fork off a myriad of various Free Software applications
The FSF overestimates its' current importance, as do you. As far as creating a new toolchain goes, the only truly major obstacle is a C compiler...and not only do alternatives to gcc exist, but it would be far easier to write a toolchain incorporating said alternatives from scratch than it would be to port the existing toolchain to use the alternatives. As far as OSS alternatives go, there is TenDRA, ten15, and Open Watcom. ICC is a closed alternative.
A C library isn't as difficult as most people think. At minimum, you need the standard C headers and an assembler interface to whichever kernel you're using. Aside from the facilities for library caching and so on, most of the extra material Glibc has is basically non-standard fluff, which is proven by said fluff's absence in some of the other entirely workable libc implementations in existence.
Virtually all of the core text utilities have either BSD equivalents, or have since had their source opened and been adopted by such projects as this. I'll also assume for the sake of argument that you're unaware that such GNU extensions as the grep -o switch are actually deviations from the Single UNIX Specification. Microsoft aren't the only people to have ever played the embrace and extend game. I keep wondering how many times the FSF are going to have to do the wrong thing before people finally wake up and realise that they're just as big a problem as Microsoft have ever been.
It is more than past time for a FOSS UNIX system to be created which is entirely independent of the GNU toolchain, if for no other reason than so that we no longer have to endure this crap.
To the Debian people, the FSF, and everyone else who *does* advocate Stallman, I make this request:- Go and work on your own system, and let the rest of the planet either make a fork or a re-implementation. That way, you can have whatever you want, and the rest of us won't have to put up with you.
Richard Stallman's bogus misdefinition of the word freedom is not something that all of us want. You might, and if you do, that's fine...but please get rid of the attitude that you're unwilling to allow the rest of us the right to exist. We've got just as much right to be here as you do.
Who has got an interest in making Linux work for grandma? No one.
No business model... no mass market product.
Yep...and we're not going to see that until either the FSF dies and/or someone can persuade the kernel people to adopt the BSD (or an equivalent) license.
The GPL is fine for IBM, Red Hat etc selling stuff to corporate buyers...but for the sort of business model that someone selling to residential users is going to want, it just doesn't cut it.
I don't care what anyone says...the GPL *was* specifically designed to be anticapitalist.
Please, just stop saving the world by converting people to linux. This isn't christianity. Linus didn't say "GOTO the people of all nations and make them my disciples".
No, Linus wasn't responsible for the religious aspect. That was Stallman's idea.
Instead make sure they get the fact that Linux is free (as in speech) and being built upon a community (but not just a community of programmers).
There are those of us who think Linux's "community" is probably it's single least appealing characteristic.
If I was going to advocate Linux to anyone, I'd talk solely about its' technical merits and the degree of flexibility/choice in user interface...and I'd also tell the person I was speaking to not to associate with anyone else who uses the operating system unless they were paying them for their time.
I think it was Emerson who wrote that, "I can not hear what you say for what you are shouts too loudly in my ears."
I'm willing to accept that that statement applies to me in this case...but it applies equally to both of us.
I *am* one of the people who believes that both the FSF and its' worldview are damaging Linux. You might answer (as someone else answered me) that Linux would not exist without the FSF. In specific terms, that is not true. The kernel was initially developed by Linus outside of the FSF, and he initially actually wrote his own license before adopting the GPL. A kernel was the one piece of software which Stallman and the FSF were never able to develop on their own.
I should walk away from this...I'm also willing to concede that. The reason why I'm finding it hard to is because I feel that mainstream computer using society has both a desire and a genuine need for Linux, and I also feel that the operating system could be a lot more than it is currently if the FSF and the attendant army of zealots would get out of the way. They're not helping...they're creating conflict and division and driving people away. This isn't just someone else's argument, either...I've been seeing it happen.
You might admire Stallman. Personally, he is a source of enormous unhappiness and emotional pain.
First off, nice tone... you really must feel threatened to not argue the points,
What points? You didn't make any. That was *my* point.
Now, they said that Linux was not ready for the enteprise because it did not do things(mostly outlook) the same way as they were currently doing it in windows.
Then I'll grant you that he hasn't done his homework. There are any number of ways to do pretty much everything that Outlook does under Linux. Mail programs, calendaring, groupware, and organisation software are all over the place. Of course, that's assuming that you still consider it legally safe to use Linux at all. Given the recent bombshell on here about the FSF with Novell, I'd be surprised if just about anybody who uses Linux in the enterprise and reads/. would still feel confident doing so.
In fact, I am not aware of anything free which can replace GCC.
There's TenDRA. Lack of alternatives however isn't so much an issue. The kernel is highly dependent on the particular implementation/dialect of C which GCC supports...there is apparently quite a lot of non-standard stuff which GCC supports which the kernel uses...hence making the two rather inextricably tied together.
Linus smoked from the GNU/crack pipe a long time ago...the kernel isn't getting extricated from the GNU toolchain now, or at least not without massive work...and that's exactly the way Stallman wants it. The various other GNU tools often contain non-standard extensions which other versions of the same programs don't have...and Stallman has introduced those for exactly the same reason as Microsoft uses such tactics...to foster dependency on his unique/non-standard versions.
If the FSF seriously goes rogue, the kernel will very likely go down with it.
