sitting there, thinking "rah rah our side" or "rah rah oooooh a sex scene" as you read Heinlein
Did you read Heinlein while you were asleep or something? Did you only read his Boy's Life stories or something?
Regardless of whether you like him or not, Heinlein was never shallow, even in his light hearted novels. Often he had major problems with fully dimensional characters, but he usuall made up for that with dozen or so mind-blowing thoughts.
This is splitting hairs too fine to be seen. A modification to the application IS NOT a modification to Qt! Troll's license only covers Qt, while the application's license only covers the application. Unlike how some view the GPL, copyright law does not grant the author rights to the works of third parties. Troll has no claims to any modifications of mine unless they they are modifications to Qt, not nothing else.
Hypothetically speaking, it might be possible to have a single code fragment that modified both the application and the library at the same time, but it would be extremely unlikely. I can't imagine this situation in any realistic code.
Those aren't proprietary extensions to FreeBSD, which the original poster was concerned about. It doesn't matter what Apple does, I can still use 100% of FreeBSD without their permission.
If Jordan Hubbard comes along and gives me an apple, and also give Steve Jobs an apple, I still have my apple. Even if Steve locks his up in a chest and threatens criminal proceedings against anyone taking it, I still have *MY* apple and I'm going to eat it and nothing Steve can do can change that.
You can't steal what is free. A parable for you:
There once was a fabulous apple tree. No matter how many apples one would take from it, there were just as many as before! When this was heard by the villagers they all rushed to the apple tree and took apples. But no matter how many they took, there were just as many apples as before. But some of them came and took apples and locked them within a chest, so that none could steal them. And they laughed at the other villagers, saying, "Look, they do not protect their apples. Surely a thief will come and steal them."
Qt hasn't been GPLd at all! It's under the QPL license instead. I hope that this was a mistype on your part, and not an extremely erroneous assumption that all free software is under the GPL.
We'll if you want to get that picky about it, if a GPL application won't let me write a Qt front end, I'd say that it's the GPL that stifling my free speech. After all, it will be the GPL author who will sue me, and not Troll Tech.
Oh, by the way, Qt is 100% free, and actually has far fewer restrictions than GPL.
It doesn't matter if the softwware is free beer, free speech or free verse, YOU are the one that is free. No one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to use Delphi. The original post still applies: don't piss on someone else's parade just because you don't have access to Borland's source code.
From a distance I saw some huperoffsprings playing volleyball and I thought to myself, "that looks like fun!" But by the time I got there, they had taken down the net and walked off with the ball. But it's still a beach so I decided to dig around a bit looking for sandcrabs.
So you tell me, you got bored, gave up and admitted you are a man, and thought the thread was over. So why did you come back? Just to see if someone else bit your hook?
"The open source revolution has gone too far. Its time for us to take back ownership of our work."
Nobody took your ownership away. It is only on the GNU side of Open Source, and only a very small minority there, that demands software have no owners. No one can tell you what you can or can't do with your software. Not the IPO's and not RMS.
Since time immemorial, or at least the time of Old English, "man" and "mankind" refer to all humans. This is the primary reason that the words "menkind" and "humen" do not exist. In fact, the *only* time "man" does not refer to a male human is when it is used to distiguish it from "woman".
The word "human" is defined in my dictionary as "of, pertaining to, or characteristic of mankind". It also shows that it is derived from the latin "humanus", which gives a clue as to the origin of your hated "man".
Stop trying to mold the English language to fit your narrow notions of political correctness.
Adding proprietary extensions to FreeBSD would be the norm
Then where are those proprietary extensions? All I can see are a couple of semi-free options. If it hasn't happened before, what makes you think it will now? One of the overriding goals of FreeBSD is to make it usable and modifiable by anyone, and throwing in proprietary stuff eliminates that.
I've been using Slack for a while. A friend who had been using Mandrake asked me about it, and soon enough I was over at his house on a saturday morning stepping him though the install.
The installation was a snap (as always), but he had some funky hardware, so the setup was a bit more difficult. I had to leave, so I left him all alone with the remainder of the fiddling.
The next morning he appeared bleary eyed. "I finally got it finished. It took me until two in the morning though." I thought he was going to dump Slack and go back to Mandrake when he continued, "I learned more about Linux last night than I did the previous two years with Redhat and Mandrake. I think I like this thing."
"Perhaps a testing enviornment could be written that emulates the various configurations above"
A most excellent suggestion. Myself for one would find such a tool to be invaluable. Most developers who don't work on more than one machine would be surpised at some the assumptions they make. At home I work on a Linux PC. At work I have a Solaris Sparc5. When I compile my code at work I often discover where I have made my bad assumptions.
