Unless you've missed the whole point of Free Software, the stuff that's released is for everyone's use. If I'm pissed that three people write me thank you notes for my software but the fourth goes out and makes a couple hundred bucks off of it, I have no one to complain to but myself. After all, I'm the one who released it under a free license to begin with. If you don't want people making money off of your code, then don't Open Source it!
It makes no sense to tell people they can do whatever they want with your software, then turn around and shout 'exploitation' because they did what you said."
"First, there's an excellent article on www.gnu.org which documents a psychology study on how much of a dis-incentive "incentives" are."
That's one report stacked up against thousands. It's also contrary to reality. What exactly do you do to acquire money to exchange for food, clothing, shelter, bigger monitors and ethernet cards? It's all incentives whether it's labeled as money or not. If you employer pays you little but you greatly enjoy your job, you may decide to stay. But if someone offers you more money for doing to same work across the street, you'll certainly think about it.
Hackers like to hack. Give a hacker the choice of programming for $75,000+ a year, or waiting tables for $12,000 a year, and you'll see how powerful incentive is. Now give them CoSource and the opportunity to pick and choose the projects they're interested in and odds are they'll jump all over it.
This is great! I've heard about this for a while but seeing it in action is awesome. We'll have to wait a while to see how it pans out, but it looks good.
This is where you go to have your itch scratched. Or where you go to get paid for scratching someone else's itch.
Peruse the listings and you'll see small projects, large projects, KDE enhancements and Gnome enhancements, drivers and filters and full blown applications. Even if you can't program you can get paid for writing documentation.
The economy is changing and we are witnessing the birth of a new paradigm. Free Marketeer suits meet collectivist radicals and put laissez faire anarcho-socialism into practice.
I too had heard rumours of Slackware installation difficulties. But I installed it for the first time when 7.0 came out. I was very surprised. It was the *easiest* installation I have ever done, and I have tried all of them.
Instead of ignoring the advanced user, include them in the review and help the newbie at the same time. Rate stuff according to installation, ease configuration, package availability, security, etc. Then weight each category differently for different users. For example:
What annoyed me most was that they changed their category weighting for every review. I wouldn't care if the review was for newbies or not, but I somehow felt that they had preselected the rankings and used the reviews merely to justify them.
Case 1) SuSE is marked down for having too large of a manual. Mandrake is marked down for having too small of a manual.
Case 2) SuSE is priced at 50$. Mandrake at 55$. The first is called inexpensive and the second is called overpriced.
Case 3) Slackware is said to only have a skimpy documentation, yet in fact the first thing that happens after installation is that the user receives a message pointing them directly to the megabytes of installed docs.
Case 4) Redhat and Mandrake are virtually similar in terms of installation, configuration and maintenance. But Mandrake gets marked down severly for not having installation phone support so that Mandrake ends up with a 5 and Redhat with an 8.
"Qt can link with the GPL, but the GPL explicitely states that you can't link in non-operating system libraries. The reason for this was that it was trying to close a loophole in the GPL."
This clause does not refer to the licensor, KDE. And it doesn't say what you think it says. The paragraph in question is talking about source code. It is merely requiring that the source code for all modules be included in the distribution. Whether or not Qt is a module of KDE is beside the point, the Qt source code is already available from the same places you get KDE.
Simply, it says if you distribute KDE then you should also distribute Qt.
"The problem is that it is not legal for Debian to distributed KDE without a license change."
It's perfectly legal. If you don't believe me, just ask any KDE developer whether you have permission to redistribute their work. Everyone of them will say yes.
That there is a possible confusion over whether the GPL allows GPL applications to be redistributed is mind boggling to me.
Taking a pre-existing GPL application and modifying it to run with a QPL library could possibly be against the license, but that is not the case with KDE.
The status of the -old- Qt lib does not put KDE in the non-free directory, only in the contrib directory. Bone up on your debian policies.
The new Qt lib is fully DFSG compliant. GPL compliance has nothing to do with it, and you can find hundreds of non-GPL stuff in dist.
Debian thinks that there is a license conflict, but this conflict is is free versus free, so nothing belongs in non-free. Perhaps they need a new directory called "politically incorrect".
But why should Qt be made GPL compliant? After all, it is the GPL that is incompatible with the QPL, and not the other way around.
"The reason for this is that, technically, KDE is illegal."
Nonsense! This is just Redhat propaganda. If it is illegal, what grounds would you give a judge to issue an injunction on
The -old- Qt license gives explicit and upfront permission to link Qt to GPL apps. So KDE is in full accord with the old Qt license. KDE is KDE is KDE (a is a), thus KDE is in full accord with its own license. So what's the problem?
