What has always amazed me about RPM packages is that the builders always seem to remove their brains before making them.
RPM-the-library has the capability to check for specific files, but real world RPM packages never do. Thus, if you ever bypass the RPM mechanism you're screwed. If appfoo-1.6 needs libfoo-2.1, then why the hell can't appfoo-1.6-i386.rpm check for the existance of the libfoo.so.2.1 file? Why does it demand the existance of libfoo-2.1-3-i386.rpm, which in turn demands packages for libfoo-patch-6.9b, libsnafu-0.0.4-pre, gnomesnafu-0.0.4-pre2, kdespuge-3.0.1b9, and on and on and on. Before you know it, you have the entirety of GNOME, KDE, and XFree86-4.0.2-patch9 just to run a stupid ncurses program.
KDE-2 is faithful to the Unix philosophy. The command line is not taken away from you. You have a great terminal with Konsole, you can but a mini Konsole on the panel, pop up a mini Konsole with Alt-F2, attack a Konsole to Konqueror, and so on.
Unix is about small tools doing one thing well that you can join together. This is still present in KDE. The window manager is small and simple and does just one thing. Ditto for the panel, the default editor, the terminal, etc. With KParts and DCOP you can start pluging them together in ways that Redmond can't even imagine. Konqueror is basically nothing more than a viewer with tons of plugins available for it.
It is the *user* who decides how simple or complex the desktop will be.
As for its "Windows look-alikeness", I don't know. Because I haven't used Windows since '95. And my desktop doesn't resemble or behave ANYTHING like Win95. Not at all. No way and no how. Sheesh...
The fact that the GIMP has not a great user interface, does not mean it is caused by its use of Gtk+.
Amen! I was a bit stunned when I read Andreas mumbling on about GIMP. I am one of the biggest Qt bigots out there, but the problems with GIMP are not the fault of GTK+.
Even if it was integrated into the kernel, so what? I'm sure I'll be labeled as a heretic (what else is new), but the DOJ's emphasis on integrating IExplorer into Windows was absolutely stupid. They could integrate MSOffice right into Windows kernel space and I wouldn't care.
Microsoft's business practices are the problem, not their technology, and especially not their sophmoric attempts to improve it.
If you're using binary packages from your distribution, most likely you are getting the lowest common denominator optimization. In other words, nothing.
Recompile X, Qt and KDE optimized for your system. I use "-O2 -mpentium" for all of them, and --no-g++exceptions when configuring Qt. The speed improvements are amazing!
There are several reasons for this speed difference. First Windows Explorer doesn't do a tenth of the stuff that Konqueror does. Combine Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, make sure none of it is in kernel space and not already running in the background somewhere, give it an advanced widget library, and then see. I bet that Konqueror would kick Windows butt all day long.
When I need dozens of computers the same day, my only hope is to go around cleaning out all the electronics and office supply stores within a reasonable distance. I can't wait around for some dinky garage assembler in Flurjnik, Minnesota to scare up enough neighbor kids to put them together and mail them to me.
I had to come back and respond to this point because it's still annoying me.
First of all, there is absolutely no need to go all the way to Flurjnik to get computers without Windows. Have you ever heard of Penguin Computing? VA Linux? And those are just two names for Linux preinstalls catering to businesses. Many others exist and also for *BSD. And I don't need to mention the hundreds of other alternatives to preinstalled-Windows. Don't excuse your lack of shopping savvy by inventing a fictitous tax.
You current state of freedom, absent any external coercion, is a product of your previous choices. If you're stuck in a situation where you have to buy 100 computers NOW, then that odds are overwhelming that it was you that got yourself into that situation. What if your situation called for 100 flatbed trucks right NOW, and the only local supplier was Ford, but that Dodge could have them ready for you in a week. Would you then be paying a Ford tax? I don't think so.
When I'm buying equipment in government or corporate situations, there are often regulations or contracts or purchasing guidelines that limit me to certain vendors
Then it is the government agency or corporation that is voluntarily choosing to use manufacturers that employ Microsoft products. In your own domain you can do whatever you want. Your employer or client cannot force you to buy Windows for your personal use.
Trust me, when I signed the paperwork granting me authorization to make major purchases on the government's tab, jail was definitely a stated consequence for failure to follow the rules.
But you wouldn't be going to jail for "tax avoidance". Microsoft had nothing to do with it. If the rules said you had to purchase Dell+Redhat and you bought a Compaq+Windows instead, you would face the identical consequences.
It is not a tax because the manufacturers "agree" (your word) to buy Windows from Microsoft. In addition, the consumer has to voluntarily "agree" to purchase the hardware. No one is being compelled. On the other hand, the tax I "owe" the IRS is compelled. If I disagree I go to jail.
