I think you are afflicted with some rather unfortunate misconceptions about the criminal nature of Australia. Permit me to enlighten you.
I recently lived in the Victorian suburb of Sunbury, from mid 1995 to Febuary of this year. The first house we lived in, in this suburb, had been used by the most recent prior tenants as a marijuana factory. The prior tenant of the third and last house I occupied in the suburb, was also a drug dealer.
In December of last year, I had an attempted home invasion and the roof of my house set fire to, in two seperate incidents, both within the same weekend, and an attempted mugging at the railway station opposite the house on Christmas Day. Five weeks later, I then had my steel mailbox thrown through my bedroom window, causing me to wake up in a bedroom covered in broken glass.
In 1997, in the same suburb, I was throttled (not fatally, thankfully) while walking back from a local service station one night, not long after I had also been witness to a rape occurring in a nearby carpark. There was another incident in 2000 where an individual displayed a concealed, sawnoff shotgun to myself and some friends, although fortunately nobody was injured.
Judging by the responses to my initial post, gun crime seems to be the only form that at least some Americans focus on. By that metric, yes, Australia might seem like a safe place to live. Firearms have been made sufficiently illegal here that they are difficult to obtain.
However, if you think the absence of guns alone makes the country safe, think again. What Australia (particularly Victoria) *does* have, is a very strong, fundamental culture of anti-intellectual, racist, homophobic, drug and alcohol-influenced group violence.
It is becoming virtually impossible to turn on the evening news in Victoria now, without hearing about numerous incidents of the most appalling violence. Recently we had the body of a woman found stuffed in a barrel in Docklands, and on the same day, another headline described an incident the previous night where a Melbourne bar had entirely erupted into violence. Police were particularly shocked about the fact that literally anything which came to hand was used as a weapon; bottles, tables, chairs, anything.
Melbourne's liquor licensing law is currently under review, due to the epidemic of late night and early morning, alcohol fuelled group violence. Just a few days ago we also had a rap concert here where almost the entire audience became part of a brawl, and we have recently had a large number of severe bashings of Indian immigrants, as well.
You are not going to be migrating to a safe country. You are going to be migrating to a country where it is becoming impossible to go to an innercity bar at night, without virtually patron in said bar becoming involved in brawls, to the point where some venues are now not allowed to use glass bottles or drinking vessels of any kind, because of the risk of their being used as weapons.
You are going to be moving to a country which calls itself multicultural, but where in the city at least, it is not safe to not have white skin.
You are going to be moving to a country where intellectualism is not part of the resident culture, and intelligence is not valued. You are moving to a country where, for the common person, the primary industries are housing construction, or if you're lucky, hospitality. If you're planning on working in IT, I hope you're already qualified, because if you're not, you won't be getting training unless you're willing to pay through the nose for it.
You are going to be moving to a country where, in the cities at least, it is no longer safe for a person to live in a house alone. Another of our recent crimes involved a 60 year old schizophrenic man who had his house broken into, and who was then doused in petrol (yes, the man, not his house) and set alight by a group of 17 year olds. When the police asked the youths what they were doing, the reply was that they were just out having a bit
The Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) Daemon is becoming obsolete, starting with Karmic Koala. Apparently the plan is to augment udev.
This is what they should have done all along. HAL was always a case of running another instance of udev when, in most cases, there was of course already one running; it doesn't do anything new, and simply adds complexity and extra resource usage, unnecessarily.
Ubuntu still needs to change a lot (scrap Upstart/clone FreeBSD init, get rid of DKMS, ideally get rid of crapt-get and clone ports, revert to OSS for sound, get rid of the insane scenario where GNOME is irremovably fused with virtually the entire rest of the system) in order to become a system I'd consider installing, but this is an important step in the right direction, and is a solution for what was truthfully, one of the major issues that I have traditionally had with Ubuntu.
...and have a judge who throws the suit out, on the grounds of it attempting to stifle competition.
Seriously, corporations shouldn't be allowed to do this sort of thing.
This is why I hate the legal system. Lawyers aren't the weak link.
Judges are.
We have 17 year olds, here in Australia, who can kill people, and get 2.5-3 years for it, in a youth training centre. The police do their job. The lawyers do theirs. Every other part of the system works; except the judges.
Unlike most people, I don't have such a big issue with lawyers; because I say to any judge who reads this, that I know where the fault with the system really is. It isn't with them, judges. It's with you.
I'm a long way from Einstein, but even I know that.
I admit, it does sound very cool; and maybe on plastic (or polymer) it might have some chance of working. Paper, cardboard, or fabrics however are not a good idea.
I can't believe that the average Linux Youth isn't given enough pocket money to be able to pick up a big spindle of blank CDs every now and then. They're not that expensive, and since the introduction of DVDs, 700 mb CDs have become even less so, because they're now not the most popular format.
You guys should definitely be taking advantage of every free bit torrent tracking site on the planet, if you're not already, as well. If you're worried about the isos of public torrents being hacked, host the appropriate md5/sha256 sums on Ubuntu's site, and tell people to check that, once they've downloaded the file from isohunt.
