it is however against the license for someone like redhat/madrake/debian to provide binaries of various java implementations alongside SUN's in a distribution
Linux for Dummies?:-)
yes, but that assumes you already run your own build of java, which will not be supported, even minimally, by anyone but yourself.
Yes, of course -- how else can you find and fix a bug in the source code? As is the case with all changes to all products -- open source or not.
and it requires all your changes are released under the SUN license.
As is the case with the GNU licensing. BSD's is, of course, the most open, but you prefer GNU for some reason. Well, anyway, now this is dangerous territory...
if it were released as free software... then someone may be willing to at least "unofficially" support it.
Such decisions -- to support or not -- are based on political (not necesserily invalid), rather than technical reasons. For crying out loud -- mplayer (and the Linux-distros, that include it) supports a host of binary only Windows (!) DLLs -- because, presumably, of the author's dedication to building a versatile player, capable of playing all known encodings. Compared to this, supporting a piece of software, for which the source code is readily available is a cake-walk!
What it boils down to -- the source is freely (as in beer) available. For anyone, who wishes to tinker with it, investigate a suspected problem, understand a concept.
No one can distribute the modified sources, which is irrelevant, since the originals are always available from the Sun itself, and the modifications can be distributed separately.
To distribute binaries one needs to pay Sun (usually) and undergo extensive compatibility tests (which I can only welcome). If there is, indeed, a limitation to distributing other implementations -- FreeBSD shows, how to overcome with its usual understated grace.
IANAL, and neither are you, presumably. I'd wait for Sun to express their opinion on the subject. Since they recently (after years of the jdk-ports' existance) officially certified the "Diablo" binary distribution (JDK13 and JRE13 for FreeBSD), I doubt, they consider FreeBSD to be in violation of their license.
what do you do now if you find a bug in your sdk? nothing...
You are welcome to fix it and rebuild. You are also welcome to post the fix (but not the rebuilt binary) anywhere you want. Anyone is welcome to automate such rebuilds by fetching the fixes you post.
The FreeBSD ports are such automations. The latest bsd-jdk131-patches-9.tar.gz, applied to j2sdk-1_3_1-src.tar.gz from Sun is 642883 bytes. Fetchable from Greg's Java pages.
And GNU is quite prone to introducing its own "embrace-and-extensions", viz. gcc, gawk, etc.
we can hardly blame them though...
This is not about the blame. Sun simply does not want Java to fork into multiple javas, as happened to C, C++ (#ifdef _BORLAND...#elif __GNUC__) and other languagues. I tend to agree...
What's important is being free to actually *use* the source code.
Yes you can! You just can't distribute the results, without undergoing compatibility testing and paying Sun money. What is it with people -- if it is not free (as in beer) it can't be used? Do you all live in collective farms or kibutzes, or something?
further than all that... even the binary license is strict; if you distribute the SUN java in your OS distro... then you are not allowed to distribute ANY other replacement
Not sure, what you mean... FreeBSD now offers installable binary packages for both JRE and JDK.
But Kaffe is also offered, as is gcj (as part of any gcc port from the lang group).
What Sun understandably wishes to avoid is the situation, when the Java code has to start checking, which JVM is in use to work around bugs or to offer different features. This was the whole point of their suit against Microsoft. And GNU is quite prone to introducing its own "embrace-and-extensions", viz. gcc, gawk, etc.
making it "free" (as in freedom) and GPL compatible would be a tremendous step
It would be -- from the political point of view. Technically -- I don't care.
FreeBSD ports of JDK 1.3 and 1.4 both build from source. Yes, you have to download the source manually from Sun, but it is available, and has been for years...
Is it really that important to be able to distribute the built binaries for people? Without paying Sun for it, that is?
what we have are communications that nobody knows how to break yet. Quantum cryptography is a different ballgame. It can't be broken without changing the laws of physics.