Debian's problem with this is that they have too many chiefs that they have to please.
"The QPL prohibits development of proprietary software."
So does the GPL. What exactly is your point?
Re:Someone didn't get enough sleep last night!
on
FreeBSD at COMDEX
·
· Score: 1
Who cares what Tom wrote in other forums or other messages. The previous poster flamed Tom for a single sentence in a non-inflammatory posting. If that posting were written by anyone other than Tom it would not have had that response.
Tom by be a bit over the top at times, and way over the edge at others, but when he keeps his temper in check and writes a decent post, then he deserves the same treatment as anyone else who writes a decent post.
I got the feeling that the AC who responded had his reply already written and just waiting to find a TC post to reply to.
And talking about names known within the community, what kind of reputation does "Anonymous Coward" have?
There were rumours floating around that KDE2.0 or KOffice would be licensed under the Artistic License as opposed to the GPL. However, the CVS tree shows that most stuff is still under the GPL.
Considering that Redhat once declared distributing KDE to be illegal, and that Debian would include Qt but not KDE, all because of a perceived GPL incompatibility, it seems that the licensing aspects would be very important.
What are the core developers views on KDE licensing? Will we see major components released under the Al, QPL or other license? Is the compatibility problem even an issue with the team?
In other words, considering the GPL/QPL intermix, and paraphrasing RMS, is it wrong to share KDE with my friend?
You have to do it in a different way, but it can be done. But is there a need out there to fork Qt in the first place? I don't see any of the other free GUI kits forking.
"* you can't make commercial software with QT without having to pay Troll."
Bull! You're thinking of the old license, not the new-and-improved Free QPL license of Qt 2.x+.
"* QT is C++, which makes it harder to program it another language than C++."
There are good C bindings for Qt. But OO is one of Qt's strongest points. Why abandon it when with just a half dozen lines of code I can inherit a Qt widget to do what I need it to do?
"* QT imposes (or at least strongly encourages) the use of a preprocessor which painfully reminds of MFC."
Then you've never programmed in both Qt and MFC. I have, and there is no comparison. With three simple macros you eliminate 99% of the cruft that goes into MFC code. Trying to code in MFC without the ClassWizard(tm) is excrutiatingly painful. But I can do all of my Qt coding out of vi with no problem.
Re:Someone didn't get enough sleep last night!
on
FreeBSD at COMDEX
·
· Score: 2
Gee! Settle down!
A one sentence truthfull statement from Tom hardly deserves an essay wandering off into irrelevant corners.
Microsoft has some the highest paid lawyers in the world. And they specialize in software licenses. When it comes time, and the time will come, to test the GPL in a court of law, we DON'T WANT the opposition to be Microsoft. We need some precedence first on some elements of the GPL before we face Microsoft's hitmen.
Answers are: integer, pointer (to something), char, float, and who cares:-)
Without looking anything up, I think mps is a Microsoft/Windows/vc++ specific prefix. I do recall that "h" was for handle, and when you're using handles for *everything* in windows programming, it makes it much easier to distinguish between ints, files and handles.
But just like the guy who avoided all whitespace because he was following the rule to keep all functions one page in length, you can overdo HN. The basic idea is to use easy to remember mnemonics with prefix notation. Using "intEmployee" and "dblSalary" is equally useful.
It makes all the difference in the world if you're a code *maintainer*, as this whole article is about. If you write code only for yourself, then you can use any coding standard you want. But then again, if you're only coding for yourself, why even release it:-)
A maintainer DOES NOT want to flip up to the top of the header files each and every time he runs across a variable to find out what it is. If a bug is signed versus unsigned related, "maxTypeCode" doesn't help at all. But an "uMaxTypeCode = -3" sticks out like a sore thumb.
I think you've missed the whole point of Hungarian notation. Those examples you used were quite contrived (and if they did actually exist in code, it is the coder's errror, not the convention).
HN is a good way to indicate the kind of variable, and it does not preclude meaningfull name. What is maxTypeCode? A string? An int pointer? Pointer to a user defined type? I don't know without scrolling back up to the declaration. is numLinePayments a signed or unsigned int? On the other hand, pszMaxTypeCode tells me instantly that it's a string and iNumLinePayments is signed.
Likewise, your iNmPt example illustrates braindead programmers, not the shortcomings of HN. It should have been called iNumLinePayments.
I think too many unix coders are frightened off from HN simply because it came from Microsoft. Don't be. Try out HN, and if you don't like it properly used, then don't use it.
