No. There is almost *NO* software that *REQUIRES* Admin rights to run, other than tools that are, by their nature, admin tools.
Most people are just too lazy to figure out the correct permissions and/or privileges needed to NOT run as an admin. There are lots of tools to use to troubleshoot this when a vendor doesn't bother to document them.
IE did exist before the web standards existed. The first version of "standard" HTML was HTML2 and that was released by the IETF, and was resoundly ignored by everyone because it expected browsers to conform to SGML semantics and parse DTD's. That was 1995.
After that, the W3C was born, and was largely useless until about HTML 3.2. It wasn't until after that (around 1998) that real web standards started to emerge, but again both browsers already had lots of legacy by then and the "standards" were not particularly mature. That's why no browser on the planet fully implements CSS2 (CSS2.1 was created to adapt to what browser vendors DID implement).
CSS3 shows some hope, but let's hope they don't make it so needlessly complex that nobody can possibly implement it.
A large amount of the blame MUST land squarely on the shoulders of the standards committees. If their standards were workable, there would be a lot less trouble implementing them, and thus a lot less reason NOT to.
Interesting that you use the phrase "hijacking of HTML standards". In many ways, the "standards" are the ones doing the hijacking. IE and Netscape existed before such standards existed. They have (and had) backwards compatibility issues to deal with that often prevented wholesale adoption of standards.
As for "how is this firefox's fault", that's simple. Most people (users) don't give a shit if a website is standards compliant or not. They just want it to render the way they expect it to. Mozilla hasn't done a good job of driving expectation of standards compliance by end users, and since the "standards" are the new kid on the block, and they are often times at odds with legacy behavior, they need a lot of convincing.
IE is "the standard" because it existed before the standards did, and the standards have had little to no effect on the end user because they have not proven their worth to them.
DreamWeaver, like most tools, can be used or abused. If you know what you're doing, you can create very good sites in dreamweaver that are fully standards compliant and well optimized. You just have to pay attention and assign the styles yourself rather than let dreamweaver do it for you.
Windows will run very slowly without a swap file in many cases.
Linux and Windows have fundamental virtual machine differences. Linux swaps pages to disk, Windows keeps a page backed store. What this means is that every memory address in Winodws is backed up by some kind of virtual memory. For code and some data segments, the "page" is the executable file on disk itself, so it doesn't need to ever copy those pages to swap. (Incidentally, this will show up as "swap file in use" even though it's not in your swap file).
Windows also uses swapping for memory mapped files, of which many apps make use of.
Finally, if there is no swap file, there is no "reserved" memory either. That is, memory that is allocated but not used. This can cause some apps to freak out if they reserve more memory than you physically have.
Thank you for the reasoned response, rather than a knee jerk reaction.
You raise some good questions. I think first is, why did Tridge *NEED* to access the BK trees directly. You claim he needed access to certain metadata that was not available otherwise.
I guess i'm at a loss as to why access to metadata was so crucial. What metadata are we talking about here? Metadata is, by it's very nature, data about data. This might include things like checkin comments or changeset information. Both of which should also appear in either the code comments, or as part of a patchset.
In any event, a tool existed, as you mention, to do this. All he needed to do was ask someone who had agreed to the license to export the necessary information for him. While that may not be ideal, *NOT* having BitKeeper won't give him access to that metadata either.
I'm not so sure I understand your argument about Larry restricting competition. All he was doing was saying "I'm not going to give you, for zero cost, the ability to reverse engineer my solution".
As for all the other questions about ethics. You base them all on the supposition that Larry was taking advantage of a situation. Both sides got something out of it. Neither side was under any delusion and both sides knew the relationship would not last.
This was a stop-gap measure until a suitable open source alternative was created. As Linus said, it was eventual but it would have been better if it had happened in another year.
SMB is, perhaps, a different story. MS being a monopoly means they operate under different rules. Also, MS willfully published CIFS documentation. Even though they may not have published all of it, it can certainly be argued that MS intended for the protocol to be used by third parties by publishing the CIFS documentation.
I'm just stating what my own opinions are on this. There is such a thing as a Client Access License, and avialable from many companies (including open source friendly ones like Oracle, Sun, IBM, and Novell). That inidcates to me that you can license ACCESS to your software via a network.
Since BK's license forbade reverse engineering, that means connecting to a server to reverse engineer the protocol was also fobidden, and thus you were not licensed to do so.
Uhh.. VB6 was released in 1998. 7 YEARS ago. That's certainly "long supported" despite the fact that it's not a Windows api, but rather a framework and compiler.
Frankly, I think the whole "window manager" concept of X is faulty to begin with.
