I don't necessarily disagree with you. As a european I am frequently amazed at the extreme shape things tend to take on the other side of the ocean. In my opinion the amount of money currently made with internet stocks is just a symptom of how sick the society over there is. I'm glad we sorted out this matter by pointing out that your opinion is based on idealism rather than facts.
You probably have a nice research project going on. I haven't checked it out but I trust you in that it is original and innovative.
Unfortunately it doesn't exactly disprove my statement. My statement was a very general one (GPL projects generally don't introduce new, revolutionary stuff). Of course you can always find an exception to such a general statement (which is what you did).
"I don't know who else is out there ready to hit the world with genuinely innovative stuff under the GPL. I'm doing it. Why? Because I have no confidence in the ability of the U.S. legal system to protect me or my ideas. I have no confidence in business to be able to help me implement them. All the promises about innovating and making millions off of great ideas are all crap- that doesn't happen anymore, those days are over."
So *slap* back: this statement clearly proves that you are an idealist (The pessimistic kind). You have lost your belief in selling good ideas for money (which is what you do in capitalist society as America). Basically you are denying that people are getting rich everyday by gambling on internet startup stocks.
GPL seems to attract paranoid idealists like yourself like flies. It doesn't prove a thing to me.
"Batch optimized native machine code" is simply the most important thing that happened to Java, ever.
???
What the fuck are you talking about. What is this batch optimized native machine code you keep talking about. Is it some form of Java to native code compilation (hardly revolutionary, we've been compiling languages to native code for nearly fifty years now)???
"The GPL is designed to keep innovations free"
What innovations? This is my main point: GPL is great for maintaining existing code, perhaps even for reimplementing existing code but not for creating something entirely new. The reason, in my opinion, is that if you are able to create something entirely new (i.e. innovate in a significant way) your creation is worth money. Only idealists give valuable stuff away for free (i.e. GPL it) the rest of us will try to sell it. GPL is only useful if the improvements are incremental rather than revolutionary.
"while you have been unable to mention a single non-Sun contribution to SCSL"
I haven't bothered mentioning any. This doesn't mean I'm not able to do so. As you may know SUN has been working together with industry parthners like IBM, Borland and even Microsoft. Surely MS hasn't contributed much but I don't think you can claim that nobody contributed anything.
"That most new ideas come from researchers, mostly at universities, and mostly government founded, can hardly be a suprise. That is what they are paid to create."
So you agree that innovation doesn't come from the open source community but from people whose job it is to do research (either from industry or from universities).
what do you mean with "batch optimized native machine code" what bullshit is this?????
And about proppietary innovation: name one propietary innovation that made it into the GPL version of the Java compiler. Right it doesn't exist (yet?). This is my main criticism agains GPL: it doesn't seem to produce new, original stuff. Java was new, original, innovative and yes propietary. So what. What did GPL add to Java?? Nothing. The best GPL java compiler you can find is a lousy SUN spec implementation. Its not about what the license allows it is about what people use what license. So far GPL only seems to attract the hippy kind of developer. Great for fixing bugs, lousy at creating new stuff. Linux, the hype of the late nineties, is nothing else but a implementation of a spec of the seventies (a very good implementation but nothing else). So far the open source process has proved nothing else but being good at reimplementing stuff that already exists. I know this doesn't sound nice to all us slashdotters but it is the truth. Think of all the hype words of the last ten, fiftheen years (databases, 4GL, internet, XML, JAVA, Unix, PC......) all of these come from either companies like IBM/SUN/... or university research (funded by companies like IBM/SUN/...).
Anyway I drank too much tonight so I had better press submit now:)
"For those Java developers who side with Stallman on this issue, a GNU Java compiler does exist."
Interestingly enough the innovations to Java are not coming from the GNU community. There's a GNU Java compiler so there's no fundamental reason not to innovate. Yet, the GNU compiler is merely lagging behind suns implementation and does not any value to it. Really, what's the point of maintaining a gnu copy whose ultimate goal is to remain compatible with whatever it was copied from?
The only reason that there is a GNU java compiler is that SUN doesn't provide a compiler for all platforms. GNU is a nice license for developing software in the LINUX community since it allows for massively parallel development of software.
The GNU java compiler will never replace SUNs compiler, however, because for that to happen it would require companies to give away all the future innovations they are going to do. This won't happen.
I really liked the discussion about forking and how the different licenses deal with it. In addition I really liked the fable about the lion, the fox and the wolf because it showes exactly where Bill Joys reasoning is flawed: the SCSL gives sun the power to decide between right and wrong. While this prevents forking it also gives sun ownership of the software and the power to steer the software in a direction that is good for them but not for their users. BSD style licenses prevent this by allowing any change under any license but these types of licenses are perhaps not so good at preventing forking (here my knowledge probably falls short). So here's a potentiallly unaddressed issue: how to prevent forking without centralizing control of software. The GNU license doesn't address this but the community around LINUX effectively prevents forking so far. This informal process is not enough however. There is nothing in the license that prevents the development of incompatible Linux forks. The BSD license does not prevent this either, there are many incompatible versions of BSD unix. Because of this, neither the GNU license nor the BSD license is perfect in my point of view. Maybe SCSL goes to far in its effort to prevent forking but I'm not aware of a better license that also prevents forking.
I think the post I'm replying to mentions something very important: companies do commit to closed hardware solutions.
The reason is simple: its not all black and white. Essentially this whole discussion always circles around two terms (closed & open). Generally the shades of gray are ignored (i.e. partly closed/open).
With any product (including software) there are generally two parties: the consumer and the producer. Those parties have different interests. The consumer wants bang for buck and as much control as he can get. The producer has a different interest: maximum profit, prevent that competition is succesful, keep customers happy.