This is a great way to get rid of "linuxisms", but it requires a range of hardware to test on. The SourceForge idea is great, but it needs to be expanded as opportunity and cash allows. Add some Solaris and IRIX boxes. Include a larger variety of hardware.
If Helix can come up with a new business model for Free Software, my hat will be off to them. This will be a much bigger boon to Free Software than Gnome. That Helix is even looking to make a profit is encouraging. Miguel earned major points in my book for just this alone. It gets pretty old when all you see are Free Software advocates who've never run a company telling others how they should run their business.
I suspect that several companies will attempt this, with most of them failing. But this is a free market economy, so either one will find it or it doesn't exist. I suspect that in five or ten years you will find that commercial Free Software will have found all of its niches, but that there will be some it can't utilize, and those will remain proprietary.
Autoconf is only a small part of the problem. So small that I'm tempted to say it's not even necessary. Autoconf will detect what's available for you on a system, but it won't write your code.
The best way to write a program that will work on any Unix is simply not to write one for Linux only:-) No, I'm not being flippant. Write according to the Unix standards. Use POSIX and avoid Linux-only kernel calls. Use standard C and avoid the extensions in glibc.
And finally, don't make the same mistake millions of other developers make every day, don't assume that the user has exactly the same system and setup that you do. Don't assume that the user has a large monitor or lots of memory. Don't assume that they have an active connection to the net. Don't assume that home directories are under/home.
Just because I don't blindly accept every prediction given to me doesn't mean that I'm not in tune with Open Source business:-) Helix (and AbiSource) is doing something quite distinct from the other Open Source companies.
To take your GreenCap example, let's say that I am starting my own Open Source business. Let's call it YellowTop Linux. Why should I hire Helix as a development firm to create a new desktop for me, when I can spend zero dollars and use the one they made for GreenCap? This is what I meant by the "free rider" problem. Why pay the money when you know all of your competitors will receive your product for free?
Free Software may have rewritten the rules of software development, but it hardly touched the rules of economics and business. If you look at the Redhat IPO filings, they do not claim that they will profit in the long term by selling shrink wrapped boxes. I have no doubts that Helix will make money in the short term. Everything with the word "Linux" attached to it is certain of that. I just want to know how Helix is going to make its money in the long term.
I wish you every bit of success, because you are sailing into uncharted waters. Just because I doubt the outcome of the voyage does not mean that I don't admire the courage of the captain.
For $80, it is my firm opinion that Redhat is charging people for their ignorance. I predict that there will come a point when newbies will no longer be ignorant of what Free Software is, and will refuse to pay more than a few dollars for what is essentially a reprinting service.
I have to disagree with your assessment of the Seattle protests. It may have sparked more protests, but that's only success if your goal is just to protest.
The Seattle protests consisted of extremely diverse viewpoints that effectively cancelled each other out. You had socialists, environmentalists, libertarians, protectionists, and even globalists who were arguing with each other just as much as they were arguing against the WTO.
In my experience in actually participating in protests, this is all too common. I used to protest every April 15th against the IRS. However the extreme mixed messages that were being sent to the public caused me to stop. I mean, there were people protesting high taxes and others protesting low taxes! It was just pointless!
During my college days, there was a large and well organized protest to change the name of a library to "Winnie Mandela Library" in protest of apartheid. This coincided with many other anti-aparthied protests around the country. They were unsuccessful in halting apartheid, and may have actually prolonged it, since they drew attention to the person of Winnie Mandela and thus to her campaign of "necklacing" and terror.
In short, I have never seen any radical protest succeed in anything other than recruitment.
Yes, radical protests work sometimes. But far more often I see protesters in the hospital after a prolonged hunger strike, or the members start to drift on home after a couple of weeks, or something else equally unproductive.
Certainly you want to be more than just another form letter in the congressmen's inbox. But there are more productive methods of protests than making a fool of oneself.
Why would I choose Helix Support, Inc. over Redhat or Linuxcare support. As an enterprise, doesn't it make much more sense to have a single support source like Linuxcare who would support Gnome and KDE and Linux and Apache and whatever else you needed support for. I also question the assumption that sales can be replaced by support. It's like declaring the skill of the developer to be valueless.
As for contracts, it sounds interesting. But ask yourself why a company would pay Helix to write an application that will be released for free when it is complete. The "free rider" problem inherent in this situation is enormous!