Of all the problems I could see Ubuntu potentially having, distribution logistics should *not* be one of them, with the Internet.
Hell, tell me who to write to about the issue, and I'll help. I think Ubuntu sucks more than the average black hole, personally; but the reason why I'd be willing to help is because where it does tend to work very well, is as a gateway drug. After a person has used Ubuntu for a bit, and begins to understand how awesome UNIX can potentially be without all of Debian's crap, they can then dump Ubuntu and get a better distro; but for FOSS evangelism, Ubuntu is great as an initial foot in the door.
I'm not interested in making the world safe for Stallman's cult, either; I'm something much more scary (and rare); a BSD zealot.;)
He says that it is all about money, no evil conspiracy. But he does say they (MS/Canonical/Red Hat) have made an agreement to push forwat Mono as THE platform, and that they really don't openly share this Grand Plan with their developers. They just slowly are moving their developers in the direction of Mono, fearing that if they push too fast there might be some silly revolt.
I suspected as much. I think a number of us have had a feeling for a while now, that Mono = Embrace and extend for Linux, essentially.
People will eventually come to realise that the so called, "purist," perspective in this case was prescient. It's just a shame that it's still probably going to destroy Linux in the process.
I just hope Microsoft are willing to allow us to keep the BSDs, at least.
A vaguely related American example would be these people typically will consume iPhone-everything simply because it's one of the most expensive ways to communicate wirelessly not because they use all of the features. They typically react with indifference or hostility to things that provide no external affirmation of their social status.
Yep. I remember my own reaction to the proverbial alpha male or female at high school was to either a) want to stick a knife in them, or b) avoid them completely. I took the latter option. I do know and understand, however, on a gut level, exactly why Columbine happened. Harris and Klebold took the option that I didn't.
Any form of social hierarchy needs to die. The only people who argue in favour of it, are those who want it themselves; they don't argue for it because it actually benefits anyone else. It doesn't.
I'm not completely opposed to Capitalism; but then again, I bothered to read von Mises, and to a lesser extent Rand and Adam Smith, so I know what the word actually means.
Capitalism was a system that was designed, broadly speaking, to do two things.
a) Regulate material scarcity in such a way, that there was an at least workable means of deciding who received scarce resources. This, of course, was a long way less than perfect in practice.
b) Provide incentives for individuals to create new niches/markets/potential areas/commodities of desire for those who might be willing to buy them. Same again; when the profit motive is the only motive, there are serious problems.
The reason why neither of the above objectives are being met in contemporary society, is because true Capitalism is not the system that is being practiced. I'm also not talking about antitrust law when I say that, either; I'm talking about the corporations themselves.
The RIAA are a good example; they don't want to try and create a viable new form of media distribution from the Internet, which they could then still use to make money. They're more willing to attempt to use the law to force the consumer to continue using an obsolete distribution system, which the consumer is no longer served by.
Von Mises would have advocated a scenario where the RIAA/MPAA's member corporations go out of business; not because of the legal system doing anything, but because in a more genuinely capitalist system, other companies would have developed that were more genuinely in touch with the consumer's needs.
That actually happened in the case of Napster/Grokster etc, but the RIAA et, al. were able to use the legal system to preserve their older oligopoly. If they hadn't been able to bludgeon the legal system into forcing companies like Grokster out of business, they would have gone out of business themselves, and Grokster would have replaced them, because it was more adequately meeting consumer need.
The presiding judge in the above case(s) should have been able to see what was happening. He or she should have realised that an old, obsolete oligopoly, which was unable to compete on merit, was attempting to use the law on its' own in order to preserve its' existence. Had he/she realised that, he/she might not have been so willing to rule in the RIAA's favour. (Unless, of course, he was being bribed, which is also a problem)
This, again, is also the reason why you have companies like Comcast and Verizon wanting to destroy net neutrality; the entire purpose behind that is to create artificial scarcity. In a truly natural, non-legally strangled environment, network bandwidth would be almost as plentiful as the air we breathe. The reason why corporations don't want that, is because if a given commodity is not scarce, they can't foresee ways in which they can make money from it.
Abuse of the legal system props up companies which, if Capitalism was truly allowed to run its' course, would die, due to failure to evolve to meet changing market/consumer need. In the case of the bandwidth question, Comcast and Verizon etc either would starve to death, or a scenario would develop where instead of selling bandwidth, they would be forced to move into the niche of say, Cisco, (in terms of network hardware) or even create their own niche with forms of network/telecoms hardware which nobody knows about yet.
Companies don't need to innovate, because they're able to use the legal system to survive when they should die. If they weren't able to do that, non-innovators would starve to death.
Stallmanite "Free Software," = Collectivism/Communism. The individual gives up something (the ability to do what they like with software in downstream terms) in order for the collective as a whole to benefit. (At least, this is the theory)
Libertarianism/non-copyleft licenses = The individual is considered important as well. Non-copyleft FOSS licenses do not attempt to dictate any element of downstream use.