I didn't find anything on the front page identifying it as being a part of the GNU project. I didn't even find a FSF or GNU link.
So why is this a part of GNU? Did XFce join GNU, or did GNU add them to their lists? Do the authors of XFce even know that they're GNU?
If it really is a part of GNU, then why? After all, GNU has Windowmaker and Gnome, with the possibility of an "official" Gnome WM real soon. Why another WM or DE?
Fifty murders is far, far more horrendous than a single murder. But what if the fifty murders were in a far off city (proprietary software), but the single murder was in your own community (open source software)?
"You can't complain about the first abuse and ignore the second much greater abuse."
Who says I'm content with tax funding of proprietary software? I am as equally opposed to it. As my dear mother told me, "just because everyone else in the schoolyard is smoking dope doesn't make it right for you also."
"First of all, the people freely and voluntary gave themselves laws which require the paying of taxes"
1) It was not unanimous. Some people did not vote for those laws. Thus, it's not voluntary for them. They are still forced to obey laws other people made, through the threat of real and violent force. I do not trust the "majority" to look after the interests of anybody but the majority. The freely elected German government of sixty years ago is proof enough for me.
2) Did you notice that you used the words "voluntarily" and "require" in the same sentence?
3) I give myself laws all the time. They're called codes of conduct, morals and self-restraint. But when I "require" other people to obey my codes, morals and restraints, I become a despot.
I am not arguing against government or against taxes. But there is a point where governments get too much power, and taxes get too high. As one American reactionary and overall wacko (George Washington) once said "Government, like fire, is a helpful servant but a fearful master". When government gets to the point where it is deciding which individual *voluntary* software projects get tax funding, then it is well on the road to becoming a fearful master. When the feudal lords only demanded 10% of their serfs, it makes me wonder how my government views me when it asks for 50%!
"Secondly, you don't have to pay taxes. Every country I know of has an income threshold below which no taxes are collected."
Ha! You call this freedom? You give me a choice between destitution and taxation and tell me I'm free because I have a choice?
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Unless you've missed the whole point of Free Software, the stuff that's released is for everyone's use. If I'm pissed that three people write me thank you notes for my software but the fourth goes out and makes a couple hundred bucks off of it, I have no one to complain to but myself. After all, I'm the one who released it under a free license to begin with. If you don't want people making money off of your code, then don't Open Source it!
It makes no sense to tell people they can do whatever they want with your software, then turn around and shout 'exploitation' because they did what you said."
No need to call the Fairness Police.
But does the expert guitarist want to spend an entire weekend tuning up the guitar so he can play properly to begin with.
If you walk into a music store and observe for some time, you'll notice that the experts aren't buying the crap guitars.
"First, there's an excellent article on www.gnu.org which documents a psychology study on how much of a dis-incentive "incentives" are."
That's one report stacked up against thousands. It's also contrary to reality. What exactly do you do to acquire money to exchange for food, clothing, shelter, bigger monitors and ethernet cards? It's all incentives whether it's labeled as money or not. If you employer pays you little but you greatly enjoy your job, you may decide to stay. But if someone offers you more money for doing to same work across the street, you'll certainly think about it.
Hackers like to hack. Give a hacker the choice of programming for $75,000+ a year, or waiting tables for $12,000 a year, and you'll see how powerful incentive is. Now give them CoSource and the opportunity to pick and choose the projects they're interested in and odds are they'll jump all over it.
This is great! I've heard about this for a while but seeing it in action is awesome. We'll have to wait a while to see how it pans out, but it looks good.
This is where you go to have your itch scratched. Or where you go to get paid for scratching someone else's itch.
Peruse the listings and you'll see small projects, large projects, KDE enhancements and Gnome enhancements, drivers and filters and full blown applications. Even if you can't program you can get paid for writing documentation.
The economy is changing and we are witnessing the birth of a new paradigm. Free Marketeer suits meet collectivist radicals and put laissez faire anarcho-socialism into practice.
I too had heard rumours of Slackware installation difficulties. But I installed it for the first time when 7.0 came out. I was very surprised. It was the *easiest* installation I have ever done, and I have tried all of them.
Instead of ignoring the advanced user, include them in the review and help the newbie at the same time. Rate stuff according to installation, ease configuration, package availability, security, etc. Then weight each category differently for different users. For example:
EpicureanLinux = 9 (newbie), 4 (expert)
or
StoicLinux = 2 (newbie), 8 (expert)
What annoyed me most was that they changed their category weighting for every review. I wouldn't care if the review was for newbies or not, but I somehow felt that they had preselected the rankings and used the reviews merely to justify them.