If we look at software we can identify different levels of opennes: I - not open: you receive a blackbox piece of software. If you are lucky a manual is provided. Basically the license only allows you (and you alone) to use the software. This level of openness maximizes the benefits for the producing party. II - in the next level of openness the software is still handed over as a blackbox. However, it's external behavior is fully described in API documentation. Because of this the blackbox can be used by third parties but they still have to buy it and the producing company fully controls what happens to it. III - in the next level of openness the source code is provided along with the product. The right to edit the code still lies at the producing company, however. This gives some flexibility to the user since it is now possible to see what the software does and how to use it. Also bugfixes can be suggested to the producing party. IV - the user now also has the right to edit the software code. The producing party still owns the software though and can restrict the right of the user to distribute the changes. V - The producing party no longer owns the software. The user can edit the software any way they think is useful. They cannot restrict the license on the existing software but can license the changes in any way they think is appropriate VI - nobody owns the software and changes have to be put under the same license.
Maybe more levels of openness can be identified, maybe they should be described in more detail but I think this covers most common situations. I think that for each level of openness you can find examples where it is the appropriate level of openness and examples where it is the worst possible level of openness.
I liked the car analogy in the article, I liked the production company analogy too but I don't think these analogies always apply.
Software can come in many forms ranging from critical (an OS, a database) to non critical (games, desktop image switchers); from valuable to non valuable; from comples to simple; etc.
Also it differs from user to user in which categories a certain piece of software falls. So any piece of software can be placed in a multidimensional space of quality attributes. And on top of that the placement is subjective and subject to change in time.
Generally the level of openness of software changes over time. When it is first released it is valuable, perhaps very critical and only available from one company. The company will try to maximize profit and go for a closed license to prevent the competition from catching up. After a few years similar software is produced by other companies so smart companies make their product more open to attract more customers. Over time the software becomes more open until the point it is no longer profitable to produce it. At this stage it becomes fully open.
As I see it operating systems and client side software is moving towards more openness on this scale. If you have a PC you can choose between a dozen or so different operating systems. Some of those are fully open (linux), others are nearly open (BSD), some are semi open (solaris) and some are fully closed (windows).
The closed operating system are losing their advantages to the open operating systems. I think the point in time where closed operating systems have no advantages over open operating systems is nearing. Depending on the type of user this may already be the case.
In my opinion there is not much profit to be made in low level system software so you might as well make it open. Device drivers and the lower layers of the operating system fall in this category. The situation is different for the higher layers of the operating system (configuration and management tools)
So you can either make the OS open (linux) and concentrate on selling what is running on top of the OS or you can bundle the OS with a lot of software and sell the whole bunch in a single package (windows).
In the first approach the producing company can concentrate on the portion of the software that is actually bringing in the money. In the last situation the company has to concentrate on the whole bunch of software, including the part that is no longer bringing in any money.
If we look at NT we see that a lot of software is provide with it. It is this software that adds the value to the whole package not the OS kernel.
If we look at development environments we see that they come in different editions these days: a cheap edition with only the very basic features and an enterprise edition which is the same product with some added value in the form of class libraries, extra software, manuals etc, support, etc.
From both examples we can see a similar pattern: the common, often central part of the software doesn't give you a competetive edge since it is available from many sources. You might as well make it open since this gives the rest of your software a competetive edge.
I think software production is the same as any other production. To make it profitable you take cheap ingredients, you add value to it and you sell it for a higher price then you spend on the ingredients. It doesn't make sense to give it all away. You only give away the stuff that doesn't provide you with (enough) profit.
Linux is something you can't make much money on. The same applies to much of the software that runs on top of it. The software industry is realizing this (except for a certain company in Redmond) and is shifting their attention to adding value. Companies like SUN and IBM have realized that they won't get rich of selling software so they are shifting their attention to what they are good at. For SUN this is selling hardware, for IBM this is both selling hardware and providing support. Neither company would benefit much from completely open software so they generally don't put GNU licenses on their software.
Let me explain why I wrote this lengthy posting. I frequently read threads about OSS on slashdot. I see lots of people bashing SUN for not giving away all the software they have. I see lots of idealistic and religious crap. I think those people generally miss the point about open sourcing your software. The article featured in this thread maybe us an eye opener to these people. Hopefully my posting contributes to it in a modest way.
It's not the security that was patented here. The amount of work needed to implement the idea is also irrelevant. I think somebody will come up with a very trivial example of an earlier implementation of this idea and bye bye patent. This patent was never designed to hold up in court but just as an obstacle for competing companies.
I used to do java development on a pentium 133 with 64 Mb. It was fast enough for me until I started using swing (beta versions at first). The problem was the amount of memory (i was working on a NT computer that also functioned as a webserver and fileserver), once the application had loaded, the response was pretty good. Interestingly performance dropped significantly if we used a JIT. This is probably because of the overhead in class loading. It's not so much the megahertz that counts but the amount of memory you have. At my work I have a PII 350 with 196 MB. I upgraded the memory a few months ago because of sluggish performance with Java apps. 196 Mb is of course plenty. Generally I don't notice much performance difference with my PC at home (PII233, 64 Mb) unless the application is rather big (such as netbeans). I think for netbeans, anything between 64 and 128 Mb should be sufficient.
NetBeans is a development tool for Java. It features all the usual stuff you find in a good IDE: editor, debugger, forms and components. One of the reasons it's getting popular really quick now, is its flexible design. I think the upcoming version integrates togetherJ (as a plugin) which is an UML oriented development tool. This tool allows you to write java code and watch the UML diagram change or vice versa.
Oh yeah, netbeans is written in 100% Java (using the swing classes) which makes it cross platform. Probably some readers of this thread are scratching their heads and wondering about performance now. I can assure you performance is quite satisfying provided you have 64 Mb or more of memory. Once the program is loaded (takes about 30 seconds on my PC), you hardly notice you are working with a Java program.