Linus may be a "pragmatist" in some ways, but he still picked the GPL. And it's not like he didn't know of alternatives--he came from the Minix world, and knew about BSD.
Linus was originally opposed to the idea of anybody using the kernel commercially...it said that in his initial license, before he moved to the GPL. My guess is that he only became receptive to the idea of the kernel being used commercially when he started to become rich from it himself. However he initially probably thought that the GPL was sufficiently anti-commercialistic that it was close to what he had originally intended...and he's always claimed to be fond of the GPL's enforced reciprocity, as well.
People have accused me of being an uncritical fanboy where Linus is concerned...I'm not. I don't have a problem with the concept of reciprocity, however I don't believe that such should have the weight of the law behind it. I will admit that I also consider Linus highly irresponsible and misguided for ever having had anything to do with Stallman. If Linus was as great a man as a lot of people think, he should have had the foresight to realise that partnering with Stallman was a very bad decision, and would come back to haunt him.
This is why I wonder why BSD wasn't pushed. It does not have any license worries, and could work just as well on a desktop.
The BSD license is not advocated for two main reasons:-
a) Even among the pragmatists, Stallman has successfully influenced their thinking (and thoroughly slandered the BSD license) to such an extent that using it is considered literally unthinkable.
b) The reason why the corporate world favours the GPL is because the BSD license still allows for a unique selling position. The people running at least some corporations have now become so mean spirited in thier thinking that they would actually prefer to forego any competitive advantage themselves, if doing so means that nobody else can have one either.
You ask "who wants to risk going with a vendor who's at risk of being tied up by a bunch of lawyers" as if the GPL is just some frivolous bit of txt that prepends Linux source code. Guess what, bucko, it's not. It's the framework around which Linux branched and grew.
There's pure, subjective emotion, here. Get rid of that red haze in front of your eyes and you might be good for something vaguely approaching a rational argument.
The single main thing that upsets me about zealots like yourself is how long it's taking you to become extinct.
OK, his arguments hold no water. After all, I can make the reverse statement truthfully. So what? Here is his statement modified for my situation.
No...you're a zealot who is simply mirroring because you think it makes you look intelligent. It doesn't. People ARE using Windows in business environments. I notice that if you're aware of the specific tasks that he wanted to try and perform with Linux, you haven't mentioned them.
If Novell loses the ability to distribute Linux because they've broken the terms of the GPL by including software with incompatible licensing - then so be it.
You're assuming that they are infringing the GPL. That hasn't been proven. That isn't really all that important anyway.
The real reason why the FSF want to do this is purely because Novell made a partnership with Microsoft, which the FSF doesn't like. I haven't seen any indication myself that Novell are any closer to violating the GPL now than they were before they made the agreement with MS; the issue that some people are having I think comes almost entirely from the Mafia-like noises Steve Ballmer has been making about Linux recently. The only reason why the FSF will want to allege that Novell *are* violating the GPL is because they need that in order to have grounds to ban (or try to ban, more specifically) Novell from distributing Linux.
There is one fact of life that the Free Software Foundation is eventually going to have to accept...and that is that very few people among the non-autistic human population cares about what they think, and neither should they have to. The sole reason why they're really persuing this is because they want to be seen as an authority. The FSF want to force people to see them as important...because they well know that 99.9% of the population aren't willingly going to otherwise.
I'm worried that the outcome of this might be to goad the FSF into inserting all sorts of new self-destructive micro-management clauses into the GPL3
They were going to do that anywayz, regardless of Novell/Microsoft. This is Stallman's endgame...I've seen it coming for a while, and I'm assuming I'm not alone.
a) Assemble as large a stockpile as possible of critical code/IP.
b) Put said code/IP under a license you/your people are the sole authors of.
c) Use the genuinely abusive/illegal actions of corporate entities to demonise them and get people on your side. Us vs them, polarised thinking serves a lot of different purposes for the next step as well.
d) Create a cult of followers who are willing to do more or less anything for you, and invent a suitably dangerous-seeming threat (DRM) that you also make it appear that you are their only chance of salvation from. This keeps people in a constant state of terror and hence completely uncritical, fanatical loyalty. They completely remove any opposition you might otherwise experience, while your own hands are able to remain spotless. Stallman believes very strongly in the power of having at least the perception of moral superiority. People on Slashdot and elsewhere will belittle or shout down those who disagree with the FSF's perspective/goals, and in the case of people like Laura Didio, the death threats and other harassment can come from the expendable rank and file within the movement. Thus, obstacles are removed, while the ordinary members take the fall and the leadership remains entirely blameless. Cult tactics 101. The non-software related activism that the FSF has switched to in the last year or two can safely be written off as a dual recruitment and public relations ploy. Make the group look good, make it mainstream credible, (or try to) and as L. Ron Hubbard said, get lots and lots of bodies in the shop. It is also well documented for cults to try and change what has customarily been seen as their traditional nature when they begin to lose credibility. Scientology became a religion when it initially was internationally banned, Amway became Alticor/Quixtar when its' reputation became too poor to continue operating, and the FSF is switching to realworld activism because most of its' development role has been adopted by Red Hat, and without its' software development role, it is entirely redundant, and not particularly well liked outside the cultic base. One of the other things I read people within the FSF saying recently is that they were trying to move the focus off Stallman as an individual, and the American chapter of the FSF...the child organisation of the FSFE is gaining prominence. This is because they know Stallman is detrimental to the FSF gaining mainstream credibility, and it is also because the current climate of anti-Americanism internationally means that they know they cannot afford to have an American as the public face of the organisation. Once again, a group faced with oblivion is trying to re-invent itself, to make itself appealing. I've seen the pattern over and over again.
