paraphrasing RMS: "Please don't call me a member of the Open Source movement."
I didn't call him a "member". The Free Software Movement(tm) is distinct from all other software movements, but the movement IS NOT the software.
Open Source software (as defined by the OSI) includes just about any software to which the source is available
Please read the OSD. Many restrictions are placed on the software licensing before it can be acknowleged "Open Source". The OSD is the same as the Free Software definition of the FSF, only worded legally and precisely, instead of a vague and changing series of essays.
For example, many "Open Source" licenses allow corporate sponsors special rights, including the ability to close the code
Licenses don't do this, copyright law does. Any time he would want to (brain tumor for example), RMS as the copyright holder could release a version of emacs under a proprietary license. But he couldn't affect any existing copies of emacs, nor could ANY Open Source license affect any existing copies of OSS software.
no constraints can be placed on anyone who gets the source, except that they must also share the source.
You're describing copyleft, not free software. Many software licenses fully acknowledged by RMS to be Free Software licenses do not compel the user to share the source code. Examples include BSD and MIT licenses. Notably missing in RMS's definition of Free Software is the requirement that it be copylefted under a GNU license. In fact, there is only ONE Open Source license that RMS does not acknowledge as free (Artistic), but that is only because the license is vague, not because it is restrictive.
If your argument is that Copyleft is not the same as Open Source, then I will fully agree. Ditto for any assertions that the Copyleft Movement(tm) is not the same as the Open Source movement. But by the same token, Copyleft is not the same as Free Software!
These are radically different- Open Source does include Free Software, but the reverse is very clearly not true
Please list one (just one) Open Source Software program that is not also a Free Software program. It is possible, I'll admit, but it would take a mighty good lawyer to follow the OSD while violating the Free Software definition.
Re:Now KDE learn diff between FREE SW and OPEN SOU
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There is no practical difference between Free Software and Open Source Software. People like you are the ones creating the rift in the community with your orwellian GNUspeak.
The "Free" in Free Software is NOT the same "free" as in free speech. If they were the same thing, then I should have the same rights to my own software as I would to my own speech. But that is not what the FSF wants. I have the right to speak publicly and to speak privately. But the FSF doesn't want me to distribute software privately, only publicly or not at all.
RMS chose the adjective "free" because he felt constrained by "proprietary" software (and rightfully so). But this "free" is synonymous with "open", not "liberty". As long as his means are voluntary, he can play his word games all day long. But once he seeks to compel software "freedom", he will become no better than a tyrant.
We certainly wouldn't have free software in masses today like we have now if it hadn't been for FSF and ultimately, RMS.
Maybe, maybe not. No one can tell. But one thing is certain, RMS did not invent the concept of free software. He was not coming up with something new, but trying to get back to what once existed.
The computer and software industry has undergone tremendous changes since their beginnings. At first hardware was incredibly expensive so software was thrown in for free. Now we have the opposite, where you can get the hardware for free by signing up for two years with a service. But the intrinsic value of source code has not changed. To say that free software all hinged on one man is ridiculous. Eventually someone would have done something similar.
Would free systems like Linux, GNU or BSD have arrived later without RMS? Maybe. But maybe they would have arrived earlier. Maybe without his radicalism the commercial developers wouldn't have shied away from it. We'll never know.
PDP-8 was not expensive compared to other systems at the time. And Unix initially was much cheaper than the competition. Don't judge history by today's $300 PCs running $80 Windows/Redhat.
What is to stop the community losing sight of it's goals...
What goals are those? Everyone has their own set of goals, and the only one I can find universal to the Free Source community is "share your individual creations." There's no way that statistics and popularity contests can affect this goal.
The community does not equate to the FSF. Not everyone is an ideologue. Larry Wall has consistantly represented a large portion of the community, and there's no reason to complain about him giving an interview just because he won't be talking about changing the world through licensing.
