Every instance of Open Source Software is also an instance of Free Software. There is not one Open Source program that is not also Free Software.
From your own link, the definition of Free Software is:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
There is one, and only one, license that is certified Open Source which RMS says is not free. But RMS is not the definition of Free Software. His definition does not say "anything approved by RMS". This one controversial license is the APSL. Even though RMS does not like it, it does meet his defnition. If he feels that his definition is obsolete, then he needs to rewrite it.
"Putting them together sounds simple, but it was not a trivial job. The GNU C library (called glibc for short) needed substantial changes." [Linux and the GNU Project]
In Mr. Stallman's own words it was glibc that was written to fit Linux and not the other way around. That glibc kept its cross-platform nature does not diminish from this fact.
It's simply the fact that the Hurd (due to its much more nonstandard design than Linux) hasn't reached the level of maturity of Linux yet.
Then what about Debian GNU/BSD? They've been working on that for years, and only managed to get it working about a week ago. According to the GNU mythology, that should have been a piece of cake. The BSD kernels are standard, robust, traditional, etc. GNU itself used proprietary systems with similar kernels during its development, so it should have been easy.
p.s. I'm suspecting that the only reason they got a Debian GNU/FreeBSD system booted last week was because the FreeBSD kernel has a builtin Linux compatibility mode...
Release a program that only works on the BSDs, and watch the Linux users come out in arms like their first born has been slaughtered...
I did that once by accident. Usually I test my software on a Linux distro before making a release, but I didn't do it once. I had QNX installed on my extra partition and didn't want to wipe it out. So I just released it.
I realized my mistake about twenty minutes later when the bug reports started coming in...
But the people asking the questions aren't saying "I've read the manual and I still can't figure it out." I have absolutely no problem with questions like that. But instead too many users don't want to read the documentation, they want you to be their personal unpaid system adminstrator.
Why read the manual when it's so much easier to post a question? Why learn to tie your shoes when your mom will do it for you all the way until you're thirty?
Can you imagine someone going to a classic automobile show, then complaining because Model T enthusiasts were elitist assholes because they told him to read the f*cking manual when he asked them "how do I change the oil?" NOBODY asks such questions as classic car shows, because no one is ballsy enough to embarrass themselves that way. But when you ask a question that is answered in the FAQ, Handbook, has 5,000 entries in a Google search, and was answered in the very same list twice this week, you're just asking to be slapped.
All I'm saying is to at least ATTEMPT to read the manual.
He didn't take GNU and write a kernel for it. The reason was that there was no GNU System at the time! There was a compiler, a shell, and some other stuff, but it wasn't anywhere to being close to an operating system.
Quite the opposite happened in fact. GNU looked at the fledging Linux operating system and started porting their stuff to it. Glibc was written for Linux, not the other way around, for one example.
GNU was not an operating system that merely lacked a kernel. When RMS says that Linus merely dropped in a kernel, he is lying. Otherwise it wouldn't have taken Debian years to get Debian HURD bootable. It wouldn't have taken them years to get a Debian BSD to boot. I don't know how anyone can consider Debian "The GNU System" when it took crowbars, sledgehammers and ripsaws to get it to use The GNU System's own kernel. Yet Debian is closer to what RMS means by "The GNU System" than anything else out there.
I'm no UI expert but the code for X, KDE, and GNOME isn't pretty (and from a user's stand point, the UI isn't friendly). I'm sure that you guys can do a better job.
I hope these guys can to a better job, but I am not at all "sure" of it. The people who work on X, KDE and GNOME aren't newbies who just learned C yesterday. They are excellent developers. I've looked at the code for all three projects, and it is all of high quality.
There is of course, some cruft in all three of those projects. But that cruft comes from the environment. X has to work with any random UNIX thrown at it, with no luxury of changing the OS to make things easier. This is good because I can use X on all of my systems without having to learn a new API, command set or application set. GNOME and KDE have to work with X, without the luxury of the authority to change X. But this is a good thing because I can use GNOME and KDE on any X system.