Aren't at least some of the widely used security algorithms proven to be likewise unbreakable without changing the laws of, mmmm, mathematics?
a loose gas cap one time, or even several times, that doesn't mean that the next time means the same thing. It might mean something serious. There is no way for Ms. Seymour to tell.
How about tightening the gas cap a little just in case -- before driving to the dealer?
As described, Ms. Seymour does appear idiotic (with or without the regretable profanities), but it is more likely to be the fault of the journalist's oversimplification...
I'm pretty convinced that the Feds have been told it's a non-priority, partly due to Ashcroft's terrorism paranoia, and partly because big business wants to keep spam as an option.
Or, may be, it is just because spammers never hired hitmen to kill anyone? That they are not believed to have ever tried to bribe a judge, or kidnap a prosecutor's child?
Using RICO laws against them may be just as inappropriate as some of the publicized (mis)applications of the PATRIOT act...
Am I the only one who's getting tired of trying to play matchup with GLIBC versions?
Switch to FreeBSD and petition WINE to follow. If FreeBSD becomes their primary platform, vendors of the various distros will become responsible for porting WINE.
As it stands, FreeBSD wine-port
end up having to untangle various hacks put in for Linux' sake.
Ok, I asked freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.org to comment on the DJB's opinion. The summarizing response (from Julian Elischer) is:
Assuming the app[lication] does an fsync()
and the disks are telling the truth about the data being on the drive,
then softupdates is no worse than FFS.
The assumptions have to be checked though.
As for the journaling file systems:
Same is true for any journalling file systems,
which essentially does the same thing: delayed write of data/metadata.
but b/c it's too good a source of revenue for them.
And who are they, oh US-basher? They are your fellow citizen, who just happened to think, that 10-15 mph above the limit is Ok, but 20 is not -- especially if your car is red, or if your music is loud.
The automatic fine-issuer will be blind to seductive breasts, respectable grey hair, and the "Troopers are your best protection" bumper stickers; it will be as deaf to the "obnoxious" music, as to the apologetic: "I'm sorry officer".
Once everyone starts getting these fines, local lawmakers (for their own greedy reasons, of course) will cease the opportunity to improve their electability by either outlawing them (putting us back where we are now) or by raising the speed limits. I am hoping for the latter outcome.
And yes, Law is about justice. Law enforcement may be about revenue, but electability comes first in the minds of the politicians.
However, comparing social situations with those of the Nazis really should not incur the invoking of Godwin's Law.
This is not what the FP in this thread did. He/she called his/her Republican/neo-con opponents "Nazis", and thus lost whatever argument she/he may have had with them.
Everything will have some overlap with Nazis. Including state education, strong military, certain tastes in art, German language.
Sorry, but I refuse to allow myself to be dragged into this any further. Whoever brings up Nazis loses. That's Godwin's law. You are welcome to petition for its abolition:-)
[...] In discussions about issues as diverse as AIDS, Kosovo, abortion, state intervention, animal rights, the global economy and gay rights, one side has accused the other of being akin to 'Nazis' or 'Holocaust deniers'. What should be a rational debate, a battle between the arguments for and against particular points of view, becomes posed as a defence of moral absolutes. [...]
This is not Bush nor Clinton. This the "public". So long as the public approves (and demands), the government of a democracy will follow. Check out the threads on Yahoo! after each article on Middle East.
On one side there are lunatics, who claim Bush and the neo-cons to be Nazis (thus immediately loozing by Godwin's Law). And on the other there are lunatics calling for "Nuking Middle East" and arguing for prohibiting Islamic worshipping here in US -- they are willing to drop the First Amendment (!) already, and there are many of these.
The law was taken on the passions of post-9/11 -- there was enough wisdom to make it automaticly expire. Hopefully, it will not be renewed. While it is in effect, FBI is right for pushing hard and ACLU is right for making noise. Enjoy...
