1) a blacklist (/24s minimum) 2) a whitelist (/32s ok, but/24s preferred) 3) an "unblocked" list (people that got blocked by accident). usually individual IPs (/32s)
don't need to keep checking it. and you're wrong about cutting off all the non spam emails too.
why? and how? easy... "unblocked lists", once a "valid" client has been blocked once, he gets unblocked and never blocked again. simple, easy. so ONE email gets blocked, big deal. not a headache.
i've been doing this for over 10 years, it works. and I've even done it at some major ISPs, it works...
yes it's definitely profitable, this is part of the problem, a major part of it!
even with all the crap that people are doing, new SMPT clients, new RFCs and bullshit, it's not going to work!
why? because spammers pay their ISPs tens of thousands of $ a month just for the privilege of spamming!
I remember an old story months (or years) ago about a spammer, got tracked down, the whole nine yards, the ISP refused to cut them off because they were paying the ISP over $50,000 a MONTH to send spam. These days they pay even more.
So all your "checks and balances" don't do any good, because the spammers are VALID users (at least in the eyes of the ISP hosting them).
And this is also why no one does egress filtering. AT&T US, etc won't do it because they get PAID to keep sending the stuff...
face it, spam is BIG business, it makes millions, esp for the ISPs, etc.
all your useless "valid" client checks, checksums, special SMTP servers, blah blah blah won't make a damn of difference.
the only way is with either good (huge) blacklists or bayesian all over the place.
and what someone said about "end users" not caring about bandwidth usage, not true. I'm an end-user, and I care, excess bandwidth costs me money dammit! I am my own mail server, so don't tell me a firewall on my server is gonna slow down the traffic. it doesn't.
I keep to my original proposal, a massive blacklist. headache? yes, but it'd work if kept updated...
there are two major issues unsolved by this. This does nothing to address the traffic/bandwidth usage. I've seen spammers continue to hit mail servers for several years (yes YEARS) after they were locked out, they just don't care. The bandwidth costs become seriously problematic.
and the second thing, sort of the first, or related, is what the issue never getting addresses about EGRESS filtering.
Now if everyone, or at least every major ISP would actually use egress filtering, the spam problem would be reduced by, probably, at least 80%.
Here we are talking about this same stupid issue years later, with the same stupid suggestions and the same stupid ideas, over and over and over again. But no one listens.
The other way to combat spam is one I mentioned years ago, and on slashdot many times, in fact, almost every time this subject comes up, which, by the way, is getting more and more frequent. Anyhow, it was an online database of known spammers, by domain and IP. Two seperate lists, one IP, one domain. IPs are by class-C (/24) minimum. It would work if it was pseudo-public, and open, and everyone would keep updating it.
but no, people say "yeah, interesting" but does anyone really get involved? no.... sigh...
My predictions: we'll see this spam issue more and more often with more and more so-called "brillant" solutions like honeypots and crap like that. But will anyone really want to *DO* anything about it? nooooo..... and we'll keep talking about it for eons... nobody cares...
Yes, the derivative works stuff, that's been getting really messy these days.
My understanding is that the GPL doesn't allow the company to license the base product commercially. How do they do that? Contact the author to write a non-GPL version of the same base? Is that even possible?
There are a lot of products that fit into this area, such as "Zebra" which has GPL and non-GPL (read: commercial) licenses. I guess I always wondered how this was done (legally)...
if the code is released GPL, then none of that code can be in the commercial version, or be a derivative of it. What I mean is, I create "hello.c" with "hello world" as GPL, can I then turn around and create "hellofred.c" with "hello fred" using identical code, modules, etc? Or do I, as the originator of the code need to white room my own creations?
This really gets into the future of this, how can commercial entities exist within the GPL universe? As soon as you release it, all your competitors have access to your code.
ok, let's get really muddy here. I'll probably get flamed and modded down for this, but I've actually been tossing this around for a few years now... I've read a lot of these comments, and even Linus' comments on LKML, etc. and it's pretty good coverage. But I have a question that doesn't seem to be covered, because it'd be considered pretty "Grey" and probably downright underhanded...
Could a company create a commercial proprietary product using GPL code for portions of it (assume even large portions), but have their own proprietary modifications, modules, and additions, AND... could they then keep their modifications/additions private by releasing ONLY the original GPL code source ?
I hope readers can catch the meaning of this. What I mean is, say for example (just example) the "hello world" program was GPL'd (yes, I know it can't be, but that's not the point), and say Fred's company wants to change it to say "Hello Fred" instead, so they modify hello.c, compile it and release it, but only release the original unmodified hello.c with it. Yes, I know this seems to violate the GPL terms, in a sense. but does it?
