The founder of Debian using what is still, fundamentally, Debian isn't that interesting.
It is when you consider how much bitterness apparently exists towards Ubuntu among a lot of the Debian crew.
I've written before that Ubuntu's success highlights the twin points of Debian's high code quality on the one hand, and the abysmally low value of Debian's ideology/culture on the other, while forcibly ramming said facts down the Debian developers' throats. I can barely describe how intensely viscerally gratifying for me that is; it's bordering on orgasmic.;)
Fair enough if the FSF want to be purist about their approach, but no one else is obliged to (Emphasis mine)
Unfortunately, try telling them that. Stallman's motto is that everyone is entitled to his opinion, and his opinion alone. He also has his army of cultists (of which crush is fairly obviously a willing footsoldier) to ensure that we never cease hearing about it.
The GNU/zombies at times seem to threaten to overwhelm Slashdot. Methinks it's long past time for CmdrTaco to enquire as to whether Sarah Michell Gellar is willing to do a house call.
In sum, despite the release of Treacherous Toad (or whatever it's called)
This is juvenile and entirely unnecessary. It's also purely a case of you aping the FSF's tendency to invent kindergarten maturity level names for things they don't like.
Ubuntu seems consistently (whether it be proprietary, closed, non-Free wireless or video card drivers or this) just to be attempting consistently to squeeze a few extra percent of the market share at the expense of the long-term robustness of Free software.
It's called the economy of scale. There are a lot more people who don't care about the above perspective than those who do, and majorities tend to make decisions.
There's your mistake. To quote the Old Testament... "Remember your first love."
Although I must admit that apostasy is something that I also have been guilty of in this case as well. Slackware was my first distribution, and although I've tried numerous others including Linux From Scratch, (and have an installation of Ubuntu on my system as we speak) there's just always been something intangible missing. To paraphrase another deeply corny saying, "Once you've had Slack, you never go back.";)
I need to reinstall it myself, but this is also a good opportunity to repeat my usual message to Linux newcomers:-
1) Use Slack as your first distro for probably a year or so 2) Build Linux From Scratch twice at minimum 3) You will then be entirely qualified to download Ubuntu or whatever other "user friendly" distro in existence with a clear conscience, and even better, you'll know how to fix it when it breaks.
I'm feeling an attack of autistic geek pedantry, here. Must...resist...
Ok, so I can't.;)
You only need bio-gel packs and iso-linear chips. But, only the green ones.
Neither of these two things would have anything to do with a forcefield, except maybe being responsible for turning it on and off.;) These two things were responsible for powering computer systems...with the isolinear chips being the more primitive of the two, and the bio-gel packs replacing them.
this is incredibly rude and uncalled for. the debian crew aren't "aberrant"; nor are their philosophies "regressive". if anything, they're *progressive*
That's one opinion. Mine was based on what I've actually seen the Debian people doing, in terms of the IceWeasel debacle, and the Etch delay issues, etc etc...not to mention the endless trolling from Debian fans/developers on here.
If you want to see them in a positive light, I can understand the desire to do so. I wouldn't have a problem doing that myself if I actually saw them behaving that way.
I'm glad this got moderated Troll. It gives me a sense of hope about the site's moderators when I see isolated examples of GNU cultists *not* being rewarded for promoting Stallman's dogma.
Burz, I believe the owner of this website offers forcible deprogramming as a service, although these days it's referred to as an intervention. I would urge you however to have a family member contact this man immediately, and plan a time for him to do some work with you.
One has to wonder if there's a financial motivation behind this--ie. where does Shuttleworth make his money and would his commercial profits and revenues be at all threatened by widespread deployment of desktop Linux solutions?
"Person X isn't voicing the opinion of Linux that I want to hear. This obviously means that they're a paid shill in the service of $corporation."
Please develop some basic maturity. Shuttleworth is funding the most popular consumer-oriented Linux distribution in existence. I.e., he's paying for it himself. Why would he spout FUD about something which he himself is sponsoring? That's self-defeating behaviour.
That's a mouthful considering it's coming from someone who, if we want to be brutal, did little but repackage someone else's hard work.
Really? This sounds like yet more sour grapes from someone affiliated with Debian. In case you don't understand the difference between Debian and Ubuntu, allow me to explain it for you. Ubuntu is a project run by and for people who live above ground. As such, they don't foam at the mouth due to the idea of people using binary hardware drivers, and they also don't subscribe to a lot of Debian's other aberrant, regressive "philosophies" and attitudes, either. Shuttleworth has to pay official lip service to them occasionally, because as you say, unfortunately the development effort does consist of a few of the abovementioned troglodytes, and it's true that he does seem to care about not alienating them.
If Ubuntu, as so many people say, would be nothing whatsoever without Debian, then how come Ubuntu is so much more popular? Here's why. Ubuntu is Debian, without Debian's people, and without the conflict and terminal immaturity that those people generate and suffer from. Ubuntu is Debian with a neurotypical re-interpretation.
One of the main things I've seen a lot of members of the Linux community becoming increasingly shrill about in the last few years is people "stealing their code," and I think I'm finally beginning to understand why. It's because although the software that you write itself genuinely is technically better than what is being developed elsewhere, as people on the other hand, deep down, you yourselves actually realise just what chronically socially disabled, mind-bogglingly juvenile, generally detestable individuals many of you really are. It therefore quite logically follows that you're understandably terrified that the mainstream population is going to want to take the good that you do produce (your code) for their own use, while leaving the bad (you yourselves) as close to being entirely ignored as possible.
I submit that my opinion is not based upon reflexive, anti-capitalist terror but instead, regard my stance as a reaction to how I have been treated over the last 40 years.
That is legitimate, and I respect it. I only wish I had seen your post earlier...I apologise for having missed it; some things get lost in the blizzard sometimes.
I've never heard of any form of AI whose inventor didn't chronically overstate its' abilities. I haven't looked at Numenta, but $10 says it's a more generalised form of something like this.
That's not to say that such things aren't cool, if only from the point of view of difficulty involved in coding even basic implementations of such...but I wouldn't hold high expectations of it actually being able to do much. They never can. An author will rave about what he's supposedly achieved, you download it, run it, and it basically sits there looking at you.
The only place I've ever seen AI that I've been able to get excited about is games, and the only three games where that was really the case were Half Life, Black and White, Quake 3 to a lesser extent, and (if you put a lot of work into it) the Sims 2. Of those three, Black and White is the only game I've seen which had something that came close to genuinely emergent AI. The Sims doesn't; on the surface it looks awesome, but dig down and all you really find are a lot of seperate implementations of rote fuzzy logic interacting with each other. That's not to say that that isn't impressive programming either; fuzzy can get fiendishly complex if you're trying to do a lot with it.