The things which most people think of as a window manager, arent'. Desktop menus, icons, wallpaper, and file managers are not Window Managers.
The window manager is strictly the so called "non-client" area of a window. The titlebar, borders, sizing controls and window controls (Close, Minimize, shade, whateveer). That's *IT*.
There is no reason there needs to be 10 bazillion window managers out there to do these basic functions. And there's no reason this couldn't all be handled by a single, simple but customizable library.
All the other stuff, which primarily falls into the "Desktop Environment" category is not strictly a window manager, and that sutff can vary greatly.
Microsoft has actually done pretty well with XP's theming API. It could be better, and a little more extensible) but it provides 95% of what people want to do with WM's. A Linux "unified window manager" could provide 100% of what people want and leave the rest to DE's.
Traditionally, platforms with much more stringent control over the platform have done better for a variety of reasons. Linux could (though highly unlikely) emulate that model and force people to follow various standards. That would probably improve things.
However, and I think this is a much better choice (but also probably unlikely), the platform could address the problems that standardization solves in a more creative way.
For example, while we'll never have a single package management system, we *COULD* have a single package management framework that all other package managers utilize to obtain cross distro compatibility. For example, take a distro like Fedora which uses a tradition Unix filesystem layout and compare it to a distro like GoboLinux that uses a layout more like OSX. A common framework could be customized for each distro to tell the installer where to put user binaries, how to configure desktop menus, where to put configuration files, etc..
Sadly, I don't see anything like this ever happening.
Static linking is absurd for most general purpose apps. Can you imagine how much memory KDE would take up if everything were statically linked? Each app would be 10-20MB in size, and they wouldn't be able to share the common bits between apps. Just running KDE itself and several KDE/QT apps would take 300MB
Even though memory is cheap(ish), you still don't want to squander it.
Which amounts to the same thing. If you want to keep people from connecting to your software, use technological means to do so or don't put it on the open internet. Don't leave the door to your business wide open and get pissed when people wander in.
So you're of the opinion that if you don't protect something, it's legal and ethical to take it?
If you don't lock your doors, it's alright for someone to walk in and take your stuff? If a woman dresses provocatively, she's asking to get raped and the perpetrators should go free?
Or how about this, if you don't put a copyright on your work, it's not copyrighted? We know for a fact that everything is copyrighted unless explicitly released in the public domain.
Yeah, not protecting yourself is stupid, but that doesn't excuse those that take advantage of it.
Are you suggesting that by visiting a website running off of IIS, you are *using IIS* and are legally bound by its license?
IIS's license doesn't require acceptance by those that use it, only those that install and run the executable. In fact Microsoft's EULA gives you an unlimited number of such "anonymous" connections.
Connecting with Active Directory authentication is a different story, and then your use is covered under the EULA. Just like you can't connect to a DB/2 server without a license, or an oracle server without a license.
If so, I guess a full 100% of web surfing population around the whole world requires an IIS license from Microsoft.
In fact, they do. Microsoft gives that license freely though. Have you never heard of a Client Access License?
Nobody, not even Larry, seemed to be suggesting that programmers using the BitKeeper-CVS gateway (same sort of "usage", just with different intent) were in fact licensees of BitKeeper... in fact the whole damn program was written because programmers refused to become beholden to BitMover.
BitMover's license allows this, so long as they weren't reverse engineering his protocol. He allows anyone to connect to his server if you honor his license. The key word there is "allow".
No, they don't have a right to keep anyone from looking at it, though they do have a right to keep people from connecting to their software.
Further, they do have the right to stipulate the conditions upon which they give access to their software, and can pull that license if those conditions are violated.
Tridge knew that his actions would result in McVoy pulling the license. In effect, he decided he knew better than anyone else how the kernel should be developed.
Yes, he did. He used the BitKeeper software when his client sent data to, and retrieved data from the BitKeeper server software.
Or are you going to suggest that this isn't really use? If so, then you've got a lot of people (such as Novell, IBM, and Microsoft) that disagree with you.
again, apparently he did not use the software and did not agree to the license.
While he may not have intended to agree to the license, he did use the software. He didn't use the CLIENT software, but he did use the server software. The license for BK states that using the software indicates acceptance of the terms.
unethical? many in the community questioned the ethics of building foss software on a proprietary product and disagreed vehemently with linus on this decision. the loss that occurred is exactly what they expected from this situation and are happy to be done with it sooner rather than later.
You're trying to side step the issue. Whether or not you disagree with what Linus was doing, it was Linus's decision, not Tridges, to use BK. Linus was willing to accept the terms to do that. Tridge wasn't, so he should not have tried to use the software in violation of the license.