Well, then, back to my original (5 Insightful) point:-) If the article did consider ext2 and ext3, why would not it consider FreeBSD's UFS and UFS with SoftUpdates? With and without the sync option SoftUpdates can shine -- for removing/creating directory trees, for example, the can avoid physical IO alltogher. The principle is not merely to aggregate the disk writes into larger chunks, but to also eliminate those writes, that are "obsoleted" by later changes. So, even in the strict-est "sync" mode, SoftUpdates can be fast.
They (with sync) may even be faster than XFS (with sync) -- especially on a 10k rpm SCSI disk...
Mmm, thanks for the links. May be -- but what about mount-ing with ``sync'' (no the ``noasync'').
But the article also examines ext2 and ext3 -- are those (with the safety/slowness turned on) also more reliable, than UFS2 with SoftUpdates, according to your sources?
My point was not about the nature of the problem, but of its (deserved) criticism. I'm sure, the Army would've preferred that the critics talked to them first. As Allen Zadr would've preferred for Nicholas to talk to GNOME first.
The similarities don't end there, however. As Red Cross and other organizations come out to say, they warned about the abuses much earlier on, but no one was punished (and the practices, presumably, continued) until the pictures went public. Likewise, according to Nicholas Petreley, GNOME developers have shown serious arrogance, and "going public" with his review may be the only recourse.
This brings me to the next point. How bad an executive power of any scale (from the President of a country, to the software developers) can be without the reigns imposed by some sort of "checks-and-balances" -- even if those are only from the "fourth branch" -- the press.
This sort of rant, if done constructively could certainly help the developers make better choices, but to put it directly to mass media as a review just sucks.
Sorry to look like a flamebait, but this is, probably, what some in the Army are thinking about the prisoner-abuse reports...
Slashdot Mirror
Linux for Dummies? :-)
Yes, of course -- how else can you find and fix a bug in the source code? As is the case with all changes to all products -- open source or not.
As is the case with the GNU licensing. BSD's is, of course, the most open, but you prefer GNU for some reason. Well, anyway, now this is dangerous territory...
Such decisions -- to support or not -- are based on political (not necesserily invalid), rather than technical reasons. For crying out loud -- mplayer (and the Linux-distros, that include it) supports a host of binary only Windows (!) DLLs -- because, presumably, of the author's dedication to building a versatile player, capable of playing all known encodings. Compared to this, supporting a piece of software, for which the source code is readily available is a cake-walk!
What it boils down to -- the source is freely (as in beer) available. For anyone, who wishes to tinker with it, investigate a suspected problem, understand a concept.
No one can distribute the modified sources, which is irrelevant, since the originals are always available from the Sun itself, and the modifications can be distributed separately.
To distribute binaries one needs to pay Sun (usually) and undergo extensive compatibility tests (which I can only welcome). If there is, indeed, a limitation to distributing other implementations -- FreeBSD shows, how to overcome with its usual understated grace.
As the /etc/motd says on freefall.FreeBSD.org:
IANAL, and neither are you, presumably. I'd wait for Sun to express their opinion on the subject. Since they recently (after years of the jdk-ports' existance) officially certified the "Diablo" binary distribution (JDK13 and JRE13 for FreeBSD), I doubt, they consider FreeBSD to be in violation of their license.
You are welcome to fix it and rebuild. You are also welcome to post the fix (but not the rebuilt binary) anywhere you want. Anyone is welcome to automate such rebuilds by fetching the fixes you post.
The FreeBSD ports are such automations. The latest bsd-jdk131-patches-9.tar.gz, applied to j2sdk-1_3_1-src.tar.gz from Sun is 642883 bytes. Fetchable from Greg's Java pages.
This is not about the blame. Sun simply does not want Java to fork into multiple javas, as happened to C, C++ (#ifdef _BORLAND...#elif __GNUC__) and other languagues. I tend to agree...
Whereas opensource projects are so-oo quick at it...
Yes you can! You just can't distribute the results, without undergoing compatibility testing and paying Sun money. What is it with people -- if it is not free (as in beer) it can't be used? Do you all live in collective farms or kibutzes, or something?