My point is that all of these are smoke and mirrors, or what's also referred to as weak AI. The Black and White creature AI is, as I've said, the only thing which comes vaguely close to looking like it could be genuinely adaptive in a multipurpose way, and yet I'm guessing that would probably turn out to be an illusion if I could see behind the curtain as well. AFAIK, Strong AI doesn't exist, and I'm extremely skeptical that it ever will outside of some kind of at least partially biological scenario.
Regardless... we're talking (in the case of militant Islamists) about people who actually come right out and SAY that they think acquiring serious WMD's is a valid and morally obligated pursuit.
They can say that as much as they want, for all the good it will do them. Nuclear weaponry in particular isn't something you can throw together in a back shed. Not only do you need very specific components, you need equally specific processing facilities, which AFAIK anywayz only exist in a handful of places on the planet. Granted, I seem to remember that there were some concerns about what happened to part of the old USSR's nuclear arsenal in the confusion after that regime collapsed, but aside from those nukes turning up on the black market, there really aren't *ANY* ways that aspiring terrorists can obtain or produce nuclear weapons. About the worst things you can make in a garden shed are thermite, or a crude analog of C4, which granted, are perfectly capable of causing murder and mayhem if you can get hold of enough of them...but they're still an order of magnitude away from nuclear weapons.
Ditto for biological weapons...you need a lab.
Pretty much all of the Doomsday "dirty bomb" scenarios that the American government has come up with are pure emotive BS designed to generate public support for wars which the government itself is interested in fighting for very different reasons. The stuff about Sadaam having WMDs was likewise utter garbage. It simply isn't logistically possible for either non-governmental groups from Middle Eastern countries, or even the governments themselves in most cases, to either obtain or produce the materials needed. Apart from anything else, they can't afford it.
If you want to be afraid of something, then by all means be afraid of attacks utilising conventional explosives, since as I said earlier, those *can* be (and are) produced relatively cheaply and easily. That's why you keep seeing reports of Palestinians (among others) strapped with potassium nitrate based explosives, similar to C4. That or something similar also what would have been used for the Madrid train bombing, I'm assuming. You can get that stuff out of the ground, or literally from bird crap. You don't however see reports of Palestinians or Iraqi insurgents utilising a uranium-fortified charge...because they don't have that material.
I notice there's one word you keep using, here. Thousands. Last I looked, the population of the planet was around 6 billion and climbing. My mathematics is hit or miss, but it sounds to me like you're saying that laws that affect at least a major chunk of those 6 billion people should be made on the basis of actions that kill less than 1% of them.
To me, that isn't terribly logical. On that basis, to me it'd make sense that if a War on Terror was going to be valid, surely a War on Ebola would be even moreso, since I'm guessing the number of people it's killed would be higher.
(Note:- This is intended to be my own version of the Superuser myth. As the saying goes, any resemblance to real individuals living or dead is purely coincidental)
...he's the anarchic, uber-Marxist, IRC-dwelling 14 year old. (Usually from either Germany, Scandinavia, or the Baltic states, but American, Canadian, and New Zealander variants of the species are known to exist)
He knows C++ and 16 bit assembler back to front, as well as how to write shellcode in pure numerics, and spends most of his time with The Matrix playing in the background on repeat (sometimes in ascii mode through xine) while coding the latest Windows virus/worm/rootkit semi-collaboratively with his fellow sociopaths, on a private IRC server, using either the BitchX or EPIC CLI clients, or in raw mode via telnet. He'll have read most of the RFCs describing the core net application protocols, and learned their structure largely from there. He will also be intimately acquainted with all editions of PHRACK, 2600, and the Cult of the Dead Cow's material. The more socially capable of the breed may have been to DefCon one year.
When he isn't coding malware or terrorising his classmates at school with his chronic mental instability, Neo wannabeism, trenchcoat, and gun fetish, (along with a general air of "stay the fuck away from me or else") he's playing either Doom, the original Quake, or Unreal Tournament (original or 2k4) multiplayer, possibly writing mods for the latter, or training with various real-world deadly weapons (shotguns, handguns, machetes) offline. He knows about the OpenGL mods for Doom, but doesn't use them because he thinks they weaken the gameplay. A hard core atheist, Keanu Reeves, Karl Marx, and Linus Torvalds are the closest he has to gods.
Usually having an IQ of above 150, ideologically he will also be very well versed in Marxist and Leninist philosophy, as well as having a knowledge of the construction of amateur explosives and the tactics of geurilla warfare. Unlikely to gain conventional employment later in life, if he does not enter the penal system, (usually for computer related offenses, but occasionally for minor acts of terrorism or gun-related crime) he will typically be employed by the intelligence community. (But on a sub-contract basis only; governments tend to feel a need to keep their involvement with this type completely deniable)
Either custom, Debian, or Slackware Linux is his operating system of choice, with either Enlightenment or Blackbox as window manager and vi as editor, although for the truly hard core, window managers are usually only installed to enable easy access to multiple terminal windows. He'll have back doors installed in a large number of machines connected to the residential DSL nets of multiple ISPs, and will actively compete with others of his kind for access to and use of these machines. He is able to command grids of thousands of such machines for either network compiling or large scale network denial of service attacks, and can do so quickly.
Although this type do not exist in sufficiently large numbers to pose a truly grave threat to the rest of the world, (they're well below 5% of the global population) his danger is his incapacity for empathy, his subversive politics, and his unpredictability. He is to the Internet as a shark is to the ocean; the net is his natural environment, and he is always waiting, lurking, somewhere in the shadows...
This probably won't get read or responded to now, but anywayz...
Want to know why I seriously first started playing San Andreas? Anthropological curiousity.
As someone living in Australia, I knew nothing about African-American gang culture whatsoever. My girlfriend's teenaged daughter, when she lived with us, listened to a lot of rap music. I heard some of it, but never really understood the context behind the lyrics at all. Hearing about San Andreas got me interested in learning about it in the same way that I ended up reading about the Amish after hearing the song Amish Paradise, or reading about the Ojibwa after watching Commander Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager. (I'd read some Voyagerfanfic where Chakotay was depicted as an Ojibwa shaman, or fairly close in terms of their spiritual beliefs) I like learning about different cultures.
From what I read, the depiction of the hood in San Andreas was very thoroughly researched by Rockstar as well; they apparently got a lot of rap musicians and other people who were/had been part of that culture. I think one the main reasons why it's interesting is because it actually makes you think a lot about different systems of morality; what some other people might think of as degraded or antisocial (in terms of prostitution, hard drug use, violence etc) would presumably have been seen by people living within that environment perhaps as simply being elements of their everyday lives.
So if you look at it from that point of view, (or in terms of another example, where you're playing a game set a few thousand years ago) the violence is only excessive by our own contemporary cultural standards. By the standards of the culture the game is intending to simulate/represent, the violence is actually one of the main parts; if you took that out, in many cases what the culture itself was based on would be lost, or at least fundamentally altered...it wouldn't be authentic.