Stallman would try and tell you that copyleft is necessary to preserve FOSS' very continued existence, however that assertion is conclusively proven false by the number of successful BSD/non-copyleft projects in existence. If the GPL were necessary to hold off the evil, ravening corporations who were supposedly eternally waiting to pounce, and rend every FOSS project in e
Just yesterday, Bruce Perens implied to me that the GPL is necessary to render FOSS more *popular*, and thus increase its' uptake; but that is a very different thing from saying that copyleft is needed for FOSS to continue to legally survive AT ALL.
Microsoft is the company that chose to release Windows 7 on the same day as Ubuntu's release candidate, not the other way around. Seems like Microsoft wanted to overshadow and minimize the latest release of Ubuntu, and do so without actually permitting Ubuntu to compete.
LOL. This literally could potentially cause derisive laughter to the point of choking.
Microsoft would have to be certifiably insane to consider Ubuntu even a marginal form of competition.
Even if they weren't light years ahead in other areas of usability, Microsoft *are* ahead of Ubuntu in at least one, basic, critical area. Stable hardware support that actually works. You know, as in sound support that doesn't die every few hours, or graphics drivers that don't intermittently cause kernel panics.
Seriously, Linux users who try and claim that any Linux distribution has any remotely conceivable chance of legitimately competing with either Microsoft or Apple at this point, literally leave me gasping. The amount denial and delusion engaged in is mind boggling.
Ubuntu reached a point, once, where I thought that could eventually become true; but since Hardy, Canonical have blown it completely.
Here's a thought; try going into your local computer place, where they have a Mac displayed for people to play with, and try using it yourself. You will probably only need to for a few minutes, in order for the point to be made.
I predict four different possible responses to this post, as well.
a) I will be accused of being a corporate shill. (Believe me, I wish that were true; I could use the money.;))
b) I will be accused of being, "disingenuous," which is apparently a favourite word of GNU/drones and other members of the "community." Either that, or various other forms of subjective ad hominem will be used, without any attempt made to back them up whatsoever.
c) I will be given the, "it doesn't matter how far behind it might be in technical terms, it's FREE!!!1!1!1eleven," argument; which presupposes that anyone who is either a) sane or b) hasn't been subjected to FSF mind control, actually cares about that. Hint: They don't.
d) This post will be down-modded to -1, Flamebait, Troll, or Overrated, because I'm making statements which cause cognitive dissonance in Linux Youth.
It's clear nevertheless that MySQL won class presidency by a landslide. Isn't it?
My "existential shirt rending," however, was in reference to that exact point. GPL licensed (as opposed to BSD licensed) software very often doesn't win on the software's actual merit. It wins because a lot of the people who support the GPL (at least those on Slashdot) are Stallmanite cultists, who as mentioned, are desperate to ensure that people don't even know that FOSS alternatives to the GPL even exist, let alone use them.
I agree with you that it should be based on choice rather the be forced. What I am most interested in is providing solid reasons why it is in a companies best interest to contribute.
Company X does their own bug fixing at times, presumably; if said bugs are being fixed in what they've released under the BSD license, they make a patch public as well. It doesn't need to be any greater work for them, and it earns them PR points, as well as potentially fixing problems that someone else is having as well, hence making themselves look like just another group of developers, rather than the proverbial evil, faceless corporation.
With the GPLv3 and its differential treatment of B2B vs. B2C software, its pretty clear that the FSF has decided to aggressively leverage the GPL's more restrictive nature, compared to other Free licenses, as a way to push business adoption of the GPL over other Free licenses, and a willingness to restructure where those restrictions cut to meet the preferences of big vendors.
This will fail.
The entire reason why the GPL v2 has been popular with business, has been because of the suicidally anti-competitive nature of contemporary business. The GPL ensures that, while you can't have a competitive advantage yourself, nobody else can either. As a result, nobody makes money from innovation; everyone makes it from consulting/support/administration/SaaS.
The GPL v2, however, was relatively clear in terms of its' legal requirements. Version 3 is not. Version 3 also seeks to control patenting, which the marketplace most assuredly will not stand for. There is also the issue that version 3 has been declared incompatible (or at least undesirable) for use with the BSDs, as well.
Given that he is currently active in this thread, Mr Perens is of course more than welcome to attempt to refute me on this point, if he wishes. I am confident that I need offer him no counter-argument of my own. The marketplace will in time do so for me.
It is hard to say what the right solution is. I find it sad to see how in some bsd projects few of the vendors who make use of the software participate in improving the base software.
Some do, some don't. I've never been able to understand why allowing the choice is a problem. It is not true that none will contribute; we've already seen that.
Because they wouldn't have survived very long. And none of us would be using MySQL. Don't you think that's self-defeating?
When you say survived very long; do you mean in economic terms, Bruce?
There are a number of large organisations of various kinds using PostgreSQL. They also had a new version released earlier this month, too...so apparently finding the resources to continue its' development isn't a problem for them.
Although I'm aware that it generally isn't considered socially acceptable to discuss this in Linux-related circles, it is actually possible to make money using BSD licensed software, you know. It seems to be working fairly well for Apple.;)
I am not sure where in histrory you will find that I have ever advocated for dual licence, since it is well known that I do not for work which I personally do (aka if you check you will find that I lean toward BSD).