e) Once the stockpile of critical code/IP becomes large enough, gradually alter the license it is under such that you are able to bar access to it from anyone you don't like. You then, as far as computing infrastructure is concerned, and as far as your followers are concerned, are in a position to basically dictate whatever you want, with the added bonus that the earlier assembly of the software stockpile makes you look like a saint to the people who've been sucked in by your official mythology.
When what I've been saying about the FSF for years now is vindicated with them taking steps like this, I'm very interested in hearing how you claim that you were correct in telling me that contrary to my assertion, Stallman is in fact NOT a Stalinist megalomaniac.
If the FSF go ahead with this, and if it sticks, that will end for certain anything I for one have to do with Linux permanently. I also hope to God that Linus is watching this, and that this prompts him to finally seek a way to cut all ties with the FSF once and for all.
Everything that has been said...the account of Ulrich Drepper, the interview with Bradley Kuhn here...it has now been vindicated. The Free Software Foundation is finally laid bare as the genuinely evil, repressive organisation that I have long known it to be.
Richard Stallman, some of us know who and what you really are. Free as in Do As I Say.
Therefore, as such, unlike the FSF, I wouldn't flat out try to tell anyone not to buy Vista.
However, I will simply observe that if you *do* buy and use Vista, you'll not only be giving yourself the shaft, but you'll also be providing Microsoft assistance in persuing their goal of screwing everyone else on the planet who uses a computer.
Pointing out the consequences of somebody exercising their free will to make a given choice is not the same as trying to coerce them not to make said choice. You've got every right to make the choice...just realise that in this case it isn't going to be one that helps you, or anybody else.
Irrespective of what anyone else is doing, I'm not buying it myself. I know that much.
No offense to Daniel Robbins or any of the other Gentoo people, but to me personally, downstream water doesn't taste so good.;-)
Daniel's original premise seems to have been (which I agree with) that there are some elements of FreeBSD which are highly desirable, which at the time, Linux didn't have. Ports, portaudit, portupgrade...they're all good things. Ubuntu has an equivalent of portaudit and portupgrade combined, and of course the Red Hat autoupdate was probably the first on Linux, but the difference between those and the two commands I mentioned is that the Ubuntu and Red Hat services both focus on binaries...portupgrade anywayz focuses on source, which is something that at least some of us want.
I don't advocate using source compilation all the time, or if I do, at least not during the day or when you're active...set something up to do it while you're asleep or while the system isn't being used...that way it won't bother you. To be honest also, the main reason why I advocate compiling from source is simply for the reason that if you stop doing a certain thing for long enough, the ability to do said thing when you *do* want to has a tendency to disappear. If you maintain the attitude of compiling from source when it doesn't matter, there'll still be enough people doing it that the option to do so will still be there when it *does*.
There are a lot of people out there who don't want to do anything that even vaguely resembles self-responsibility or proactivity, at least where using a computer is concerned. That's fine, but said people need to realise that the fascist nature of such things as Vista is merely the ultimate logical extension of them wanting multinational corporations to act as their wetnurse. It's been an eternal truth in politics and other areas as well as IT that freedom and proactivity genuinely go hand in hand...If you don't want one, you're not going to get the other.
As the constitution unambiguously says, rights are not granted by governments but exist inherently, and the ninth amendment quite specifically says that the Bill of Rights should not be read as an exhaustive list of such rights.
Yes, and such a statement (especially one so vague) is worth roughly a millilitre of urine to any government currently holding office.
There's optimism, and then there's realism.;-) I hope you enjoy the rose coloured glasses...personally I prefer being alive.
Depending on your hardware, try FreeBSD. VLC works a treat via ports, and installs a heap of codecs as well. Granted, the Open Sound System perhaps isn't quite as nice as ALSA, but it offers perfectly good stereo, and there are actually a number of sound filters available for XMMS at least which do various different things, so if you want something that boosts volume or cleans sound up in some way, you can probably get that from ports too.
I wouldn't bother with Samba, personally...use FTP. You can put an ftpd on the Windows box, make the directories you want accessible, and then do a batch wget from the Linux/FreeBSD box to transfer whatever files you need over. If you need to send files the other way, there are any number of GUI ftp clients for Linux or FreeBSD available; either search here for Linux or here for FreeBSD.
Until Linux frees itself from the horrible terminal/command line dependencies, eliminates text files for configuration (how the heck is the average joe supposed to know which one of hundreds of config files he needs to edit just to connect a network drive??)
What do you advocate as a replacement? The Registry?;) The Registry uses text in places...the DWORD is actually an assembler variable...but it also uses a lot of non-text and is completely non-transparent in places. There are good reasons why UNIX (and hence Linux) uses text config files...you can read about those here if you want.
Your problem wasn't text config files...it was knowing which transfer protocol to use for what you want.