Hence, violence in games doesn't have to encourage violence in real life...it can allow us to look at other cultures or time periods, and remind us that in those other scenarios, violence often led to extremely negative consequences...and so rather than encourage it now, it can actually help us to see why reducing it is a better idea. CJ taught me quite a lot.
Of course, anyone who really doesn't like GPL3 for some reason is free to fork gcc, emacs, etc. and maintain their own GPL2 versions.
This is pretty much always said with the rhetorical implication that a fork of gcc in particular would require an impossibly large degree of intellectual labour to maintain seperately.
"Of COURSE you're free to fork gcc under GPL 2! But you'll find, after a few months, that in practice the program is just too complex to be able to maintain your own fork effectively. So when you discover this and come crawling back, you'll have already learned that in effective reality it's GPL 3 or nothing without us needing to have said a word about it. So we get to have our cake and eat it too. We can give people the illusion that they're completely free to do their own thing, and we don't have to relinquish the appearance of holding the moral high ground, because they'll discover that they actually effectively *can't* do their own thing all by themselves. Cool, eh?"
You're condescending stanza is mildly annoying: everyone else has been "fed by Stallman", while you have had the hands-on experience.
I didn't mean that I have "hands-on" experience as such...I more meant that I have taken the time to try and do some background research when it at least looks as though a lot of people I've responded to on here primarily simply believed what they were told.
I'll spare you the attitude and will avoid saying that your miopic views on this are due to you being hand fed this crap by Theo or the BSD Historical Reconstruction Society.
*chuckle* I think you just did.;-)
Maybe you've been told that the FSF is like Scientology or something.
It's not so much purely that I've been told that...it's also that I see the FSF's fanboys on this site behaving in a way that reinforces that perception on a fairly routine basis.;)
and at that very same time BSD was not under the BSD licence, nor was it free software.
This is interesting, and you've put forward a good argument for it. I stand corrected.
Some of the links you give me go out of they way to say that:
o RMS sucks
If you look at the links again, you'll notice that they don't simply say, "RMS sucks," but are actually a fair bit more specific. The material might not be complementary, but I've come across a number of people online who worship Stallman with a degree of single-mindedness that I don't really feel is prudent or appropriate for *any* human being...I thus actually consider it important to try and balance the scales where he is concerned wherever possible. It also troubles me that I feel that he actually encourages this unrealistically positive view of him, or at least does nothing to discourage it...and as the above links suggest, there is both a positive and a negative perspective.
The stated goal for the project was to create a free Unix because it was a good idea, not because of Microsoft or any other external party.
From what I've read, Stallman has written that Microsoft themselves are not the problem, but that corporatism itself is the disease, with Microsoft in particular merely being the largest and most prominent symptom. So yes, Microsoft specifically wasn't the cause.
I would love a world were the BSD licence was enough.
Then we apparently have commonality of opinion in that respect.
the answers by Theo distill the same kind of distorted world view that you have echoed in yout first answer, attacking the GPL using community as some weird MS haters and the BSD community as a haven of freedom and Unix love.
Again, this isn't purely because of what BSD people have said. I sadly never see a justification for the GPL given on Slashdot which does not include an appeal to fear either of Microsoft, or of the corporate world in general. It might well be true that as you say, not everyone associated with Linux is motivated purely by anti-corporate fear or hatred, but if that is true, I wish people didn't do such a convincing job at times of making it appear that way.;)
If you're wondering why I hate, your own particular screed here actually offers some good examples. I'll take it point by point.
Indeed, it's also a sight for sore eyes that you've masterfully created a distribution above and beyond the stability and predictability that debian provides.
There hasn't been much that's stable or predictable about the release schedule lately, has there? Not only that, although yes, internal patching is performed abundantly, one of the other primary ways that Debian provides "stability" is simply to continue to use packages that are years old. It is also the sickening tone of superiority present in the above that is one of the main reasons why Debian's developers have always managed to antagonise me. That isn't jealousy over actual achievements; it's resentment for an attitude which I not only consider alienating and unnecessary, but which, due to my own experiences with the distribution, I also feel is largely unjustified.
Not only that, but you've kept it free and you promise to keep it free.
Bragging about something which only Debian people themselves care about hardly counts, does it?;) It's also no secret that the only reason why the people running Ubuntu have made noise about not including binary drivers etc is purely in order to keep some of the Debian developers themselves happy. The only real effect it has is to make life temporarily more difficult for end users...but once they find the codecs/drivers, they simply then begin using them and cease caring about that debate entirely.
Newsflash:- Caring in any way whatsoever about the FSF's definition of freedom is due purely to a combination of a) mind control induced emotionalism, and b) neurological disability. It isn't based on anything remotely close to legitimate reason, and thus, feeling superior because you yourself happen to fall into this category is likewise delusional.
If only other groups could so finely establish their principles and stick by them.
Yeah, that kind of BS beaurecracy is really something other distros need, isn't it? As I said earlier, it did wonders for Etch's release schedule. Of course, never mind that other distributions *do* exist that have social contracts/mission statements etc, and that they've generally done those distros about as much good as they've done Debian itself...which is to say, roughly zilch. Having a catalogue of idealism does absolutely nothing to reduce internal conflict or produce code faster, and if anything, the Etch debacle has also proven how grossly inefficient a system which tries to be democratic is when compared to a dictatorial model...because nothing ever gets concretely decided, one way or the other. You might not like what I'm saying, here...but it actually happened.
You can't imagine that people would contribute back to a community.
This is yet another example of exactly the kind of moronic insularity of opinion that I'm objecting to here. Do you honestly believe that Debian is the only distro in existence where reciprocal collaboration occurs? But of course...Debian is the only non-profit distro that exists, right? Forget Slackware. Forget Gentoo. Forget any of the BSDs. As one other similar moron commenting on this article said, they're not "serious" like Debian.
You're so chronically deluded that I actually have no idea why I'm bothering to try and respond to you at all...it's not like I believe that any of what I'm saying is actually going to get through. Also, not that you're going to believe this anywayz, but my overall point was that I don't hate Debian because it's cool...I hate it because I feel I have valid reason.
It is not. Many of Ubuntu's changes involve installing non-free software by default. Debian will never do this. You may feel that this will consign the distribution to obscurity until the end of time; go right ahead, it won't change anything, because Debian is about freedom (and technical superiority) and not market share.
For those of us who find the Debian attitude annoying, it's actually a good thing that you're so uncompromising...we can hope that that, combined with the terrible release schedule will eventually render the distribution entirely extinct.
Maybe they should just install XPDE by default? Or just give up and tell people to install Windows in the first place?
...