"Yes they do when the site doesn't work because of the crappy implementation of those two facilities"
But that doesn't happen. No sensible webdeveloper would produce a site that doesn't work on the browser with the largest market share. If those two features are a problem the solution is simple: don't use 'em.
"I think it has - I'm not saying Netscape 4 is perfect, but it's a damn sight better than IE"
They are both far from perfect.
"What it looks like doesn't matter in the slightest. Whether it handles simple web standards is more important."
Bullshit, as I pointed out, looks are all that matter. The average user is quite clueless about so called standards (I think the word standard is a bit premature when it comes to HTML 4.0 since no browser has fully implemented it yet). Since the user (at this moment) chooses to use internet explorer, that's the target platform for web developers. So in reality most sites work on ie. The few that don't are usually not so relevant. It's been a long time since I encountered "this site only works with netscape 4.x" or even "this site is best viewed with netscape 4.x".
"They do when things don't work!!! Without standards you'll just end up with a proprietary MS-web - sure MS users can view it, but with the proliferation of set-top-boxes et. al that don't use IE, MS will be forced to comply to the standards..."
Set top boxes at this point use far less advanced browsers than netscape or IE. Generally HTML 4.0 and XML are not supported on them. So I don't see how this makes a difference.
I'm not saying I like this situation but I'm realistic enough to recognise things as they are. I truly hope mozilla will make a difference.
Most people are not webdevelopers so they use a browser that works for them. Non webdevelopers don't care about the mime output of cgi scripts. nor do they care about javascript.
"Why trust MS to implement standards properly.."
Netscape hasn't done any better (excluding mozilla which will take another few months to appear). The 4.x version of their browser can hardly be called standards compliant. But standards are only relevant to web developers not to users. Users expect their favorite webpages to just work they don't care how they work. This is something MS used to their advantage when developing IE. While netscape was fooling around with the 4.x generation of their browser, IE created IE which from a users point of view is faster, more stable and prettier.
And my pessimistic guess is that they will use the same thing again to outcompete mozilla. Nobody outside the webdevelopers community cares about standards. MS is compliant enough for most users.
suns strategy has been pretty consistent since jdk 1.1. Its just that it takes bit longer than they originally expected.
"That's typically what people in here decry - the fact that there is so much hype for so little delivery."
Those people generally seem to be unaware of anything else but applets. One of the reasons there are so many Java products at this moment is because its a profitable business. I.e. people actually buy and use stuff like JBuilder, Visual Age, etc.
You are right that SUN is repositioning Java all the time. They have to because there's a lot changing. A year ago XML was just a spec. Now it's the latest hype. Java is right in the centre providing tools, parsers etc. I don't think that's bad. Then Jini, I really like the ideas behind that. Its something truly innovative. It doesn't seem to hurt other things in Java so what's your problem with Jini?
"...no tool can satisfy all these diverse needs as easily as Sun would have you believe"
Sun doesn't want you to believe that. They're offering different versions of their JDK now. A standard version, an enterprise version, a micro edition (coming in five flavors if I remember correctly). Each is targeting a different portion of the market.
I'm sorry the world is spinning too fast for you these days.
It took them about 48 hours to reverse their policy. They were getting a lot of negative publicity about this thing. This probably caught them by surprise, hence their nervous reaction. After the latest anouncement I think they are back on track again.
I reboot once every 4 weeks or so. Usually the reason is to prevent it gets unstable, not because it actually becomes unstable. I have not seen any blue screen yet, but then I don't do any serious c/c++ developing on the machine (only java). I don't think it has crashed a single time since I have the machine on my desk (about a year now).
I always read about people having to reboot NT every hour or so and blue screens stopping by every few seconds. If the above article was fud then what are these stories? Sure NT is not perfect, I wouldn't want to run it as a server environment for instance, but for the average desk user its not that bad.
redhat is a commercial company. Their ultimate goal is to sell as many copies of linux as possible and to sell as many support contracts as possible.
It is only a matter of time before somebody figures out that you sell more if you do marketing. Spreading FUD is a good strategy, MS is the living proof of that.
So far Red Hat does not seem to attack its real competition (other linux distributions). In an expanding market like Linux, MS is not a threat but only a source for new customers.
If you can prove 1% of what you are claiming our current government is history. I'm not saying we don't have any lobbying going on.
It would very much surprise me if our prime minister had accepted a single dutch guilder from companies. Remember the trouble a former candidate called Brinkman had when the media found out he was involved with some obscure companies. Remember the media hype about the "beste Els.." letter (for non dutch people: Dear Els,.., Els Borst is a minister in the dutch government) from another dutch politician speaking on behalf of a company.
Both cases prove that there is some lobbying going on. Both cases also proof that even the not so dirty cases can cause serious trouble for a politician if the media hears about it. Brinkman lost the elections and the minister nearly lost her job on this thing (she managed to talk her way out).
"So don't say it doesn't happen here (except in local politics).. it happens here just as much, only more covertly since there are no "legal" ways to bribe someone (like in the US with "campaign funding")"
I hope I pointed out that the scale on which stuff happens is not so big as in the US. About the military stuff, I think there is a lot of diplomatic pressure when large orders are involved. Basically Holland decided to buy Apache helicopters against the enormous pressure from France and Germany to buy european stuff instead.
"politicians are people with power.. and everyone has a price.. everyone can be bought... "
True (a bit cliche though), only it is illegal to be bought in Holland. If it is proven you generally have to face prison and even being suspected of corruption can be enough to loose your job. So in practice I don't think it happens that often.
You hit the bottomline. MS doesn't really care about home users installing two copies of win 98 when they only bought one. They do care about companies creating thousands of win 98 cds and selling them as the real stuff. The latter is bad for MS but it may also cause trouble for the people who buy the illegal cds (without knowing it).