Most people think X/KDE/GNOME are slow, bloated, crufty, etc., because they are comparing it to the Windows desktop. In case you haven't noticed, you can only use the Windows desktop under Windows. If you look really close, you'll see that the Windows desktop has only a tenth the functionality of KDE or GNOME. What's amazing to me is that the FreeBSD/XFree86/KDE environment on my workstation is *faster* than the Windows2K environment on the very same machine!
How rude! This poor guy doesn't know anything, asks an innocent question, and you go and tell him to RTFM!
Seriously, I'm on a few FreeBSD lists, and everytime someone asks a question that's been answered twenty times in the past week, I usually answer "your answer is in chapter three section six of the handbook. You can find it online at http:..., or installed on your system at/usr/share/doc..." I figure that's polite, will let the poster know where to find his own answers next time, etc. But ALWAYS some person comes along and says I'm a horrible FreeBSD elitist for not coming out and giving them a complete detailed technical answer.
So keep being an elitist prick. Eventually we will train these newbies that volunteer community support people aren't there to do their reading for them.
If your '.NET server' is serving a web-app (i.e. html) then why would you need WINE on the client?
If it's just a normal web page I get, I wouldn't have any problems with it. But I don't trust.NET to remain a server-only infrastructure. Microsoft's own goals say differently. What's the point of distributed components if you don't distribute them to the client? Even if WINE isn't a requirement, GNOME, Mono, or something else will be. Even if that something else is "free", it's still a major imposition on the end user.
Besides which, if present web designers aren't disciplined enough to stop requiring flash for their sites, what makes you think future designers will be any different with regards to.NET?
Well, we all know what a web-browser is, why should viewing HTML suddenly require the use of WINE? Doesnt make sense to me...
Because the browser itself will be a.NET application whose GUI will require WINE.
Finally, the attitude that "programmers absolutely have to know how to work with memory" is the Unix mentality that has held on strong for decades.
An electronics engineer needs to know about resistance, capacitance, inductance and all the other nasty low level. So why shouldn't a software engineer not need to know about memory?
A systems administrator doesn't need to know about memory in order to write a shell script to generate login stats. A web "programmer" doesn't need to know about memory in order to shove some stuff through xslt. But I expect a software developer to know as much about how the software works as an automotive technician knows how my ignition system works.
They are using Wine to implement the forms package only.
Can you imagine a GTK+ or Qt that was touted as cross-platform, but you needed Wine to have a GUI? I would call that bullshit.
Maybe you don't need Wine for your.NET server, but the client will. The client will be dependent upon either Wine or a web browser. How long until that web browser is a.NET application that requires Wine?
For almost two years now I have been subjected to the religious proselityzing of the.NET cult. "It's platform neutral," they said. "It will run on Linux," they said. "Just trust Miguel and you will be saved," they said. But now they say they will use Wine. What a crock of shit! If.NET is crossplatform then so is MS Word!
I see their fiendish plot now. When every application is a.NET application, and Linux is a merely bootloader for Wine, then there will no longer be a need for Linux.
edit: 1 a : to prepare (as literary material) for publication or public presentation b : to assemble (as a moving picture or tape recording) by cutting and rearranging c : to alter, adapt, or refine especially to bring about conformity to a standard or to suit a particular purpose 2 : to direct the publication of
An editor should not be inserting his or her own opinions into the story. That is not their job. An editor is not an editorialist.
The biggest conceptual challenge in moving from MS Office to Star/OpenOffice is getting used to the idea of applying styles to text instead of just clicking on an icon for formatting.
Granted, I haven't used Word all that much, but I seem to recall it uses styles as well. But for some strange reason nobody uses them.
My first WYSIWYG word processor was Lotus Wordpro (Amipro). It had awesome style capabilities. 99% of the work would be spent creating content while only 1% was spent fiddling with formatting. OpenOffice Writer is almost as good in this regard. Adobe Framemaker on UNIX has the world's worst user interface, but its excellent style support almost makes up for this. I can't for the life of my figure out why someone wouldn't want to use styles.