The games you mention are non-free. As I said above, if you want them installed by default then you are using the wrong distro. Try Ubuntu instead.
Yep, great idea. Encourage people to move to Windows, Ubuntu, anything but Debian itself...Let's hasten the inevitable as much as we can...that way, we'll no longer have to listen to the smug superiority and brain dead insistence on holding to a failed philosophy. I'm looking forward to it.
The things you are ranting about are simply not important enough to justify the level of fear and paranoia you are exhibiting.
Granted, I am exhibiting fear and paranoia, but I see a lot of that on here from the pro-GPL side of the fence, as well. I'm curious...is it justified when they exhibit it?;)
Argue with real posts or fuck off, kid. Your playground psychology won't cut it here.
Au contraire. Playground psychology is more or less the only thing that ever gets used around here. However, I think what you mean is that said psychology is usually the verbal equivalent to the playground tactic of a punch to the face.;)
Looks like I've struck a nerve, here. Interesting...if what I'm saying is, "bullshit," then why bother getting so upset about it?
Oh, so after you insult every developer who doesn't use the BSD license (which as I noted is a pretty pointless license), now you want to backtrack and take the high road to impartiality. As you say, "interesting."
The BSD developer should contact bcw, say he was sorry for any misunderstanding and the ranting De Radt slugged at them, and ask what they think would be possible in BSD licensing. I am not a legal expert but it would seem that even if there are parts they just don't want to divulge, it would still be legally acceptable to completely rewrite those sections of code but based on the understanding of the hardware provided by bcw, correct?
I agree, and I believe that would have been a very just and discerning solution to the conflict.
Certainly I have no interest in destroying BSD.
I apologise for concluding that that was the sentiment you were expressing, if it was not. There have been a few individuals in this article's thread that have openly called for the banning of the BSDs.
At any rate you can see I certainly would not have to ask these questions if it was obvious where the line is drawn. Maybe there is a faq somewhere. Unless this perception is addressed, it seems BSD may have inferior hardware support
The point which issues like this illustrate is how destructive the GPL can be. Code which wasn't previously under the GPL, once going under the GPL, is there for good. GPL advocates say that that's a good thing...because the only thing they care about is corporate entities not being able to use it. My own long term concern however is that we end up with an ever increasing mountain of code under a single license, which in turn is under the jurisdiction of a single institution, the FSF. Monocultures can exist in a lot of different forms; they don't have to be purely economic. The one universal element among monocultures though is that they're unhealthy. Any scenario where something of vital importance is under the control of a single institution, sooner or later, is going to cause problems.
There are also non-technical people who consider the advent of GPL uber alles as a sign of "the open source concept maturing," however, I feel that such people have been trained to equate monoculture with maturity and modernity, primarily by how desktop computer history has been shaped up until this point. Diversity tends to be seen by such people as a weakness rather than a strength.
However you appear to believe the BSD license is the only ethical open source license. Am I correct?
No, I actually don't...I must have given you the wrong impression. I thank you however for seeking clarification of that rather than merely assuming that I felt that way.
There are a very large number of different open source licenses in existence, many of which serve a variety of different purposes, for different situations. GPL advocates have tried to introduce the categorisation of "permissive and non-permissive" licenses into people's minds, for the purposes of collapsing said multitude of existing licenses down into two categories, which in turn is closer to *their* desired endgame (in many, but not all cases) of the GPL being the only FOSS license remaining in existence.
I will openly admit that I *do* believe that the BSD license (and a few others that are similar, such as the MIT/X license) are the closest in practice to the gift culture written about by Eric Raymond, because unlike the GPL, they do not attempt to dictate distribution or end use, nor do they seek to discriminate against any groups for any reason. However, there are others such as the MPL and the AT&T license which, while mainly similar to the above, contain a few specific conditions which the entities in question considered it appropriate to add, as is their right. Before any GPL zealots who may be reading predictably pounce on this, let me remind them that such conditions did not violate the OSD; said conditions usually concerned patent indemnity, from memory.
I will also admit that the definition of an open source license that I believe in does not include discrimination against groups. (such as Microsoft and Novell, as one example) Version 3 of the GPL is l
I guess this is enough to disregard the fact that it was GNU/Linux - *not BSD* - that was the first truely free Unix like OS.
Apparently Bill Joy started putting BSD together in early 1977. The FSF didn't exist until October 1985. From what I've read, the UNIX sources were distributed completely without restriction even earlier than 1977, since due to the antitrust case against them, AT&T weren't allowed to begin selling an operating system. The only charge that was being put on the source was the price of the mag tape, and I also don't know of any license restrictions either. Given the degree of university collaboration that existed early on, I can only assume that there weren't any. AT&T only became restrictive with the source themselves when they were released from the ban on selling it.
AFAIK, the main reason why UNIX wasn't used much outside of universities very early on was because of it originally being written for the PDP-8 and 11, which were very different architectures to the 80386. The first port that I know of to the 80386 that took place that I know of was the one done by the Jolitzes, which ended up becoming (more or less, anywayz) what we now know as FreeBSD.
It sounds like you've got the version of history that Stallman wants people to have; i.e., the one that makes him look like the sole father of the entire practice of releasing source code in general. From what I've been able to figure out anywayz, the truth is a bit different. UNIX was developed very collaboratively from its' inception, and as you yourself probably know, without source, that can't really happen.;-)
Probably enough to disregard the fact that the "evil" FSF was already making available a shitload of software when Bill Gates was still dabbling in GWBASIC
The ANSI standard for Minimal BASIC is dated 1978, the same year Microsoft was founded. According to Wikipedia, the FSF was founded in October 1985...Looks like you're off by a couple of years. According to that, BASIC existed *before* the FSF. Also...I don't know what your own definition of "free" is, but Stallman himself was selling copies of Emacs during the 80s.
Rewriting history must be a nice hobby.
Reading history is a great hobby, sure...it allows me to know when it's been rewritten by someone else.;)
You might dislike it, you might have another, but *ours* has been there well before BSD did *anything*.
Unfortunately that simply is not true...it's what you've been told. Don't take my word for it though...Go and do some research of your own. Some links that might help:-
Maybe if you take the time to go through this material, you might start to realise what my beef is. I don't like bullies, and I don't like frauds...Stallman is both, which from reading the above, you will learn. I strongly urge anyone else here who views me as merely a baseless troll to go to the above links and read that material as well. If I am a troll, the point of it is very simple:- This Emperor has no clothes.
Slashdot Mirror
The founder of Debian using what is still, fundamentally, Debian isn't that interesting.
;)
It is when you consider how much bitterness apparently exists towards Ubuntu among a lot of the Debian crew.
I've written before that Ubuntu's success highlights the twin points of Debian's high code quality on the one hand, and the abysmally low value of Debian's ideology/culture on the other, while forcibly ramming said facts down the Debian developers' throats. I can barely describe how intensely viscerally gratifying for me that is; it's bordering on orgasmic.