Forget emailing or writing your senator. Honestly, when has that ever really worked? Instead, stage a sit-in protest in his office.
Hah! Honestly, when was the last time that a sit-in protest ever worked? If all you want is to get your name in the paper, then go for it. But it will never change policy in your favor, and would more than likely get you branded as a kook with nothing of importance to say. I mean, Brian Wilson got his name in all the papers and became famous, but NO ONE will ever take him seriously except the fringe.
Okay, Helix is a commercial concern. But I continue to fail to understand how they are going to make money with GNOME.
Do they plan to sell a shrink wrapped box on the shelves of Fry's? Why in the world should I buy it when it already comes with (insert distro here)? Even if it didn't come with my distro, I can still download it. Are they only counting on the ignorant for sales? And if it seriously becomes so bloated that people won't download it, why not just get a $2 CD from Cheapbytes instead?
Or do they plan to go IPO and rake in cash from ignorant investors instead?
Or do they plan to make money through support? I don't think so, unless they're truly machiavellian. Consider that the better they make their product the less support it will need. If this is to be the easiest to use desktop, simple enough even for your grandmother, who's going to need support?
Or are they going to create closed source addons for GNOME and sell those instead? This would be highly unusual (and hypocritical) since the founder of Helix is a member of GNU.
The only thing I can think of is so they can sell manuals. So why then are they a software company instead of a publishing house?
"And what would be the benefit of his "hang[ing] it all out and go[ing] BSD" -- except that that would make it perfectly legal for some sleazeball "entrepreneur" to hijack his code base, close it off, and start selling a "competing" copy of his work?"
Oh please! I made it 80% of the way down the page without seeing any bullshit being slung about (which is amazing considering the topic), then I see you comment.
I'll tell you what the BSDL does: it allows Apple to use 4.4BSD code in MacOSX without having to give anything back, yet they still give back! When you treat your users with respect, you'll get respect in return. But when you treat your users as potential thieves, don't be surprised when your users choose other software.
My apologies to any GPL developers who treat their users with the respect due them. You are the vast majority. My tirade is only directed to the tiny minority of self-righteous license bigots.
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sitting there, thinking "rah rah our side" or "rah rah oooooh a sex scene" as you read Heinlein
Did you read Heinlein while you were asleep or something? Did you only read his Boy's Life stories or something?
Regardless of whether you like him or not, Heinlein was never shallow, even in his light hearted novels. Often he had major problems with fully dimensional characters, but he usuall made up for that with dozen or so mind-blowing thoughts.
This is splitting hairs too fine to be seen. A modification to the application IS NOT a modification to Qt! Troll's license only covers Qt, while the application's license only covers the application. Unlike how some view the GPL, copyright law does not grant the author rights to the works of third parties. Troll has no claims to any modifications of mine unless they they are modifications to Qt, not nothing else.
Hypothetically speaking, it might be possible to have a single code fragment that modified both the application and the library at the same time, but it would be extremely unlikely. I can't imagine this situation in any realistic code.
Those aren't proprietary extensions to FreeBSD, which the original poster was concerned about. It doesn't matter what Apple does, I can still use 100% of FreeBSD without their permission.
If Jordan Hubbard comes along and gives me an apple, and also give Steve Jobs an apple, I still have my apple. Even if Steve locks his up in a chest and threatens criminal proceedings against anyone taking it, I still have *MY* apple and I'm going to eat it and nothing Steve can do can change that.
You can't steal what is free. A parable for you:
There once was a fabulous apple tree. No matter how many apples one would take
from it, there were just as many as before! When this was heard by the villagers
they all rushed to the apple tree and took apples. But no matter how many they
took, there were just as many apples as before. But some of them came and took
apples and locked them within a chest, so that none could steal them. And they
laughed at the other villagers, saying, "Look, they do not protect their apples.
Surely a thief will come and steal them."
QT wasn't GPL'ed through 1.4, either
Qt hasn't been GPLd at all! It's under the QPL license instead. I hope that this was a mistype on your part, and not an extremely erroneous assumption that all free software is under the GPL.
We'll if you want to get that picky about it, if a GPL application won't let me write a Qt front end, I'd say that it's the GPL that stifling my free speech. After all, it will be the GPL author who will sue me, and not Troll Tech.
Oh, by the way, Qt is 100% free, and actually has far fewer restrictions than GPL.
It doesn't matter if the softwware is free beer, free speech or free verse, YOU are the one that is free. No one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to use Delphi. The original post still applies: don't piss on someone else's parade just because you don't have access to Borland's source code.