So, you're saying that gcc, emacs, GNOME and all the other FSF software is not Open Source! Wow! You'd better let RMS know that people are treating it as Open Source by copying, modifying and distributing it.
There may be two different communities (the dogs versus the canines), but the software is the SAME! No difference. Every OS program is also FS, and vice versa.
you are making the unwarranted and fatal assumption that 'property' is simply something natural, that arises quite unproblematically between individuals (a la Locke) without the application of state force.
It's the only assumption that I can make. Because the only property-less or communal-property systems I have ever seen have been either small voluntary groups are large state tyrannies.
Ditto on the linuxisms. When 99% of Linux software can be made to work with every single Unix out there with only a minimum amount of effort, there is no excuse for linuxisms. FreeBSD is free (hence the name). Throw it on a spare partition and make sure your software will compile and run on it before you release it into the world.
Saying your software only runs on Linux just lets the world know you're lazy.
coercion stops you simply emptying a bank vault, or driving off with that Porsche
Since communists do not believe in private property, let me define coercion in property-less terms. Coercion is the invasion of another person's personal domain of control without their permission. Thus, striking someone's nose with your fist is coercion, because the nose belongs in their domain of control. You can hit your own nose as often as you want.
In the case of the Porsche, the coercion is the use of the vehicle without authorization of the person who controls it. There are many systems for determining who controls an object (who is the owner). Though most systems use force to protect these controls, not all force is coercion. Only the initiation of force is coercion. Of the communist societies that have existed in history, all of them have reserved the ownership of all property to the state (though they have not always exercised that reservation). Most times this exercise of control has come down to declaring with the barrel of a gun that "what is under your domain of control now belongs to the state, because we say so".
This isn't anything new (look up anarcho-sydicalism), there are cooperatives now and ususally they outperform corporations, and their employees are a hell of a lot happier.
But even there they have bosses. They're just hired by the employees instead of the board of directors.
Every implementation of communism or socialism beyond the small group level requires people to be forced to things. But every proponent of communism or socialism (who uses those words) advocates those systems on at least a regional or national level.
What if someone decides that they don't want to be "co-owner"? What if a group wants to set up a market to sell their produce at instead of handing over to the "gatherers and sharers"? Ultimately, communism (and socialism) needs to force people to act against their human nature. That's why the only communism that has ever worked has been at a small and voluntary level. It takes authoritarian means to expand it beyond the group of volunteers sharing their stuff.
This is also the reason why the Free Software Movement(tm) of the FSF has worked: it's voluntary. It's also why the goal of 100% Free Software will never work. There will always be people who don't want to release their stuff as Free Software, and if you force them, you twist the meaning of "Free" into a cruel parody of Orwell.
Though I think this idea has elements of loopiness (a technical term) in it, I will have to disagree with you. This is a mischaracterization.
There are two ways that a company can earn revenues off of development. One is to develop a product and sell it. For Open Source Software (Free Software for those of you in Rio Linda), this is not a viable business model. If this was their business model, you would be correct. However, there is another way to earn revenues off of development. And that is contracting out development services.
Someone needs something developed, they go to a developer to create it. This group can make good money in this are if they get a good reputation. To answer you question, the government would be wrong to pay for pre-existing Open Source software. But if the the software they needed did not exist, paying for it is the only way they're going to get it. I'm not expecting the government (or anyone else) to buy Ada compilers from this group. That would be stupid. However, paying them to port legacy software to Ada would be a different thing.
The big difference between the product-model and the contract-model, is that in the former the developer creates a product and searches for a customer and in the latter the customer needs a product and searches for the developer. Both models are needed in the real world of commercial software, which is why a completely Open Source world isn't realistic.
So let's add ext2fs and tcsh and any other non-GNU program necessary to get to a command prompt.