Anyhow, MS keeps the door wide open for piracy and only has trivial obstructions for copying the cd. The only copy protection is the serial number you have to type in when you install the product. If MS were serious about doing something about the smaller software pirates, they could easily add some copy protecting stuff on the cd (which would make it hard for the average user to make a copy). But they don't, they choose to keep the door wideopen to piracy. This causes me to believe that they actually benefit from home users cheating a little with their software. They even allow those users to download updates!
All this (in theory:)) doesn't make me feel guilty about installing their software without paying for it.
Actually, I think the net war is going to take place in the US, not in europe. Most of europe is pretty safe compared to the US. I recently went to the US (conference visit) and to my own surpise and amusement found every single cliche I could think of confirmed: fat, stupid people all over the place and money fixes everything you need.
Unlike DCOM, Corba was developed using input from many companies. Therefore it is simply better. MS wants us to belief that NT in combination with COM/DCOM is the solution to all your problems. Their marketing department has managed to spread this belief for a few years and many companies were fooled enough to start using it. In some cases it worked, in some it didn't. A few months ago I read somewhere that despite what MS wants us to believe, NT is mainly used in small scale companies to do simple stuff like email and databases for small departments. Don't misunderstand me this is not a small market but it is nowhere near the great stuff MS wants people to belief NT is capable of.
Windows 2000 has the smell of failure all around it. Endless delays, features nobody is asking for, features that already exist in other products. Really if you need directory thingies, you're problably using netware already. If you really need RPC, CORBA has been around for years. Most companies that actually need these features have already found them in non MS products.
MS's marketing department has clearly lost its touch with reality. The much hyped MS DNA has died within months of its introduction. Nobody bought it. This new thing (SOAP they call it LOL, I mean are they serious or what???) will burst also. XML and Java are both past the hype stage now, so people will no longer blindly buy anything that be associated with either of these terms.
Untill a year ago or so MS was always one step ahead of their competition. They killed netscape by creating explorer, they killed os/2 with succesfull marketing and windows 95. They killed wordperfect wit office. But they failed to kill Java, they saw no other choice but to embrace XML and didn't even bother to provide a propietary alternative. Their proprietary HTML extensions are going nowhere because most people want their pages to be readable in non MS browsers as well. EJB and CORBA is eating their lunch in the ecommerce department. Linux is eating their lunch in the small department server market (so far their only market for NT). SUN is giving away star office for free, this has to hurt in ms office revenues.
So are they going to die?? Of course not! Their shareholders will eventually stop them and get them back to what they were once good at: reinventing and marketing the wheel. MS shouldn't bother inventing new stuff nobody asked for because they are pretty lousy at it. MS DNA and MS SOAP bubble only show they are getting nervous. Both things will go away (pretty soon) and will be replaced with other stuff. Windows 2000 will be the turning point. Shareholders will be pretty pissed of when they find out companies refuse to convert to w2k. This combined with the unavoidable DOJ case output will cause some serious change within MS.
Their traditional markets (operating systems/office ware) are eroding because there are increasingly succesful, free alternatives. In the end there won't be enough profit margin in creating operating systems and word processors This is something they noticed (hence their activity in the ecommerce and internet market), so they are trying to find new markets.
Just one question, what's the point of giving somebody money if you won't get anything in return? I mean, MS is a commercial company, they don't give away money just for the sake of it.
I think the only logical answer is that they expect this Gorton guy and a lot of other people they donated money to, to be nice to them when something comes up that is important to MS.
Of course they can't expect much for 50000 but there's other ways to be nice to a politican. You can take him to an expensive restaurant, invite him for a business trip to the bahamas and god knows what.
It's called lobbying.
Similarly, a politician can do small favors for a company: support policies that are good for his friends, perhaps suggest or support favorable changes in laws that may help his friends out.
This senator supporting a 9 million dollar cut on DOJ case funding is an example of such a small favor. It is easy to defend in public (goverment waisting money) and the guy probably would have gotten away with it if it stayed out of the media.
This closed door way of doing politics is better known as corruption. I doubt the senator would have taken much interest in the whole case if he hadn't been paid.
"First of all, I believe that any company that produces only proprietary software is an enemy of Free Software, and freedom in general. I know this sounds Stallman-esqe, but that's because it is. Remember Free Software? It's what we believed in before open source turned us into proponents of a business model instead of an ideal."
I never believed in free software. Linux is a nice product, I might use it in the future but its not revolutionary. I'm not an idealist. I like to think of my self as a pragmatic person. All this talk about evil companies and enemies of OSS makes me laugh.
OSS is an efficient way of incrementally improving software. I have yet to see any new stuff originating from the OSS community. With new I mean something that is not a cleanroom implementation of something that already exists. I think John Carmack made a similar statement in the interview earlier today.
Most companies currently involved in OSS are pragmatic too and are in it for one thing only: making more profit. Red Hat sells shrink wrapped linux, IBM and SUN are hardware companies in the first place. They also make money supporting software (either their own or open source stuff.). Making software is something they do only to support the first two things.
Because of this, Linux is not an "enemy" to SUN. They can make money selling hardware that runs Linux and they can make money selling support (something they are not doing right now).
Giving away their own software (under GPL) won't boost their hardware sales significantly, also it won't improve their support revenue. So why are they bothering with semi OSS? Simple: they found out that it is a good way to improve their software without losing control.
Is SUN different from MS? Yes, MS is a software selling company in the first place and a software support company only in the second place. OSS can only cut their revenue since everything given away won't bring in revenue. SUN on the other hand only gets a minor percentage of their revenue from software sales. If they can boost hardware sales by giving away software they will do it. IBM is in the same position and is following a similar strategy.
Slashdot Mirror
"Maybe the fact that I want to do something good in society is enough"
If that's the fact you fit my definition of being an idealist.