This is really no different that someone choosing to use GPL'd software but not agreeing to or abiding by the terms. If you don't like the terms, DON'T USE IT. No matter how you spin it, that's the issue here.
What is wrong with common courtesy? Respecting your collegues decisions? Nobody had to use BK that didn't want to, there were lots of other ways to get at the code. Those people that wanted to use BK and agree to the terms could. Those that didn't want to agree to the terms could get access to the code via other (Free) ways. It was a win-win, until someone decided they wanted to shit in the kiddie pool.
Indeed, reverse engineering for interoperability is generally legal. But in this case, doing so was not generally ethical, since the software had been provided under the condition that it not be reverse engineered.
It was ethically questionable given the negative impact reverse engineering would have on the entire Linux community (developers and users) through the loss of the software.
Finally, why even do it? The purpose is to create a tool to interoperate with BK Trees... right? But the very act of reverse engineering would make those trees go away because of the license. As you said, sum.zero. It's the Schrodinger's Cat of software development.
I think what you, and everone else, is missing is not whether or not it was legal for Tridge to do what he did, but whether or not it was ETHICAL for him to do it.
Ethics are hard to nail down, but Linus clearly believes that if someone gives you a gift, you don't bend them over and ram them up the rear for their generosity, even if it's perfectly legal for you to do so.
Linus also seems to believe that Tridge did the Linux community a disservice by forcing this issue when there was no open source alternative to take the place of BK.
"Captain, the ship is taking on water after the crew detonated a large explosive device in the engine room".
"Why did they do that?"
"Because they weren't american made engines"
"Well, I guess it's all right that we're sinking then, at least we don't have those damn russian engines to worry about anymore".
The difference here is that there was no way for me to know about the terms of the license before you told me and HTTP is generally considered an open protocol.
BK, however, is not an open protocol, and not only did Tridge know that, he was also generally aware that there were terms associated with it, and was aware of the "no reverse engineering" clause. On top of that, he continued to work on the software even after being explicitly informed and asked to stop (which he apparently agreed to do but did not honor).
Tridge can't argue ignorance of the terms, since he knew about them.
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Regmon, Filemon, etc...
No. There is almost *NO* software that *REQUIRES* Admin rights to run, other than tools that are, by their nature, admin tools.
Most people are just too lazy to figure out the correct permissions and/or privileges needed to NOT run as an admin. There are lots of tools to use to troubleshoot this when a vendor doesn't bother to document them.
IE did exist before the web standards existed. The first version of "standard" HTML was HTML2 and that was released by the IETF, and was resoundly ignored by everyone because it expected browsers to conform to SGML semantics and parse DTD's. That was 1995.
After that, the W3C was born, and was largely useless until about HTML 3.2. It wasn't until after that (around 1998) that real web standards started to emerge, but again both browsers already had lots of legacy by then and the "standards" were not particularly mature. That's why no browser on the planet fully implements CSS2 (CSS2.1 was created to adapt to what browser vendors DID implement).
CSS3 shows some hope, but let's hope they don't make it so needlessly complex that nobody can possibly implement it.
A large amount of the blame MUST land squarely on the shoulders of the standards committees. If their standards were workable, there would be a lot less trouble implementing them, and thus a lot less reason NOT to.
Interesting that you use the phrase "hijacking of HTML standards". In many ways, the "standards" are the ones doing the hijacking. IE and Netscape existed before such standards existed. They have (and had) backwards compatibility issues to deal with that often prevented wholesale adoption of standards.
As for "how is this firefox's fault", that's simple. Most people (users) don't give a shit if a website is standards compliant or not. They just want it to render the way they expect it to. Mozilla hasn't done a good job of driving expectation of standards compliance by end users, and since the "standards" are the new kid on the block, and they are often times at odds with legacy behavior, they need a lot of convincing.
IE is "the standard" because it existed before the standards did, and the standards have had little to no effect on the end user because they have not proven their worth to them.
DreamWeaver, like most tools, can be used or abused. If you know what you're doing, you can create very good sites in dreamweaver that are fully standards compliant and well optimized. You just have to pay attention and assign the styles yourself rather than let dreamweaver do it for you.
Windows will run very slowly without a swap file in many cases.
Linux and Windows have fundamental virtual machine differences. Linux swaps pages to disk, Windows keeps a page backed store. What this means is that every memory address in Winodws is backed up by some kind of virtual memory. For code and some data segments, the "page" is the executable file on disk itself, so it doesn't need to ever copy those pages to swap. (Incidentally, this will show up as "swap file in use" even though it's not in your swap file).