Let's get really muddy... Take the Linux kernel, make a "ton" of modifications and additions to it, re-release it as a new product, give the original authors, contributors proper notice in copyright files, licenses, and documentation, release the original kernel that was used as source with it, AND, just for kicks, release a document file listing which "lines" in which "files" of the original were modified. Not the modifications themselves, just the "tap" points, as it were. But don't list the actual modifications, and don't list the additions made.
I've always wondered about this scenario. It means the company is perhaps "technically" complying with the GPL, but more than likely breaking it. However, in these grey muddy waters, I have no idea where each of these would stand legally.
the idea is this - a company wants to create a product, they have a great idea, but they're not about to re-invent the wheel, they find that there is GPL code that does a "lot" of what they need, but is missing stuff all over the place, and key critical modules and functions are also missing. They can't afford to hire coders to "white room" rewrite all that GPL code and can't afford the time to do this even if they could, and they can't afford to release their unique creation to GPL.
So what are they supposed to do? This is all based on my thoughts of commercial uses of "GPL" code (note the QUOTES!). and please don't flame me...
None of his points are valid or even close to being reasonable.
My god, look at all the Microsoft ads on it, should give you a clue (cuz the editor of that article sure didn't have one).
I love the "microsoft windows services for unix"... Uh, just which unix are they talking about? Must be SCO... eeesh
the guy has no clue what the hell he's talking about, yes, if posted here, it'd be modded down into oblivion. It's all wrong, totally off-base. it's flame-bait, and trolling at it's lowest.
I mean come on, get a clue. sheesh. He's obviously been paid by M$ to say that stuff, to try and pump SCOs stock. ugh. I hate the FUD machines!
unix is indeed "dead", the signs are here
on
On The Death Of Unix
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· Score: -1, Redundant
For example, and the article uses these points, so I'm going to attack those points...
IBM... well, they are moving to Linux now, I predict AIX is going to be "absorbed" sooner rather than later. You will be assimilated... resistence is futile!:)
SUN? Well, they're already moving to Linux, in fact, they just announced dropping the Sparc chip in favor of the Athlon FX and Opteron chips. Sparc is dead. Sun Solaris will soon be Linux, as I predicted years ago...
SCO? (falls over laughing). Nuff said.
So that leaves 2 (possibly 3) players in the "Unix" world. Linux, HP (HP-UX) and BSD. BSD has been dying a slow painful death already (no flames please, just accept it).
Besides if Sun has their way BSD will be part of Linux soon. And look at Debian, it's already got some of BSD in it. Hrm, y'know I predicted this over 2 years ago too. gee, funny ain't it?
So in reality we'll have two operating systems (ok, 3), by 2007. Windohs, Linux, and Mac. And Windohs is gonna take a beating when 2.6 arives, and will be pretty dead once the 2.8 kernel comes out.
BTW I just thought of something odd. I wonder if it was intentional or not, on Linus' part? You know how GNU is an acronym for GNUs Not Unix, and how its recursive? Well, how about Linux? Has anyone noticed that it TOO is a recursive acronym? Well? come on now... LINUX = Linux Is Not UniX
There ya go, that should settle everyones confusion... Ok, so half the slashdot readers are going "DOH!" right about now...:)
Then again, anything could beat that pile of cow turds. omg the matrix revulsions was so horribly bad, and I don't mean that in a good way.
There were many times I wished I had a "fast forward" button, many times...
And is it just me or did the actors look totally BORED and completely lacking any energy or enthusism? I mean, really, there are so many scenes where it just seems like the actors are saying "ok, let's just get this overwith so we can all go home", really!
One great example of this is Agent Smiths final speech to Neo (near the end of the movie, of course, you'd have to wade through all the other muck in this film to get that far). His delivery of these lines is so lifeless, and it's actually broken up a few times (pauses in the wrong places). Where it seems like he just couldn't give a damn about saying the line or not...
I remember several of the more "dramatic" or "serious" conversation scenes, where the entire audience actually broke up laughing hysterically, many times.
Also, many times throughout the movie audience members actually got up and walked out. Many times... I considered it myself, but figured I might as well see just how bad it could be...
Ed Wood could have done a better job, on a better budget too. sheesh. And that editor/reporter who said that the Ewoks could have made this movie better was RIGHT! omg it stunk so bad!
Many of the plotlines and stuff just didn't make sense, or were just so completely wrong, it was just unbearable after a while. I could name things, but that'd be considered some serious spoilers... Neo's abilities, his "disconnection", I mean, come on. puh-leeze!
omg the ending was lame. They should have hired some real writers and done something decent with it, it's hard to imagine that #3 is actually worse than #2 (returded)... yuck...
I will end this like many editorials do: "at least its finally over!":)
MSNBC wrote an article about a penguin...
on
The Opus Interview
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· Score: 1
Gates and Ballmer are gonna have conoraries once they read about this...