Fair enough if the FSF want to be purist about their approach, but no one else is obliged to (Emphasis mine)
;)
Unfortunately, try telling them that. Stallman's motto is that everyone is entitled to his opinion, and his opinion alone. He also has his army of cultists (of which crush is fairly obviously a willing footsoldier) to ensure that we never cease hearing about it.
The GNU/zombies at times seem to threaten to overwhelm Slashdot. Methinks it's long past time for CmdrTaco to enquire as to whether Sarah Michell Gellar is willing to do a house call.
"Brains..."
In sum, despite the release of Treacherous Toad (or whatever it's called)
This is juvenile and entirely unnecessary. It's also purely a case of you aping the FSF's tendency to invent kindergarten maturity level names for things they don't like.
You just lost all credibility.
Ubuntu seems consistently (whether it be proprietary, closed, non-Free wireless or video card drivers or this) just to be attempting consistently to squeeze a few extra percent of the market share at the expense of the long-term robustness of Free software.
It's called the economy of scale. There are a lot more people who don't care about the above perspective than those who do, and majorities tend to make decisions.
WareZ d00dz spreading FOSS. Although nothing so surprising, really...to them it's probably just another file.
I tried some other distros over the years
;)
There's your mistake. To quote the Old Testament...
"Remember your first love."
Although I must admit that apostasy is something that I also have been guilty of in this case as well. Slackware was my first distribution, and although I've tried numerous others including Linux From Scratch, (and have an installation of Ubuntu on my system as we speak) there's just always been something intangible missing. To paraphrase another deeply corny saying, "Once you've had Slack, you never go back."
I need to reinstall it myself, but this is also a good opportunity to repeat my usual message to Linux newcomers:-
1) Use Slack as your first distro for probably a year or so
2) Build Linux From Scratch twice at minimum
3) You will then be entirely qualified to download Ubuntu or whatever other "user friendly" distro in existence with a clear conscience, and even better, you'll know how to fix it when it breaks.
I'm feeling an attack of autistic geek pedantry, here. Must...resist...
;)
;) These two things were responsible for powering computer systems...with the isolinear chips being the more primitive of the two, and the bio-gel packs replacing them.
Ok, so I can't.
You only need bio-gel packs and iso-linear chips. But, only the green ones.
Neither of these two things would have anything to do with a forcefield, except maybe being responsible for turning it on and off.
this is incredibly rude and uncalled for. the debian crew aren't "aberrant"; nor are their philosophies "regressive". if anything, they're *progressive*
That's one opinion. Mine was based on what I've actually seen the Debian people doing, in terms of the IceWeasel debacle, and the Etch delay issues, etc etc...not to mention the endless trolling from Debian fans/developers on here.
If you want to see them in a positive light, I can understand the desire to do so. I wouldn't have a problem doing that myself if I actually saw them behaving that way.
I'm glad this got moderated Troll. It gives me a sense of hope about the site's moderators when I see isolated examples of GNU cultists *not* being rewarded for promoting Stallman's dogma.
Burz, I believe the owner of this website offers forcible deprogramming as a service, although these days it's referred to as an intervention. I would urge you however to have a family member contact this man immediately, and plan a time for him to do some work with you.
It's not too late to get help.
One has to wonder if there's a financial motivation behind this--ie. where does Shuttleworth make his money and would his commercial profits and revenues be at all threatened by widespread deployment of desktop Linux solutions?
"Person X isn't voicing the opinion of Linux that I want to hear. This obviously means that they're a paid shill in the service of $corporation."
Please develop some basic maturity. Shuttleworth is funding the most popular consumer-oriented Linux distribution in existence. I.e., he's paying for it himself. Why would he spout FUD about something which he himself is sponsoring? That's self-defeating behaviour.
That's a mouthful considering it's coming from someone who, if we want to be brutal, did little but repackage someone else's hard work.
Really? This sounds like yet more sour grapes from someone affiliated with Debian. In case you don't understand the difference between Debian and Ubuntu, allow me to explain it for you. Ubuntu is a project run by and for people who live above ground. As such, they don't foam at the mouth due to the idea of people using binary hardware drivers, and they also don't subscribe to a lot of Debian's other aberrant, regressive "philosophies" and attitudes, either. Shuttleworth has to pay official lip service to them occasionally, because as you say, unfortunately the development effort does consist of a few of the abovementioned troglodytes, and it's true that he does seem to care about not alienating them.
If Ubuntu, as so many people say, would be nothing whatsoever without Debian, then how come Ubuntu is so much more popular? Here's why. Ubuntu is Debian, without Debian's people, and without the conflict and terminal immaturity that those people generate and suffer from. Ubuntu is Debian with a neurotypical re-interpretation.
One of the main things I've seen a lot of members of the Linux community becoming increasingly shrill about in the last few years is people "stealing their code," and I think I'm finally beginning to understand why. It's because although the software that you write itself genuinely is technically better than what is being developed elsewhere, as people on the other hand, deep down, you yourselves actually realise just what chronically socially disabled, mind-bogglingly juvenile, generally detestable individuals many of you really are. It therefore quite logically follows that you're understandably terrified that the mainstream population is going to want to take the good that you do produce (your code) for their own use, while leaving the bad (you yourselves) as close to being entirely ignored as possible.
I submit that my opinion is not based upon reflexive, anti-capitalist terror but instead, regard my stance as a reaction to how I have been treated over the last 40 years.
That is legitimate, and I respect it. I only wish I had seen your post earlier...I apologise for having missed it; some things get lost in the blizzard sometimes.
I've never heard of any form of AI whose inventor didn't chronically overstate its' abilities. I haven't looked at Numenta, but $10 says it's a more generalised form of something like this.
That's not to say that such things aren't cool, if only from the point of view of difficulty involved in coding even basic implementations of such...but I wouldn't hold high expectations of it actually being able to do much. They never can. An author will rave about what he's supposedly achieved, you download it, run it, and it basically sits there looking at you.
The only place I've ever seen AI that I've been able to get excited about is games, and the only three games where that was really the case were Half Life, Black and White, Quake 3 to a lesser extent, and (if you put a lot of work into it) the Sims 2. Of those three, Black and White is the only game I've seen which had something that came close to genuinely emergent AI. The Sims doesn't; on the surface it looks awesome, but dig down and all you really find are a lot of seperate implementations of rote fuzzy logic interacting with each other. That's not to say that that isn't impressive programming either; fuzzy can get fiendishly complex if you're trying to do a lot with it.