Windows also uses swapping for memory mapped files, of which many apps make use of.
Finally, if there is no swap file, there is no "reserved" memory either. That is, memory that is allocated but not used. This can cause some apps to freak out if they reserve more memory than you physically have.
Already did. Sent you an email the other day to the account listed on your website.
What does VB have to do with that? Are you suggesting that C++ developers have access to information VB6 developers do not?
What damage can MS do? At most he can sue the Samba developers, and that's a risk they elected to take.
Tridge's decision effected people other than himself.
Thank you for the reasoned response, rather than a knee jerk reaction.
You raise some good questions. I think first is, why did Tridge *NEED* to access the BK trees directly. You claim he needed access to certain metadata that was not available otherwise.
I guess i'm at a loss as to why access to metadata was so crucial. What metadata are we talking about here? Metadata is, by it's very nature, data about data. This might include things like checkin comments or changeset information. Both of which should also appear in either the code comments, or as part of a patchset.
In any event, a tool existed, as you mention, to do this. All he needed to do was ask someone who had agreed to the license to export the necessary information for him. While that may not be ideal, *NOT* having BitKeeper won't give him access to that metadata either.
I'm not so sure I understand your argument about Larry restricting competition. All he was doing was saying "I'm not going to give you, for zero cost, the ability to reverse engineer my solution".
As for all the other questions about ethics. You base them all on the supposition that Larry was taking advantage of a situation. Both sides got something out of it. Neither side was under any delusion and both sides knew the relationship would not last.
This was a stop-gap measure until a suitable open source alternative was created. As Linus said, it was eventual but it would have been better if it had happened in another year.
SMB is, perhaps, a different story. MS being a monopoly means they operate under different rules. Also, MS willfully published CIFS documentation. Even though they may not have published all of it, it can certainly be argued that MS intended for the protocol to be used by third parties by publishing the CIFS documentation.
I'm just stating what my own opinions are on this. There is such a thing as a Client Access License, and avialable from many companies (including open source friendly ones like Oracle, Sun, IBM, and Novell). That inidcates to me that you can license ACCESS to your software via a network.
Since BK's license forbade reverse engineering, that means connecting to a server to reverse engineer the protocol was also fobidden, and thus you were not licensed to do so.
Uhh.. VB6 was released in 1998. 7 YEARS ago. That's certainly "long supported" despite the fact that it's not a Windows api, but rather a framework and compiler.
Frankly, I think the whole "window manager" concept of X is faulty to begin with.
The things which most people think of as a window manager, arent'. Desktop menus, icons, wallpaper, and file managers are not Window Managers.
The window manager is strictly the so called "non-client" area of a window. The titlebar, borders, sizing controls and window controls (Close, Minimize, shade, whateveer). That's *IT*.
There is no reason there needs to be 10 bazillion window managers out there to do these basic functions. And there's no reason this couldn't all be handled by a single, simple but customizable library.
All the other stuff, which primarily falls into the "Desktop Environment" category is not strictly a window manager, and that sutff can vary greatly.
Microsoft has actually done pretty well with XP's theming API. It could be better, and a little more extensible) but it provides 95% of what people want to do with WM's. A Linux "unified window manager" could provide 100% of what people want and leave the rest to DE's.
I both agree and disagree.
Traditionally, platforms with much more stringent control over the platform have done better for a variety of reasons. Linux could (though highly unlikely) emulate that model and force people to follow various standards. That would probably improve things.
However, and I think this is a much better choice (but also probably unlikely), the platform could address the problems that standardization solves in a more creative way.
For example, while we'll never have a single package management system, we *COULD* have a single package management framework that all other package managers utilize to obtain cross distro compatibility. For example, take a distro like Fedora which uses a tradition Unix filesystem layout and compare it to a distro like GoboLinux that uses a layout more like OSX. A common framework could be customized for each distro to tell the installer where to put user binaries, how to configure desktop menus, where to put configuration files, etc..
Sadly, I don't see anything like this ever happening.
Static linking is absurd for most general purpose apps. Can you imagine how much memory KDE would take up if everything were statically linked? Each app would be 10-20MB in size, and they wouldn't be able to share the common bits between apps. Just running KDE itself and several KDE/QT apps would take 300MB
Even though memory is cheap(ish), you still don't want to squander it.
Which amounts to the same thing. If you want to keep people from connecting to your software, use technological means to do so or don't put it on the open internet. Don't leave the door to your business wide open and get pissed when people wander in.
So you're of the opinion that if you don't protect something, it's legal and ethical to take it?
If you don't lock your doors, it's alright for someone to walk in and take your stuff? If a woman dresses provocatively, she's asking to get raped and the perpetrators should go free?