Also realise that Microsoft created the interoperability problems themselves...it's very convenient...first they make something completely closed and proprietary, and then they can use their obviously greater level of familiarity with their own system to make it marginally more workable with Linux.
Unfortunately, things like DRM which people talk about so much on here go hand in glove with people wanting Windows to do everything for them. If you willingly surrender self-responsibility to Microsoft, they're going to use that power to make some bad decisions...it's human nature. You can't reasonably expect them to give you something which works without you investing any effort at all on the one hand, and not have them include things with it which are actively harmful to you on the other. I realise that is going to sound self-righteous, condescending, and offensive...but unfortunately, it's also true.
If you want a system which does what you want, and only what you want, you're going to have to accept some responsibility, and do some work...that isn't Linux's fault. It's simply that you've got used to having most things done for you on the one hand, but also being abused on the other.
I'd say if she were serving the wants of the people, that's significantly better than many, many politicians that server the wants of themselves. It's a strange idea, I know, but you do want your policymakers to listen to the will of the people and support it, and you'd like them to do that even when it is at odds with their own personal belief, if a sufficient majority of the nation wishes a particular change.
Has anyone had "the talk" with you about Santa Claus yet?
More seriously, politicians only give a damn about what anyone else thinks while they're not in power and they're still trying to get in. Once they do get in, as another reply to my OP said, that changes very rapidly...they start doing exactly what they want, and to hell with the electorate.
Hillary and people like her are the proverbial wolves in sheep's clothing. She cares about one thing and one thing only: Power. When she gets it, you'll find out exactly how much she cares about the people.
...is not to be anti what you don't want, but pro what you do.
If you don't want people to adopt Vista, get involved with the Beryl or Compiz projects as one example, in order to give people a free alternative to Aero, which is one of Vista's main selling points.
Another fantastic thing which we could integrate into existing Linux distros is OpenBFS. We could then tell people that Microsoft pulled WinFS because they weren't able to implement it after years of trying, whereas Linux has a db filesystem right now.
If you don't want people to use Vista, simply telling them not to isn't going to work...you need to give them some alternative. If they see that Linux can do everything that Vista can, as well as being free, they'll use it. Freedom in itself can't be sold as the main point, because people won't care if the software doesn't do what they need...but if it does, they'll see freedom as a major bonus.
In truth, the FSF did a lot more to effectively fight DRM back when they still gave a damn about the GNU project, IMHO. Nobody is going to win against DRM by fearmongering and making a lot of noise...we'll win against DRM by giving people a better tangible alternative that they can actually use to perform the tasks they need.
...that even among other such politicians, Hillary is one of the most blatant, shameless populists ever to have walked the Earth. Her perspectives, her very mind itself in its' entirety is completely for sale, for the purpose of gaining votes.
She might be making noises about the "right to privacy," right now, but please try and remember that when Jack Thompson and the other usual suspects were screeching and crying about violence in video games, she supported that, too. She tries to determine which way the wind is blowing, and when she suspects that she has, then jumps on what she feels is the dominant voter bandwagon at any given point in time. But she is not the archetypical Slashbot's friend...or really anyone else's, for that matter.
Should Novell donate the Unix I.P. rights to the FSF or the Linux community before it is too late?
Microsoft can have whatever UNIX IP they want; source of old systems, even the trademark itself if they want to put up the money for it. It won't do them any good.
For starters, the UNIX trademark is owned by the Open Group, and they only allow anyone to use it after the system which is trying to claim the right to use it has passed POSIX/Single UNIX Specification standards tests. Linus might well have read those standards and tried to make the kernel conformant with them, but as anyone remotely familiar with POSIX likely knows, that standard anyway wasn't referring to purely the kernel...it specifies which userland apps (grep and so forth) need to be present for a system to call itself a UNIX as well.
For another thing, AFAIK nobody associated with Linux has tried to pass the tests, or even take them...the reason being is because either way they're more trouble than they're worth. Passing them would be an extremely arduous process for one thing, and for another, the only likely reward would be to give Microsoft a superficially legally sound excuse for persuing a lawsuit if they acquired the old sources from Novell.
Given that Linux is not certified POSIX or Single UNIX Specification compliant in a formal sense, there is currently no way that Microsoft can honestly legally claim that Linux is a direct descendant of the UNIX operating system, and no distribution should want to become formally POSIX compliant, because if they do, that will change. This is also why, even if the Open Group were willing to sell the UNIX trademark to Microsoft, (which is highly doubtful) Microsoft acquiring it and trying to sue anyone associated with Linux for anything even remotely related to the UNIX trademark wouldn't work, because they're entirely seperate trademarks that have nothing to do with each other. They can argue about assumptions of what Linus' informal *intent* was for as long as they want; that still won't prove anything, and it certainly doesn't mean that ANY original UNIX code is present within contemporary Linux. If they then want to talk about refactoring, that's fine...but that then becomes a patent issue, and Microsoft don't own all of the patents covering technology Linux uses, even if they own some.
Slashdot Mirror
fork off a myriad of various Free Software applications
The FSF overestimates its' current importance, as do you. As far as creating a new toolchain goes, the only truly major obstacle is a C compiler...and not only do alternatives to gcc exist, but it would be far easier to write a toolchain incorporating said alternatives from scratch than it would be to port the existing toolchain to use the alternatives. As far as OSS alternatives go, there is TenDRA, ten15, and Open Watcom. ICC is a closed alternative.