But you're completely missing the point. The operating system I have on my box is not The GNU System. At the time a workable Linux kernel was released, the distribution creators did not say "hey, here's a kernel that works better with The GNU System than the current one", because there was no GNU kernel. The certainly did not excise a BSD or Solaris kernel from their complete-but-for-kernel GNU Systems and pop in Linux. That's absurd. But that is the argument that RMS makes, that a Linux distribution is merely The GNU System with the kernel swapped out.
To quote Linus Torvalds, "Your midwife doesn't select the name of your babies.."
My error. I apologize. I also did some checking on ld, and it turns out that it is not GNU software (at least the one in Slack 7.1). So I guess that there are no GNU packages required for an operational Linux OS. Of course, as others have pointed out, gcc is still currently needed to build the kernel.
Just because gcc is required to build the kernel does not mean that the normal operation of a distribution requires it.
FreeBSD is built with gcc. Should I now call it GNU/FreeBSD? The person who built the hammer does not get to name the house.
Out of curiosity, who are you to define things today?
I'm not defining anything. The dictionary is. Here is the definition of "operating system" taken from the Merriam Webster online dictionary:
software that controls the operation of a computer and directs the processing of programs (as by assigning storage space in memory and controlling input and output functions)
But gcc is not a part of the operating system. Even RMS has said so. All he has said was (paraphrase) GNU needs a free compiler so we will write one. It is certainly a wonderful component, and in the case of unices, almost mandatory, but the presence of GNU gcc does not make a system GNU. Otherwise we would have to call a certain system by the name of "GNU/OpenBSD", and Theo would have a cow.
And to clarify my previous statement, even though gcc may be required to compile the Linux kernel, it is not required for the normal operation of the system. There are other free C compilers. They do not have the functionality of gcc, but they do exist, so even gcc can be replaced.
None of us who object to the term "GNU/Linux" are disputing in any way the contributions that the GNU Project has made to the typical Linux and BSD distribution. We just feel that those who build the finished product get to name it, not those who built the majority of components.
According to the page you site only one in ten families had some form of inappropriate aggressive behavior between spouses. This is lower than the 1/9 rate you cite for the general population. The one in three figure is cited for "army" families and for spousal abuse. Now either the US Army is way out of line with the other services (some of which are trained to be more aggressive), or it is somehow possible for there to be incidents of spousal abuse without there being any aggressive behavior between spouses.
No one was denying that spousal abuse does not exist in the military. Spousal abuse exists in every walk of life and every profession. But the conflicting statistics you references fails to show that the situation is any worse among the military as they are for other professions. But even if there were statistics showing this (and I have no doubt you can find them), it still does not show any cause and effect. You seem to think that the aggressive training of soldiers causes spousal abuse, but another way to look at it is that those most likely to commit spousal abuse are more likely to engage in aggressive occupations.
I will not be censored
Disagreement is not censorship. No one, especially myself, attempted to censor you.
"plus anything that allows the kernel to work" means just that, anything that allows the kernel to work./etc/inittab (or similar init scheme) is needed. ls is not. ld is.
But inittab is not GNU:-) For my current system, the GNU software that is required for the OS consists of glibc (although I could recompile the kernel to use a non-GNU libc) and ld (not sure if this is GNU). Also required, but not GNU software is lilo.
To me, an operating system at least has to be something that can do *something* without the aid of additional software.
This is Microsoft think. Get Windows out of your head, and look up operating system in the dictionary. Operating systems do not include the applications that run on them. Even shells do not count as part of the operating system, otherwise Linux with bash would be a *different* operating system then Linux with tcsh, which would be different than Linux with ksh, etc.
There's an old saying that Unix is not an operating system. What GNU refers to as "operating system" is actually an operating environment, a completely different beast. You don't name an operating system after the software that runs under it.
If all Patrick Volkerding (as an example) did when creating Slackware was to take an Official GNU System CD, remove HURD and replace it with the Linux kernel, then the name "GNU/Linux" would be very appropriate. But what happened wasn't even close.