I don't necessarily disagree with you. As a european I am frequently amazed at the extreme shape things tend to take on the other side of the ocean. In my opinion the amount of money currently made with internet stocks is just a symptom of how sick the society over there is. I'm glad we sorted out this matter by pointing out that your opinion is based on idealism rather than facts.
You probably have a nice research project going on. I haven't checked it out but I trust you in that it is original and innovative.
Unfortunately it doesn't exactly disprove my statement. My statement was a very general one (GPL projects generally don't introduce new, revolutionary stuff). Of course you can always find an exception to such a general statement (which is what you did).
"I don't know who else is out there ready to hit the world with genuinely innovative stuff under the GPL. I'm doing it. Why? Because I have no confidence in the ability of the U.S. legal system to protect me or my ideas. I have no confidence in business to be able to help me implement them. All the promises about innovating and making millions off of great ideas are all crap- that doesn't happen anymore, those days are over."
So *slap* back: this statement clearly proves that you are an idealist (The pessimistic kind).
You have lost your belief in selling good ideas for money (which is what you do in capitalist society as America). Basically you are denying that people are getting rich everyday by gambling on internet startup stocks.
GPL seems to attract paranoid idealists like yourself like flies. It doesn't prove a thing to me.
"Batch optimized native machine code" is simply the most important thing that happened to Java, ever.
???
What the fuck are you talking about. What is this
batch optimized native machine code you keep talking about. Is it some form of Java to native code compilation (hardly revolutionary, we've been compiling languages to native code for nearly fifty years now)???
"The GPL is designed to keep innovations free"
What innovations? This is my main point: GPL is great for maintaining existing code, perhaps even for reimplementing existing code but not for creating something entirely new. The reason, in my opinion, is that if you are able to create something entirely new (i.e. innovate in a significant way) your creation is worth money. Only idealists give valuable stuff away for free (i.e. GPL it) the rest of us will try to sell it. GPL is only useful if the improvements are incremental rather than revolutionary.
"while you have been unable to mention a single non-Sun contribution to SCSL"
I haven't bothered mentioning any. This doesn't mean I'm not able to do so. As you may know SUN has been working together with industry parthners like IBM, Borland and even Microsoft. Surely MS hasn't contributed much but I don't think you can claim that nobody contributed anything.
"That most new ideas come from researchers, mostly at universities, and mostly government founded, can hardly be a suprise. That is what they are paid to create."
So you agree that innovation doesn't come from the open source community but from people whose job it is to do research (either from industry or from universities).
what do you mean with "batch optimized native machine code" what bullshit is this?????
......) all of these come from either companies like IBM/SUN/... or university research (funded by companies like IBM/SUN/...).
:)
And about proppietary innovation: name one propietary innovation that made it into the GPL version of the Java compiler. Right it doesn't exist (yet?). This is my main criticism agains GPL: it doesn't seem to produce new, original stuff. Java was new, original, innovative and yes propietary. So what. What did GPL add to Java?? Nothing. The best GPL java compiler you can find is a lousy SUN spec implementation.
Its not about what the license allows it is about what people use what license. So far GPL only seems to attract the hippy kind of developer. Great for fixing bugs, lousy at creating new stuff. Linux, the hype of the late nineties, is nothing else but a implementation of a spec of the seventies (a very good implementation but nothing else). So far the open source process has proved nothing else but being good at reimplementing stuff that already exists. I know this doesn't sound nice to all us slashdotters but it is the truth. Think of all the hype words of the last ten, fiftheen years (databases, 4GL, internet, XML, JAVA, Unix, PC
Anyway I drank too much tonight so I had better press submit now
"For those Java developers who side with Stallman on this issue, a GNU Java compiler does exist."
Interestingly enough the innovations to Java are not coming from the GNU community. There's a GNU Java compiler so there's no fundamental reason not to innovate. Yet, the GNU compiler is merely lagging behind suns implementation and does not any value to it. Really, what's the point of maintaining a gnu copy whose ultimate goal is to remain compatible with whatever it was copied from?
The only reason that there is a GNU java compiler is that SUN doesn't provide a compiler for all platforms. GNU is a nice license for developing software in the LINUX community since it allows for massively parallel development of software.
The GNU java compiler will never replace SUNs compiler, however, because for that to happen it would require companies to give away all the future innovations they are going to do. This won't happen.
I really liked the discussion about forking and how the different licenses deal with it. In addition I really liked the fable about the lion, the fox and the wolf because it showes exactly where Bill Joys reasoning is flawed: the SCSL gives sun the power to decide between right and wrong. While this prevents forking it also gives sun ownership of the software and the power to steer the software in a direction that is good for them but not for their users. BSD style licenses prevent this by allowing any change under any license but these types of licenses are perhaps not so good at preventing forking (here my knowledge probably falls short). So here's a potentiallly unaddressed issue: how to prevent forking without centralizing control of software. The GNU license doesn't address this but the community around LINUX effectively prevents forking so far. This informal process is not enough however. There is nothing in the license that prevents the development of incompatible Linux forks.
The BSD license does not prevent this either, there are many incompatible versions of BSD unix.
Because of this, neither the GNU license nor the BSD license is perfect in my point of view.
Maybe SCSL goes to far in its effort to prevent forking but I'm not aware of a better license that also prevents forking.
I think the post I'm replying to mentions something very important: companies do commit to closed hardware solutions.
The reason is simple: its not all black and white. Essentially this whole discussion always circles around two terms (closed & open). Generally the shades of gray are ignored (i.e. partly closed/open).
With any product (including software) there are generally two parties: the consumer and the producer. Those parties have different interests. The consumer wants bang for buck and as much control as he can get. The producer has a different interest: maximum profit, prevent that competition is succesful, keep customers happy.
If we look at software we can identify different levels of opennes:
I - not open: you receive a blackbox piece of software. If you are lucky a manual is provided. Basically the license only allows you (and you alone) to use the software. This level of openness maximizes the benefits for the producing party.