My point is that all of these are smoke and mirrors, or what's also referred to as weak AI. The Black and White creature AI is, as I've said, the only thing which comes vaguely close to looking like it could be genuinely adaptive in a multipurpose way, and yet I'm guessing that would probably turn out to be an illusion if I could see behind the curtain as well. AFAIK, Strong AI doesn't exist, and I'm extremely skeptical that it ever will outside of some kind of at least partially biological scenario.
Regardless... we're talking (in the case of militant Islamists) about people who actually come right out and SAY that they think acquiring serious WMD's is a valid and morally obligated pursuit.
They can say that as much as they want, for all the good it will do them. Nuclear weaponry in particular isn't something you can throw together in a back shed. Not only do you need very specific components, you need equally specific processing facilities, which AFAIK anywayz only exist in a handful of places on the planet. Granted, I seem to remember that there were some concerns about what happened to part of the old USSR's nuclear arsenal in the confusion after that regime collapsed, but aside from those nukes turning up on the black market, there really aren't *ANY* ways that aspiring terrorists can obtain or produce nuclear weapons. About the worst things you can make in a garden shed are thermite, or a crude analog of C4, which granted, are perfectly capable of causing murder and mayhem if you can get hold of enough of them...but they're still an order of magnitude away from nuclear weapons.
Ditto for biological weapons...you need a lab.
Pretty much all of the Doomsday "dirty bomb" scenarios that the American government has come up with are pure emotive BS designed to generate public support for wars which the government itself is interested in fighting for very different reasons. The stuff about Sadaam having WMDs was likewise utter garbage. It simply isn't logistically possible for either non-governmental groups from Middle Eastern countries, or even the governments themselves in most cases, to either obtain or produce the materials needed. Apart from anything else, they can't afford it.
If you want to be afraid of something, then by all means be afraid of attacks utilising conventional explosives, since as I said earlier, those *can* be (and are) produced relatively cheaply and easily. That's why you keep seeing reports of Palestinians (among others) strapped with potassium nitrate based explosives, similar to C4. That or something similar also what would have been used for the Madrid train bombing, I'm assuming. You can get that stuff out of the ground, or literally from bird crap. You don't however see reports of Palestinians or Iraqi insurgents utilising a uranium-fortified charge...because they don't have that material.
Are you alive? Many thousands of people are not.
I notice there's one word you keep using, here. Thousands. Last I looked, the population of the planet was around 6 billion and climbing. My mathematics is hit or miss, but it sounds to me like you're saying that laws that affect at least a major chunk of those 6 billion people should be made on the basis of actions that kill less than 1% of them.
To me, that isn't terribly logical. On that basis, to me it'd make sense that if a War on Terror was going to be valid, surely a War on Ebola would be even moreso, since I'm guessing the number of people it's killed would be higher.
(Note:- This is intended to be my own version of the Superuser myth. As the saying goes, any resemblance to real individuals living or dead is purely coincidental)
...he's the anarchic, uber-Marxist, IRC-dwelling 14 year old. (Usually from either Germany, Scandinavia, or the Baltic states, but American, Canadian, and New Zealander variants of the species are known to exist)
;)
He knows C++ and 16 bit assembler back to front, as well as how to write shellcode in pure numerics, and spends most of his time with The Matrix playing in the background on repeat (sometimes in ascii mode through xine) while coding the latest Windows virus/worm/rootkit semi-collaboratively with his fellow sociopaths, on a private IRC server, using either the BitchX or EPIC CLI clients, or in raw mode via telnet. He'll have read most of the RFCs describing the core net application protocols, and learned their structure largely from there. He will also be intimately acquainted with all editions of PHRACK, 2600, and the Cult of the Dead Cow's material. The more socially capable of the breed may have been to DefCon one year.
When he isn't coding malware or terrorising his classmates at school with his chronic mental instability, Neo wannabeism, trenchcoat, and gun fetish, (along with a general air of "stay the fuck away from me or else") he's playing either Doom, the original Quake, or Unreal Tournament (original or 2k4) multiplayer, possibly writing mods for the latter, or training with various real-world deadly weapons (shotguns, handguns, machetes) offline. He knows about the OpenGL mods for Doom, but doesn't use them because he thinks they weaken the gameplay. A hard core atheist, Keanu Reeves, Karl Marx, and Linus Torvalds are the closest he has to gods.
Usually having an IQ of above 150, ideologically he will also be very well versed in Marxist and Leninist philosophy, as well as having a knowledge of the construction of amateur explosives and the tactics of geurilla warfare. Unlikely to gain conventional employment later in life, if he does not enter the penal system, (usually for computer related offenses, but occasionally for minor acts of terrorism or gun-related crime) he will typically be employed by the intelligence community. (But on a sub-contract basis only; governments tend to feel a need to keep their involvement with this type completely deniable)
Either custom, Debian, or Slackware Linux is his operating system of choice, with either Enlightenment or Blackbox as window manager and vi as editor, although for the truly hard core, window managers are usually only installed to enable easy access to multiple terminal windows. He'll have back doors installed in a large number of machines connected to the residential DSL nets of multiple ISPs, and will actively compete with others of his kind for access to and use of these machines. He is able to command grids of thousands of such machines for either network compiling or large scale network denial of service attacks, and can do so quickly.
Although this type do not exist in sufficiently large numbers to pose a truly grave threat to the rest of the world, (they're well below 5% of the global population) his danger is his incapacity for empathy, his subversive politics, and his unpredictability. He is to the Internet as a shark is to the ocean; the net is his natural environment, and he is always waiting, lurking, somewhere in the shadows...
Damn kid. They're all alike.
This probably won't get read or responded to now, but anywayz...
Want to know why I seriously first started playing San Andreas? Anthropological curiousity.
As someone living in Australia, I knew nothing about African-American gang culture whatsoever. My girlfriend's teenaged daughter, when she lived with us, listened to a lot of rap music. I heard some of it, but never really understood the context behind the lyrics at all. Hearing about San Andreas got me interested in learning about it in the same way that I ended up reading about the Amish after hearing the song Amish Paradise, or reading about the Ojibwa after watching Commander Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager. (I'd read some Voyager fanfic where Chakotay was depicted as an Ojibwa shaman, or fairly close in terms of their spiritual beliefs) I like learning about different cultures.
From what I read, the depiction of the hood in San Andreas was very thoroughly researched by Rockstar as well; they apparently got a lot of rap musicians and other people who were/had been part of that culture. I think one the main reasons why it's interesting is because it actually makes you think a lot about different systems of morality; what some other people might think of as degraded or antisocial (in terms of prostitution, hard drug use, violence etc) would presumably have been seen by people living within that environment perhaps as simply being elements of their everyday lives.
So if you look at it from that point of view, (or in terms of another example, where you're playing a game set a few thousand years ago) the violence is only excessive by our own contemporary cultural standards. By the standards of the culture the game is intending to simulate/represent, the violence is actually one of the main parts; if you took that out, in many cases what the culture itself was based on would be lost, or at least fundamentally altered...it wouldn't be authentic.