A) You were talking about the MS Developer subscription thingy for $2500. No, that is not charged per developer like Trolltech does. It's worse! It's charged per CPU! So you have to pay it all over again if you want to work at home.
B) You can't compare Qt to dev-studio. They do completely different things! dev-studio is an IDE. Qt is a cross-platform GUI toolkit. How hard is it to understand? If you are uninterested in cross-platform development, then at least make the more rational comparison between Qt and MFC. In terms of Qt/MFC, Qt is filet mignon while MFC is chopped liver.
C) It's perfectly reasonable for you to want to pay zero dollars for the tools you need to create your for-profit software. But that's not reality. If your sole criteria in selecting your tools is initial monetary outlay then by all means don't use Qt. Don't use any microsoft tools either. Stick to tcl/tk.
D) It's outrageous that I have to spend $7.99 a pound for beef when the charities are giving away cheese, said the chef.
You've got it sort of backwards. The reason that Windows tends to crash more often than other systems is not because it supports more stuff, but that the implements this support by deeply binding it into the kernel. An IE crash can take down windows. A NS crash won't take down Linux, BSD or Solaris because NS isn't the operating system.
But what does Windows support that Linux or any other free Unix does not? (general areas please, no specific applications, and certainly no Microsoft written software)
Not true. GNU is the name of an operating system. What is sometimes called "GNU/Linux" is NOT that operating system. So what is the operating system? It's the linux kernel plus anything that allows that kernel to work. Nothing more. Compilers, editors, and other utilities, no matter how basic, are not part of the operating system. Every GNU program commonly distributed with Linux can be replaced with a non-GNU alternative.
The Linux distributions are NOT an operating system (otherwise there would be 20 different operating systems). Instead, they are a collection of software that includes Linux the OS, Linux the infrastructure as created by Linus and friends, BSD daemons, GNU userland utilities, and a whole bunch of stuff selected by the distributor. The distributors put all this stuff together, so they get to name it.
If you say "GNU/Linux" and mean "Linux operating system + GNU low-level user environment" you may be right. But if you mean "GNU OS with just a kernel swapped out" you will be wrong.
"...commercial users..need to pay $1500/developer..."
No, users don't have to pay to use KDE or Qt. Perhaps you meant proprietary commercial developers. There's a big difference.
"that's more than people pay for a very complete, industry-standard Microsoft development environment."
It's also more than a bag of peanuts, and has about the same relevance. The standard MS development environment is a compiler and a non-portable flaky foundation class. On the other hand, Qt is a high quality cross-platform GUI library. It's apples and oranges. A simple recompile and your application works on any Unix and any Windows. If you want to compare prices, compare Qt with other quality cross-platform GUI libraries. Or compare the price of VC++ with g++.
"Under its current license, I think KDE/Qt will be harmful to both free software and the commercial acceptance of free software."
I fully agree with you that a LGPL or BSD licensed Qt would be better for the developer. But the typical proprietary commercial developer can easily afford a proprietary license. A commercial developer should be making at *least* $50,000 a year. $1500 for tools on that kind of salary is perfectly reasonable.
Qt is Free Software for Free Software developers, Open Source for Open Source developers, and proprietary for proprietary developers. Although I think it would be better for them to release under the BSD license, I cannot argue that this is inequitable.
It's perfectly understandable why Redhat didn't join. Not only were they the first to publicly declare distributors of KDE to be criminals (they have since retracted their allegations), they also fund a good portion of GNOME development. And VA Linux tends to blow in the same breeze as Redhat.
Who cares if VAL and RH aren't members of a KDE league? What difference would it make?
I humbly beg your pardon. Of course I knew that, which is why I didn't call it outright libel.
I was mistaken by calling the previous post "borderline libel". I should be more accurate. When someone accuses the miltary personel as a group of being a bunch of wife beaters, the correct term is "asshole." I may not like a lot of the current military policies, but I respect the individual soldier (and anyone else who volunteers to stand between me and harm).