If MySQL itself had used the BSD license, this particular conflict (as with so many, many others) would not be happening.
RMS could not care less about open source. He only cares about free software. There's a difference and he will go to great pains to point out the difference if you engage him using the term "open source." If you are going to respond to him, the least you can do is use the terminology correctly. Otherwise he'll interpret what you say differently than what you probably meant.
That's right. Keep bringing this up. Keep treating it as important. The corporations that you're so paranoid about, love it when you do...because it means that while you're busy arguing about this, you're not providing them with any consistent form of opposition instead.
But then again, what am I saying? If you were one of the people who were actually helping Linux get somewhere, you wouldn't be on Slashdot.
Oops, I forgot to use the term, "GNU/Linux," as well. You'd better remind me not to do that next time, as well. After all, we know how critically important it is.
"Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices -- mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law -- justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel."
The acquisition of MySQL by Oracle will be a major setback to the development of a FLOSS database platform, potentially alienating and dispersing MySQL's core community of developers. It could take several years before another database platform could rival the progress and opportunities now available to MySQL, because it will take time before any of them attract and cultivate a large enough team of developers and achieve a similar customer base.
I will link to PostgreSQL again, here, and probably again get modded down to -1 Redundant or Overrated, by GPL fanatics who don't want anyone to know that Postgres exists, because of the fact that it uses the BSD license.
Of course, given the way I've written the above, they will probably try and perhaps use that as an excuse to appear more legitimate, by down-modding this to -1 Troll or Flamebait, instead.
You also have to check the product page to make sure you are getting a mostly-DRM-free product
Mostly DRM free, you say? That reminds me of how they used to use de-cocanised coca leaves in Coca Cola.
"Don't worry! It's safe! 95% of the cocaine has been taken out! You're only getting 5% per bottle!"
Another creative use of that argument is for light filtered cigarettes. If they only have 25% of the tar, hopefully they'll take four times as long to kill you.
Then you try and rationalize it by saying everyone else is less intelligent than you are.
Not everyone else. Just people who use things like Steam.
Steam also has a lot of weekend sales. Valve's games are probably worth more hours-per-dollar than any other digital entertainment product I've seen in years.
Well, in that case, you're right. That completely invalidates my argument. We all know that the moral/sociological desirability of something is directly proportional to the amount of money it makes. As we all know, what's good for corporations, can only be good for the rest of us.
The crowd has spoken with their wallets.
"Over 9000 other lemmings have gone over the cliff! It was good enough for them! Who are you to question their wisdom?"
I've noticed that of all the logical fallacies that get thrown around on here, the argumentum ad populum is still, by far, the reigning favourite. It makes sense, though; it's just such a completely airtight argument. I mean, after all, the majority always know exactly the right thing to do, don't they? The one strategy that never fails is following the herd!
For me, the more Slashdot bashes Microsoft unfairly, the less I despise Microsoft. If Microsoft is supposedly so rotten, why does Slashdot feel the need to lie? It makes Slashdot look like it's run by a bunch of idiots with an agenda, and makes me question how much of the bashing of MS is legitimate.
Truthfully, I've been trying to understand why the delusional, pro-Linux groupthink has become so bad around here, recently.
Granted, there's always been some of it to a greater or lesser degree, but in the past, Slashdot used to be somewhat self-correcting; you'd get a blatant Linux or FSF fanboy making one of their usual insane statements, but then you'd get someone else exposing the first poster as nuts and putting them in their place.
Now, it never happens. The recent thread about Pulseaudio was a fantastic case in point; despite the number of people who've reported problems with it, the apologist developers and supporting trolls were out in force, and were also supported by people with mod points. The official stance was that Pulse was fine, there was nothing wrong with it, and if there was a problem, it was downstream's fault, so we should all just shut up, enjoy this miraculous innovation in Linux audio, and worship the tireless devs for bringing it to us.
And again, with the recent IBM/Ubuntu thread. Not only were my statements refuted, they were then down moderated Troll or Flamebait as well. The fanboys without mod points bombard you with ad hominem, and then the fanboys *with* points downmod your supposedly baseless post into oblivion, in order to ensure that it never sees the light of day.
The worst case of this was when I also suggested PostgreSQL as an alternative to MySQL. That got modded down to -1; the GPL fanatics are absolutely terrified of anyone using BSD licensed software; the BSD license is seen as a lethal threat, that must be stopped at all costs.
You really are deeply pathetic, Linux community. Normally when people report problems, the sane thing to do is to actually listen to said feedback, and try and improve. The Stallman-inspired (and make no mistake, I know exactly where the above toxicity originates from) strategy, however, is to do exactly the opposite. Continue to engage in abject denial, bury any dissent that appears, and if possible, silence the dissenter.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are afflicted with some rather unfortunate misconceptions about the criminal nature of Australia. Permit me to enlighten you.
I recently lived in the Victorian suburb of Sunbury, from mid 1995 to Febuary of this year. The first house we lived in, in this suburb, had been used by the most recent prior tenants as a marijuana factory. The prior tenant of the third and last house I occupied in the suburb, was also a drug dealer.