II - in the next level of openness the software is still handed over as a blackbox. However, it's external behavior is fully described in API documentation. Because of this the blackbox can be used by third parties but they still have to buy it and the producing company fully controls what happens to it.
III - in the next level of openness the source code is provided along with the product. The right to edit the code still lies at the producing company, however. This gives some flexibility to the user since it is now possible to see what the software does and how to use it. Also bugfixes can be suggested to the producing party.
IV - the user now also has the right to edit the software code. The producing party still owns the software though and can restrict the right of the user to distribute the changes.
V - The producing party no longer owns the software. The user can edit the software any way they think is useful. They cannot restrict the license on the existing software but can license the changes in any way they think is appropriate
VI - nobody owns the software and changes have to be put under the same license.
Maybe more levels of openness can be identified, maybe they should be described in more detail but I think this covers most common situations. I think that for each level of openness you can find examples where it is the appropriate level of openness and examples where it is the worst possible level of openness.
I liked the car analogy in the article, I liked the production company analogy too but I don't think these analogies always apply.
Software can come in many forms ranging from critical (an OS, a database) to non critical (games, desktop image switchers); from valuable to non valuable; from comples to simple; etc.
Also it differs from user to user in which categories a certain piece of software falls. So any piece of software can be placed in a multidimensional space of quality attributes. And on top of that the placement is subjective and subject to change in time.
Generally the level of openness of software changes over time. When it is first released it is valuable, perhaps very critical and only available from one company. The company will try to maximize profit and go for a closed license to prevent the competition from catching up. After a few years similar software is produced by other companies so smart companies make their product more open to attract more customers. Over time the software becomes more open until the point it is no longer profitable to produce it. At this stage it becomes fully open.
As I see it operating systems and client side software is moving towards more openness on this scale. If you have a PC you can choose between a dozen or so different operating systems. Some of those are fully open (linux), others are nearly open (BSD), some are semi open (solaris) and some are fully closed (windows).
The closed operating system are losing their advantages to the open operating systems. I think the point in time where closed operating systems have no advantages over open operating systems is nearing. Depending on the type of user this may already be the case.
In my opinion there is not much profit to be made in low level system software so you might as well make it open. Device drivers and the lower layers of the operating system fall in this category. The situation is different for the higher layers of the operating system (configuration and management tools)
So you can either make the OS open (linux) and concentrate on selling what is running on top of the OS or you can bundle the OS with a lot of software and sell the whole bunch in a single package (windows).
In the first approach the producing company can concentrate on the portion of the software that is actually bringing in the money. In the last situation the company has to concentrate on the whole bunch of software, including the part that is no longer bringing in any money.
If we look at NT we see that a lot of software is provide with it. It is this software that adds the value to the whole package not the OS kernel.
If we look at development environments we see that they come in different editions these days: a cheap edition with only the very basic features and an enterprise edition which is the same product with some added value in the form of class libraries, extra software, manuals etc, support, etc.
From both examples we can see a similar pattern: the common, often central part of the software doesn't give you a competetive edge since it is available from many sources. You might as well make it open since this gives the rest of your software a competetive edge.
I think software production is the same as any other production. To make it profitable you take cheap ingredients, you add value to it and you sell it for a higher price then you spend on the ingredients. It doesn't make sense to give it all away. You only give away the stuff that doesn't provide you with (enough) profit.
Linux is something you can't make much money on. The same applies to much of the software that runs on top of it. The software industry is realizing this (except for a certain company in Redmond) and is shifting their attention to adding value. Companies like SUN and IBM have realized that they won't get rich of selling software so they are shifting their attention to what they are good at. For SUN this is selling hardware, for IBM this is both selling hardware and providing support. Neither company would benefit much from completely open software so they generally don't put GNU licenses on their software.
Let me explain why I wrote this lengthy posting. I frequently read threads about OSS on slashdot. I see lots of people bashing SUN for not giving away all the software they have. I see lots of idealistic and religious crap.
I think those people generally miss the point about open sourcing your software. The article featured in this thread maybe us an eye opener to these people. Hopefully my posting contributes to it in a modest way.
It's not the security that was patented here. The amount of work needed to implement the idea is also irrelevant.
I think somebody will come up with a very trivial example of an earlier implementation of this idea and bye bye patent. This patent was never designed to hold up in court but just as an obstacle for competing companies.
I used to do java development on a pentium 133 with 64 Mb. It was fast enough for me until I started using swing (beta versions at first). The problem was the amount of memory (i was working on a NT computer that also functioned as a webserver and fileserver), once the application had loaded, the response was pretty good. Interestingly performance dropped significantly if we used a JIT. This is probably because of the overhead in class loading.
It's not so much the megahertz that counts but the amount of memory you have. At my work I have a PII 350 with 196 MB. I upgraded the memory a few months ago because of sluggish performance with Java apps. 196 Mb is of course plenty.
Generally I don't notice much performance difference with my PC at home (PII233, 64 Mb) unless the application is rather big (such as netbeans).
I think for netbeans, anything between 64 and 128 Mb should be sufficient.
Beowulf deathmatch sounds nice to me!
NetBeans is a development tool for Java. It features all the usual stuff you find in a good IDE: editor, debugger, forms and components. One of the reasons it's getting popular really quick now, is its flexible design. I think the upcoming version integrates togetherJ (as a plugin) which is an UML oriented development tool. This tool allows you to write java code and watch the UML diagram change or vice versa.
Oh yeah, netbeans is written in 100% Java (using the swing classes) which makes it cross platform.
Probably some readers of this thread are scratching their heads and wondering about performance now. I can assure you performance is quite satisfying provided you have 64 Mb or more of memory. Once the program is loaded (takes about 30 seconds on my PC), you hardly notice you are working with a Java program.