Slashdot Mirror
paraphrasing RMS: "Please don't call me a member of the Open Source movement."
I didn't call him a "member". The Free Software Movement(tm) is distinct from all other software movements, but the movement IS NOT the software.
Open Source software (as defined by the OSI) includes just about any software to which the source is available
Please read the OSD. Many restrictions are placed on the software licensing before it can be acknowleged "Open Source". The OSD is the same as the Free Software definition of the FSF, only worded legally and precisely, instead of a vague and changing series of essays.
For example, many "Open Source" licenses allow corporate sponsors special rights, including the ability to close the code
Licenses don't do this, copyright law does. Any time he would want to (brain tumor for example), RMS as the copyright holder could release a version of emacs under a proprietary license. But he couldn't affect any existing copies of emacs, nor could ANY Open Source license affect any existing copies of OSS software.
no constraints can be placed on anyone who gets the source, except that they must also share the source.
You're describing copyleft, not free software. Many software licenses fully acknowledged by RMS to be Free Software licenses do not compel the user to share the source code. Examples include BSD and MIT licenses. Notably missing in RMS's definition of Free Software is the requirement that it be copylefted under a GNU license. In fact, there is only ONE Open Source license that RMS does not acknowledge as free (Artistic), but that is only because the license is vague, not because it is restrictive.
If your argument is that Copyleft is not the same as Open Source, then I will fully agree. Ditto for any assertions that the Copyleft Movement(tm) is not the same as the Open Source movement. But by the same token, Copyleft is not the same as Free Software!
These are radically different- Open Source does include Free Software, but the reverse is very clearly not true
Please list one (just one) Open Source Software program that is not also a Free Software program. It is possible, I'll admit, but it would take a mighty good lawyer to follow the OSD while violating the Free Software definition.
There is no practical difference between Free Software and Open Source Software. People like you are the ones creating the rift in the community with your orwellian GNUspeak.
The "Free" in Free Software is NOT the same "free" as in free speech. If they were the same thing, then I should have the same rights to my own software as I would to my own speech. But that is not what the FSF wants. I have the right to speak publicly and to speak privately. But the FSF doesn't want me to distribute software privately, only publicly or not at all.
RMS chose the adjective "free" because he felt constrained by "proprietary" software (and rightfully so). But this "free" is synonymous with "open", not "liberty". As long as his means are voluntary, he can play his word games all day long. But once he seeks to compel software "freedom", he will become no better than a tyrant.
We certainly wouldn't have free software in masses today like we have now if it hadn't been for FSF and ultimately, RMS.
Maybe, maybe not. No one can tell. But one thing is certain, RMS did not invent the concept of free software. He was not coming up with something new, but trying to get back to what once existed.
The computer and software industry has undergone tremendous changes since their beginnings. At first hardware was incredibly expensive so software was thrown in for free. Now we have the opposite, where you can get the hardware for free by signing up for two years with a service. But the intrinsic value of source code has not changed. To say that free software all hinged on one man is ridiculous. Eventually someone would have done something similar.
Would free systems like Linux, GNU or BSD have arrived later without RMS? Maybe. But maybe they would have arrived earlier. Maybe without his radicalism the commercial developers wouldn't have shied away from it. We'll never know.
PDP-8 was not expensive compared to other systems at the time. And Unix initially was much cheaper than the competition. Don't judge history by today's $300 PCs running $80 Windows/Redhat.
What is to stop the community losing sight of it's goals...
What goals are those? Everyone has their own set of goals, and the only one I can find universal to the Free Source community is "share your individual creations." There's no way that statistics and popularity contests can affect this goal.
The community does not equate to the FSF. Not everyone is an ideologue. Larry Wall has consistantly represented a large portion of the community, and there's no reason to complain about him giving an interview just because he won't be talking about changing the world through licensing.
First: the FSF isn't involved with Open Source.