In December of last year, I had an attempted home invasion and the roof of my house set fire to, in two seperate incidents, both within the same weekend, and an attempted mugging at the railway station opposite the house on Christmas Day. Five weeks later, I then had my steel mailbox thrown through my bedroom window, causing me to wake up in a bedroom covered in broken glass.
In 1997, in the same suburb, I was throttled (not fatally, thankfully) while walking back from a local service station one night, not long after I had also been witness to a rape occurring in a nearby carpark. There was another incident in 2000 where an individual displayed a concealed, sawnoff shotgun to myself and some friends, although fortunately nobody was injured.
Judging by the responses to my initial post, gun crime seems to be the only form that at least some Americans focus on. By that metric, yes, Australia might seem like a safe place to live. Firearms have been made sufficiently illegal here that they are difficult to obtain.
However, if you think the absence of guns alone makes the country safe, think again. What Australia (particularly Victoria) *does* have, is a very strong, fundamental culture of anti-intellectual, racist, homophobic, drug and alcohol-influenced group violence.
It is becoming virtually impossible to turn on the evening news in Victoria now, without hearing about numerous incidents of the most appalling violence. Recently we had the body of a woman found stuffed in a barrel in Docklands, and on the same day, another headline described an incident the previous night where a Melbourne bar had entirely erupted into violence. Police were particularly shocked about the fact that literally anything which came to hand was used as a weapon; bottles, tables, chairs, anything.
Melbourne's liquor licensing law is currently under review, due to the epidemic of late night and early morning, alcohol fuelled group violence. Just a few days ago we also had a rap concert here where almost the entire audience became part of a brawl, and we have recently had a large number of severe bashings of Indian immigrants, as well.
You are not going to be migrating to a safe country. You are going to be migrating to a country where it is becoming impossible to go to an innercity bar at night, without virtually patron in said bar becoming involved in brawls, to the point where some venues are now not allowed to use glass bottles or drinking vessels of any kind, because of the risk of their being used as weapons.
You are going to be moving to a country which calls itself multicultural, but where in the city at least, it is not safe to not have white skin.
You are going to be moving to a country where intellectualism is not part of the resident culture, and intelligence is not valued. You are moving to a country where, for the common person, the primary industries are housing construction, or if you're lucky, hospitality. If you're planning on working in IT, I hope you're already qualified, because if you're not, you won't be getting training unless you're willing to pay through the nose for it.
You are going to be moving to a country where, in the cities at least, it is no longer safe for a person to live in a house alone. Another of our recent crimes involved a 60 year old schizophrenic man who had his house broken into, and who was then doused in petrol (yes, the man, not his house) and set alight by a group of 17 year olds. When the police asked the youths what they were doing, the reply was that they were just out having a bit
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18833
The Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) Daemon is becoming obsolete, starting with Karmic Koala. Apparently the plan is to augment udev.
This is what they should have done all along. HAL was always a case of running another instance of udev when, in most cases, there was of course already one running; it doesn't do anything new, and simply adds complexity and extra resource usage, unnecessarily.
Ubuntu still needs to change a lot (scrap Upstart/clone FreeBSD init, get rid of DKMS, ideally get rid of crapt-get and clone ports, revert to OSS for sound, get rid of the insane scenario where GNOME is irremovably fused with virtually the entire rest of the system) in order to become a system I'd consider installing, but this is an important step in the right direction, and is a solution for what was truthfully, one of the major issues that I have traditionally had with Ubuntu.
...and have a judge who throws the suit out, on the grounds of it attempting to stifle competition.
Seriously, corporations shouldn't be allowed to do this sort of thing.
This is why I hate the legal system. Lawyers aren't the weak link.
Judges are.
We have 17 year olds, here in Australia, who can kill people, and get 2.5-3 years for it, in a youth training centre. The police do their job. The lawyers do theirs. Every other part of the system works; except the judges.
Unlike most people, I don't have such a big issue with lawyers; because I say to any judge who reads this, that I know where the fault with the system really is. It isn't with them, judges. It's with you.
I'm a long way from Einstein, but even I know that.
I admit, it does sound very cool; and maybe on plastic (or polymer) it might have some chance of working. Paper, cardboard, or fabrics however are not a good idea.
I can't believe that the average Linux Youth isn't given enough pocket money to be able to pick up a big spindle of blank CDs every now and then. They're not that expensive, and since the introduction of DVDs, 700 mb CDs have become even less so, because they're now not the most popular format.
You guys should definitely be taking advantage of every free bit torrent tracking site on the planet, if you're not already, as well. If you're worried about the isos of public torrents being hacked, host the appropriate md5/sha256 sums on Ubuntu's site, and tell people to check that, once they've downloaded the file from isohunt.
Of all the problems I could see Ubuntu potentially having, distribution logistics should *not* be one of them, with the Internet.
Hell, tell me who to write to about the issue, and I'll help. I think Ubuntu sucks more than the average black hole, personally; but the reason why I'd be willing to help is because where it does tend to work very well, is as a gateway drug. After a person has used Ubuntu for a bit, and begins to understand how awesome UNIX can potentially be without all of Debian's crap, they can then dump Ubuntu and get a better distro; but for FOSS evangelism, Ubuntu is great as an initial foot in the door.
