I'm finding analogous parallels to my own work in this ever increasing torrent of copy protection schemes.
I am working on secure software registration. My coworkers have come up with as many ways to secure the software as the music industry has in proposing new laws to punish the innocent. But my common sense is at least two points higher than the RIAA: I fully realize that once the software leaves our hands, it is out of our control.
Security is the inverse of convenience, so that a perfectly secure system is also perfectly inconvenient. We've come up with some virtualy unbreakable schemes, but the impose severe inconveniences on the user. So we're not going to use them. If we lock down our system too tight our honest customers will be driven to our competitors, while our extremely few dishonest customers will break the system anyway. Sometimes trusting your customers is the best policy!
For starters, Redhat could submit their code modifications to KDE. Some mods obviously don't make sense to submit (distro-specific stuff), but actual bug fixes, improvements stuff like that should go back to the original developers. It's not required to do so under the GPL, but it sure is good Open Source citizenship to do so.
How could you determine that? My company has a whole team of lawyers trying to figure out HIPAA, to no effect. It's the most incomprehensible law I've seen next to the US Tax Code.
The problem is that GNOME==Redhat in a significant number of circumstances. So when Redhat hacks on GNOME, the hacks automatically make it to GNOME. But when Redhat hacks on KDE, the hacks never make it to KDE, Redhat users log bugs to KDE, and KDE developer gets confused.
Kappfinder comes with KDE by default (kdebase). If it's not on a Redhat system, I can only assume they've replaced it with something else they deem superior. Check your Redhat documentation. If no appropriate application is available, then start logging bugs...
My email stopped working this morning and I couldn't call IT to fix it because I was using Mozilla which is not supported. Took me about an hour, but I had to fix it myself (they changed the proxy server and it interfered with Moz's connecting to IMAP). Then I had to check in some docs into a web-based document management system. Kept having horrible problems, asked the librarian what was wrong, and he said that only Internet Exploder was supported.
I'm a Unix developer. I'll be damned if I have to boot into Windows just to read messages from fellow Unix developers, or to check in design docs for Unix software.
Considering Redhat is the home of GNOME, the number one financial contributor, and the only distro that has it as its default desktop, you would think that they would begin fixing the problem by focusing on GNOME rather than on KDE.
Who moderated this post up? It's pure FUD. The poster is accepting Mr. Powell's hyperbole as fact without stopping to consider any of the numerous rebuttals to his articles.
There are no bad business practices, because KDE League is not a business! It's a not-for-profit that didn't get some paperwork done in time. Sheesh!
How is that any different than GNOME? Complaining that KDE uses its own audio daemon instead of esound is like complaining it uses it's own toolkit instead of GTK+.
Gnome and other applications that were formerly listed in its menus seem to have disappeared
KDE has always included kappfinder, which searched the system for applications to add to the menu. If you not seeing them there now, then perhaps your distro is no longer running kappfinder during install. So go run it manually.
KDE's drag-and-drop does not interoperate fully with non-KDE apps
To reiterate, how is this different from GNOME? DnD support is much improved, but there will still be the odd application out there that doesn't support the freedesktop.org standard. This isn't the fault of freedesktop.org or KDE, but the fault of that odd application.
KDE flaunts many X11 conventions
To reiterate, how is this any different from GNOME? KDE has at least tried to get it's wm hints standardized, but GNOME hints are still the scourge of wm authors everywhere.
Under Debian, installing KDE automatically made kdm the default on my machine.
Go complain to Debian. It's not KDE's fault that Debian is making kdm the default. I mean, sheesh, get real here!
it's high time the KDE - Gnome squabble stopped and both teams started concentrating on a unified desktop.
If you mean get rid of one or the other, or even merge the two, it ain't going to happen. No way, no how.
If you mean have them be interoperable, then it is already the case. You can run Evolution in the KDE desktop, and KDevelop on the GNOME desktop. Mix and match to your hearts content.
And if you mean you want identical looks, feels, keystrokes and menu orderings, then don't limit it to KDE and GNOME. Xfce, Blackbox, Windowmaker, GNU Emacs, Vim, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Xmms, ad infinitum, need to get on board as well.