So, you're saying that gcc, emacs, GNOME and all the other FSF software is not Open Source! Wow! You'd better let RMS know that people are treating it as Open Source by copying, modifying and distributing it.
There may be two different communities (the dogs versus the canines), but the software is the SAME! No difference. Every OS program is also FS, and vice versa.
you are making the unwarranted and fatal assumption that 'property' is simply something natural, that arises quite unproblematically between individuals (a la Locke) without the application of state force.
It's the only assumption that I can make. Because the only property-less or communal-property systems I have ever seen have been either small voluntary groups are large state tyrannies.
Ditto on the linuxisms. When 99% of Linux software can be made to work with every single Unix out there with only a minimum amount of effort, there is no excuse for linuxisms. FreeBSD is free (hence the name). Throw it on a spare partition and make sure your software will compile and run on it before you release it into the world.
Saying your software only runs on Linux just lets the world know you're lazy.
coercion stops you simply emptying a bank vault, or driving off with that Porsche
Since communists do not believe in private property, let me define coercion in property-less terms. Coercion is the invasion of another person's personal domain of control without their permission. Thus, striking someone's nose with your fist is coercion, because the nose belongs in their domain of control. You can hit your own nose as often as you want.
In the case of the Porsche, the coercion is the use of the vehicle without authorization of the person who controls it. There are many systems for determining who controls an object (who is the owner). Though most systems use force to protect these controls, not all force is coercion. Only the initiation of force is coercion. Of the communist societies that have existed in history, all of them have reserved the ownership of all property to the state (though they have not always exercised that reservation). Most times this exercise of control has come down to declaring with the barrel of a gun that "what is under your domain of control now belongs to the state, because we say so".
This isn't anything new (look up anarcho-sydicalism), there are cooperatives now and ususally they outperform corporations, and their employees are a hell of a lot happier.
But even there they have bosses. They're just hired by the employees instead of the board of directors.
Every implementation of communism or socialism beyond the small group level requires people to be forced to things. But every proponent of communism or socialism (who uses those words) advocates those systems on at least a regional or national level.
What if someone decides that they don't want to be "co-owner"? What if a group wants to set up a market to sell their produce at instead of handing over to the "gatherers and sharers"? Ultimately, communism (and socialism) needs to force people to act against their human nature. That's why the only communism that has ever worked has been at a small and voluntary level. It takes authoritarian means to expand it beyond the group of volunteers sharing their stuff.
This is also the reason why the Free Software Movement(tm) of the FSF has worked: it's voluntary. It's also why the goal of 100% Free Software will never work. There will always be people who don't want to release their stuff as Free Software, and if you force them, you twist the meaning of "Free" into a cruel parody of Orwell.
Though I think this idea has elements of loopiness (a technical term) in it, I will have to disagree with you. This is a mischaracterization.
There are two ways that a company can earn revenues off of development. One is to develop a product and sell it. For Open Source Software (Free Software for those of you in Rio Linda), this is not a viable business model. If this was their business model, you would be correct. However, there is another way to earn revenues off of development. And that is contracting out development services.
Someone needs something developed, they go to a developer to create it. This group can make good money in this are if they get a good reputation. To answer you question, the government would be wrong to pay for pre-existing Open Source software. But if the the software they needed did not exist, paying for it is the only way they're going to get it. I'm not expecting the government (or anyone else) to buy Ada compilers from this group. That would be stupid. However, paying them to port legacy software to Ada would be a different thing.
The big difference between the product-model and the contract-model, is that in the former the developer creates a product and searches for a customer and in the latter the customer needs a product and searches for the developer. Both models are needed in the real world of commercial software, which is why a completely Open Source world isn't realistic.
So let's add ext2fs and tcsh and any other non-GNU program necessary to get to a command prompt.