Though there is no difference between Free Software and Open Source, there is a world of difference between their movements. First of all, the Open Source movement doesn't capitalize "movement".
Every year the Movement gets a little bit smaller. It would be even smaller still, if it weren't for the GNUspeak sucking in the newbies.
I can be an American without having to be a Democrat, and I can be a Christian without having to be a Baptist. But God Damnit why can't I be an advocate for Free Software without having to kiss Stallman's unholy butt!
Yep. Just about every protocol in existance, open or closed, has "private" fields. They're dangerous to use because it can mean compatibility problems, but they're there to use.
It's not much different from the glibc extensions to the *standard* C library. Depending on them can bite you in the ass.
I don't know what world you're in, but I seriously doubt that Tools++ will ever be LGPL, and I am certain beyond measure that MFC never will be. But it doesn't matter, because the LGPL is not required to run commercial software under Linux. And certainly Oracle and Wordperfect are not under any sort of a GNU license.
My choice seems to be to steal the sony laptop/iPAQ (so I don't pay Microsoft) or pay microsoft, if I want the sony/iPAQ.
You choice is hardly limited to those. Try a different manufacturer. Or build your own. The only way Microsoft will get any money off of you is if you voluntarily give it to them. So don't!
Freedom is not convenient. Nor will it ever. Get over it.
since the Microsoft tax is levied on hardware purchases from almost all major PC manufacturers.
The big difference between Microsoft and the government, is that Microsoft can only get manufacturers to pay them through persuasion. But no manufacturer has any choice about not paying the government tax. Voluntary versus involuntary. Huge difference.
If I don't pay taxes to the IRS and California Franchise Tax Board, I go to jail! On the other hand, I own a modern x86 computer that has never had any Microsoft software on it, ever. And I have absolutely no fear that Bill Gates can do anything about it.
We don't have "rulers" anymore (at least in democratic societies).
Please check out the etymology of "democracy" and find out what the _cracy_ part stands for. By "ruler" I did not mean a monarch. I meant a person or group of persons that can compel me through force to obey their rules, otherwise known as government.
---
Harsh words time: if Microsoft is compelling you to do anything, it is your own damn fault. Grow a backbone and start making your own decisions. If you don't want to purchase a copy of Windows, then simply don't purchase one! Of course it won't be convenient. Freedom has never been convenient. You're going to have to excercise your shopping muscles and find one of those manufacturers that don't charge for Windows. Or build your own. So what if it's hard! Who gives a shit! My ancestors fought and died in the Revolutionary war for freedom and here you are blaming Microsoft just because you're too lazy to shop around.
"You paid the tax! But I though you hated King George."
"Sorry, dear. It was just too much work throwing the tea into the harbor."
"Well, no matter. You'd better hurry because it's time for your Sons of Liberty meeting."
Does that mean I pay a tax to Goodyear when I buy a Ford? Or that I pay a tax to the farmer when I buy a head of lettuce at the grocers? Wow! I need to get a new dictionary, mine is obviously out of date. And here I thought that a tax was something compelled by a party external to the economic transaction.
The Darwin software, as a whole, is under the closed source APSL. But the individual parts that are original BSD code are still under the BSDL. The only parts that the BSD license does not cover are the bits written by Apple.
And in the meantime, if it's too inconvenient to filter the two apart, FreeBSD is still there and fully available to all comers. Nothing has been stolen, hidden or made proprietary. You cannot steal what is free.
Closed source and proprietary do not require copyrights. Toss out the entirety of copyright law and they will still exist. In fact, the MS EULA is not even based on copyright law! It's based on contract law. Tossing out copyright wouldn't affect Windows one little bit.
But the FSF lists several "rights". And in case I might have been mistaken, I checked in the GNU Manifesto, and sure enough, RMS advocates government intervention into software licensing.
If you mean, authors have a natural right to control the distribution and use of their works, copies and derivatives therof, you're wrong.
Cool! That must mean that authors don't have the natural right to control the distribution and use of their works by means of the GPL. I'll go along with that if you will.
I don't think that it's accurate to call it proprietary though. It's not in the same spirit as that at all.
You're right. They're certainly of different spirits. Microsoft and RogueWave don't care how I license applications written with MFC or Tools++. But a GPLd library does care, and prevents me from using any other license but the GPL.
Slashdot Mirror
The world's perfect OS is Slackware with ports. Too bad it only exists in my imagination.
What has always amazed me about RPM packages is that the builders always seem to remove their brains before making them.