Hence, violence in games doesn't have to encourage violence in real life...it can allow us to look at other cultures or time periods, and remind us that in those other scenarios, violence often led to extremely negative consequences...and so rather than encourage it now, it can actually help us to see why reducing it is a better idea. CJ taught me quite a lot.
Of course, anyone who really doesn't like GPL3 for some reason is free to fork gcc, emacs, etc. and maintain their own GPL2 versions.
This is pretty much always said with the rhetorical implication that a fork of gcc in particular would require an impossibly large degree of intellectual labour to maintain seperately.
"Of COURSE you're free to fork gcc under GPL 2! But you'll find, after a few months, that in practice the program is just too complex to be able to maintain your own fork effectively. So when you discover this and come crawling back, you'll have already learned that in effective reality it's GPL 3 or nothing without us needing to have said a word about it. So we get to have our cake and eat it too. We can give people the illusion that they're completely free to do their own thing, and we don't have to relinquish the appearance of holding the moral high ground, because they'll discover that they actually effectively *can't* do their own thing all by themselves. Cool, eh?"
You're condescending stanza is mildly annoying: everyone else has been "fed by Stallman", while you have had the hands-on experience.
;-)
;)
;)
I didn't mean that I have "hands-on" experience as such...I more meant that I have taken the time to try and do some background research when it at least looks as though a lot of people I've responded to on here primarily simply believed what they were told.
I'll spare you the attitude and will avoid saying that your miopic views on this are due to you being hand fed this crap by Theo or the BSD Historical Reconstruction Society.
*chuckle* I think you just did.
Maybe you've been told that the FSF is like Scientology or something.
It's not so much purely that I've been told that...it's also that I see the FSF's fanboys on this site behaving in a way that reinforces that perception on a fairly routine basis.
and at that very same time BSD was not under the BSD licence, nor was it free software.
This is interesting, and you've put forward a good argument for it. I stand corrected.
Some of the links you give me go out of they way to say that:
o RMS sucks
If you look at the links again, you'll notice that they don't simply say, "RMS sucks," but are actually a fair bit more specific. The material might not be complementary, but I've come across a number of people online who worship Stallman with a degree of single-mindedness that I don't really feel is prudent or appropriate for *any* human being...I thus actually consider it important to try and balance the scales where he is concerned wherever possible. It also troubles me that I feel that he actually encourages this unrealistically positive view of him, or at least does nothing to discourage it...and as the above links suggest, there is both a positive and a negative perspective.
The stated goal for the project was to create a free Unix because it was a good idea, not because of Microsoft or any other external party.
From what I've read, Stallman has written that Microsoft themselves are not the problem, but that corporatism itself is the disease, with Microsoft in particular merely being the largest and most prominent symptom. So yes, Microsoft specifically wasn't the cause.
I would love a world were the BSD licence was enough.
Then we apparently have commonality of opinion in that respect.
the answers by Theo distill the same kind of distorted world view that you have echoed in yout first answer, attacking the GPL using community as some weird MS haters and the BSD community as a haven of freedom and Unix love.
Again, this isn't purely because of what BSD people have said. I sadly never see a justification for the GPL given on Slashdot which does not include an appeal to fear either of Microsoft, or of the corporate world in general. It might well be true that as you say, not everyone associated with Linux is motivated purely by anti-corporate fear or hatred, but if that is true, I wish people didn't do such a convincing job at times of making it appear that way.
If you're wondering why I hate, your own particular screed here actually offers some good examples. I'll take it point by point.
;) It's also no secret that the only reason why the people running Ubuntu have made noise about not including binary drivers etc is purely in order to keep some of the Debian developers themselves happy. The only real effect it has is to make life temporarily more difficult for end users...but once they find the codecs/drivers, they simply then begin using them and cease caring about that debate entirely.
Indeed, it's also a sight for sore eyes that you've masterfully created a distribution above and beyond the stability and predictability that debian provides.
There hasn't been much that's stable or predictable about the release schedule lately, has there? Not only that, although yes, internal patching is performed abundantly, one of the other primary ways that Debian provides "stability" is simply to continue to use packages that are years old. It is also the sickening tone of superiority present in the above that is one of the main reasons why Debian's developers have always managed to antagonise me. That isn't jealousy over actual achievements; it's resentment for an attitude which I not only consider alienating and unnecessary, but which, due to my own experiences with the distribution, I also feel is largely unjustified.
Not only that, but you've kept it free and you promise to keep it free.
Bragging about something which only Debian people themselves care about hardly counts, does it?
Newsflash:- Caring in any way whatsoever about the FSF's definition of freedom is due purely to a combination of a) mind control induced emotionalism, and b) neurological disability. It isn't based on anything remotely close to legitimate reason, and thus, feeling superior because you yourself happen to fall into this category is likewise delusional.
If only other groups could so finely establish their principles and stick by them.
Yeah, that kind of BS beaurecracy is really something other distros need, isn't it? As I said earlier, it did wonders for Etch's release schedule. Of course, never mind that other distributions *do* exist that have social contracts/mission statements etc, and that they've generally done those distros about as much good as they've done Debian itself...which is to say, roughly zilch. Having a catalogue of idealism does absolutely nothing to reduce internal conflict or produce code faster, and if anything, the Etch debacle has also proven how grossly inefficient a system which tries to be democratic is when compared to a dictatorial model...because nothing ever gets concretely decided, one way or the other. You might not like what I'm saying, here...but it actually happened.
You can't imagine that people would contribute back to a community.
This is yet another example of exactly the kind of moronic insularity of opinion that I'm objecting to here. Do you honestly believe that Debian is the only distro in existence where reciprocal collaboration occurs? But of course...Debian is the only non-profit distro that exists, right? Forget Slackware. Forget Gentoo. Forget any of the BSDs. As one other similar moron commenting on this article said, they're not "serious" like Debian.
You're so chronically deluded that I actually have no idea why I'm bothering to try and respond to you at all...it's not like I believe that any of what I'm saying is actually going to get through. Also, not that you're going to believe this anywayz, but my overall point was that I don't hate Debian because it's cool...I hate it because I feel I have valid reason.
It is not. Many of Ubuntu's changes involve installing non-free software by default. Debian will never do this. You may feel that this will consign the distribution to obscurity until the end of time; go right ahead, it won't change anything, because Debian is about freedom (and technical superiority) and not market share.
...
For those of us who find the Debian attitude annoying, it's actually a good thing that you're so uncompromising...we can hope that that, combined with the terrible release schedule will eventually render the distribution entirely extinct.
Maybe they should just install XPDE by default? Or just give up and tell people to install Windows in the first place?
The games you mention are non-free. As I said above, if you want them installed by default then you are using the wrong distro. Try Ubuntu instead.