But you're completely missing the point. The operating system I have on my box is not The GNU System. At the time a workable Linux kernel was released, the distribution creators did not say "hey, here's a kernel that works better with The GNU System than the current one", because there was no GNU kernel. The certainly did not excise a BSD or Solaris kernel from their complete-but-for-kernel GNU Systems and pop in Linux. That's absurd. But that is the argument that RMS makes, that a Linux distribution is merely The GNU System with the kernel swapped out.
To quote Linus Torvalds, "Your midwife doesn't select the name of your babies.."
The kernel does not use libc. That's insane.
My error. I apologize. I also did some checking on ld, and it turns out that it is not GNU software (at least the one in Slack 7.1). So I guess that there are no GNU packages required for an operational Linux OS. Of course, as others have pointed out, gcc is still currently needed to build the kernel.
FreeBSD is built with gcc. Should I now call it GNU/FreeBSD? The person who built the hammer does not get to name the house.
Out of curiosity, who are you to define things today?
I'm not defining anything. The dictionary is. Here is the definition of "operating system" taken from the Merriam Webster online dictionary:
But gcc is not a part of the operating system. Even RMS has said so. All he has said was (paraphrase) GNU needs a free compiler so we will write one. It is certainly a wonderful component, and in the case of unices, almost mandatory, but the presence of GNU gcc does not make a system GNU. Otherwise we would have to call a certain system by the name of "GNU/OpenBSD", and Theo would have a cow.
And to clarify my previous statement, even though gcc may be required to compile the Linux kernel, it is not required for the normal operation of the system. There are other free C compilers. They do not have the functionality of gcc, but they do exist, so even gcc can be replaced.
None of us who object to the term "GNU/Linux" are disputing in any way the contributions that the GNU Project has made to the typical Linux and BSD distribution. We just feel that those who build the finished product get to name it, not those who built the majority of components.
According to the page you site only one in ten families had some form of inappropriate aggressive behavior between spouses. This is lower than the 1/9 rate you cite for the general population. The one in three figure is cited for "army" families and for spousal abuse. Now either the US Army is way out of line with the other services (some of which are trained to be more aggressive), or it is somehow possible for there to be incidents of spousal abuse without there being any aggressive behavior between spouses.
No one was denying that spousal abuse does not exist in the military. Spousal abuse exists in every walk of life and every profession. But the conflicting statistics you references fails to show that the situation is any worse among the military as they are for other professions. But even if there were statistics showing this (and I have no doubt you can find them), it still does not show any cause and effect. You seem to think that the aggressive training of soldiers causes spousal abuse, but another way to look at it is that those most likely to commit spousal abuse are more likely to engage in aggressive occupations.
I will not be censored
Disagreement is not censorship. No one, especially myself, attempted to censor you.
"plus anything that allows the kernel to work" means just that, anything that allows the kernel to work. /etc/inittab (or similar init scheme) is needed. ls is not. ld is.
:-) For my current system, the GNU software that is required for the OS consists of glibc (although I could recompile the kernel to use a non-GNU libc) and ld (not sure if this is GNU). Also required, but not GNU software is lilo.
But inittab is not GNU
To me, an operating system at least has to be something that can do *something* without the aid of additional software.
This is Microsoft think. Get Windows out of your head, and look up operating system in the dictionary. Operating systems do not include the applications that run on them. Even shells do not count as part of the operating system, otherwise Linux with bash would be a *different* operating system then Linux with tcsh, which would be different than Linux with ksh, etc.
There's an old saying that Unix is not an operating system. What GNU refers to as "operating system" is actually an operating environment, a completely different beast. You don't name an operating system after the software that runs under it.
If all Patrick Volkerding (as an example) did when creating Slackware was to take an Official GNU System CD, remove HURD and replace it with the Linux kernel, then the name "GNU/Linux" would be very appropriate. But what happened wasn't even close.
A) You were talking about the MS Developer subscription thingy for $2500. No, that is not charged per developer like Trolltech does. It's worse! It's charged per CPU! So you have to pay it all over again if you want to work at home.