RPM-the-library has the capability to check for specific files, but real world RPM packages never do. Thus, if you ever bypass the RPM mechanism you're screwed. If appfoo-1.6 needs libfoo-2.1, then why the hell can't appfoo-1.6-i386.rpm check for the existance of the libfoo.so.2.1 file? Why does it demand the existance of libfoo-2.1-3-i386.rpm, which in turn demands packages for libfoo-patch-6.9b, libsnafu-0.0.4-pre, gnomesnafu-0.0.4-pre2, kdespuge-3.0.1b9, and on and on and on. Before you know it, you have the entirety of GNOME, KDE, and XFree86-4.0.2-patch9 just to run a stupid ncurses program.
Sorry, I'm ranting. I'll go take my pill now...
Well, I guess if the only language you know is Sather, then you'll have to stick with GNOME.
KDE-2 is faithful to the Unix philosophy. The command line is not taken away from you. You have a great terminal with Konsole, you can but a mini Konsole on the panel, pop up a mini Konsole with Alt-F2, attack a Konsole to Konqueror, and so on.
Unix is about small tools doing one thing well that you can join together. This is still present in KDE. The window manager is small and simple and does just one thing. Ditto for the panel, the default editor, the terminal, etc. With KParts and DCOP you can start pluging them together in ways that Redmond can't even imagine. Konqueror is basically nothing more than a viewer with tons of plugins available for it.
It is the *user* who decides how simple or complex the desktop will be.
As for its "Windows look-alikeness", I don't know. Because I haven't used Windows since '95. And my desktop doesn't resemble or behave ANYTHING like Win95. Not at all. No way and no how. Sheesh...
The fact that the GIMP has not a great user interface, does not mean it is caused by its use of Gtk+.
Amen! I was a bit stunned when I read Andreas mumbling on about GIMP. I am one of the biggest Qt bigots out there, but the problems with GIMP are not the fault of GTK+.
Even if it was integrated into the kernel, so what? I'm sure I'll be labeled as a heretic (what else is new), but the DOJ's emphasis on integrating IExplorer into Windows was absolutely stupid. They could integrate MSOffice right into Windows kernel space and I wouldn't care.
Microsoft's business practices are the problem, not their technology, and especially not their sophmoric attempts to improve it.
If you're using binary packages from your distribution, most likely you are getting the lowest common denominator optimization. In other words, nothing.
Recompile X, Qt and KDE optimized for your system. I use "-O2 -mpentium" for all of them, and --no-g++exceptions when configuring Qt. The speed improvements are amazing!
There are several reasons for this speed difference. First Windows Explorer doesn't do a tenth of the stuff that Konqueror does. Combine Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, make sure none of it is in kernel space and not already running in the background somewhere, give it an advanced widget library, and then see. I bet that Konqueror would kick Windows butt all day long.
Try actually casting some pewter beasties and then come back and tell us your time is worth nothing.
When I need dozens of computers the same day, my only hope is to go around cleaning out all the electronics and office supply stores within a reasonable distance. I can't wait around for some dinky garage assembler in Flurjnik, Minnesota to scare up enough neighbor kids to put them together and mail them to me.
I had to come back and respond to this point because it's still annoying me.
First of all, there is absolutely no need to go all the way to Flurjnik to get computers without Windows. Have you ever heard of Penguin Computing? VA Linux? And those are just two names for Linux preinstalls catering to businesses. Many others exist and also for *BSD. And I don't need to mention the hundreds of other alternatives to preinstalled-Windows. Don't excuse your lack of shopping savvy by inventing a fictitous tax.
You current state of freedom, absent any external coercion, is a product of your previous choices. If you're stuck in a situation where you have to buy 100 computers NOW, then that odds are overwhelming that it was you that got yourself into that situation. What if your situation called for 100 flatbed trucks right NOW, and the only local supplier was Ford, but that Dodge could have them ready for you in a week. Would you then be paying a Ford tax? I don't think so.
But even Stallman freely [sic] admits that Free Software was around long before he started promoting it.
When I'm buying equipment in government or corporate situations, there are often regulations or contracts or purchasing guidelines that limit me to certain vendors
Then it is the government agency or corporation that is voluntarily choosing to use manufacturers that employ Microsoft products. In your own domain you can do whatever you want. Your employer or client cannot force you to buy Windows for your personal use.
Trust me, when I signed the paperwork granting me authorization to make major purchases on the government's tab, jail was definitely a stated consequence for failure to follow the rules.
But you wouldn't be going to jail for "tax avoidance". Microsoft had nothing to do with it. If the rules said you had to purchase Dell+Redhat and you bought a Compaq+Windows instead, you would face the identical consequences.
It is not a tax because the manufacturers "agree" (your word) to buy Windows from Microsoft. In addition, the consumer has to voluntarily "agree" to purchase the hardware. No one is being compelled. On the other hand, the tax I "owe" the IRS is compelled. If I disagree I go to jail.
someone can, under the myopic slashdot definition, "steal" BSDL software.
