Somehow I suspect he will be commenting on the embarrassing failure of Caldera/SCO for years to come.
I suspect he will move into the after-dinner speaking market and write too many books on how he spectacularly failed and "what he learned". He will probably make some fairly decent cash from this as other "business" folk will listen/read because they want to a) gloat, b) pretend they are in reality trying to "learn from his mistakes" and c) gloat a little more.
All the while the model for the "business" he was (and they are) in is changing and what caused him and will cause others to fail is their refusal to adapt.
For McBride to call the Linux companies aggressive after the stunts he has pulled is hypocrisy in its purest form. Aside from that I thought the whole point of free market enterprise was this survival of the fittest thing. Don't we keep getting told that to succeed/survive in business you have to be ruthless and aggressive? (Not that I agree with this it's just what people like McBride seem to keep spouting).
Ahh... So if they've swallowed BSD and added their extensions during the digestive process, that explains how they've managed to consistently release such a crap OS!
Any changes Novell makes to the Linux kernel or supporting OS code (and apps), all distributed under GPL, will be available for any other developer to use under GPL, as per the GPL. Novell's Linux products might eventually become traps for Microsoft lockin, but the code itself need not be if included in other distros. That would be up to the other distro.
Whilst that might be true for applications, for the kernel it's a different matter. We could find ourselves faced with two or more almost-the-same-but-different-enough kernel bases. That could lead to a fragmentation in the distro world which could lead to application developers shunning Linux because "with Windows you have a single codebase to deal with". Does any of this sound familiar to Unix users?
Let me give you just one example: Microsoft Office, since at least Office 2000, has an easy way for you to assign special symbols to keypress combinations. OpenOffice doesn't This is a known bug.
We'll leave the argument as to whether a missing feature can be called a "bug" to another day:o) but the key-combo argument just seems to raise the whole issue of where such things should be configured. Okay I don't even know if this is possible in Windows but I hope it is. My point is that surely we should not still be in the days when you have to setup and remember keyboard combo's for each application? This kind of thing should be in the remit of the Window Manager/GUI not the application.
I primarily use KDE and if I want to use accented or other non-English characters such as " " (the upside down question mark and exclamation point - if you can't see them) in ANY application then it's a matter of the keyboard layout handler and not the the specific application. I use a British layout keyboard so certain characters are not available to me by default but KDE[1] allows me to access them across the apps running on it with a single control centre option. In my case this means I enabled (e.g. ticked a box) the right Alt/Alt-Gr key as my "Compose" key and that's it. All I need do to type say an á is press Alt-Gr once and then press ' followed by A. For â it's Alt-Gr then ^ then A. For (again upside down question mark) I press Alt-Gr once and then ?? . It's no more difficult than pressing Alt-Gr+Shift+A - well not to me anyway.
BTW I used the same keyboard combinations to enter those characters in here too. Does IE automatically support the keyboard combo's you setup in Word?
Look, I'm not saying this is why OOo doesn't have this feature, you may be right in that. I'm just saying that such arguments end up adding huge amounts of duplicate development work, whereas having the WM/GUI handle it - and educating users about such features - saves a lot of repetition. If you are using your applications for such features then you are either doing it wrong or being forced to.
[1] I am sure that GNOME,XFCE,MAC and even Windows [w|sh]ould as well.
I saw that too. The video can be found here http://www.moller.com/videom200x.htm. Using the timecode on the video image, the crane comes into view at around 1:05:50 . Keep watching and at around 1:06:12 - 1:06:13 you can see what looks like acable coming down. There are two "blobs" on it which can be seen on 1:06:12:28 .
I'm not sure about the side to side stuff as the "jet" configuration may cause that but the crane certainly looks like it is attached to the "car".
Of course it could just be a safety-wire of sorts (like those used on some climbing walls) so that if the car's engines fail the driver is not dropped to the ground at speed.
In that sense you are correct. When I first replied the site was unavailable from here so I didn't know about the CC licence. The licence changes things as it does seem to indicate a preference to not have it in any other format.