I'm not interested in making the world safe for Stallman's cult, either; I'm something much more scary (and rare); a BSD zealot. ;)
To quote Richard Prior, none of the above. ;)
Here's my own choice.
There's practicing African hospitality, and then there's becoming a daemoniac. ;)
"Ubuntu seems to have hit the big time, riding off the Win7 release." +5 Insightful
- WOW
If I had mod points, you'd get one. The groupthink surrounding Ubuntu on Slashdot has become insane, lately.
In most cases, with Linux, we've got source code.
So if we want to run programs on a new architecture, maybe we could *gasp* compile from source?
He says that it is all about money, no evil conspiracy. But he does say they (MS/Canonical/Red Hat) have made an agreement to push forwat Mono as THE platform, and that they really don't openly share this Grand Plan with their developers. They just slowly are moving their developers in the direction of Mono, fearing that if they push too fast there might be some silly revolt.
I suspected as much. I think a number of us have had a feeling for a while now, that Mono = Embrace and extend for Linux, essentially.
People will eventually come to realise that the so called, "purist," perspective in this case was prescient. It's just a shame that it's still probably going to destroy Linux in the process.
I just hope Microsoft are willing to allow us to keep the BSDs, at least.
A vaguely related American example would be these people typically will consume iPhone-everything simply because it's one of the most expensive ways to communicate wirelessly not because they use all of the features. They typically react with indifference or hostility to things that provide no external affirmation of their social status.
Yep. I remember my own reaction to the proverbial alpha male or female at high school was to either a) want to stick a knife in them, or b) avoid them completely. I took the latter option. I do know and understand, however, on a gut level, exactly why Columbine happened. Harris and Klebold took the option that I didn't.
Any form of social hierarchy needs to die. The only people who argue in favour of it, are those who want it themselves; they don't argue for it because it actually benefits anyone else. It doesn't.
I'm looking forward to the Lecherous Lemming release, myself.
Too bad I already missed Copulating Camel.
I'm not completely opposed to Capitalism; but then again, I bothered to read von Mises, and to a lesser extent Rand and Adam Smith, so I know what the word actually means.
Capitalism was a system that was designed, broadly speaking, to do two things.
a) Regulate material scarcity in such a way, that there was an at least workable means of deciding who received scarce resources. This, of course, was a long way less than perfect in practice.
b) Provide incentives for individuals to create new niches/markets/potential areas/commodities of desire for those who might be willing to buy them. Same again; when the profit motive is the only motive, there are serious problems.
The reason why neither of the above objectives are being met in contemporary society, is because true Capitalism is not the system that is being practiced. I'm also not talking about antitrust law when I say that, either; I'm talking about the corporations themselves.
The RIAA are a good example; they don't want to try and create a viable new form of media distribution from the Internet, which they could then still use to make money. They're more willing to attempt to use the law to force the consumer to continue using an obsolete distribution system, which the consumer is no longer served by.
Von Mises would have advocated a scenario where the RIAA/MPAA's member corporations go out of business; not because of the legal system doing anything, but because in a more genuinely capitalist system, other companies would have developed that were more genuinely in touch with the consumer's needs.
That actually happened in the case of Napster/Grokster etc, but the RIAA et, al. were able to use the legal system to preserve their older oligopoly. If they hadn't been able to bludgeon the legal system into forcing companies like Grokster out of business, they would have gone out of business themselves, and Grokster would have replaced them, because it was more adequately meeting consumer need.
The presiding judge in the above case(s) should have been able to see what was happening. He or she should have realised that an old, obsolete oligopoly, which was unable to compete on merit, was attempting to use the law on its' own in order to preserve its' existence. Had he/she realised that, he/she might not have been so willing to rule in the RIAA's favour. (Unless, of course, he was being bribed, which is also a problem)
This, again, is also the reason why you have companies like Comcast and Verizon wanting to destroy net neutrality; the entire purpose behind that is to create artificial scarcity. In a truly natural, non-legally strangled environment, network bandwidth would be almost as plentiful as the air we breathe. The reason why corporations don't want that, is because if a given commodity is not scarce, they can't foresee ways in which they can make money from it.
Abuse of the legal system props up companies which, if Capitalism was truly allowed to run its' course, would die, due to failure to evolve to meet changing market/consumer need. In the case of the bandwidth question, Comcast and Verizon etc either would starve to death, or a scenario would develop where instead of selling bandwidth, they would be forced to move into the niche of say, Cisco, (in terms of network hardware) or even create their own niche with forms of network/telecoms hardware which nobody knows about yet.
Companies don't need to innovate, because they're able to use the legal system to survive when they should die. If they weren't able to do that, non-innovators would starve to death.
Stallmanite "Free Software," = Collectivism/Communism. The individual gives up something (the ability to do what they like with software in downstream terms) in order for the collective as a whole to benefit. (At least, this is the theory)
Libertarianism/non-copyleft licenses = The individual is considered important as well. Non-copyleft FOSS licenses do not attempt to dictate any element of downstream use.