Misappropriate? Possibly. Exploit? Maybe. But steal? No way. The best defense against definition myopia is a good dictionary.
Though there is no difference between Free Software and Open Source, there is a world of difference between their movements. First of all, the Open Source movement doesn't capitalize "movement".
Every year the Movement gets a little bit smaller. It would be even smaller still, if it weren't for the GNUspeak sucking in the newbies.
I can be an American without having to be a Democrat, and I can be a Christian without having to be a Baptist. But God Damnit why can't I be an advocate for Free Software without having to kiss Stallman's unholy butt!
Yep. Just about every protocol in existance, open or closed, has "private" fields. They're dangerous to use because it can mean compatibility problems, but they're there to use.
It's not much different from the glibc extensions to the *standard* C library. Depending on them can bite you in the ass.
I don't know what world you're in, but I seriously doubt that Tools++ will ever be LGPL, and I am certain beyond measure that MFC never will be. But it doesn't matter, because the LGPL is not required to run commercial software under Linux. And certainly Oracle and Wordperfect are not under any sort of a GNU license.
My choice seems to be to steal the sony laptop/iPAQ (so I don't pay Microsoft) or pay microsoft, if I want the sony/iPAQ.
You choice is hardly limited to those. Try a different manufacturer. Or build your own. The only way Microsoft will get any money off of you is if you voluntarily give it to them. So don't!
Freedom is not convenient. Nor will it ever. Get over it.
since the Microsoft tax is levied on hardware purchases from almost all major PC manufacturers.
The big difference between Microsoft and the government, is that Microsoft can only get manufacturers to pay them through persuasion. But no manufacturer has any choice about not paying the government tax. Voluntary versus involuntary. Huge difference.
If I don't pay taxes to the IRS and California Franchise Tax Board, I go to jail! On the other hand, I own a modern x86 computer that has never had any Microsoft software on it, ever. And I have absolutely no fear that Bill Gates can do anything about it.
We don't have "rulers" anymore (at least in democratic societies).
Please check out the etymology of "democracy" and find out what the _cracy_ part stands for. By "ruler" I did not mean a monarch. I meant a person or group of persons that can compel me through force to obey their rules, otherwise known as government.
---
Harsh words time: if Microsoft is compelling you to do anything, it is your own damn fault. Grow a backbone and start making your own decisions. If you don't want to purchase a copy of Windows, then simply don't purchase one! Of course it won't be convenient. Freedom has never been convenient. You're going to have to excercise your shopping muscles and find one of those manufacturers that don't charge for Windows. Or build your own. So what if it's hard! Who gives a shit! My ancestors fought and died in the Revolutionary war for freedom and here you are blaming Microsoft just because you're too lazy to shop around.
"You paid the tax! But I though you hated King George."
"Sorry, dear. It was just too much work throwing the tea into the harbor."
"Well, no matter. You'd better hurry because it's time for your Sons of Liberty meeting."
Does that mean I pay a tax to Goodyear when I buy a Ford? Or that I pay a tax to the farmer when I buy a head of lettuce at the grocers? Wow! I need to get a new dictionary, mine is obviously out of date. And here I thought that a tax was something compelled by a party external to the economic transaction.
The Darwin software, as a whole, is under the closed source APSL. But the individual parts that are original BSD code are still under the BSDL. The only parts that the BSD license does not cover are the bits written by Apple.
And in the meantime, if it's too inconvenient to filter the two apart, FreeBSD is still there and fully available to all comers. Nothing has been stolen, hidden or made proprietary. You cannot steal what is free.
Talk about a real herring in the net, the GNU Manifesto actually advocates taxing proprietary developers to fund Free Software development...
Closed source and proprietary do not require copyrights. Toss out the entirety of copyright law and they will still exist. In fact, the MS EULA is not even based on copyright law! It's based on contract law. Tossing out copyright wouldn't affect Windows one little bit.
Causes aren't the same as rights.
But the FSF lists several "rights". And in case I might have been mistaken, I checked in the GNU Manifesto, and sure enough, RMS advocates government intervention into software licensing.
If you mean, authors have a natural right to control the distribution and use of their works, copies and derivatives therof, you're wrong.
Cool! That must mean that authors don't have the natural right to control the distribution and use of their works by means of the GPL. I'll go along with that if you will.
I don't think that it's accurate to call it proprietary though. It's not in the same spirit as that at all.
You're right. They're certainly of different spirits. Microsoft and RogueWave don't care how I license applications written with MFC or Tools++. But a GPLd library does care, and prevents me from using any other license but the GPL.
I don't want them hiding it and declaring it their own, depriving other people of seeing how it worked.
How is that even physically possible? I mean, besides hold a gun to your head and forcing you to wipe your servers...