A C library isn't as difficult as most people think. At minimum, you need the standard C headers and an assembler interface to whichever kernel you're using. Aside from the facilities for library caching and so on, most of the extra material Glibc has is basically non-standard fluff, which is proven by said fluff's absence in some of the other entirely workable libc implementations in existence.
Virtually all of the core text utilities have either BSD equivalents, or have since had their source opened and been adopted by such projects as this. I'll also assume for the sake of argument that you're unaware that such GNU extensions as the grep -o switch are actually deviations from the Single UNIX Specification. Microsoft aren't the only people to have ever played the embrace and extend game. I keep wondering how many times the FSF are going to have to do the wrong thing before people finally wake up and realise that they're just as big a problem as Microsoft have ever been.
It is more than past time for a FOSS UNIX system to be created which is entirely independent of the GNU toolchain, if for no other reason than so that we no longer have to endure this crap.
To the Debian people, the FSF, and everyone else who *does* advocate Stallman, I make this request:- Go and work on your own system, and let the rest of the planet either make a fork or a re-implementation. That way, you can have whatever you want, and the rest of us won't have to put up with you.
Richard Stallman's bogus misdefinition of the word freedom is not something that all of us want. You might, and if you do, that's fine...but please get rid of the attitude that you're unwilling to allow the rest of us the right to exist. We've got just as much right to be here as you do.
So does 90% more out than in mean it's overunity?
Who has got an interest in making Linux work for grandma? No one.
No business model... no mass market product.
Yep...and we're not going to see that until either the FSF dies and/or someone can persuade the kernel people to adopt the BSD (or an equivalent) license.
The GPL is fine for IBM, Red Hat etc selling stuff to corporate buyers...but for the sort of business model that someone selling to residential users is going to want, it just doesn't cut it.
I don't care what anyone says...the GPL *was* specifically designed to be anticapitalist.
Please, just stop saving the world by converting people to linux. This isn't christianity. Linus didn't say "GOTO the people of all nations and make them my disciples".
No, Linus wasn't responsible for the religious aspect. That was Stallman's idea.
Instead make sure they get the fact that Linux is free (as in speech) and being built upon a community (but not just a community of programmers).
There are those of us who think Linux's "community" is probably it's single least appealing characteristic.
If I was going to advocate Linux to anyone, I'd talk solely about its' technical merits and the degree of flexibility/choice in user interface...and I'd also tell the person I was speaking to not to associate with anyone else who uses the operating system unless they were paying them for their time.
I think it was Emerson who wrote that, "I can not hear what you say for what you are shouts too loudly in my ears."
I'm willing to accept that that statement applies to me in this case...but it applies equally to both of us.
I *am* one of the people who believes that both the FSF and its' worldview are damaging Linux. You might answer (as someone else answered me) that Linux would not exist without the FSF. In specific terms, that is not true. The kernel was initially developed by Linus outside of the FSF, and he initially actually wrote his own license before adopting the GPL. A kernel was the one piece of software which Stallman and the FSF were never able to develop on their own.
I should walk away from this...I'm also willing to concede that. The reason why I'm finding it hard to is because I feel that mainstream computer using society has both a desire and a genuine need for Linux, and I also feel that the operating system could be a lot more than it is currently if the FSF and the attendant army of zealots would get out of the way. They're not helping...they're creating conflict and division and driving people away. This isn't just someone else's argument, either...I've been seeing it happen.
You might admire Stallman. Personally, he is a source of enormous unhappiness and emotional pain.
First off, nice tone... you really must feel threatened to not argue the points,
/. would still feel confident doing so.
What points? You didn't make any. That was *my* point.
Now, they said that Linux was not ready for the enteprise because it did not do things(mostly outlook) the same way as they were currently doing it in windows.
Then I'll grant you that he hasn't done his homework. There are any number of ways to do pretty much everything that Outlook does under Linux. Mail programs, calendaring, groupware, and organisation software are all over the place. Of course, that's assuming that you still consider it legally safe to use Linux at all. Given the recent bombshell on here about the FSF with Novell, I'd be surprised if just about anybody who uses Linux in the enterprise and reads
I'm making arguments...sometimes fairly detailed ones. You're calling me names.
I don't think I really need to say anything else.
In fact, I am not aware of anything free which can replace GCC.
There's TenDRA. Lack of alternatives however isn't so much an issue. The kernel is highly dependent on the particular implementation/dialect of C which GCC supports...there is apparently quite a lot of non-standard stuff which GCC supports which the kernel uses...hence making the two rather inextricably tied together.
Linus smoked from the GNU/crack pipe a long time ago...the kernel isn't getting extricated from the GNU toolchain now, or at least not without massive work...and that's exactly the way Stallman wants it. The various other GNU tools often contain non-standard extensions which other versions of the same programs don't have...and Stallman has introduced those for exactly the same reason as Microsoft uses such tactics...to foster dependency on his unique/non-standard versions.
If the FSF seriously goes rogue, the kernel will very likely go down with it.
Linus may be a "pragmatist" in some ways, but he still picked the GPL. And it's not like he didn't know of alternatives--he came from the Minix world, and knew about BSD.