I had to spend a bit of time in Windows this morning. You know, Joe and Jane User's operating system. Surprise! There is no consistent look and feel there either! Realplayer doesn't look like Quicktime which doesn't look like Netscape which doesn't look like Outlook which doesn't look like OpenOffice which doesn't look like MSWord which doesn't look like Winamp. Give me a break! If Joe and Jane user can use the inconsistent Windows platform without going nuts, then they can certainly deal with Evolution running under KDE.
So you're saying only those with business models have any business [sic] implementing standards? Only commercial entities should write w3c conformant software? Hogwash!
Not everything needs a business model. I certainly don't need a business model to each lunch, phone my friends, or write a personal webpage. Putting patents on the standards used for webpages is as asinine as putting patents on eating lunch or phoning friends.
The BSD license lets secondary authors remove some freedoms from *their* copy of the software. In other words, they can fork off a closed version. But no one is required to use the proprietary fork. The original is still there, untouched.
I was thinking about standardized office formats in XML the other day. It dawned on me that they would be very Bad Things(tm). Very Bad Things(tm) indeed.
There should be interoperable filters, but there should not be an standard file format. That's because different programs work in different ways. A format assuming a page-oriented word processor isn't going to fit well in a frame-oriented word processor. Arguing that KOffice should dump its file formats in favor of Openoffice's are about as moronic as arguing that electric automobiles should dump their batteries in favor of standardized gasoline.
Here's a question. I'm a fairly competent Qt programmer, but I've never used WxWindows. What are the advantages and disadvantages of WxWindows over Qt? I'm not interested so much in cross-platform issues as I am being able to write good code that is easy to maintain.
If Redhat wishes to engage in a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction with respect to patents, then I will be opposed to them.
Redhat has stated that it will allow GPL software only to use its patented "technology". This shows a complete misunderstanding of what patents are. Patents cover the use of the technology. It's not about Redhat versus Evil Corporation, it's about Redhat versus users. It's using patents where it should be using copyright. The concept of copyleft is not meant for patents.
An example: I use FreeBSD. Should FreeBSD mess up and incorporate GPL code into BSD code, then Redhat will call them on the table. The problem will get fixed. It will not affect my use of FreeBSD. On the other hand, if Redhat has a patent on that same code/technology, then it will become illegal for me to use FreeBSD. In addition, there would be no way for FreeBSD to recitify the problem, because they couldn't even write their own implementation of the technology. Redhat could shut FreeBSD down completely with their thermonuclear device.
Even if they are honest about making their patents free to GPL code (and when was the last time you heard of an honest corporation), you have to remember that every Linux distro ships some non-GPL code that would give Redhat the "moral authority" to demand royalty payments.
What has Red Hat done to cause you not to trust them?
1) They're applying for patents. Buying a handgun (copyright) for personal self-defense is reasonable. Buying a thermonuclear device (patent) for personal self-defense is not.
2) They have already stated that only GPL software will have a free ride, regardless of the software freedom other licenses provide. These patents allow them, should they choose to excercise their legal rights, to extort royalty fees out of every other distribution, since every distribution includes non-GPL software such as XFree86, Apache, etc. To reiterate, no one needs a thermonuclear device for personal self-defense.
That's because the poor overworked KDE ports maintainers at FreeBSD haven't submitted one. You see, KDE does not create, maintain or support those binaries at their site. They only host them.
You'll also note a lack of binaries for any community developed distro or system. You won't find NetBSD, Gentoo, Debian, etc. You see, these teams don't get paid by corporations for producing broken packages for beta releases on impossible time schedules.
FreeBSD is focusing on the kde-3.1 release. Hurdles that must be overcome are producing stable packages for -current (gcc-3.2) and -stable (gcc-2.95), the occasional linuxisms that crop up, and the irrational expectation by users that packages must be flawless. Expect stable 3.1 packages to be available at the time of the official announcement or very shortly thereafter.
KDE does not make those binaries. The distros do, and contribute them back to KDE for posting. This is why a lot of distros and systems don't have binaries available at the time of the announcement.