But MSWord users don't. We have some Framemaker and MSWord templates at work we're supposed to use for process documents. I always use the Framemaker ones, since I use Solaris and FreeBSD at work. But the few times I've used the Word templates, I've noticed that there are no styles! What's the frickin point of a word processing template without styles? Do they think we're masochists? Do they think we want to spend 99% of our time formatting our documents and 1% of our time creating content? Our company Powerpoint templates are the same way.
Although I personally support a flat tax, a national sales tax has its benefits (provided that it replaces the income tax as opposed to supplementing it).
It's progressive: The more money you have the more you spend and the more you pay taxes. To help the little guy scraping by on a $10,000 income, just eliminate the tax on essentials.
Savings boost the economy: When people save money they contribute back to the economy, because they are NOT putting that money under the mattress, but putting it in a bank where it can be loaned out. The greater the supply of money to be loaned the less its cost (interest) and the more people will be making loans to buy homes, buy cars, go to college, etc.
I believe PGP encrypts the data _prior_ to encryption...
Pulling out my Slashdot to English parser, I see that what you really meant to say was "I believe PGP compresses the data prior to encryption".
You're right. But my original point was to use the right tool for the right job. zip encryption is a joke and PGP compression is mediocre. So use the best compression tool to compress the data, and the best encryption program to encrypt the result.
Not really. PGP is focused on encryption not security, while PKW/WZ are the other way around.
You cannot compress encrypted data as much as unencrypted data. Theoretically, with perfect encryption you won't be able to compress the data at all. Thus, PGP doesn't try to get awesome compression ratios and PKWare/Winzip don't try to get awesome encryption strength.
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From your own link, the definition of Free Software is:
There is one, and only one, license that is certified Open Source which RMS says is not free. But RMS is not the definition of Free Software. His definition does not say "anything approved by RMS". This one controversial license is the APSL. Even though RMS does not like it, it does meet his defnition. If he feels that his definition is obsolete, then he needs to rewrite it.
Glibc was not written for Linux
Not originally, but to quote from RMS:
"Putting them together sounds simple, but it was not a trivial job. The GNU C library (called glibc for short) needed substantial changes." [Linux and the GNU Project]
In Mr. Stallman's own words it was glibc that was written to fit Linux and not the other way around. That glibc kept its cross-platform nature does not diminish from this fact.
It's simply the fact that the Hurd (due to its much more nonstandard design than Linux) hasn't reached the level of maturity of Linux yet.
Then what about Debian GNU/BSD? They've been working on that for years, and only managed to get it working about a week ago. According to the GNU mythology, that should have been a piece of cake. The BSD kernels are standard, robust, traditional, etc. GNU itself used proprietary systems with similar kernels during its development, so it should have been easy.
p.s. I'm suspecting that the only reason they got a Debian GNU/FreeBSD system booted last week was because the FreeBSD kernel has a builtin Linux compatibility mode...
Release a program that only works on the BSDs, and watch the Linux users come out in arms like their first born has been slaughtered...
I did that once by accident. Usually I test my software on a Linux distro before making a release, but I didn't do it once. I had QNX installed on my extra partition and didn't want to wipe it out. So I just released it.
I realized my mistake about twenty minutes later when the bug reports started coming in...
But the people asking the questions aren't saying "I've read the manual and I still can't figure it out." I have absolutely no problem with questions like that. But instead too many users don't want to read the documentation, they want you to be their personal unpaid system adminstrator.
Why read the manual when it's so much easier to post a question? Why learn to tie your shoes when your mom will do it for you all the way until you're thirty?
Can you imagine someone going to a classic automobile show, then complaining because Model T enthusiasts were elitist assholes because they told him to read the f*cking manual when he asked them "how do I change the oil?" NOBODY asks such questions as classic car shows, because no one is ballsy enough to embarrass themselves that way. But when you ask a question that is answered in the FAQ, Handbook, has 5,000 entries in a Google search, and was answered in the very same list twice this week, you're just asking to be slapped.
All I'm saying is to at least ATTEMPT to read the manual.
He didn't take GNU and write a kernel for it. The reason was that there was no GNU System at the time! There was a compiler, a shell, and some other stuff, but it wasn't anywhere to being close to an operating system.
