It's a technology fact that as hardware power goes up, software requirements and features do as well.
Non sequitur. If the speed limit increases does technology demand more horsepower for the automobile? Of course not!
The technology doesn't drive software requirements, marketing does.
They think about what most of their users are likely to have as hardware and what features their users would like to see.
I don't know what the current figures are. But on the date that Windows 95 was released, the most common type of non-server computer hardware in businesses was... the 80286!
The entry of *new* customers into the market has been driving the Microsoft profits since 1981. Well, the market it levelling out, and in not too long of a time, this year or next, the majority of computer users will not be newbies. That's going to kick Microsoft right in the teeth. For once they're going to have to market to the second and third time owner of Windows instead of relying on preinstalls for the majority of their sales.
This is just continuing a trend that has been ongoing for two decades.
Most of you youngin's don't remember the early days of computing. Rest assured that it's not much different from today. You went and bought a brand new IBM PC with 48K RAM. Then you rudely discovered that all the programs needed 64K. So you upgraded and discovered that programs needed 256K, so you upgraded again. And again. To 640K, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. A mere six years ago 4MB to 8MB was sufficient for DOS/Win3.1. OS/2 was considered a memory hog because it wanted 16MB. Then you had to upgrade yet again, to 16MB, 32MB, 64MB, and 128MB. Six years and the memory considered "barely adequate" has doubled five times. At this rate you will need Four Gigabytes of RAM in the year 2008!
The developers (and their tool manufacturers) are at fault for ignoring the user. When they want to know what the minimum requirements should be, they don't find out what the users actually have. Instead they go to Circuit City and Best Buy and see what the less-than-two-day-old systems are shipping with.
Maybe it's just me, but doesn't it seem like the more controls are placed on the purchasing of guns, and the more certain types of guns are banned, that more school shootings occur? I'm not saying that their is a direct correlation, just that gun control isn't solving any problems.
Longtime readers may be aware that I have little to no problems with censorware. I believe that people should be able to do what everythey want on the net so long as they don't interfer with anyone elses right to do the same, and that they do so on their own machine. That terminal in the public library isn't mine, so I don't get to make the rules about what software can or cannot be installed.
But ignore all of that. This Texas bill has nothing whatsoever to do with censorware. It has everything to do with some buttinski politician exploring the seemingly limitless avenues personal political power. The bill could be mandating the installation of Linux on PCs, the use of asphalt shingles on doghouses, or flow limiters in toilets, but it would be every bit as evil.
I can understand why Garcia is ticked off that some unsolicited porn popped up on his monitor. But what I don't understand is why the wrath is targeted at the innocent retailer and consumer rather than being targeted at the actual culprit. It's time to start filing criminal charges at the pornspammers instead of imprisoning their victims.
I don't see how freenet could have avoided the abuses in the DeCSS or CPHACK cases. Jon could have released DeCSS anonymously with the services of freenet, but he could also have done it anonymously *without* freenet. He got in trouble because he chose to place his name and his license on his code.
Freenet isn't a free speech haven. It's a speakeasy.
Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Larry Wall, and Guido van Rossum are but four major authors of SuSE Linux that are not German. You see, SuSE did not write 98% of SuSE. They only took existing components and fit them together, along with some of their own. SuSE may have created the SuSE Linux operating system, but they didn't create the vast majority of components.
Hey, but at least the build is automatic! Give it a low priority and let it build in the background. No muss no fuss.
(unless of course you're using a modem. with close to 30 megs of sources, that would suck...)
There's a big difference. When the Thirteen Colonies declared their independence, they did it because England was denying them their free speech. But free speech is not restricted on the internet as a whole (it might be in some small areas however). Imagine if one of those Thirteen Colonies had seceeded in 1786 on the basis that they wanted to create a free speech haven. It would have been absurd because they already had it!
I don't have to go to freenet to peddle my thoughts and speeches. I can already do that without fear of reprisal.
You know I can't say who it is :-)
Suffice it to say that we used to be an engineering organization with an engineer/physician CEO. Now our Siemens CEO is a marketing dude, and our marketing department, dancing on their puppet strings, are creating our engineering *specs*. Gaaagh!