Case 1) SuSE is marked down for having too large of a manual. Mandrake is marked down for having too small of a manual.
Case 2) SuSE is priced at 50$. Mandrake at 55$. The first is called inexpensive and the second is called overpriced.
Case 3) Slackware is said to only have a
skimpy documentation, yet in fact the first thing that happens after installation is that the user receives a message pointing them directly to the megabytes of installed docs.
Case 4) Redhat and Mandrake are virtually similar in terms of installation, configuration and maintenance. But Mandrake gets marked down severly for not having installation phone support so that Mandrake ends up with a 5 and Redhat with an 8.
"Qt can link with the GPL, but the GPL explicitely states that you can't link in non-operating system
libraries. The reason for this was that it was
trying to close a loophole in the GPL."
This clause does not refer to the licensor, KDE. And it doesn't say what you think it says. The paragraph in question is talking about source code. It is merely requiring that the source code for all modules be included in the distribution. Whether or not Qt is a module of KDE is beside the point, the Qt source code is already available from the same places you get KDE.
Simply, it says if you distribute KDE then you should also distribute Qt.
"If that's true, they can just change the license to a valid one, right?"
Even though KDE was written from scratch, there was more than one developer. You still need to get "The KDE Team" to agree.
"The problem is that it is not legal for Debian to distributed KDE without a license change."
It's perfectly legal. If you don't believe me, just ask any KDE developer whether you have permission to redistribute their work. Everyone of them will say yes.
That there is a possible confusion over whether the GPL allows GPL applications to be redistributed is mind boggling to me.
Taking a pre-existing GPL application and modifying it to run with a QPL library could possibly be against the license, but that is not the case with KDE.
The status of the -old- Qt lib does not put KDE in the non-free directory, only in the contrib directory. Bone up on your debian policies.
The new Qt lib is fully DFSG compliant. GPL compliance has nothing to do with it, and you can find hundreds of non-GPL stuff in dist.
Debian thinks that there is a license conflict, but this conflict is is free versus free, so nothing belongs in non-free. Perhaps they need a new directory called "politically incorrect".
But why should Qt be made GPL compliant? After all, it is the GPL that is incompatible with the QPL, and not the other way around.
"The reason for this is that, technically, KDE is illegal."
Nonsense! This is just Redhat propaganda. If it is illegal, what grounds would you give a judge to issue an injunction on
The -old- Qt license gives explicit and upfront permission to link Qt to GPL apps. So KDE is in full accord with the old Qt license. KDE is KDE is KDE (a is a), thus KDE is in full accord with its own license. So what's the problem?
Debian's problem with this is that they have too many chiefs that they have to please.
"The QPL prohibits development of proprietary software."
So does the GPL. What exactly is your point?
Who cares what Tom wrote in other forums or other messages. The previous poster flamed Tom for a single sentence in a non-inflammatory posting. If that posting were written by anyone other than Tom it would not have had that response.
Tom by be a bit over the top at times, and way over the edge at others, but when he keeps his temper in check and writes a decent post, then he deserves the same treatment as anyone else who writes a decent post.
I got the feeling that the AC who responded had his reply already written and just waiting to find a TC post to reply to.
And talking about names known within the community, what kind of reputation does "Anonymous Coward" have?
There were rumours floating around that KDE2.0 or KOffice would be licensed under the Artistic License as opposed to the GPL. However, the CVS tree shows that most stuff is still under the GPL.
Considering that Redhat once declared distributing KDE to be illegal, and that Debian would include Qt but not KDE, all because of a perceived GPL incompatibility, it seems that the licensing aspects would be very important.
What are the core developers views on KDE licensing? Will we see major components released under the Al, QPL or other license? Is the compatibility problem even an issue with the team?
In other words, considering the GPL/QPL intermix, and paraphrasing RMS, is it wrong to share KDE with my friend?
"* you can't fork QT development."
You have to do it in a different way, but it can be done. But is there a need out there to fork Qt in the first place? I don't see any of the other free GUI kits forking.
"* you can't make commercial software with QT without having to pay Troll."
Bull! You're thinking of the old license, not the new-and-improved Free QPL license of Qt 2.x+.
"* QT is C++, which makes it harder to program it another language than C++."
There are good C bindings for Qt. But OO is one of Qt's strongest points. Why abandon it when with just a half dozen lines of code I can inherit a Qt widget to do what I need it to do?
"* QT imposes (or at least strongly encourages) the use of a preprocessor which painfully reminds of MFC."