From a distance I saw some huperoffsprings playing volleyball and I thought to myself, "that looks like fun!" But by the time I got there, they had taken down the net and walked off with the ball. But it's still a beach so I decided to dig around a bit looking for sandcrabs.
So you tell me, you got bored, gave up and admitted you are a man, and thought the thread was over. So why did you come back? Just to see if someone else bit your hook?
"The open source revolution has gone too far. Its time for us to take back ownership of our work."
Nobody took your ownership away. It is only on the GNU side of Open Source, and only a very small minority there, that demands software have no owners. No one can tell you what you can or can't do with your software. Not the IPO's and not RMS.
Since time immemorial, or at least the time of Old English, "man" and "mankind" refer to all humans. This is the primary reason that the words "menkind" and "humen" do not exist. In fact, the *only* time "man" does not refer to a male human is when it is used to distiguish it from "woman".
The word "human" is defined in my dictionary as "of, pertaining to, or characteristic of mankind". It also shows that it is derived from the latin "humanus", which gives a clue as to the origin of your hated "man".
Stop trying to mold the English language to fit your narrow notions of political correctness.
A platypus like they used to have! Call him Pete and have him join Tux and Chuckie as they all twirl merrily down Telegraph avenue!
ps. Anyone know where I can get a good icon of a platypus to replace the K in my kpanel?
Adding proprietary extensions to FreeBSD would be the norm
Then where are those proprietary extensions? All I can see are a couple of semi-free options. If it hasn't happened before, what makes you think it will now? One of the overriding goals of FreeBSD is to make it usable and modifiable by anyone, and throwing in proprietary stuff eliminates that.
I've been using Slack for a while. A friend who had been using Mandrake asked me about it, and soon enough I was over at his house on a saturday morning stepping him though the install.
The installation was a snap (as always), but he had some funky hardware, so the setup was a bit more difficult. I had to leave, so I left him all alone with the remainder of the fiddling.
The next morning he appeared bleary eyed. "I finally got it finished. It took me until two in the morning though." I thought he was going to dump Slack and go back to Mandrake when he continued, "I learned more about Linux last night than I did the previous two years with Redhat and Mandrake. I think I like this thing."
"Perhaps a testing enviornment could be written that emulates the various configurations above"
A most excellent suggestion. Myself for one would find such a tool to be invaluable. Most developers who don't work on more than one machine would be surpised at some the assumptions they make. At home I work on a Linux PC. At work I have a Solaris Sparc5. When I compile my code at work I often discover where I have made my bad assumptions.
This is a great way to get rid of "linuxisms", but it requires a range of hardware to test on. The SourceForge idea is great, but it needs to be expanded as opportunity and cash allows. Add some Solaris and IRIX boxes. Include a larger variety of hardware.
If Helix can come up with a new business model for Free Software, my hat will be off to them. This will be a much bigger boon to Free Software than Gnome. That Helix is even looking to make a profit is encouraging. Miguel earned major points in my book for just this alone. It gets pretty old when all you see are Free Software advocates who've never run a company telling others how they should run their business.
I suspect that several companies will attempt this, with most of them failing. But this is a free market economy, so either one will find it or it doesn't exist. I suspect that in five or ten years you will find that commercial Free Software will have found all of its niches, but that there will be some it can't utilize, and those will remain proprietary.
Autoconf is only a small part of the problem. So small that I'm tempted to say it's not even necessary. Autoconf will detect what's available for you on a system, but it won't write your code.
:-) No, I'm not being flippant. Write according to the Unix standards. Use POSIX and avoid Linux-only kernel calls. Use standard C and avoid the extensions in glibc.
/home.
The best way to write a program that will work on any Unix is simply not to write one for Linux only
And finally, don't make the same mistake millions of other developers make every day, don't assume that the user has exactly the same system and setup that you do. Don't assume that the user has a large monitor or lots of memory. Don't assume that they have an active connection to the net. Don't assume that home directories are under
Just because I don't blindly accept every prediction given to me doesn't mean that I'm not in tune with Open Source business :-) Helix (and AbiSource) is doing something quite distinct from the other Open Source companies.
To take your GreenCap example, let's say that I am starting my own Open Source business. Let's call it YellowTop Linux. Why should I hire Helix as a development firm to create a new desktop for me, when I can spend zero dollars and use the one they made for GreenCap? This is what I meant by the "free rider" problem. Why pay the money when you know all of your competitors will receive your product for free?