The summary just said his wishes were to make it available in ogg only, not that he was restricting others from converting it. I assumed this meant he was just not prepared to release it in a closed format himself.
Of course I forgot this was RMS we're talking about;o)
I've seen a few discussions recently on whether conversion constitutes a derivative. Obviously it does in the purest sense but when fair usage is taken on board it does raise this kind of conflict.
I can just see the cognitive dissonance Stallman would experience: to demand a take-down and remain pure to doctrine (but at the same time join league with the copyright cartels he decries) or leave it alone and allow people to actually hear the message. You're wrong. I think he wouldn't have a problem with it at all. His reason for releasing it under an open format was to allow the greatest number of people do what they wanted with it. Play it (with a suitable player), convert it to a different format, distribute it etc. The point is that to release it under a closed format could legally restrict those who want to convert it to their preferred format.
I would imagine that if you wait long enough, somebody will put it on You Tube.
Stallman has never claimed to be a fan of "openness", he talks about freedom. You are confusing the four freedoms with the ability to distribute in the currently popular formats. Information cannot flow freely if it is frestricted by patents, licences and other legal wrangling.
MP3 has a history of licencing and patenting issues, OGG Vorbis is patent free and open. Thus, of the two, the latter format is more likely to ensure continued access to the data.
Yes, the popular ( read: pre-installed with an OS ) music playing software make it difficult to play Ogg but there are plenty of players around. You call it fanaticism and say he has compromised to make a point. I (and many others I suspect) would say he is absolutely not-compromising and this decision is completely in line with Stallman's aims and philosophy and those of the FSF.
way back nixers used to bash windows for their DLL issues.. these days dependencies and libraries on nix is a far bigger problem than DLL ever was.. funny that.. walking right into their own trap. These days dependencies and libraries *should* only be an issue if you are installing bleeding edge stuff or installing something for which there is no package on your distro (like proprietary software that they cannot distribute). For the rest of the time apt, yum or any other half-decent package manager more than adequately handles dependencies.
That sound of crickets chirping you hear when you search Slashdot for Beagle articles:
Did you actually go and search for it? Thirty seconds ago, this http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=beagle gave me the above article as the fourth result. It daes from Jan 2006 and I remember it making the frontpage (or at least my RSS feed).
It means that no one really cares about closed vs. open
No-one? You really don't read Slashdot often do you?:o)
I assumed the reason this made it to/. was because it meant us geeks could now stop having to say "no but it will be and here's an alternative" when asked if Google desktop ran under Linux. Now we can say "Yes but there is a better alternative".
How is it a structural engineer can make a bridge or skyscraper perfect every time with no bugs
*Every* time????
You might like to have a look at London's millenium bridge ( designed by one of the biggest Civil/Structural engineering firms in the world ) or Ronan point (to name just two of the famous ones) and reconsider that statement a little.
He obviously doesn't understand what Free Software is all about. It's about freedom, not saving money. Getting it for free is just a fringe benefit.
He probably does understand but I reckon he is betting on the fact that a lot of the people he is trying to sell to don't. If Microsoft can even further confuse people (who already associate "free" with cost) then the task of selling them ever restrictive licences becomes simpler as they opt for the path of least resistance.
You're correct in that it's about freedom but getting it for free is not even a fringe benefit - it's unrelated. The purchase price has nothing to do with the licence (when we are talking about Free Software that is). It's this misconception that Hilf is targetting and trying to embrace and extend:o)
Why are you asking us - other than to generate a/. discussion?
Time to decide where you stand and stick to it. We can all advise that you should leave - and it seems most people are doing that - but in the end it is you who has to live with whichever decision you make. So ask yourself - which type of person can I live with being and _be_ that person. This includes blowing the whistle. If it were me I would leave now - not waiting for another job - and write to my bosses explaining clearly why I was leaving. I would not blow the whistle or snitch as I think that if they act like this it will catch up with them eventually and the less involved you are,the better.