Then you've never programmed in both Qt and MFC. I have, and there is no comparison. With three simple macros you eliminate 99% of the cruft that goes into MFC code. Trying to code in MFC without the ClassWizard(tm) is excrutiatingly painful. But I can do all of my Qt coding out of vi with no problem.
Gee! Settle down!
A one sentence truthfull statement from Tom hardly deserves an essay wandering off into irrelevant corners.
Microsoft has some the highest paid lawyers in the world. And they specialize in software licenses. When it comes time, and the time will come, to test the GPL in a court of law, we DON'T WANT the opposition to be Microsoft. We need some precedence first on some elements of the GPL before we face Microsoft's hitmen.
"HN was invented by someone who was too lazy to write a simple cross-referencer."
Do you know who you're talking about?
"If you're using a proper (non-segmented) CPU, you don't have to waste time considering pointer size and memory models..."
It must be nice to pick and choose the assignments your employer gives to you.
Answers are: integer, pointer (to something), char, float, and who cares :-)
Without looking anything up, I think mps is a Microsoft/Windows/vc++ specific prefix. I do recall that "h" was for handle, and when you're using handles for *everything* in windows programming, it makes it much easier to distinguish between ints, files and handles.
But just like the guy who avoided all whitespace because he was following the rule to keep all functions one page in length, you can overdo HN. The basic idea is to use easy to remember mnemonics with prefix notation. Using "intEmployee" and "dblSalary" is equally useful.
It makes all the difference in the world if you're a code *maintainer*, as this whole article is about. If you write code only for yourself, then you can use any coding standard you want. But then again, if you're only coding for yourself, why even release it :-)
A maintainer DOES NOT want to flip up to the top of the header files each and every time he runs across a variable to find out what it is. If a bug is signed versus unsigned related, "maxTypeCode" doesn't help at all. But an "uMaxTypeCode = -3" sticks out like a sore thumb.
I think you've missed the whole point of Hungarian notation. Those examples you used were quite contrived (and if they did actually exist in code, it is the coder's errror, not the convention).
HN is a good way to indicate the kind of variable, and it does not preclude meaningfull name. What is maxTypeCode? A string? An int pointer? Pointer to a user defined type? I don't know without scrolling back up to the declaration. is numLinePayments a signed or unsigned int? On the other hand, pszMaxTypeCode tells me instantly that it's a string and iNumLinePayments is signed.
Likewise, your iNmPt example illustrates braindead programmers, not the shortcomings of HN. It should have been called iNumLinePayments.
I think too many unix coders are frightened off from HN simply because it came from Microsoft. Don't be. Try out HN, and if you don't like it properly used, then don't use it.
I didn't find anything on the front page identifying it as being a part of the GNU project. I didn't even find a FSF or GNU link.
So why is this a part of GNU? Did XFce join GNU, or did GNU add them to their lists? Do the authors of XFce even know that they're GNU?
If it really is a part of GNU, then why? After all, GNU has Windowmaker and Gnome, with the possibility of an "official" Gnome WM real soon. Why another WM or DE?
Fifty murders is far, far more horrendous than a single murder. But what if the fifty murders were in a far off city (proprietary software), but the single murder was in your own community (open source software)?
"You can't complain about the first abuse and ignore the second much greater abuse."
Who says I'm content with tax funding of proprietary software? I am as equally opposed to it. As my dear mother told me, "just because everyone else in the schoolyard is smoking dope doesn't make it right for you also."
"First of all, the people freely and voluntary gave themselves laws which require the paying of taxes"
1) It was not unanimous. Some people did not vote for those laws. Thus, it's not voluntary for them. They are still forced to obey laws other people made, through the threat of real and violent force. I do not trust the "majority" to look after the interests of anybody but the majority. The freely elected German government of sixty years ago is proof enough for me.
2) Did you notice that you used the words "voluntarily" and "require" in the same sentence?
3) I give myself laws all the time. They're called codes of conduct, morals and self-restraint. But when I "require" other people to obey my codes, morals and restraints, I become a despot.
I am not arguing against government or against taxes. But there is a point where governments get too much power, and taxes get too high. As one American reactionary and overall wacko (George Washington) once said "Government, like fire, is a helpful servant but a fearful master". When government gets to the point where it is deciding which individual *voluntary* software projects get tax funding, then it is well on the road to becoming a fearful master. When the feudal lords only demanded 10% of their serfs, it makes me wonder how my government views me when it asks for 50%!
"Secondly, you don't have to pay taxes. Every country I know of has an income threshold below which no taxes are collected."
Ha! You call this freedom? You give me a choice between destitution and taxation and tell me I'm free because I have a choice?