I fail to see why it is a victory for BSD that Apple could take its code private and not contribute anything to project, surely thats an indication of BSD license problems!
But that's not what happens. In actual fact, the Unix parts of OS X are free software (the Darwin system).
It's pretty simple. Companies who modify BSD have, as a rule, very little to gain from keeping their code prorprietary, and much to gain from releasing it. Unix is commodity software nowadays, period-- nobody gains a proprietary advantage from "stealing" it.
I did not read your article, since slashdot reported on it, and of course the contributors and editors never read articles incorrectly, and never attribute strawman claims and/or arguments to pieces they are opposed to. This is because they, I mean, we, are geeks, and we are the smartest people, and never tell lies (read the first few chapters of ESR's Jargon File, it explains how cool we geeks are).
Anyway, I am writing to tell you how stupid you are. I know this because Slashdot says that you said that Linux should switch to the BSD license because it would help it avoid patent issues. I know that your article claims that, because Slashdot said it did, and Bruce Perens also responded knowing that it did, and of course Slashdot and Bruce Perens must be right.
I cannot imagine how a human being can claim something so stupid and obviously wrong. Logic, if applied strictly, should then warn me to suspect that Slashdot has misreported what you said. But, hey, it's Slashdot vs. a dumb suit, so of course Slashdot must be right.
I will tell all my friends in Slashdot to write you emails just like this one.
I was just saying the GPL rather a good method for attracting contributions, not that it was the only way.
No, you weren't saying just that. I quote from your grandparent post (with my emphasis):
The point they miss (because they are looking back) is
many corportate donors of software source in linux would never have done it if it was not GPL.
How do you claim to know this? Do you have a skill at making 100% accurate retrospective counterfactual predictions?
Here's an alternative, which I don't claim to believe any more than I believe yours: if it had been BSD rather than Linux that became "the big thing", pretty much the same would have happened.
Please point out where the article claims that switching to the BSD license will help on the patent front.
Hint: you won't find it, because it's not there. The solution the author proposes for the patent issue is for the big linux players to set up a fund, not a license switch.
(As to why the "you too", well, you're like the 4th person I tell this.)
The article doesn't actually claim that switching licenses will improve the patent situation. Please stop perpetuating this stupid, self-serving misreading.
The article doesn't claim anywhere that switching to a BSD license would help with the patent risks. What it claims is that open source software is facing obstacles towards business adoption, two among which are: (a) the patent problems; (b) the anti-corporate culture behind the GPL.
This whole slashdot article is based on two things: (a) some zealot who wilfullly misread the article, giving it the most uncharitable and illogical interpretation, to shout it down; (b) a lynch mob of linux zealots that will latch on to any such misreading to puff up their chests and act self-righteous about how superior they are to the suits and their culture.
The reporter doesn't actually claim anywhere that switching to BSD licenses helps with the patents issue. They're two completely separate points, and neither is offered as evidence for the other.
It's a pretty badly written article, which, they way I read it, merely juxtaposes two things: (a) the patent issues with free software in general, (b) the anti-corporate culture behind the GPL. The BSD license is offered as an alternative in the second regard, not the first.
The problem with the article, again, is that it's badly written, and in such a way that if you assume it is a single, unified argument from start to end, you end up concluding that the guy claimed something he didn't.
Smalltalk implementations are just not as well integrated with the Unix environment as Ruby is. They require this huge, language-specific, monolithic environment around them, practically an OS into itself. The only such language that's really been successful is Java.
Indeed, this can be difficult even for scientists who read the physics literature.
No, not really. Outside of cosmology, which is wank, it's pretty clear what's truth and fiction in physics.
Physicists are carrying out serious experiments on quantum teleportation, and methods of transmitting information (random information, but still information) faster than light.
"Random information" is just this short from being an oxymoron. A pretty good definition of "random" is "carries no information". (Not the only reasonable definition, though.)
At any rate, you're exaggerating.
Now there are multiple lines of serious investigation, any one of which that could lead to massive transformation not merely of human culture (such as happened so recently with the internet, and was predicted by hardly anybody),
You're making a mistake that I mention elsewhere in this thread: you're mistaking factual and value judgements. You can repeat as much as you like how the internet supposedly has "massively revolutionized" culture (as opposed to merely incrementally changed it); that says very little about what the internet has in fact done, and very much about what you value.
Please don't try to pass your value judgements as fact.
On the other hand, neurobiology has been booming along, and there seems little doubt that it will eventually be possible to simulate brain function.
Translation: "I don't doubt that soon we'll be able to simulate brain function." I won't bother to go into the simulacra issue, though (Searle's 1990's work lays this notion of "simulation" to waste, IMHO).