"Yes they do when the site doesn't work because of the crappy implementation of those two facilities"
But that doesn't happen. No sensible webdeveloper would produce a site that doesn't work on the browser with the largest market share. If those two features are a problem the solution is simple: don't use 'em.
"I think it has - I'm not saying Netscape 4 is perfect, but it's a damn sight better than IE"
They are both far from perfect.
"What it looks like doesn't matter in the slightest. Whether it handles simple web standards is more important."
Bullshit, as I pointed out, looks are all that matter. The average user is quite clueless about so called standards (I think the word standard is a bit premature when it comes to HTML 4.0 since no browser has fully implemented it yet). Since the user (at this moment) chooses to use internet explorer, that's the target platform for web developers. So in reality most sites work on ie. The few that don't are usually not so relevant. It's been a long time since I encountered "this site only works with netscape 4.x" or even "this site is best viewed with netscape 4.x".
"They do when things don't work!!! Without standards you'll just end up with a proprietary MS-web - sure MS users can view it, but with the proliferation of set-top-boxes et. al that don't use IE, MS will be forced to comply to the standards..."
Set top boxes at this point use far less advanced browsers than netscape or IE. Generally HTML 4.0 and XML are not supported on them. So I don't see how this makes a difference.
I'm not saying I like this situation but I'm realistic enough to recognise things as they are. I truly hope mozilla will make a difference.
Most people are not webdevelopers so they use a browser that works for them. Non webdevelopers don't care about the mime output of cgi scripts. nor do they care about javascript.
.."
"Why trust MS to implement standards properly
Netscape hasn't done any better (excluding mozilla which will take another few months to appear). The 4.x version of their browser can hardly be called standards compliant. But standards are only relevant to web developers not to users. Users expect their favorite webpages to just work they don't care how they work. This is something MS used to their advantage when developing IE. While netscape was fooling around with the 4.x generation of their browser, IE created IE which from a users point of view is faster, more stable and prettier.
And my pessimistic guess is that they will use the same thing again to outcompete mozilla. Nobody outside the webdevelopers community cares about standards. MS is compliant enough for most users.
suns strategy has been pretty consistent since jdk 1.1. Its just that it takes bit longer than they originally expected.
"That's typically what people in here decry - the fact that there is so much hype for so little delivery."
Those people generally seem to be unaware of anything else but applets. One of the reasons there are so many Java products at this moment is because its a profitable business. I.e. people actually buy and use stuff like JBuilder, Visual Age, etc.
You are right that SUN is repositioning Java all the time. They have to because there's a lot changing. A year ago XML was just a spec. Now it's the latest hype. Java is right in the centre providing tools, parsers etc. I don't think that's bad.
Then Jini, I really like the ideas behind that. Its something truly innovative. It doesn't seem to hurt other things in Java so what's your problem with Jini?
"...no tool can satisfy all these diverse needs as easily as Sun would have you believe"
Sun doesn't want you to believe that. They're offering different versions of their JDK now. A standard version, an enterprise version, a micro edition (coming in five flavors if I remember correctly). Each is targeting a different portion of the market.
I'm sorry the world is spinning too fast for you these days.
Is that with hotspot installed?
It took them about 48 hours to reverse their policy. They were getting a lot of negative publicity about this thing. This probably caught them by surprise, hence their nervous reaction. After the latest anouncement I think they are back on track again.
I reboot once every 4 weeks or so. Usually the reason is to prevent it gets unstable, not because it actually becomes unstable. I have not seen any blue screen yet, but then I don't do any serious c/c++ developing on the machine (only java). I don't think it has crashed a single time since I have the machine on my desk (about a year now).
I always read about people having to reboot NT every hour or so and blue screens stopping by every few seconds. If the above article was fud then what are these stories? Sure NT is not perfect, I wouldn't want to run it as a server environment for instance, but for the average desk user its not that bad.
bullshit
redhat is a commercial company. Their ultimate goal is to sell as many copies of linux as possible and to sell as many support contracts as possible.
It is only a matter of time before somebody figures out that you sell more if you do marketing. Spreading FUD is a good strategy, MS is the living proof of that.
So far Red Hat does not seem to attack its real competition (other linux distributions). In an expanding market like Linux, MS is not a threat but only a source for new customers.
If you can prove 1% of what you are claiming our current government is history. I'm not saying we don't have any lobbying going on.
.." letter (for non dutch people: Dear Els, .., Els Borst is a minister in the dutch government) from another dutch politician speaking on behalf of a company.
.. it happens here just as much, only more covertly since there are no "legal" ways to bribe someone (like in the US with "campaign funding")"
.. and everyone has a price .. everyone can be bought ... "
It would very much surprise me if our prime minister had accepted a single dutch guilder from companies. Remember the trouble a former candidate called Brinkman had when the media found out he was involved with some obscure companies. Remember the media hype about the "beste Els
Both cases prove that there is some lobbying going on. Both cases also proof that even the not so dirty cases can cause serious trouble for a politician if the media hears about it. Brinkman lost the elections and the minister nearly lost her job on this thing (she managed to talk her way out).
"So don't say it doesn't happen here (except in local politics)
I hope I pointed out that the scale on which stuff happens is not so big as in the US. About the military stuff, I think there is a lot of diplomatic pressure when large orders are involved. Basically Holland decided to buy Apache helicopters against the enormous pressure from France and Germany to buy european stuff instead.
"politicians are people with power
True (a bit cliche though), only it is illegal to be bought in Holland. If it is proven you generally have to face prison and even being suspected of corruption can be enough to loose your job. So in practice I don't think it happens that often.
You hit the bottomline. MS doesn't really care about home users installing two copies of win 98 when they only bought one. They do care about companies creating thousands of win 98 cds and selling them as the real stuff. The latter is bad for MS but it may also cause trouble for the people who buy the illegal cds (without knowing it).