You disagree with the decision to do something illegal. You are unhappy about knowingly doing something illegal. Yet you say you want to keep your job. _Why_ would you want to work in an environment that requires you to be part of something you clearly dislike?
What are your reasons for wanting to keep the job? They'd have to be pretty good to outweigh the negatives of this side wouldn't they?
There are other jobs, maybe less pay, less benefits but they come with things like sleeping at night and looking yourself in the mirror each morning.
It's quite likely he *has* hired some kind of legal counsel because he has brought a suit challenging the legality of the NSL. To do that without hiring legal representation would seem daft. Aside from that ( again from TFA):
Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.
Here he talks here of the case he is involved in and meeting with *his* attorneys. I take that to mean he has hired a lawyer.
Slashdot Mirror
Flashblock is very good for this. I just avoid the flash bit and read the rest. If they haven't *got* any other form of content - I leave.
Don't hold your breath on that one.
It seems to have plenty of goatse - does that count? :o)
In Britain we get to do it with all three - sometimes in the same day! :o)
I suspect he will move into the after-dinner speaking market and write too many books on how he spectacularly failed and "what he learned". He will probably make some fairly decent cash from this as other "business" folk will listen/read because they want to a) gloat, b) pretend they are in reality trying to "learn from his mistakes" and c) gloat a little more.
All the while the model for the "business" he was (and they are) in is changing and what caused him and will cause others to fail is their refusal to adapt.
For McBride to call the Linux companies aggressive after the stunts he has pulled is hypocrisy in its purest form. Aside from that I thought the whole point of free market enterprise was this survival of the fittest thing. Don't we keep getting told that to succeed/survive in business you have to be ruthless and aggressive? (Not that I agree with this it's just what people like McBride seem to keep spouting).
You live by the sword, you die by the sword.
Ahh...
So if they've swallowed BSD and added their extensions during the digestive process, that explains how they've managed to consistently release such a crap OS!
An iceweasel by any chance?
Whilst that might be true for applications, for the kernel it's a different matter. We could find ourselves faced with two or more almost-the-same-but-different-enough kernel bases. That could lead to a fragmentation in the distro world which could lead to application developers shunning Linux because "with Windows you have a single codebase to deal with". Does any of this sound familiar to Unix users?
"That should be done in individual applications"
s/should be done/should *not* be done
doh!
We'll leave the argument as to whether a missing feature can be called a "bug" to another day
I primarily use KDE and if I want to use accented or other non-English characters such as " " (the upside down question mark and exclamation point - if you can't see them) in ANY application then it's a matter of the keyboard layout handler and not the the specific application. I use a British layout keyboard so certain characters are not available to me by default but KDE[1] allows me to access them across the apps running on it with a single control centre option. In my case this means I enabled (e.g. ticked a box) the right Alt/Alt-Gr key as my "Compose" key and that's it. All I need do to type say an á is press Alt-Gr once and then press ' followed by A. For â it's Alt-Gr then ^ then A. For (again upside down question mark) I press Alt-Gr once and then ?? . It's no more difficult than pressing Alt-Gr+Shift+A - well not to me anyway.
BTW I used the same keyboard combinations to enter those characters in here too. Does IE automatically support the keyboard combo's you setup in Word?
Look, I'm not saying this is why OOo doesn't have this feature, you may be right in that. I'm just saying that such arguments end up adding huge amounts of duplicate development work, whereas having the WM/GUI handle it - and educating users about such features - saves a lot of repetition. If you are using your applications for such features then you are either doing it wrong or being forced to.
[1] I am sure that GNOME,XFCE,MAC and even Windows [w|sh]ould as well.
I saw that too. The video can be found here http://www.moller.com/videom200x.htm.
Using the timecode on the video image, the crane comes into view at around 1:05:50 . Keep watching and at around 1:06:12 - 1:06:13 you can see what looks like acable coming down. There are two "blobs" on it which can be seen on 1:06:12:28 .
I'm not sure about the side to side stuff as the "jet" configuration may cause that but the crane certainly looks like it is attached to the "car".