We were best of breed, the most respected company of our type. And we got bought out by number eight in a field of nine competitors.
It's time to get my resume in order...
Never having to answer the question "Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?": Priceless.
A strange thing happened to free speech a few decades ago. The majority of people took free speech for granted, and a small minority tried to take advantage of that. Then some college kids said enough is enough, and tried to fix things. But being college kids, their brains were the consistancy of tapioca. They meant well but they screwed up big time...
You see, they had this very strange notion that free speech needed an official place to be excercised. So they designated official "free speech areas". If you wanted to protest the war in Vietnam, you went to a designated free speech area and said your piece. Apparently they didn't believe that free speech was allowed on the street corners. The result of that movement is today's political correctness, and the heart of political correctness is UC Berkeley, home of the free speech movement.
Freenet is going down that same path. They're designating an official place to practice free speech. Apparently, they to do not understand that free speech on the internet is for everyone everywhere. If free speech is ever fully taken away from us, it will be in part the fault of freenet and their unfree notion that freedom needs to be corraled inside a fence instead of being excercised anywhere and everywhere.
98% of SuSE is not german.
If I wanted the ultimate secure OS for a PC-based server, I would want to use OpenBSD. But too bad, it's developed in Canada...
Don't count on Siemens having the nerve to say no to Microsoft. If you look at the most recent Dr. Dobbs, they are the featured "client" of Microsoft NT Embedded. Also, I work for a company that just got aquired (peacefully) by Siemens AG. We were a long time user of LynxOS for realtime embedded medical software. The word has now come from above that we will discontinue the use of LynxOS, and use Syngo(tm), which is Siemens Medical Software divisions' WinNT/2K based ActiveX framework.
Okay, so the US is only 5% of the population but produces 25% of the CO2. Is that good or bad? You don't know! Maybe that 25% emissions is *low* for the level of US industrialization. Don't dismiss the previous post as sarcasm, there's a lot of truth there.
Maybe Hoovaloo and Lin Chang aren't (significant) CO2 producers. And maybe Thog the slash-and-burn farmer in the Amazon rainforest isn't either, but he *does* have a significant effect on CO2 levels.
This exact thing has happened before, the last time it happened was about 10.500 years ago when climatic conditions in S-England changed...
I'm wondering how the cro-magnon managed to cause global warming/cooling without the benefit of factories, SUV's and capitalism...
If you use glibc, linux and Xfree86 extensions in your program, then it will *only* run on Linux.
Take a look at the FreeBSD ports and start counting how many applications *require* glibc installed just to compile the software. Obviously, there are scads of developers that are indeed using non-portable extensions.
This is only a stopgap standard for use by the lazy. What needs to be done is to make Linux conform the the *current* standards already out there, instead of continuing to ensure that Linux apps will only run on Linux systems.
Conform to the ISO/ANSI Standard C Library instead of glibc-2.2.
Conform to POSIX instead of Linux-2.2.14.
Conform to X11R6 instead of XFree86-3.3.5.
A few pieces of software will need to be system specific, but the vast majority of Open Source code should be cleanly rebuildable on all Unix like operating systems, including *BSD, Solaris, HPUX, IRIX, etc.
Hi, Bob.
Hi, Lenny. Say, did you get the new gcc?
Yeah, it's cost me $500. Can you believe that?
Hey! I paid $500 also. What a ripoff!
Tell you what, next version I'll buy it then sell you a copy of $250...
What are the frech words for "free memory block", "free electron", "free end of a rope" and "free verse"?
There are seventeen definitions of "free" in my dictionary. Having only two words to express them is not much better than only having one.
Which is why the term is "open source" as opposed to just "open". If only RMS had picked the term "free source" way back when, a whole bunch of confusion could have been avoided.
Using the word "free" in reference to source code means the same thing as "open". Only human beings can be free in the sense of "free speech". What's the difference between "free speech" and "open speech" anyway? After all, it's not the software nor the speech that are free, but the coder and the speaker. "free speech" places the emphasis on the speaker and "open speech" places it on the speech itself, but it's still the same thing.