FreeBSD has binaries of this beta available. But these are beta packages of a beta release. It does not make sense to widely disseminate packages that are known to be broken. These binaries are for testing purposes only, so that packages will be available for 3.1 in a timely manner.
A good example is tar. GNU tar has many more command line switches and options than the standard (not just BSD) tar has. It means that scripts written assuming a GNU tar won't always work on machines with a standard tar.
Another example, of which I actually have both versions is make. GNU has added a whole stack of new functionality and stuff to its version of make. There's nothing wrong with it, but it ain't standard. The reason I have two versions of make installed is that there's a heck of a lot of software that implicitly assumes GNU make is standard. A significant fraction of the ports specify GNU make as a dependency precisely because of this.
The biggest surprise a Linuxite in BSDland will encounter is that a lot of what they thought was standard UNIX was really GNU. Some of these "linuxisms" are really basic, like shell scripts with the heading #!/bin/sh that only work with bash, to the more obscure, like why ldconfig doesn't behave the way you think it should.
That's not all GNU software. It's the optional but recommended GPLed software. I don't run NetBSD, but if it's anything like FreeBSD, it will include such non-GNU software as uucp, man, patch, and perl.
It's whatever floats your boat. GNU has historically extended the classic UNIX utilities to the nth degree, while BSD has been content to replicate the classic UNIX utilities (in a lot of cases, the BSD utilities ARE the classic UNIX utilities). It's the difference between "give them enough rope to hang themselves" and "K.I.S.S".
Neither way is wrong, so neither way is evidence of superiority.
Let's see... Pink Tie Linux (since they can't use the name Redhat) is $5.99 for three high quality media CDs. That's $2 a CD. That may not be Cheapbytes cost for a CD, but it is yours, if you choose to buy just one single blank CD.
It appears that Cheapbytes is selling Redhat retail at the retail price for single blank CDs.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm finding analogous parallels to my own work in this ever increasing torrent of copy protection schemes.
I am working on secure software registration. My coworkers have come up with as many ways to secure the software as the music industry has in proposing new laws to punish the innocent. But my common sense is at least two points higher than the RIAA: I fully realize that once the software leaves our hands, it is out of our control.
Security is the inverse of convenience, so that a perfectly secure system is also perfectly inconvenient. We've come up with some virtualy unbreakable schemes, but the impose severe inconveniences on the user. So we're not going to use them. If we lock down our system too tight our honest customers will be driven to our competitors, while our extremely few dishonest customers will break the system anyway. Sometimes trusting your customers is the best policy!
For starters, Redhat could submit their code modifications to KDE. Some mods obviously don't make sense to submit (distro-specific stuff), but actual bug fixes, improvements stuff like that should go back to the original developers. It's not required to do so under the GPL, but it sure is good Open Source citizenship to do so.
Just about EVERYTHING is illegal under HIPAA.
How could you determine that? My company has a whole team of lawyers trying to figure out HIPAA, to no effect. It's the most incomprehensible law I've seen next to the US Tax Code.
The problem is that GNOME==Redhat in a significant number of circumstances. So when Redhat hacks on GNOME, the hacks automatically make it to GNOME. But when Redhat hacks on KDE, the hacks never make it to KDE, Redhat users log bugs to KDE, and KDE developer gets confused.
Log out, or reboot and the menus revert back to the previous state.
Never had that problem on any of my systems. Sounds like a Mandrake bug. Distros have bugs too...
Kappfinder comes with KDE by default (kdebase). If it's not on a Redhat system, I can only assume they've replaced it with something else they deem superior. Check your Redhat documentation. If no appropriate application is available, then start logging bugs...
Now we're moving to Mozilla-based browsers.
Oh you lucky dog!
My email stopped working this morning and I couldn't call IT to fix it because I was using Mozilla which is not supported. Took me about an hour, but I had to fix it myself (they changed the proxy server and it interfered with Moz's connecting to IMAP). Then I had to check in some docs into a web-based document management system. Kept having horrible problems, asked the librarian what was wrong, and he said that only Internet Exploder was supported.
I'm a Unix developer. I'll be damned if I have to boot into Windows just to read messages from fellow Unix developers, or to check in design docs for Unix software.