Linus was originally opposed to the idea of anybody using the kernel commercially...it said that in his initial license, before he moved to the GPL. My guess is that he only became receptive to the idea of the kernel being used commercially when he started to become rich from it himself. However he initially probably thought that the GPL was sufficiently anti-commercialistic that it was close to what he had originally intended...and he's always claimed to be fond of the GPL's enforced reciprocity, as well.
People have accused me of being an uncritical fanboy where Linus is concerned...I'm not. I don't have a problem with the concept of reciprocity, however I don't believe that such should have the weight of the law behind it. I will admit that I also consider Linus highly irresponsible and misguided for ever having had anything to do with Stallman. If Linus was as great a man as a lot of people think, he should have had the foresight to realise that partnering with Stallman was a very bad decision, and would come back to haunt him.
This is why I wonder why BSD wasn't pushed. It does not have any license worries, and could work just as well on a desktop.
The BSD license is not advocated for two main reasons:-
a) Even among the pragmatists, Stallman has successfully influenced their thinking (and thoroughly slandered the BSD license) to such an extent that using it is considered literally unthinkable.
b) The reason why the corporate world favours the GPL is because the BSD license still allows for a unique selling position. The people running at least some corporations have now become so mean spirited in thier thinking that they would actually prefer to forego any competitive advantage themselves, if doing so means that nobody else can have one either.
You ask "who wants to risk going with a vendor who's at risk of being tied up by a bunch of lawyers" as if the GPL is just some frivolous bit of txt that prepends Linux source code. Guess what, bucko, it's not. It's the framework around which Linux branched and grew.
There's pure, subjective emotion, here. Get rid of that red haze in front of your eyes and you might be good for something vaguely approaching a rational argument.
The single main thing that upsets me about zealots like yourself is how long it's taking you to become extinct.
The whole point of Free Software is freedom - enforced by the GPL.
There's a contradiction contained in that statement. See if you can figure out what it is.
Perhaps there may be trademark issues, but restricting someone from doing what they want with GPL software would make Stallman quite the hypocrite.
It wouldn't make him one...it'd simply reveal in less than the usually controvertible terms just how much of one he really is.
OK, his arguments hold no water. After all, I can make the reverse statement truthfully. So what? Here is his statement modified for my situation.
No...you're a zealot who is simply mirroring because you think it makes you look intelligent. It doesn't. People ARE using Windows in business environments. I notice that if you're aware of the specific tasks that he wanted to try and perform with Linux, you haven't mentioned them.
If Novell loses the ability to distribute Linux because they've broken the terms of the GPL by including software with incompatible licensing - then so be it.
You're assuming that they are infringing the GPL. That hasn't been proven. That isn't really all that important anyway.
The real reason why the FSF want to do this is purely because Novell made a partnership with Microsoft, which the FSF doesn't like. I haven't seen any indication myself that Novell are any closer to violating the GPL now than they were before they made the agreement with MS; the issue that some people are having I think comes almost entirely from the Mafia-like noises Steve Ballmer has been making about Linux recently. The only reason why the FSF will want to allege that Novell *are* violating the GPL is because they need that in order to have grounds to ban (or try to ban, more specifically) Novell from distributing Linux.
There is one fact of life that the Free Software Foundation is eventually going to have to accept...and that is that very few people among the non-autistic human population cares about what they think, and neither should they have to. The sole reason why they're really persuing this is because they want to be seen as an authority. The FSF want to force people to see them as important...because they well know that 99.9% of the population aren't willingly going to otherwise.
I'm worried that the outcome of this might be to goad the FSF into inserting all sorts of new self-destructive micro-management clauses into the GPL3
They were going to do that anywayz, regardless of Novell/Microsoft. This is Stallman's endgame...I've seen it coming for a while, and I'm assuming I'm not alone.
a) Assemble as large a stockpile as possible of critical code/IP.
b) Put said code/IP under a license you/your people are the sole authors of.
c) Use the genuinely abusive/illegal actions of corporate entities to demonise them and get people on your side. Us vs them, polarised thinking serves a lot of different purposes for the next step as well.
d) Create a cult of followers who are willing to do more or less anything for you, and invent a suitably dangerous-seeming threat (DRM) that you also make it appear that you are their only chance of salvation from. This keeps people in a constant state of terror and hence completely uncritical, fanatical loyalty. They completely remove any opposition you might otherwise experience, while your own hands are able to remain spotless. Stallman believes very strongly in the power of having at least the perception of moral superiority. People on Slashdot and elsewhere will belittle or shout down those who disagree with the FSF's perspective/goals, and in the case of people like Laura Didio, the death threats and other harassment can come from the expendable rank and file within the movement. Thus, obstacles are removed, while the ordinary members take the fall and the leadership remains entirely blameless. Cult tactics 101. The non-software related activism that the FSF has switched to in the last year or two can safely be written off as a dual recruitment and public relations ploy. Make the group look good, make it mainstream credible, (or try to) and as L. Ron Hubbard said, get lots and lots of bodies in the shop. It is also well documented for cults to try and change what has customarily been seen as their traditional nature when they begin to lose credibility. Scientology became a religion when it initially was internationally banned, Amway became Alticor/Quixtar when its' reputation became too poor to continue operating, and the FSF is switching to realworld activism because most of its' development role has been adopted by Red Hat, and without its' software development role, it is entirely redundant, and not particularly well liked outside the cultic base. One of the other things I read people within the FSF saying recently is that they were trying to move the focus off Stallman as an individual, and the American chapter of the FSF...the child organisation of the FSFE is gaining prominence. This is because they know Stallman is detrimental to the FSF gaining mainstream credibility, and it is also because the current climate of anti-Americanism internationally means that they know they cannot afford to have an American as the public face of the organisation. Once again, a group faced with oblivion is trying to re-invent itself, to make itself appealing. I've seen the pattern over and over again.