Yep, great idea. Encourage people to move to Windows, Ubuntu, anything but Debian itself...Let's hasten the inevitable as much as we can...that way, we'll no longer have to listen to the smug superiority and brain dead insistence on holding to a failed philosophy. I'm looking forward to it.
The things you are ranting about are simply not important enough to justify the level of fear and paranoia you are exhibiting.
;)
Granted, I am exhibiting fear and paranoia, but I see a lot of that on here from the pro-GPL side of the fence, as well. I'm curious...is it justified when they exhibit it?
Argue with real posts or fuck off, kid. Your playground psychology won't cut it here.
;)
Au contraire. Playground psychology is more or less the only thing that ever gets used around here. However, I think what you mean is that said psychology is usually the verbal equivalent to the playground tactic of a punch to the face.
Looks like I've struck a nerve, here. Interesting...if what I'm saying is, "bullshit," then why bother getting so upset about it?
;)
Oh, so after you insult every developer who doesn't use the BSD license (which as I noted is a pretty pointless license), now you want to backtrack and take the high road to impartiality. As you say, "interesting."
I notice you didn't answer the question.
The BSD developer should contact bcw, say he was sorry for any misunderstanding and the ranting De Radt slugged at them, and ask what they think would be possible in BSD licensing. I am not a legal expert but it would seem that even if there are parts they just don't want to divulge, it would still be legally acceptable to completely rewrite those sections of code but based on the understanding of the hardware provided by bcw, correct?
I agree, and I believe that would have been a very just and discerning solution to the conflict.
Certainly I have no interest in destroying BSD.
I apologise for concluding that that was the sentiment you were expressing, if it was not. There have been a few individuals in this article's thread that have openly called for the banning of the BSDs.
At any rate you can see I certainly would not have to ask these questions if it was obvious where the line is drawn. Maybe there is a faq somewhere. Unless this perception is addressed, it seems BSD may have inferior hardware support
The point which issues like this illustrate is how destructive the GPL can be. Code which wasn't previously under the GPL, once going under the GPL, is there for good. GPL advocates say that that's a good thing...because the only thing they care about is corporate entities not being able to use it. My own long term concern however is that we end up with an ever increasing mountain of code under a single license, which in turn is under the jurisdiction of a single institution, the FSF. Monocultures can exist in a lot of different forms; they don't have to be purely economic. The one universal element among monocultures though is that they're unhealthy. Any scenario where something of vital importance is under the control of a single institution, sooner or later, is going to cause problems.
There are also non-technical people who consider the advent of GPL uber alles as a sign of "the open source concept maturing," however, I feel that such people have been trained to equate monoculture with maturity and modernity, primarily by how desktop computer history has been shaped up until this point. Diversity tends to be seen by such people as a weakness rather than a strength.
However you appear to believe the BSD license is the only ethical open source license. Am I correct?
No, I actually don't...I must have given you the wrong impression. I thank you however for seeking clarification of that rather than merely assuming that I felt that way.
There are a very large number of different open source licenses in existence, many of which serve a variety of different purposes, for different situations. GPL advocates have tried to introduce the categorisation of "permissive and non-permissive" licenses into people's minds, for the purposes of collapsing said multitude of existing licenses down into two categories, which in turn is closer to *their* desired endgame (in many, but not all cases) of the GPL being the only FOSS license remaining in existence.
I will openly admit that I *do* believe that the BSD license (and a few others that are similar, such as the MIT/X license) are the closest in practice to the gift culture written about by Eric Raymond, because unlike the GPL, they do not attempt to dictate distribution or end use, nor do they seek to discriminate against any groups for any reason. However, there are others such as the MPL and the AT&T license which, while mainly similar to the above, contain a few specific conditions which the entities in question considered it appropriate to add, as is their right. Before any GPL zealots who may be reading predictably pounce on this, let me remind them that such conditions did not violate the OSD; said conditions usually concerned patent indemnity, from memory.
I will also admit that the definition of an open source license that I believe in does not include discrimination against groups. (such as Microsoft and Novell, as one example) Version 3 of the GPL is l
I guess this is enough to disregard the fact that it was GNU/Linux - *not BSD* - that was the first truely free Unix like OS.
;-)
;)
Apparently Bill Joy started putting BSD together in early 1977. The FSF didn't exist until October 1985. From what I've read, the UNIX sources were distributed completely without restriction even earlier than 1977, since due to the antitrust case against them, AT&T weren't allowed to begin selling an operating system. The only charge that was being put on the source was the price of the mag tape, and I also don't know of any license restrictions either. Given the degree of university collaboration that existed early on, I can only assume that there weren't any. AT&T only became restrictive with the source themselves when they were released from the ban on selling it.
AFAIK, the main reason why UNIX wasn't used much outside of universities very early on was because of it originally being written for the PDP-8 and 11, which were very different architectures to the 80386. The first port that I know of to the 80386 that took place that I know of was the one done by the Jolitzes, which ended up becoming (more or less, anywayz) what we now know as FreeBSD.
It sounds like you've got the version of history that Stallman wants people to have; i.e., the one that makes him look like the sole father of the entire practice of releasing source code in general. From what I've been able to figure out anywayz, the truth is a bit different. UNIX was developed very collaboratively from its' inception, and as you yourself probably know, without source, that can't really happen.
Probably enough to disregard the fact that the "evil" FSF was already making available a shitload of software when Bill Gates was still dabbling in GWBASIC
The ANSI standard for Minimal BASIC is dated 1978, the same year Microsoft was founded. According to Wikipedia, the FSF was founded in October 1985...Looks like you're off by a couple of years. According to that, BASIC existed *before* the FSF. Also...I don't know what your own definition of "free" is, but Stallman himself was selling copies of Emacs during the 80s.
Rewriting history must be a nice hobby.
Reading history is a great hobby, sure...it allows me to know when it's been rewritten by someone else.
You might dislike it, you might have another, but *ours* has been there well before BSD did *anything*.
Unfortunately that simply is not true...it's what you've been told. Don't take my word for it though...Go and do some research of your own. Some links that might help:-
Some accounts of early UNIX history from the UNIX Heritage Society. There's some early source code there as well.
20 Years of Berkeley UNIX.
Some info about where Stallman originally got at least some of his ideas.
The Art of UNIX Programming, which has a fair amount of historical info as well.
A rather non-canon biographical portrait of Stallman.
Another second opinion on Stallman, more or less in general.
Maybe if you take the time to go through this material, you might start to realise what my beef is. I don't like bullies, and I don't like frauds...Stallman is both, which from reading the above, you will learn. I strongly urge anyone else here who views me as merely a baseless troll to go to the above links and read that material as well. If I am a troll, the point of it is very simple:- This Emperor has no clothes.