Considering Redhat is the home of GNOME, the number one financial contributor, and the only distro that has it as its default desktop, you would think that they would begin fixing the problem by focusing on GNOME rather than on KDE.
Who moderated this post up? It's pure FUD. The poster is accepting Mr. Powell's hyperbole as fact without stopping to consider any of the numerous rebuttals to his articles.
There are no bad business practices, because KDE League is not a business! It's a not-for-profit that didn't get some paperwork done in time. Sheesh!
it uses its own audio output
How is that any different than GNOME? Complaining that KDE uses its own audio daemon instead of esound is like complaining it uses it's own toolkit instead of GTK+.
Gnome and other applications that were formerly listed in its menus seem to have disappeared
KDE has always included kappfinder, which searched the system for applications to add to the menu. If you not seeing them there now, then perhaps your distro is no longer running kappfinder during install. So go run it manually.
KDE's drag-and-drop does not interoperate fully with non-KDE apps
To reiterate, how is this different from GNOME? DnD support is much improved, but there will still be the odd application out there that doesn't support the freedesktop.org standard. This isn't the fault of freedesktop.org or KDE, but the fault of that odd application.
KDE flaunts many X11 conventions
To reiterate, how is this any different from GNOME? KDE has at least tried to get it's wm hints standardized, but GNOME hints are still the scourge of wm authors everywhere.
Under Debian, installing KDE automatically made kdm the default on my machine.
Go complain to Debian. It's not KDE's fault that Debian is making kdm the default. I mean, sheesh, get real here!
it's high time the KDE - Gnome squabble stopped and both teams started concentrating on a unified desktop.
If you mean get rid of one or the other, or even merge the two, it ain't going to happen. No way, no how.
If you mean have them be interoperable, then it is already the case. You can run Evolution in the KDE desktop, and KDevelop on the GNOME desktop. Mix and match to your hearts content.
And if you mean you want identical looks, feels, keystrokes and menu orderings, then don't limit it to KDE and GNOME. Xfce, Blackbox, Windowmaker, GNU Emacs, Vim, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Xmms, ad infinitum, need to get on board as well.
I had to spend a bit of time in Windows this morning. You know, Joe and Jane User's operating system. Surprise! There is no consistent look and feel there either! Realplayer doesn't look like Quicktime which doesn't look like Netscape which doesn't look like Outlook which doesn't look like OpenOffice which doesn't look like MSWord which doesn't look like Winamp. Give me a break! If Joe and Jane user can use the inconsistent Windows platform without going nuts, then they can certainly deal with Evolution running under KDE.
Free Software's outdated business model
So you're saying only those with business models have any business [sic] implementing standards? Only commercial entities should write w3c conformant software? Hogwash!
Not everything needs a business model. I certainly don't need a business model to each lunch, phone my friends, or write a personal webpage. Putting patents on the standards used for webpages is as asinine as putting patents on eating lunch or phoning friends.
Close, but yet so so far away from the truth.
The BSD license lets secondary authors remove some freedoms from *their* copy of the software. In other words, they can fork off a closed version. But no one is required to use the proprietary fork. The original is still there, untouched.
I was thinking about standardized office formats in XML the other day. It dawned on me that they would be very Bad Things(tm). Very Bad Things(tm) indeed.
There should be interoperable filters, but there should not be an standard file format. That's because different programs work in different ways. A format assuming a page-oriented word processor isn't going to fit well in a frame-oriented word processor. Arguing that KOffice should dump its file formats in favor of Openoffice's are about as moronic as arguing that electric automobiles should dump their batteries in favor of standardized gasoline.
Here's a question. I'm a fairly competent Qt programmer, but I've never used WxWindows. What are the advantages and disadvantages of WxWindows over Qt? I'm not interested so much in cross-platform issues as I am being able to write good code that is easy to maintain.
If Redhat wishes to engage in a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction with respect to patents, then I will be opposed to them.
Redhat has stated that it will allow GPL software only to use its patented "technology". This shows a complete misunderstanding of what patents are. Patents cover the use of the technology. It's not about Redhat versus Evil Corporation, it's about Redhat versus users. It's using patents where it should be using copyright. The concept of copyleft is not meant for patents.