Or how about this, if you don't put a copyright on your work, it's not copyrighted? We know for a fact that everything is copyrighted unless explicitly released in the public domain.
Yeah, not protecting yourself is stupid, but that doesn't excuse those that take advantage of it.
Are you suggesting that by visiting a website running off of IIS, you are *using IIS* and are legally bound by its license?
IIS's license doesn't require acceptance by those that use it, only those that install and run the executable. In fact Microsoft's EULA gives you an unlimited number of such "anonymous" connections.
Connecting with Active Directory authentication is a different story, and then your use is covered under the EULA. Just like you can't connect to a DB/2 server without a license, or an oracle server without a license.
If so, I guess a full 100% of web surfing population around the whole world requires an IIS license from Microsoft.
In fact, they do. Microsoft gives that license freely though. Have you never heard of a Client Access License?
Nobody, not even Larry, seemed to be suggesting that programmers using the BitKeeper-CVS gateway (same sort of "usage", just with different intent) were in fact licensees of BitKeeper... in fact the whole damn program was written because programmers refused to become beholden to BitMover.
BitMover's license allows this, so long as they weren't reverse engineering his protocol. He allows anyone to connect to his server if you honor his license. The key word there is "allow".
No, they don't have a right to keep anyone from looking at it, though they do have a right to keep people from connecting to their software.
Further, they do have the right to stipulate the conditions upon which they give access to their software, and can pull that license if those conditions are violated.
Tridge knew that his actions would result in McVoy pulling the license. In effect, he decided he knew better than anyone else how the kernel should be developed.
Yes, he did. He used the BitKeeper software when his client sent data to, and retrieved data from the BitKeeper server software.
Or are you going to suggest that this isn't really use? If so, then you've got a lot of people (such as Novell, IBM, and Microsoft) that disagree with you.
again, apparently he did not use the software and did not agree to the license.
While he may not have intended to agree to the license, he did use the software. He didn't use the CLIENT software, but he did use the server software. The license for BK states that using the software indicates acceptance of the terms.
unethical? many in the community questioned the ethics of building foss software on a proprietary product and disagreed vehemently with linus on this decision. the loss that occurred is exactly what they expected from this situation and are happy to be done with it sooner rather than later.
You're trying to side step the issue. Whether or not you disagree with what Linus was doing, it was Linus's decision, not Tridges, to use BK. Linus was willing to accept the terms to do that. Tridge wasn't, so he should not have tried to use the software in violation of the license.
This is really no different that someone choosing to use GPL'd software but not agreeing to or abiding by the terms. If you don't like the terms, DON'T USE IT. No matter how you spin it, that's the issue here.
What is wrong with common courtesy? Respecting your collegues decisions? Nobody had to use BK that didn't want to, there were lots of other ways to get at the code. Those people that wanted to use BK and agree to the terms could. Those that didn't want to agree to the terms could get access to the code via other (Free) ways. It was a win-win, until someone decided they wanted to shit in the kiddie pool.
Indeed, reverse engineering for interoperability is generally legal. But in this case, doing so was not generally ethical, since the software had been provided under the condition that it not be reverse engineered.
It was ethically questionable given the negative impact reverse engineering would have on the entire Linux community (developers and users) through the loss of the software.
Finally, why even do it? The purpose is to create a tool to interoperate with BK Trees... right? But the very act of reverse engineering would make those trees go away because of the license. As you said, sum.zero. It's the Schrodinger's Cat of software development.
I think what you, and everone else, is missing is not whether or not it was legal for Tridge to do what he did, but whether or not it was ETHICAL for him to do it.
Ethics are hard to nail down, but Linus clearly believes that if someone gives you a gift, you don't bend them over and ram them up the rear for their generosity, even if it's perfectly legal for you to do so.
Linus also seems to believe that Tridge did the Linux community a disservice by forcing this issue when there was no open source alternative to take the place of BK.
"Captain, the ship is taking on water after the crew detonated a large explosive device in the engine room".
"Why did they do that?"
"Because they weren't american made engines"
"Well, I guess it's all right that we're sinking then, at least we don't have those damn russian engines to worry about anymore".
The difference here is that there was no way for me to know about the terms of the license before you told me and HTTP is generally considered an open protocol.
BK, however, is not an open protocol, and not only did Tridge know that, he was also generally aware that there were terms associated with it, and was aware of the "no reverse engineering" clause. On top of that, he continued to work on the software even after being explicitly informed and asked to stop (which he apparently agreed to do but did not honor).
Tridge can't argue ignorance of the terms, since he knew about them.