:)) doesn't make me feel guilty about installing their software without paying for it.
Anyhow, MS keeps the door wide open for piracy and only has trivial obstructions for copying the cd. The only copy protection is the serial number you have to type in when you install the product. If MS were serious about doing something about the smaller software pirates, they could easily add some copy protecting stuff on the cd (which would make it hard for the average user to make a copy). But they don't, they choose to keep the door wideopen to piracy. This causes me to believe that they actually benefit from home users cheating a little with their software. They even allow those users to download updates!
All this (in theory
Actually, I think the net war is going to take place in the US, not in europe. Most of europe is pretty safe compared to the US. I recently went to the US (conference visit) and to my own surpise and amusement found every single cliche I could think of confirmed: fat, stupid people all over the place and money fixes everything you need.
Unlike DCOM, Corba was developed using input from many companies. Therefore it is simply better. MS wants us to belief that NT in combination with COM/DCOM is the solution to all your problems. Their marketing department has managed to spread this belief for a few years and many companies were fooled enough to start using it. In some cases it worked, in some it didn't. A few months ago I read somewhere that despite what MS wants us to believe, NT is mainly used in small scale companies to do simple stuff like email and databases for small departments. Don't misunderstand me this is not a small market but it is nowhere near the great stuff MS wants people to belief NT is capable of.
Windows 2000 has the smell of failure all around it. Endless delays, features nobody is asking for, features that already exist in other products. Really if you need directory thingies, you're problably using netware already. If you really need RPC, CORBA has been around for years. Most companies that actually need these features have already found them in non MS products.
MS's marketing department has clearly lost its touch with reality. The much hyped MS DNA has died within months of its introduction. Nobody bought it. This new thing (SOAP they call it LOL, I mean are they serious or what???) will burst also. XML and Java are both past the hype stage now, so people will no longer blindly buy anything that be associated with either of these terms.
Untill a year ago or so MS was always one step ahead of their competition. They killed netscape by creating explorer, they killed os/2 with succesfull marketing and windows 95. They killed wordperfect wit office. But they failed to kill Java, they saw no other choice but to embrace XML and didn't even bother to provide a propietary alternative. Their proprietary HTML extensions are going nowhere because most people want their pages to be readable in non MS browsers as well. EJB and CORBA is eating their lunch in the ecommerce department. Linux is eating their lunch in the small department server market (so far their only market for NT). SUN is giving away star office for free, this has to hurt in ms office revenues.
So are they going to die?? Of course not! Their shareholders will eventually stop them and get them back to what they were once good at: reinventing and marketing the wheel. MS shouldn't bother inventing new stuff nobody asked for because they are pretty lousy at it.
MS DNA and MS SOAP bubble only show they are getting nervous. Both things will go away (pretty soon) and will be replaced with other stuff. Windows 2000 will be the turning point. Shareholders will be pretty pissed of when they find out companies refuse to convert to w2k. This combined with the unavoidable DOJ case output will cause some serious change within MS.
Their traditional markets (operating systems/office ware) are eroding because there are increasingly succesful, free alternatives. In the end there won't be enough profit margin in creating operating systems and word processors This is something they noticed (hence their activity in the ecommerce and internet market), so they are trying to find new markets.
The whole idea of XML is to embrace and extend. XML stands for extensible markup language. I'm glad to see that MS is embracing this.
"I doubt it swayed Gorton one way or another."
Just one question, what's the point of giving somebody money if you won't get anything in return? I mean, MS is a commercial company, they don't give away money just for the sake of it.
I think the only logical answer is that they expect this Gorton guy and a lot of other people they donated money to, to be nice to them when something comes up that is important to MS.
Of course they can't expect much for 50000 but there's other ways to be nice to a politican. You can take him to an expensive restaurant, invite him for a business trip to the bahamas and god knows what.
It's called lobbying.
Similarly, a politician can do small favors for a company: support policies that are good for his friends, perhaps suggest or support favorable changes in laws that may help his friends out.
This senator supporting a 9 million dollar cut on DOJ case funding is an example of such a small favor. It is easy to defend in public (goverment waisting money) and the guy probably would have gotten away with it if it stayed out of the media.
This closed door way of doing politics is better known as corruption. I doubt the senator would have taken much interest in the whole case if he hadn't been paid.
"First of all, I believe that any company that produces only proprietary software is an enemy of Free Software, and freedom in general. I know this sounds Stallman-esqe, but that's because it is. Remember Free Software? It's what we believed in before open source turned us into proponents of a business model instead of an ideal."
I never believed in free software. Linux is a nice product, I might use it in the future but its not revolutionary. I'm not an idealist. I like to think of my self as a pragmatic person. All this talk about evil companies and enemies of OSS makes me laugh.
OSS is an efficient way of incrementally improving software. I have yet to see any new stuff originating from the OSS community. With new I mean something that is not a cleanroom implementation of something that already exists. I think John Carmack made a similar statement in the interview earlier today.
Most companies currently involved in OSS are pragmatic too and are in it for one thing only: making more profit. Red Hat sells shrink wrapped linux, IBM and SUN are hardware companies in the first place. They also make money supporting software (either their own or open source stuff.). Making software is something they do only to support the first two things.
Because of this, Linux is not an "enemy" to SUN. They can make money selling hardware that runs Linux and they can make money selling support (something they are not doing right now).
Giving away their own software (under GPL) won't boost their hardware sales significantly, also it won't improve their support revenue. So why are they bothering with semi OSS? Simple: they found out that it is a good way to improve their software without losing control.
Is SUN different from MS? Yes, MS is a software selling company in the first place and a software support company only in the second place. OSS can only cut their revenue since everything given away won't bring in revenue. SUN on the other hand only gets a minor percentage of their revenue from software sales. If they can boost hardware sales by giving away software they will do it. IBM is in the same position and is following a similar strategy.