Not sure, what you mean... FreeBSD now offers installable binary packages for both JRE and JDK. But Kaffe is also offered, as is gcj (as part of any gcc port from the lang group).
What Sun understandably wishes to avoid is the situation, when the Java code has to start checking, which JVM is in use to work around bugs or to offer different features. This was the whole point of their suit against Microsoft. And GNU is quite prone to introducing its own "embrace-and-extensions", viz. gcc, gawk, etc.
It would be -- from the political point of view. Technically -- I don't care.
Is it really that important to be able to distribute the built binaries for people? Without paying Sun for it, that is?
Aren't at least some of the widely used security algorithms proven to be likewise unbreakable without changing the laws of, mmmm, mathematics?
All the better, if it will work on my FreeBSD laptop (no serial ports -- USB only).
Thanks!
Of course, there is a part of joke in every joke...
How about tightening the gas cap a little just in case -- before driving to the dealer?
As described, Ms. Seymour does appear idiotic (with or without the regretable profanities), but it is more likely to be the fault of the journalist's oversimplification...
How are the unions different from other monopolies and trusts?
Or, may be, it is just because spammers never hired hitmen to kill anyone? That they are not believed to have ever tried to bribe a judge, or kidnap a prosecutor's child?
Using RICO laws against them may be just as inappropriate as some of the publicized (mis)applications of the PATRIOT act...
Switch to FreeBSD and petition WINE to follow. If FreeBSD becomes their primary platform, vendors of the various distros will become responsible for porting WINE.
As it stands, FreeBSD wine-port end up having to untangle various hacks put in for Linux' sake.
As for the journaling file systems:
And who are they, oh US-basher? They are your fellow citizen, who just happened to think, that 10-15 mph above the limit is Ok, but 20 is not -- especially if your car is red, or if your music is loud.
The automatic fine-issuer will be blind to seductive breasts, respectable grey hair, and the "Troopers are your best protection" bumper stickers; it will be as deaf to the "obnoxious" music, as to the apologetic: "I'm sorry officer".
Once everyone starts getting these fines, local lawmakers (for their own greedy reasons, of course) will cease the opportunity to improve their electability by either outlawing them (putting us back where we are now) or by raising the speed limits. I am hoping for the latter outcome.
And yes, Law is about justice. Law enforcement may be about revenue, but electability comes first in the minds of the politicians.
I am all for it. Once everybody starts getting tickets for speeding, the limits will rise to sensible levels (or are abandoned entirely).
This is not what the FP in this thread did. He/she called his/her Republican/neo-con opponents "Nazis", and thus lost whatever argument she/he may have had with them.
Anyway, as stated, the law is quite explicit:
regardless of what the topic is -- "social situations" or penchant for Wagner...Sorry, but I refuse to allow myself to be dragged into this any further. Whoever brings up Nazis loses. That's Godwin's law. You are welcome to petition for its abolition :-)
Read the other link I offered. It has commentary:
(Sorry for the misspellings.)
The law was taken on the passions of post-9/11 -- there was enough wisdom to make it automaticly expire. Hopefully, it will not be renewed. While it is in effect, FBI is right for pushing hard and ACLU is right for making noise. Enjoy...
They (with sync) may even be faster than XFS (with sync) -- especially on a 10k rpm SCSI disk...
But the article also examines ext2 and ext3 -- are those (with the safety/slowness turned on) also more reliable, than UFS2 with SoftUpdates, according to your sources?
The similarities don't end there, however. As Red Cross and other organizations come out to say, they warned about the abuses much earlier on, but no one was punished (and the practices, presumably, continued) until the pictures went public. Likewise, according to Nicholas Petreley, GNOME developers have shown serious arrogance, and "going public" with his review may be the only recourse.
This brings me to the next point. How bad an executive power of any scale (from the President of a country, to the software developers) can be without the reigns imposed by some sort of "checks-and-balances" -- even if those are only from the "fourth branch" -- the press.
Sorry to look like a flamebait, but this is, probably, what some in the Army are thinking about the prisoner-abuse reports...