B) You can't compare Qt to dev-studio. They do completely different things! dev-studio is an IDE. Qt is a cross-platform GUI toolkit. How hard is it to understand? If you are uninterested in cross-platform development, then at least make the more rational comparison between Qt and MFC. In terms of Qt/MFC, Qt is filet mignon while MFC is chopped liver.
C) It's perfectly reasonable for you to want to pay zero dollars for the tools you need to create your for-profit software. But that's not reality. If your sole criteria in selecting your tools is initial monetary outlay then by all means don't use Qt. Don't use any microsoft tools either. Stick to tcl/tk.
D) It's outrageous that I have to spend $7.99 a pound for beef when the charities are giving away cheese, said the chef.
You've got it sort of backwards. The reason that Windows tends to crash more often than other systems is not because it supports more stuff, but that the implements this support by deeply binding it into the kernel. An IE crash can take down windows. A NS crash won't take down Linux, BSD or Solaris because NS isn't the operating system.
But what does Windows support that Linux or any other free Unix does not? (general areas please, no specific applications, and certainly no Microsoft written software)
GNU/Linux is GNU.
Not true. GNU is the name of an operating system. What is sometimes called "GNU/Linux" is NOT that operating system. So what is the operating system? It's the linux kernel plus anything that allows that kernel to work. Nothing more. Compilers, editors, and other utilities, no matter how basic, are not part of the operating system. Every GNU program commonly distributed with Linux can be replaced with a non-GNU alternative.
The Linux distributions are NOT an operating system (otherwise there would be 20 different operating systems). Instead, they are a collection of software that includes Linux the OS, Linux the infrastructure as created by Linus and friends, BSD daemons, GNU userland utilities, and a whole bunch of stuff selected by the distributor. The distributors put all this stuff together, so they get to name it.
If you say "GNU/Linux" and mean "Linux operating system + GNU low-level user environment" you may be right. But if you mean "GNU OS with just a kernel swapped out" you will be wrong.
For $1500 on Qt Professional, plus $2 to $50 for a Linux or BSD distribution, you get
"...commercial users..need to pay $1500/developer..."
No, users don't have to pay to use KDE or Qt. Perhaps you meant proprietary commercial developers. There's a big difference.
"that's more than people pay for a very complete, industry-standard Microsoft development environment."
It's also more than a bag of peanuts, and has about the same relevance. The standard MS development environment is a compiler and a non-portable flaky foundation class. On the other hand, Qt is a high quality cross-platform GUI library. It's apples and oranges. A simple recompile and your application works on any Unix and any Windows. If you want to compare prices, compare Qt with other quality cross-platform GUI libraries. Or compare the price of VC++ with g++.
"Under its current license, I think KDE/Qt will be harmful to both free software and the commercial acceptance of free software."
I fully agree with you that a LGPL or BSD licensed Qt would be better for the developer. But the typical proprietary commercial developer can easily afford a proprietary license. A commercial developer should be making at *least* $50,000 a year. $1500 for tools on that kind of salary is perfectly reasonable.
Qt is Free Software for Free Software developers, Open Source for Open Source developers, and proprietary for proprietary developers. Although I think it would be better for them to release under the BSD license, I cannot argue that this is inequitable.
It's perfectly understandable why Redhat didn't join. Not only were they the first to publicly declare distributors of KDE to be criminals (they have since retracted their allegations), they also fund a good portion of GNOME development. And VA Linux tends to blow in the same breeze as Redhat.
Who cares if VAL and RH aren't members of a KDE league? What difference would it make?
I humbly beg your pardon. Of course I knew that, which is why I didn't call it outright libel.
I was mistaken by calling the previous post "borderline libel". I should be more accurate. When someone accuses the miltary personel as a group of being a bunch of wife beaters, the correct term is "asshole." I may not like a lot of the current military policies, but I respect the individual soldier (and anyone else who volunteers to stand between me and harm).