e) Once the stockpile of critical code/IP becomes large enough, gradually alter the license it is under such that you are able to bar access to it from anyone you don't like. You then, as far as computing infrastructure is concerned, and as far as your followers are concerned, are in a position to basically dictate whatever you want, with the added bonus that the earlier assembly of the software stockpile makes you look like a saint to the people who've been sucked in by your official mythology.
This has been the plan from the beginning.
...I hope you're paying attention.
When what I've been saying about the FSF for years now is vindicated with them taking steps like this, I'm very interested in hearing how you claim that you were correct in telling me that contrary to my assertion, Stallman is in fact NOT a Stalinist megalomaniac.
If the FSF go ahead with this, and if it sticks, that will end for certain anything I for one have to do with Linux permanently. I also hope to God that Linus is watching this, and that this prompts him to finally seek a way to cut all ties with the FSF once and for all.
Everything that has been said...the account of Ulrich Drepper, the interview with Bradley Kuhn here...it has now been vindicated. The Free Software Foundation is finally laid bare as the genuinely evil, repressive organisation that I have long known it to be.
Richard Stallman, some of us know who and what you really are. Free as in Do As I Say.
Therefore, as such, unlike the FSF, I wouldn't flat out try to tell anyone not to buy Vista.
However, I will simply observe that if you *do* buy and use Vista, you'll not only be giving yourself the shaft, but you'll also be providing Microsoft assistance in persuing their goal of screwing everyone else on the planet who uses a computer.
Pointing out the consequences of somebody exercising their free will to make a given choice is not the same as trying to coerce them not to make said choice. You've got every right to make the choice...just realise that in this case it isn't going to be one that helps you, or anybody else.
Irrespective of what anyone else is doing, I'm not buying it myself. I know that much.
No offense to Daniel Robbins or any of the other Gentoo people, but to me personally, downstream water doesn't taste so good. ;-)
Daniel's original premise seems to have been (which I agree with) that there are some elements of FreeBSD which are highly desirable, which at the time, Linux didn't have. Ports, portaudit, portupgrade...they're all good things. Ubuntu has an equivalent of portaudit and portupgrade combined, and of course the Red Hat autoupdate was probably the first on Linux, but the difference between those and the two commands I mentioned is that the Ubuntu and Red Hat services both focus on binaries...portupgrade anywayz focuses on source, which is something that at least some of us want.
I don't advocate using source compilation all the time, or if I do, at least not during the day or when you're active...set something up to do it while you're asleep or while the system isn't being used...that way it won't bother you. To be honest also, the main reason why I advocate compiling from source is simply for the reason that if you stop doing a certain thing for long enough, the ability to do said thing when you *do* want to has a tendency to disappear. If you maintain the attitude of compiling from source when it doesn't matter, there'll still be enough people doing it that the option to do so will still be there when it *does*.
There are a lot of people out there who don't want to do anything that even vaguely resembles self-responsibility or proactivity, at least where using a computer is concerned. That's fine, but said people need to realise that the fascist nature of such things as Vista is merely the ultimate logical extension of them wanting multinational corporations to act as their wetnurse. It's been an eternal truth in politics and other areas as well as IT that freedom and proactivity genuinely go hand in hand...If you don't want one, you're not going to get the other.
As the constitution unambiguously says, rights are not granted by governments but exist inherently, and the ninth amendment quite specifically says that the Bill of Rights should not be read as an exhaustive list of such rights.
;-) I hope you enjoy the rose coloured glasses...personally I prefer being alive.
Yes, and such a statement (especially one so vague) is worth roughly a millilitre of urine to any government currently holding office.
There's optimism, and then there's realism.
Depending on your hardware, try FreeBSD. VLC works a treat via ports, and installs a heap of codecs as well. Granted, the Open Sound System perhaps isn't quite as nice as ALSA, but it offers perfectly good stereo, and there are actually a number of sound filters available for XMMS at least which do various different things, so if you want something that boosts volume or cleans sound up in some way, you can probably get that from ports too.
;) The Registry uses text in places...the DWORD is actually an assembler variable...but it also uses a lot of non-text and is completely non-transparent in places. There are good reasons why UNIX (and hence Linux) uses text config files...you can read about those here if you want.
I wouldn't bother with Samba, personally...use FTP. You can put an ftpd on the Windows box, make the directories you want accessible, and then do a batch wget from the Linux/FreeBSD box to transfer whatever files you need over. If you need to send files the other way, there are any number of GUI ftp clients for Linux or FreeBSD available; either search here for Linux or here for FreeBSD.