We are really heading into a future where we will be able to use nanotechnology, new physics, biotech, chem, discoveries to accelerate a big change in the current world situation.
You are dodging my point: "progress" is a qualitative thing, not a quantitative one. Talk about progress "accelerating" can only be done by means of numerical metrics, and the choice of metric is arbitrary.
There's an even bigger point to be made: "progress" is an evaluative word. Whether something constitutes "progress", "stagnation" or "regress" is a matter of human judgement. Essentially all of transhumanist "philosophy" is laden with this fallacy.
By what standard? You talk about this as if it were a matter of fact, not opinion.
At any rate, the biggest problem with (classic) AI (and of symbolic cognitive science in general) is that its model of rationality (symbolic processing) is pretty bad.
Only a small number of third world countries are significant in the tech outsourcing business; and the benefits are reaped by only a small amount of their populations.
Almost everybody now has access to music, photo, typesetting, and video editing facilities that were available only to professionals 30 years ago.
It is typical of spoiled first-worlders to talk as if no other people exist, other than spoiled first-worlders, and to think that incremental improvements on their quality of life are great cultural revolutiona.
In this paper, Heinz shows that the best formula that describes population growth over known human history is one that predicts the population will go to infinity on a Friday the 13 in November of 2026.
...that there is such a thing as the true answer for all those question? That's the biggest mistake you're making. "Can a computer think?" What makes you think the reasons for answering "yes" or "no" to that question are going to be any better than for the questions "Can an airplane fly", and "Can a submarine swim?"
Note that's a neat example right there. We don't really ever say that what submarines do is "swimming", while we do say that airplanes "fly". It's hard to justify the difference rationally, but more imporantly, there is no need to do so. I would say that the reason we call what an airplane does "flying", but not apply similar standards to submarines, is that we're more impressed with the feat of building a machine that does what the airplane does.
The "singularity" is one of the favorite wet dreams of the "transhumanists", a group of spoiled adults who seemingly find it difficult to tell reality and science fiction apart. The "theory" is that human progress is going so "fast" (nevermind that progress is qualitative, and any supposed measurement is an arbitrary procedure), that before we know it we're going to reach the "singularity"-- the point where it accelerates beyond our capability to understand it. Typically thanks to our having built machines much more intelligent than us (these people naïvely believe in all the AI and IQ testing stuff), which wil in turn design machines more intelligent than them in a fraction of the time, and so on.
You can tell that I don't think very much of these people. Well, I really regard them as a segment of academia that's every bit as woolly-headed as the worst of the "postmodernist" crowd (but warning: I think the best of those people kick ass), but but which gets a free ride in comparison when it comes to institutional criticism. A number of them manage to get plenty of real money for their sillyness, they organize conferences at big name universities (Stanford had an "Accelerating Change" conference last year IIRC, I'm sure you'll understand the name).
module Enumerable def each_even each_with_index do |elt, i| yield elt if i % 2 == 0 end end end
# Hell, that was too easy. Let's have this instead: module Enumerable def each_modulo(n, polarity=true) each_with_index do |elt, i| yield elt if i % n == polarity end end
def each_even each_modulo(2) { |elt| yield elt } end def each_odd each_modulo(2, false) { |elt| yield elt } end # and so on... end
# now we can print all line of a file except for every seventh one: File.open("filename") do |file| file.each_modulo(7, false) do |line| print line end end </ecode>
Basically, you're looping through the entire array/list/what have you. I believe you can even for it with a string, going through each character.
All sorts of things implement an each method in Ruby, not just arrays and strings: IO objects (files, pipes, network sockets), for iterating over lines of input, and XML libraries (over elements).
Also, there's many iteration methods defined generically on terms of each(), like each_with_index(), find(), find_all(), collect(), reject(), inject(), etc.
You can also write your own iterators very easily: the other day I needed to convert a list of objects into a list of strings with their position in the list substituted into the string, so I wrote a map_with_index iterator, like this:
module Enumerable def map_with_index result = [] each_with_index { |elt, i| result << yield elt, i } return result end end
Another generic iterator I once wrote is each_with_successor(), which iterates over pairs of an element and its successor in the collection (or file, or string, or XML element children, or whatever).
It never ceases to amaze me that people go all gooey over Ruby, when exactly the same features are available in languages like OCaml - which also provides a native compiler that rivals C++ for speed, and the safety of static typechecking.
I know Ruby very well, ML fairly well, and like them both, but Ruby is just usually easier to program in, at least in the short run. This is because of a combination of dynamicity, really good OOP, libraries that are easy to use and extend, and integration with the OS. (The last point would be the one to emphasize if you changed your question to "Why do so many people program in Ruby instead of Smalltalk"...)