Of course it could just be a safety-wire of sorts (like those used on some climbing walls) so that if the car's engines fail the driver is not dropped to the ground at speed.
I'm not sure that came out how you intended
In that sense you are correct. When I first replied the site was unavailable from here so I didn't know about the CC licence. The licence changes things as it does seem to indicate a preference to not have it in any other format.
;o)
The summary just said his wishes were to make it available in ogg only, not that he was restricting others from converting it. I assumed this meant he was just not prepared to release it in a closed format himself.
Of course I forgot this was RMS we're talking about
I've seen a few discussions recently on whether conversion constitutes a derivative. Obviously it does in the purest sense but when fair usage is taken on board it does raise this kind of conflict.
I would imagine that if you wait long enough, somebody will put it on You Tube.
s/vorbis/theora/i
s/music/media/i
That'll teach me to not read TFS. I saw ".mp3" in the GP and assumed - whoops!
Stallman has never claimed to be a fan of "openness", he talks about freedom. You are confusing the four freedoms with the ability to distribute in the currently popular formats. Information cannot flow freely if it is frestricted by patents, licences and other legal wrangling.
MP3 has a history of licencing and patenting issues, OGG Vorbis is patent free and open. Thus, of the two, the latter format is more likely to ensure continued access to the data.
Yes, the popular ( read: pre-installed with an OS ) music playing software make it difficult to play Ogg but there are plenty of players around. You call it fanaticism and say he has compromised to make a point. I (and many others I suspect) would say he is absolutely not-compromising and this decision is completely in line with Stallman's aims and philosophy and those of the FSF.
yep and *that* is why I use Debian :o)
Beagle has. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/18
Did you actually go and search for it? Thirty seconds ago, this http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=beagle gave me the above article as the fourth result. It daes from Jan 2006 and I remember it making the frontpage (or at least my RSS feed).
No-one? You really don't read Slashdot often do you?
I assumed the reason this made it to
Anybody else read the headline in their feed reader and wonder why Randall was getting involved in GPL wars? :o)
*Every* time????
You might like to have a look at London's millenium bridge ( designed by one of the biggest Civil/Structural engineering firms in the world ) or Ronan point (to name just two of the famous ones) and reconsider that statement a little.
He probably does understand but I reckon he is betting on the fact that a lot of the people he is trying to sell to don't.
If Microsoft can even further confuse people (who already associate "free" with cost) then the task of selling them ever restrictive licences becomes simpler as they opt for the path of least resistance.
You're correct in that it's about freedom but getting it for free is not even a fringe benefit - it's unrelated. The purchase price has nothing to do with the licence (when we are talking about Free Software that is). It's this misconception that Hilf is targetting and trying to embrace and extend
Why are you asking us - other than to generate a /. discussion?
,the better.
Time to decide where you stand and stick to it. We can all advise that you should leave - and it seems most people are doing that - but in the end it is you who has to live with whichever decision you make. So ask yourself - which type of person can I live with being and _be_ that person. This includes blowing the whistle.
If it were me I would leave now - not waiting for another job - and write to my bosses explaining clearly why I was leaving. I would not blow the whistle or snitch as I think that if they act like this it will catch up with them eventually and the less involved you are
You disagree with the decision to do something illegal. You are unhappy about knowingly doing something illegal. Yet you say you want to keep your job. _Why_ would you want to work in an environment that requires you to be part of something you clearly dislike?
What are your reasons for wanting to keep the job? They'd have to be pretty good to outweigh the negatives of this side wouldn't they?
There are other jobs, maybe less pay, less benefits but they come with things like sleeping at night and looking yourself in the mirror each morning.
It's quite likely he *has* hired some kind of legal counsel because he has brought a suit challenging the legality of the NSL. To do that without hiring legal representation would seem daft. Aside from that ( again from TFA):
Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.
Here he talks here of the case he is involved in and meeting with *his* attorneys. I take that to mean he has hired a lawyer.