Quite the opposite happened in fact. GNU looked at the fledging Linux operating system and started porting their stuff to it. Glibc was written for Linux, not the other way around, for one example.
GNU was not an operating system that merely lacked a kernel. When RMS says that Linus merely dropped in a kernel, he is lying. Otherwise it wouldn't have taken Debian years to get Debian HURD bootable. It wouldn't have taken them years to get a Debian BSD to boot. I don't know how anyone can consider Debian "The GNU System" when it took crowbars, sledgehammers and ripsaws to get it to use The GNU System's own kernel. Yet Debian is closer to what RMS means by "The GNU System" than anything else out there.
I'm no UI expert but the code for X, KDE, and GNOME isn't pretty (and from a user's stand point, the UI isn't friendly). I'm sure that you guys can do a better job.
I hope these guys can to a better job, but I am not at all "sure" of it. The people who work on X, KDE and GNOME aren't newbies who just learned C yesterday. They are excellent developers. I've looked at the code for all three projects, and it is all of high quality.
There is of course, some cruft in all three of those projects. But that cruft comes from the environment. X has to work with any random UNIX thrown at it, with no luxury of changing the OS to make things easier. This is good because I can use X on all of my systems without having to learn a new API, command set or application set. GNOME and KDE have to work with X, without the luxury of the authority to change X. But this is a good thing because I can use GNOME and KDE on any X system.
Most people think X/KDE/GNOME are slow, bloated, crufty, etc., because they are comparing it to the Windows desktop. In case you haven't noticed, you can only use the Windows desktop under Windows. If you look really close, you'll see that the Windows desktop has only a tenth the functionality of KDE or GNOME. What's amazing to me is that the FreeBSD/XFree86/KDE environment on my workstation is *faster* than the Windows2K environment on the very same machine!
and try to find the answer BEFORE you ask.
/usr/share/doc..." I figure that's polite, will let the poster know where to find his own answers next time, etc. But ALWAYS some person comes along and says I'm a horrible FreeBSD elitist for not coming out and giving them a complete detailed technical answer.
How rude! This poor guy doesn't know anything, asks an innocent question, and you go and tell him to RTFM!
Seriously, I'm on a few FreeBSD lists, and everytime someone asks a question that's been answered twenty times in the past week, I usually answer "your answer is in chapter three section six of the handbook. You can find it online at http:..., or installed on your system at
So keep being an elitist prick. Eventually we will train these newbies that volunteer community support people aren't there to do their reading for them.
If your '.NET server' is serving a web-app (i.e. html) then why would you need WINE on the client?
.NET to remain a server-only infrastructure. Microsoft's own goals say differently. What's the point of distributed components if you don't distribute them to the client? Even if WINE isn't a requirement, GNOME, Mono, or something else will be. Even if that something else is "free", it's still a major imposition on the end user.
.NET?
.NET application whose GUI will require WINE.
If it's just a normal web page I get, I wouldn't have any problems with it. But I don't trust
Besides which, if present web designers aren't disciplined enough to stop requiring flash for their sites, what makes you think future designers will be any different with regards to
Well, we all know what a web-browser is, why should viewing HTML suddenly require the use of WINE? Doesnt make sense to me...
Because the browser itself will be a
Mmmm... stout macaroni and cheese...
Finally, the attitude that "programmers absolutely have to know how to work with memory" is the Unix mentality that has held on strong for decades.
An electronics engineer needs to know about resistance, capacitance, inductance and all the other nasty low level. So why shouldn't a software engineer not need to know about memory?
A systems administrator doesn't need to know about memory in order to write a shell script to generate login stats. A web "programmer" doesn't need to know about memory in order to shove some stuff through xslt. But I expect a software developer to know as much about how the software works as an automotive technician knows how my ignition system works.
They are using Wine to implement the forms package only.
.NET server, but the client will. The client will be dependent upon either Wine or a web browser. How long until that web browser is a .NET application that requires Wine?
Can you imagine a GTK+ or Qt that was touted as cross-platform, but you needed Wine to have a GUI? I would call that bullshit.