Stallman would try and tell you that copyleft is necessary to preserve FOSS' very continued existence, however that assertion is conclusively proven false by the number of successful BSD/non-copyleft projects in existence. If the GPL were necessary to hold off the evil, ravening corporations who were supposedly eternally waiting to pounce, and rend every FOSS project in e
Just yesterday, Bruce Perens implied to me that the GPL is necessary to render FOSS more *popular*, and thus increase its' uptake; but that is a very different thing from saying that copyleft is needed for FOSS to continue to legally survive AT ALL.
Microsoft is the company that chose to release Windows 7 on the same day as Ubuntu's release candidate, not the other way around. Seems like Microsoft wanted to overshadow and minimize the latest release of Ubuntu, and do so without actually permitting Ubuntu to compete.
LOL. This literally could potentially cause derisive laughter to the point of choking.
Microsoft would have to be certifiably insane to consider Ubuntu even a marginal form of competition.
Even if they weren't light years ahead in other areas of usability, Microsoft *are* ahead of Ubuntu in at least one, basic, critical area. Stable hardware support that actually works. You know, as in sound support that doesn't die every few hours, or graphics drivers that don't intermittently cause kernel panics.
Seriously, Linux users who try and claim that any Linux distribution has any remotely conceivable chance of legitimately competing with either Microsoft or Apple at this point, literally leave me gasping. The amount denial and delusion engaged in is mind boggling.
Ubuntu reached a point, once, where I thought that could eventually become true; but since Hardy, Canonical have blown it completely.
Here's a thought; try going into your local computer place, where they have a Mac displayed for people to play with, and try using it yourself. You will probably only need to for a few minutes, in order for the point to be made.
I predict four different possible responses to this post, as well.
a) I will be accused of being a corporate shill. (Believe me, I wish that were true; I could use the money. ;))
b) I will be accused of being, "disingenuous," which is apparently a favourite word of GNU/drones and other members of the "community." Either that, or various other forms of subjective ad hominem will be used, without any attempt made to back them up whatsoever.
c) I will be given the, "it doesn't matter how far behind it might be in technical terms, it's FREE!!!1!1!1eleven," argument; which presupposes that anyone who is either a) sane or b) hasn't been subjected to FSF mind control, actually cares about that. Hint: They don't.
d) This post will be down-modded to -1, Flamebait, Troll, or Overrated, because I'm making statements which cause cognitive dissonance in Linux Youth.
Prove me wrong, Linux users.
Does that mean that you're saying that Postgres is completely irrelevant, then?
It's clear nevertheless that MySQL won class presidency by a landslide. Isn't it?
My "existential shirt rending," however, was in reference to that exact point. GPL licensed (as opposed to BSD licensed) software very often doesn't win on the software's actual merit. It wins because a lot of the people who support the GPL (at least those on Slashdot) are Stallmanite cultists, who as mentioned, are desperate to ensure that people don't even know that FOSS alternatives to the GPL even exist, let alone use them.
I agree with you that it should be based on choice rather the be forced. What I am most interested in is providing solid reasons why it is in a companies best interest to contribute.
Company X does their own bug fixing at times, presumably; if said bugs are being fixed in what they've released under the BSD license, they make a patch public as well. It doesn't need to be any greater work for them, and it earns them PR points, as well as potentially fixing problems that someone else is having as well, hence making themselves look like just another group of developers, rather than the proverbial evil, faceless corporation.
With the GPLv3 and its differential treatment of B2B vs. B2C software, its pretty clear that the FSF has decided to aggressively leverage the GPL's more restrictive nature, compared to other Free licenses, as a way to push business adoption of the GPL over other Free licenses, and a willingness to restructure where those restrictions cut to meet the preferences of big vendors.
This will fail.
The entire reason why the GPL v2 has been popular with business, has been because of the suicidally anti-competitive nature of contemporary business. The GPL ensures that, while you can't have a competitive advantage yourself, nobody else can either. As a result, nobody makes money from innovation; everyone makes it from consulting/support/administration/SaaS.
The GPL v2, however, was relatively clear in terms of its' legal requirements. Version 3 is not. Version 3 also seeks to control patenting, which the marketplace most assuredly will not stand for. There is also the issue that version 3 has been declared incompatible (or at least undesirable) for use with the BSDs, as well.
Given that he is currently active in this thread, Mr Perens is of course more than welcome to attempt to refute me on this point, if he wishes. I am confident that I need offer him no counter-argument of my own. The marketplace will in time do so for me.
It is hard to say what the right solution is. I find it sad to see how in some bsd projects few of the vendors who make use of the software participate in improving the base software.
Some do, some don't. I've never been able to understand why allowing the choice is a problem. It is not true that none will contribute; we've already seen that.
Because they wouldn't have survived very long. And none of us would be using MySQL. Don't you think that's self-defeating?
When you say survived very long; do you mean in economic terms, Bruce?
There are a number of large organisations of various kinds using PostgreSQL. They also had a new version released earlier this month, too...so apparently finding the resources to continue its' development isn't a problem for them.