Free Software may have rewritten the rules of software development, but it hardly touched the rules of economics and business. If you look at the Redhat IPO filings, they do not claim that they will profit in the long term by selling shrink wrapped boxes. I have no doubts that Helix will make money in the short term. Everything with the word "Linux" attached to it is certain of that. I just want to know how Helix is going to make its money in the long term.
I wish you every bit of success, because you are sailing into uncharted waters. Just because I doubt the outcome of the voyage does not mean that I don't admire the courage of the captain.
For $80, it is my firm opinion that Redhat is charging people for their ignorance. I predict that there will come a point when newbies will no longer be ignorant of what Free Software is, and will refuse to pay more than a few dollars for what is essentially a reprinting service.
I have to disagree with your assessment of the Seattle protests. It may have sparked more protests, but that's only success if your goal is just to protest.
The Seattle protests consisted of extremely diverse viewpoints that effectively cancelled each other out. You had socialists, environmentalists, libertarians, protectionists, and even globalists who were arguing with each other just as much as they were arguing against the WTO.
In my experience in actually participating in protests, this is all too common. I used to protest every April 15th against the IRS. However the extreme mixed messages that were being sent to the public caused me to stop. I mean, there were people protesting high taxes and others protesting low taxes! It was just pointless!
During my college days, there was a large and well organized protest to change the name of a library to "Winnie Mandela Library" in protest of apartheid. This coincided with many other anti-aparthied protests around the country. They were unsuccessful in halting apartheid, and may have actually prolonged it, since they drew attention to the person of Winnie Mandela and thus to her campaign of "necklacing" and terror.
In short, I have never seen any radical protest succeed in anything other than recruitment.
Yes, radical protests work sometimes. But far more often I see protesters in the hospital after a prolonged hunger strike, or the members start to drift on home after a couple of weeks, or something else equally unproductive.
Certainly you want to be more than just another form letter in the congressmen's inbox. But there are more productive methods of protests than making a fool of oneself.
Okay, support and contracts.
Why would I choose Helix Support, Inc. over Redhat or Linuxcare support. As an enterprise, doesn't it make much more sense to have a single support source like Linuxcare who would support Gnome and KDE and Linux and Apache and whatever else you needed support for. I also question the assumption that sales can be replaced by support. It's like declaring the skill of the developer to be valueless.
As for contracts, it sounds interesting. But ask yourself why a company would pay Helix to write an application that will be released for free when it is complete. The "free rider" problem inherent in this situation is enormous!
Forget emailing or writing your senator. Honestly, when has that ever really worked? Instead, stage a sit-in protest in his office.
Hah! Honestly, when was the last time that a sit-in protest ever worked? If all you want is to get your name in the paper, then go for it. But it will never change policy in your favor, and would more than likely get you branded as a kook with nothing of importance to say. I mean, Brian Wilson got his name in all the papers and became famous, but NO ONE will ever take him seriously except the fringe.
Okay, Helix is a commercial concern. But I continue to fail to understand how they are going to make money with GNOME.
Do they plan to sell a shrink wrapped box on the shelves of Fry's? Why in the world should I buy it when it already comes with (insert distro here)? Even if it didn't come with my distro, I can still download it. Are they only counting on the ignorant for sales? And if it seriously becomes so bloated that people won't download it, why not just get a $2 CD from Cheapbytes instead?
Or do they plan to go IPO and rake in cash from ignorant investors instead?
Or do they plan to make money through support? I don't think so, unless they're truly machiavellian. Consider that the better they make their product the less support it will need. If this is to be the easiest to use desktop, simple enough even for your grandmother, who's going to need support?
Or are they going to create closed source addons for GNOME and sell those instead? This would be highly unusual (and hypocritical) since the founder of Helix is a member of GNU.
The only thing I can think of is so they can sell manuals. So why then are they a software company instead of a publishing house?
"And what would be the benefit of his "hang[ing] it all out and go[ing] BSD" -- except that that would make it perfectly legal for some sleazeball "entrepreneur" to hijack his code base, close it off, and start selling a "competing" copy of his work?"
Oh please! I made it 80% of the way down the page without seeing any bullshit being slung about (which is amazing considering the topic), then I see you comment.
I'll tell you what the BSDL does: it allows Apple to use 4.4BSD code in MacOSX without having to give anything back, yet they still give back! When you treat your users with respect, you'll get respect in return. But when you treat your users as potential thieves, don't be surprised when your users choose other software.
My apologies to any GPL developers who treat their users with the respect due them. You are the vast majority. My tirade is only directed to the tiny minority of self-righteous license bigots.