Maybe you don't need Wine for your
For almost two years now I have been subjected to the religious proselityzing of the .NET cult. "It's platform neutral," they said. "It will run on Linux," they said. "Just trust Miguel and you will be saved," they said. But now they say they will use Wine. What a crock of shit! If .NET is crossplatform then so is MS Word!
.NET application, and Linux is a merely bootloader for Wine, then there will no longer be a need for Linux.
I see their fiendish plot now. When every application is a
Or like Bored of the Rings, when Frito and Spam show their kindly nature and throw him in after kneeing him in the groin.
Way to go Michael, for publicly spanking that boy.
I second that motion. Without Michael there to tell me how to think I would be lost in a sea of confusion.
Emmett is the Jerk in Chief of Slashdot. He taught Michael everything he knows. His social skills are on part with CmdrTaco's spelling.
They are EDITORS.
edit: 1 a : to prepare (as literary material) for publication or public presentation b : to assemble (as a moving picture or tape recording) by cutting and rearranging c : to alter, adapt, or refine especially to bring about conformity to a standard or to suit a particular purpose
2 : to direct the publication of
An editor should not be inserting his or her own opinions into the story. That is not their job. An editor is not an editorialist.
You didn't live enough time. Otherwise you would think of Solaris, AIX, HP/UX and Irix
I first started using UNIX with 3BSD. All the ones you list are young'ns...
I hope Apple wins this one, because as strange as it sounds, OSX has more UNIX pedigree than many systems eligable to use that trademark.
The biggest conceptual challenge in moving from MS Office to Star/OpenOffice is getting used to the idea of applying styles to text instead of just clicking on an icon for formatting.
Granted, I haven't used Word all that much, but I seem to recall it uses styles as well. But for some strange reason nobody uses them.
My first WYSIWYG word processor was Lotus Wordpro (Amipro). It had awesome style capabilities. 99% of the work would be spent creating content while only 1% was spent fiddling with formatting. OpenOffice Writer is almost as good in this regard. Adobe Framemaker on UNIX has the world's worst user interface, but its excellent style support almost makes up for this. I can't for the life of my figure out why someone wouldn't want to use styles.
But MSWord users don't. We have some Framemaker and MSWord templates at work we're supposed to use for process documents. I always use the Framemaker ones, since I use Solaris and FreeBSD at work. But the few times I've used the Word templates, I've noticed that there are no styles! What's the frickin point of a word processing template without styles? Do they think we're masochists? Do they think we want to spend 99% of our time formatting our documents and 1% of our time creating content? Our company Powerpoint templates are the same way.
Although I personally support a flat tax, a national sales tax has its benefits (provided that it replaces the income tax as opposed to supplementing it).
It's progressive: The more money you have the more you spend and the more you pay taxes. To help the little guy scraping by on a $10,000 income, just eliminate the tax on essentials.
Savings boost the economy: When people save money they contribute back to the economy, because they are NOT putting that money under the mattress, but putting it in a bank where it can be loaned out. The greater the supply of money to be loaned the less its cost (interest) and the more people will be making loans to buy homes, buy cars, go to college, etc.
How about Eterm?
The point of Gnome term is that you don't need X11, only GTK+ which has a native non-X11 Aqua version. With eterm you're back using X11 again.
I believe PGP encrypts the data _prior_ to encryption...
Pulling out my Slashdot to English parser, I see that what you really meant to say was "I believe PGP compresses the data prior to encryption".
You're right. But my original point was to use the right tool for the right job. zip encryption is a joke and PGP compression is mediocre. So use the best compression tool to compress the data, and the best encryption program to encrypt the result.
Not really. PGP is focused on encryption not security, while PKW/WZ are the other way around.
You cannot compress encrypted data as much as unencrypted data. Theoretically, with perfect encryption you won't be able to compress the data at all. Thus, PGP doesn't try to get awesome compression ratios and PKWare/Winzip don't try to get awesome encryption strength.
My mom tells her friends that I don't use Microsoft Windows, I use another Windows.
From the man page: "The devfs file system first appeared in FreeBSD 2.0. The devfs manual page first appeared in FreeBSD 2.2."