An example: I use FreeBSD. Should FreeBSD mess up and incorporate GPL code into BSD code, then Redhat will call them on the table. The problem will get fixed. It will not affect my use of FreeBSD. On the other hand, if Redhat has a patent on that same code/technology, then it will become illegal for me to use FreeBSD. In addition, there would be no way for FreeBSD to recitify the problem, because they couldn't even write their own implementation of the technology. Redhat could shut FreeBSD down completely with their thermonuclear device.
Even if they are honest about making their patents free to GPL code (and when was the last time you heard of an honest corporation), you have to remember that every Linux distro ships some non-GPL code that would give Redhat the "moral authority" to demand royalty payments.
What has Red Hat done to cause you not to trust them?
1) They're applying for patents. Buying a handgun (copyright) for personal self-defense is reasonable. Buying a thermonuclear device (patent) for personal self-defense is not.
2) They have already stated that only GPL software will have a free ride, regardless of the software freedom other licenses provide. These patents allow them, should they choose to excercise their legal rights, to extort royalty fees out of every other distribution, since every distribution includes non-GPL software such as XFree86, Apache, etc. To reiterate, no one needs a thermonuclear device for personal self-defense.
My computer hasn't locked up in four years. That's because I stopped using Windows...
That's because the poor overworked KDE ports maintainers at FreeBSD haven't submitted one. You see, KDE does not create, maintain or support those binaries at their site. They only host them.
You'll also note a lack of binaries for any community developed distro or system. You won't find NetBSD, Gentoo, Debian, etc. You see, these teams don't get paid by corporations for producing broken packages for beta releases on impossible time schedules.
FreeBSD is focusing on the kde-3.1 release. Hurdles that must be overcome are producing stable packages for -current (gcc-3.2) and -stable (gcc-2.95), the occasional linuxisms that crop up, and the irrational expectation by users that packages must be flawless. Expect stable 3.1 packages to be available at the time of the official announcement or very shortly thereafter.
KDE does not make those binaries. The distros do, and contribute them back to KDE for posting. This is why a lot of distros and systems don't have binaries available at the time of the announcement.
FreeBSD has binaries of this beta available. But these are beta packages of a beta release. It does not make sense to widely disseminate packages that are known to be broken. These binaries are for testing purposes only, so that packages will be available for 3.1 in a timely manner.
Whoohoo! I can have a beowulf cluster of these things in a month!
A good example is tar. GNU tar has many more command line switches and options than the standard (not just BSD) tar has. It means that scripts written assuming a GNU tar won't always work on machines with a standard tar.
Another example, of which I actually have both versions is make. GNU has added a whole stack of new functionality and stuff to its version of make. There's nothing wrong with it, but it ain't standard. The reason I have two versions of make installed is that there's a heck of a lot of software that implicitly assumes GNU make is standard. A significant fraction of the ports specify GNU make as a dependency precisely because of this.
The biggest surprise a Linuxite in BSDland will encounter is that a lot of what they thought was standard UNIX was really GNU. Some of these "linuxisms" are really basic, like shell scripts with the heading #!/bin/sh that only work with bash, to the more obscure, like why ldconfig doesn't behave the way you think it should.
gnusrc.tgz 55949 KB 09/11/02 18:51:00
That's not all GNU software. It's the optional but recommended GPLed software. I don't run NetBSD, but if it's anything like FreeBSD, it will include such non-GNU software as uucp, man, patch, and perl.
a userland with less features
It's whatever floats your boat. GNU has historically extended the classic UNIX utilities to the nth degree, while BSD has been content to replicate the classic UNIX utilities (in a lot of cases, the BSD utilities ARE the classic UNIX utilities). It's the difference between "give them enough rope to hang themselves" and "K.I.S.S".
Neither way is wrong, so neither way is evidence of superiority.
Let's see... Pink Tie Linux (since they can't use the name Redhat) is $5.99 for three high quality media CDs. That's $2 a CD. That may not be Cheapbytes cost for a CD, but it is yours, if you choose to buy just one single blank CD.
It appears that Cheapbytes is selling Redhat retail at the retail price for single blank CDs.