It's also a big factor that Ruby takes a lot of pretty advanced language features like coroutines and closures, and packages them up in a syntax that looks like imperative control structures.
The grandparent poster's statements imply that one shouldn't have to understand the language of the problem domain one is programming. I think this is just fundamentally wrong: programming close to the language of the problem domain is immensely important, because (a) that language is a tool closely tailored for thinking about that problem domain, and, usually equivalently, (b) it's the language in which the experts on the domain talk and think about it, which makes it easier to translate their knowledge into code, and for them to understand your code (or even write their own code).
You, on the other hand, are making a different mistake: you're advocating that one treat the terms and syntax of a language as meaningless symbolic stuff. Strictly speaking, this implies that all symbolisms are equally good. In practice this isn't so-- "+" has a meaning in real world use that goes well beyond "invoke a function".
Freedom is relative, and there are many things you can do in Brazil that if done in America will get you arrested and thrown in jail.
For example, racial discourse in Brazil is in some ways more open than in the USA (and less so in others). For example: Caetano Veloso, one of the leading singers in Brazil, recorded in one of his albums in the 90's somebody's poem about a slave ship flying a Brazilian flag, which had some lines in the end that went something like "it would have been better if my country's flag had been destroyed in battle, than it be flown by slave ships like this one."
Now try to imagine the outrage that would ensue in the USA if a popular singer tried to record anything of the sort.
Slashdot Mirror
But that's not what happens. In actual fact, the Unix parts of OS X are free software (the Darwin system).
It's pretty simple. Companies who modify BSD have, as a rule, very little to gain from keeping their code prorprietary, and much to gain from releasing it. Unix is commodity software nowadays, period-- nobody gains a proprietary advantage from "stealing" it.
Which is exactly why there are like 50something different forked BSD systems, each of them unpredictably different from the next. Oh, wait, no.
No, you weren't saying just that. I quote from your grandparent post (with my emphasis):
How do you claim to know this? Do you have a skill at making 100% accurate retrospective counterfactual predictions?Here's an alternative, which I don't claim to believe any more than I believe yours: if it had been BSD rather than Linux that became "the big thing", pretty much the same would have happened.
Please point out where the article claims that switching to the BSD license will help on the patent front. Hint: you won't find it, because it's not there. The solution the author proposes for the patent issue is for the big linux players to set up a fund, not a license switch.
(As to why the "you too", well, you're like the 4th person I tell this.) The article doesn't actually claim that switching licenses will improve the patent situation. Please stop perpetuating this stupid, self-serving misreading.
The article doesn't claim anywhere that switching to a BSD license would help with the patent risks. What it claims is that open source software is facing obstacles towards business adoption, two among which are: (a) the patent problems; (b) the anti-corporate culture behind the GPL. This whole slashdot article is based on two things: (a) some zealot who wilfullly misread the article, giving it the most uncharitable and illogical interpretation, to shout it down; (b) a lynch mob of linux zealots that will latch on to any such misreading to puff up their chests and act self-righteous about how superior they are to the suits and their culture.
The reporter doesn't actually claim anywhere that switching to BSD licenses helps with the patents issue. They're two completely separate points, and neither is offered as evidence for the other.
No business has ever donated code to a BSD project. Oh no. Never happened.
It's a pretty badly written article, which, they way I read it, merely juxtaposes two things: (a) the patent issues with free software in general, (b) the anti-corporate culture behind the GPL. The BSD license is offered as an alternative in the second regard, not the first.
The problem with the article, again, is that it's badly written, and in such a way that if you assume it is a single, unified argument from start to end, you end up concluding that the guy claimed something he didn't.
Smalltalk implementations are just not as well integrated with the Unix environment as Ruby is. They require this huge, language-specific, monolithic environment around them, practically an OS into itself. The only such language that's really been successful is Java.
...this is realistic exactly how?
No, not really. Outside of cosmology, which is wank, it's pretty clear what's truth and fiction in physics.
Physicists are carrying out serious experiments on quantum teleportation, and methods of transmitting information (random information, but still information) faster than light.
"Random information" is just this short from being an oxymoron. A pretty good definition of "random" is "carries no information". (Not the only reasonable definition, though.)
At any rate, you're exaggerating.
Now there are multiple lines of serious investigation, any one of which that could lead to massive transformation not merely of human culture (such as happened so recently with the internet, and was predicted by hardly anybody),
You're making a mistake that I mention elsewhere in this thread: you're mistaking factual and value judgements. You can repeat as much as you like how the internet supposedly has "massively revolutionized" culture (as opposed to merely incrementally changed it); that says very little about what the internet has in fact done, and very much about what you value.