Until Linux frees itself from the horrible terminal/command line dependencies, eliminates text files for configuration (how the heck is the average joe supposed to know which one of hundreds of config files he needs to edit just to connect a network drive??)
What do you advocate as a replacement? The Registry?
Your problem wasn't text config files...it was knowing which transfer protocol to use for what you want.
Also realise that Microsoft created the interoperability problems themselves...it's very convenient...first they make something completely closed and proprietary, and then they can use their obviously greater level of familiarity with their own system to make it marginally more workable with Linux.
Unfortunately, things like DRM which people talk about so much on here go hand in glove with people wanting Windows to do everything for them. If you willingly surrender self-responsibility to Microsoft, they're going to use that power to make some bad decisions...it's human nature. You can't reasonably expect them to give you something which works without you investing any effort at all on the one hand, and not have them include things with it which are actively harmful to you on the other. I realise that is going to sound self-righteous, condescending, and offensive...but unfortunately, it's also true.
If you want a system which does what you want, and only what you want, you're going to have to accept some responsibility, and do some work...that isn't Linux's fault. It's simply that you've got used to having most things done for you on the one hand, but also being abused on the other.
I'd say if she were serving the wants of the people, that's significantly better than many, many politicians that server the wants of themselves. It's a strange idea, I know, but you do want your policymakers to listen to the will of the people and support it, and you'd like them to do that even when it is at odds with their own personal belief, if a sufficient majority of the nation wishes a particular change.
Has anyone had "the talk" with you about Santa Claus yet?
More seriously, politicians only give a damn about what anyone else thinks while they're not in power and they're still trying to get in. Once they do get in, as another reply to my OP said, that changes very rapidly...they start doing exactly what they want, and to hell with the electorate.
Hillary and people like her are the proverbial wolves in sheep's clothing. She cares about one thing and one thing only: Power. When she gets it, you'll find out exactly how much she cares about the people.
...is not to be anti what you don't want, but pro what you do.
If you don't want people to adopt Vista, get involved with the Beryl or Compiz projects as one example, in order to give people a free alternative to Aero, which is one of Vista's main selling points.
Another fantastic thing which we could integrate into existing Linux distros is OpenBFS. We could then tell people that Microsoft pulled WinFS because they weren't able to implement it after years of trying, whereas Linux has a db filesystem right now.
If you don't want people to use Vista, simply telling them not to isn't going to work...you need to give them some alternative. If they see that Linux can do everything that Vista can, as well as being free, they'll use it. Freedom in itself can't be sold as the main point, because people won't care if the software doesn't do what they need...but if it does, they'll see freedom as a major bonus.
In truth, the FSF did a lot more to effectively fight DRM back when they still gave a damn about the GNU project, IMHO. Nobody is going to win against DRM by fearmongering and making a lot of noise...we'll win against DRM by giving people a better tangible alternative that they can actually use to perform the tasks they need.
...that even among other such politicians, Hillary is one of the most blatant, shameless populists ever to have walked the Earth. Her perspectives, her very mind itself in its' entirety is completely for sale, for the purpose of gaining votes.
She might be making noises about the "right to privacy," right now, but please try and remember that when Jack Thompson and the other usual suspects were screeching and crying about violence in video games, she supported that, too. She tries to determine which way the wind is blowing, and when she suspects that she has, then jumps on what she feels is the dominant voter bandwagon at any given point in time. But she is not the archetypical Slashbot's friend...or really anyone else's, for that matter.
Should Novell donate the Unix I.P. rights to the FSF or the Linux community before it is too late?
Microsoft can have whatever UNIX IP they want; source of old systems, even the trademark itself if they want to put up the money for it. It won't do them any good.
For starters, the UNIX trademark is owned by the Open Group, and they only allow anyone to use it after the system which is trying to claim the right to use it has passed POSIX/Single UNIX Specification standards tests. Linus might well have read those standards and tried to make the kernel conformant with them, but as anyone remotely familiar with POSIX likely knows, that standard anyway wasn't referring to purely the kernel...it specifies which userland apps (grep and so forth) need to be present for a system to call itself a UNIX as well.
For another thing, AFAIK nobody associated with Linux has tried to pass the tests, or even take them...the reason being is because either way they're more trouble than they're worth. Passing them would be an extremely arduous process for one thing, and for another, the only likely reward would be to give Microsoft a superficially legally sound excuse for persuing a lawsuit if they acquired the old sources from Novell.
Given that Linux is not certified POSIX or Single UNIX Specification compliant in a formal sense, there is currently no way that Microsoft can honestly legally claim that Linux is a direct descendant of the UNIX operating system, and no distribution should want to become formally POSIX compliant, because if they do, that will change. This is also why, even if the Open Group were willing to sell the UNIX trademark to Microsoft, (which is highly doubtful) Microsoft acquiring it and trying to sue anyone associated with Linux for anything even remotely related to the UNIX trademark wouldn't work, because they're entirely seperate trademarks that have nothing to do with each other. They can argue about assumptions of what Linus' informal *intent* was for as long as they want; that still won't prove anything, and it certainly doesn't mean that ANY original UNIX code is present within contemporary Linux. If they then want to talk about refactoring, that's fine...but that then becomes a patent issue, and Microsoft don't own all of the patents covering technology Linux uses, even if they own some.