Although I'm aware that it generally isn't considered socially acceptable to discuss this in Linux-related circles, it is actually possible to make money using BSD licensed software, you know. It seems to be working fairly well for Apple. ;)
I am not sure where in histrory you will find that I have ever advocated for dual licence, since it is well known that I do not for work which I personally do (aka if you check you will find that I lean toward BSD).
If MySQL itself had used the BSD license, this particular conflict (as with so many, many others) would not be happening.
RMS could not care less about open source. He only cares about free software. There's a difference and he will go to great pains to point out the difference if you engage him using the term "open source." If you are going to respond to him, the least you can do is use the terminology correctly. Otherwise he'll interpret what you say differently than what you probably meant.
That's right. Keep bringing this up. Keep treating it as important. The corporations that you're so paranoid about, love it when you do...because it means that while you're busy arguing about this, you're not providing them with any consistent form of opposition instead.
But then again, what am I saying? If you were one of the people who were actually helping Linux get somewhere, you wouldn't be on Slashdot.
Oops, I forgot to use the term, "GNU/Linux," as well. You'd better remind me not to do that next time, as well. After all, we know how critically important it is.
"Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices -- mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law -- justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel."
-- Matthew 23:23,24
The acquisition of MySQL by Oracle will be a major setback to the development of a FLOSS database platform, potentially alienating and dispersing MySQL's core community of developers. It could take several years before another database platform could rival the progress and opportunities now available to MySQL, because it will take time before any of them attract and cultivate a large enough team of developers and achieve a similar customer base.
I will link to PostgreSQL again, here, and probably again get modded down to -1 Redundant or Overrated, by GPL fanatics who don't want anyone to know that Postgres exists, because of the fact that it uses the BSD license.
Of course, given the way I've written the above, they will probably try and perhaps use that as an excuse to appear more legitimate, by down-modding this to -1 Troll or Flamebait, instead.
You also have to check the product page to make sure you are getting a mostly-DRM-free product
Mostly DRM free, you say? That reminds me of how they used to use de-cocanised coca leaves in Coca Cola.
"Don't worry! It's safe! 95% of the cocaine has been taken out! You're only getting 5% per bottle!"
Another creative use of that argument is for light filtered cigarettes. If they only have 25% of the tar, hopefully they'll take four times as long to kill you.
Then you try and rationalize it by saying everyone else is less intelligent than you are.
Not everyone else. Just people who use things like Steam.
Steam also has a lot of weekend sales. Valve's games are probably worth more hours-per-dollar than any other digital entertainment product I've seen in years.
Well, in that case, you're right. That completely invalidates my argument. We all know that the moral/sociological desirability of something is directly proportional to the amount of money it makes. As we all know, what's good for corporations, can only be good for the rest of us.
The crowd has spoken with their wallets.
"Over 9000 other lemmings have gone over the cliff! It was good enough for them! Who are you to question their wisdom?"
I've noticed that of all the logical fallacies that get thrown around on here, the argumentum ad populum is still, by far, the reigning favourite. It makes sense, though; it's just such a completely airtight argument. I mean, after all, the majority always know exactly the right thing to do, don't they? The one strategy that never fails is following the herd!
For me, the more Slashdot bashes Microsoft unfairly, the less I despise Microsoft. If Microsoft is supposedly so rotten, why does Slashdot feel the need to lie? It makes Slashdot look like it's run by a bunch of idiots with an agenda, and makes me question how much of the bashing of MS is legitimate.
Truthfully, I've been trying to understand why the delusional, pro-Linux groupthink has become so bad around here, recently.
Granted, there's always been some of it to a greater or lesser degree, but in the past, Slashdot used to be somewhat self-correcting; you'd get a blatant Linux or FSF fanboy making one of their usual insane statements, but then you'd get someone else exposing the first poster as nuts and putting them in their place.
Now, it never happens. The recent thread about Pulseaudio was a fantastic case in point; despite the number of people who've reported problems with it, the apologist developers and supporting trolls were out in force, and were also supported by people with mod points. The official stance was that Pulse was fine, there was nothing wrong with it, and if there was a problem, it was downstream's fault, so we should all just shut up, enjoy this miraculous innovation in Linux audio, and worship the tireless devs for bringing it to us.
And again, with the recent IBM/Ubuntu thread. Not only were my statements refuted, they were then down moderated Troll or Flamebait as well. The fanboys without mod points bombard you with ad hominem, and then the fanboys *with* points downmod your supposedly baseless post into oblivion, in order to ensure that it never sees the light of day.
The worst case of this was when I also suggested PostgreSQL as an alternative to MySQL. That got modded down to -1; the GPL fanatics are absolutely terrified of anyone using BSD licensed software; the BSD license is seen as a lethal threat, that must be stopped at all costs.
You really are deeply pathetic, Linux community. Normally when people report problems, the sane thing to do is to actually listen to said feedback, and try and improve. The Stallman-inspired (and make no mistake, I know exactly where the above toxicity originates from) strategy, however, is to do exactly the opposite. Continue to engage in abject denial, bury any dissent that appears, and if possible, silence the dissenter.
Now go ahead; mod me down, like good monkies.