Please don't try to pass your value judgements as fact.
On the other hand, neurobiology has been booming along, and there seems little doubt that it will eventually be possible to simulate brain function.
Translation: "I don't doubt that soon we'll be able to simulate brain function." I won't bother to go into the simulacra issue, though (Searle's 1990's work lays this notion of "simulation" to waste, IMHO).
You are dodging my point: "progress" is a qualitative thing, not a quantitative one. Talk about progress "accelerating" can only be done by means of numerical metrics, and the choice of metric is arbitrary.
There's an even bigger point to be made: "progress" is an evaluative word. Whether something constitutes "progress", "stagnation" or "regress" is a matter of human judgement. Essentially all of transhumanist "philosophy" is laden with this fallacy.
By what standard? You talk about this as if it were a matter of fact, not opinion.
At any rate, the biggest problem with (classic) AI (and of symbolic cognitive science in general) is that its model of rationality (symbolic processing) is pretty bad.
Only a small number of third world countries are significant in the tech outsourcing business; and the benefits are reaped by only a small amount of their populations.
It is typical of spoiled first-worlders to talk as if no other people exist, other than spoiled first-worlders, and to think that incremental improvements on their quality of life are great cultural revolutiona.
I can't wait.
Note that's a neat example right there. We don't really ever say that what submarines do is "swimming", while we do say that airplanes "fly". It's hard to justify the difference rationally, but more imporantly, there is no need to do so. I would say that the reason we call what an airplane does "flying", but not apply similar standards to submarines, is that we're more impressed with the feat of building a machine that does what the airplane does.
The "singularity" is one of the favorite wet dreams of the "transhumanists", a group of spoiled adults who seemingly find it difficult to tell reality and science fiction apart. The "theory" is that human progress is going so "fast" (nevermind that progress is qualitative, and any supposed measurement is an arbitrary procedure), that before we know it we're going to reach the "singularity"-- the point where it accelerates beyond our capability to understand it. Typically thanks to our having built machines much more intelligent than us (these people naïvely believe in all the AI and IQ testing stuff), which wil in turn design machines more intelligent than them in a fraction of the time, and so on.
You can tell that I don't think very much of these people. Well, I really regard them as a segment of academia that's every bit as woolly-headed as the worst of the "postmodernist" crowd (but warning: I think the best of those people kick ass), but but which gets a free ride in comparison when it comes to institutional criticism. A number of them manage to get plenty of real money for their sillyness, they organize conferences at big name universities (Stanford had an "Accelerating Change" conference last year IIRC, I'm sure you'll understand the name).
module Enumerable
def each_even
each_with_index do |elt, i|
yield elt if i % 2 == 0
end
end
end
# Hell, that was too easy. Let's have this instead:
module Enumerable
def each_modulo(n, polarity=true)
each_with_index do |elt, i|
yield elt if i % n == polarity
end
end
def each_even
each_modulo(2) { |elt| yield elt }
end
def each_odd
each_modulo(2, false) { |elt| yield elt }
end
# and so on...
end
# now we can print all line of a file except for every seventh one:
File.open("filename") do |file|
file.each_modulo(7, false) do |line|
print line
end
end
</ecode>
Also, there's many iteration methods defined generically on terms of each(), like each_with_index(), find(), find_all(), collect(), reject(), inject(), etc.
You can also write your own iterators very easily: the other day I needed to convert a list of objects into a list of strings with their position in the list substituted into the string, so I wrote a map_with_index iterator, like this:
Another generic iterator I once wrote is each_with_successor(), which iterates over pairs of an element and its successor in the collection (or file, or string, or XML element children, or whatever).I know Ruby very well, ML fairly well, and like them both, but Ruby is just usually easier to program in, at least in the short run. This is because of a combination of dynamicity, really good OOP, libraries that are easy to use and extend, and integration with the OS. (The last point would be the one to emphasize if you changed your question to "Why do so many people program in Ruby instead of Smalltalk"...)
It's also a big factor that Ruby takes a lot of pretty advanced language features like coroutines and closures, and packages them up in a syntax that looks like imperative control structures.
You, on the other hand, are making a different mistake: you're advocating that one treat the terms and syntax of a language as meaningless symbolic stuff. Strictly speaking, this implies that all symbolisms are equally good. In practice this isn't so-- "+" has a meaning in real world use that goes well beyond "invoke a function".
Now try to imagine the outrage that would ensue in the USA if a popular singer tried to record anything of the sort.