Not really any question per se, except maybe the most obvious one: "Why?!?"
For me, I stopped using RedHat years ago, long before the 7.2 release. I always found it buggy and unreliable, things just didnt work, were intermittent, or just a general pain. Sometimes the support for whatever hardware just wasn't there. I've always thought of RedHat as the "Microsoft" of Linux distros. RedHat has seemed to be more concerned with corporate policies or whatever "marketing direction" BS, instead of what it's supposed to be about -- the users! (includes all classes, developers, etc)
I never even really liked the distro, I used Slackware since it came out way back when, until around slack 4-7, then it also got real ugly. Lots of people say debian is great and harp on it, to me, debian is aweful! (no flames please), I hate it, it's horrible. slack beat it any time.
Does RedHat have any thoughts towards consideration of their users, some of which who have bought distributions from retail channels or otherwise, looking for long-term support ? I mean, you never expect your favorite distro (or most popular anyhow) to suddenly up and pull out like this. BTW Fedora is beyond aweful, nuff said.
these days I'm actually using Mandrake, at least it's one of the larger distros, and has real user support behind it, even non-paying club members can vote on package includes, now thats a bit of democracy you hardly see any more. It has also supported all my hardware, been dirt-simple to install and configure, and has never crashed (unless I forced one myself manually). Sure betas had their bugs, but that's what betas are for. so to me, Mandrake is and will be #1, I really hope they become the new defacto standard of choice for most common users and developers.
I guess Redhat just doesn't care about the users, its all about the bottom line. And just when the SCO stuff is getting really insane, RedHat bails, great timing ya morons!
if there are any of you out there (and there must be a few), though I really hope most of you have gotten out by now. The rest maybe trapped or something, and don't really want to acknowledge you actually work there or anything (who the hell would blame you for that?)... certainly not us! If you can't get out now, at least get out soon, even flipping burgers is a better fate than what's in store for you...
Anyhow, I really wanted to say that if ANY of you want to come forward for ANY reason, with some sort of "smoking gun" as some have put it, PLEASE do so, make it anonymous, send it to me, send it to someone at slashdot or groklaw, we'll protect your identity and see the info gets out in some obscure untraceable way (have to protect our sourcees) and yes, that last pun was intentional.
So anyhow, slip out something that'll be a real killer, do it anonymously or whatever you like, we promise we won't tell anyone where it came from. And who knows, you might just end up getting offered a job at IBM (standing up to the BS really shows some guts, and earns you a few brownie points). So get to it...
assuming anyone is actually left at SCO...
please note, I'm not a lawyer or even pretend to be one, do not take my suggestions as legal counsel or in any legal way what-so-ever, heck what I've suggested just might be illegal, how the hell do I know... it's just my own personal opinion, and far as I know, that's still protected (oops, that might be SCO's next target!) oi...:)
I see some people posting some negative replies, or lamenting on OSS process, etc and saying how it didnt work, or how a psuedo-trusted patch would get in, if it went through proper channels, or some such crap.
this couldn't be further from the truth, you are all forgetting many things, #1 - the checking scripts run daily now, and Larry has mentioned he's going to step that up, still fixed within 24hrs is a damn good response time! closed-source could never be this fast.
#2 - all this talk of peer review, saying it didn't catch this or whatever nonsense, yes in a way it did, and whats more it's exactly what will keep semi-valid attempts or those through "proper channels" out of the code. You forget, millions of people around the world review this stuff, and someone, somewhere will find it relatively quickly, and not just because all the good developers (which is most of the millions) really LIKE linux and do their utmost to protect it, and ensure that no twits do things like this.
on the oft-side billions to one chance someone does something stupid like people said hire someone to do good patches for a long time, get trusted, and submit a patch with this kind of code in it, well, first of all, this is just stupid, it would take years to get that trusted from "zero", second, even assuming all that, the code would still get caught very quickly.
Like I said, someone, somewhere is gonna notice real quick, because the millions of us out in the world really happen to LIKE linux, and protect the kernel most of all, and I'm sure as the code worked its way into the tree, one of the people would catch it, and I'd be willing to bet several would see it at the same moment, including Linus, et all.
You simply can't pull a fast one over the great coders we have, these aren't your average coders, and remember, not just them, but all of us, really, in a way, put our heart and soul into supporting Linux, its a confidence we dont share lightly, the kernel is the most protected of it all, yes, for obvious reasons, its the most critical code.
But even outside the kernel, remember millions of people around the world are reviewing code 24hrs a day, every day, and posting notes about issues, patches, etc.
It's simply much harder to get by all that. Like I said, and I'll say it again, someone's gonna notice, and probably LONG before it even gets into the main BK tree, because even those reviewers ain't slouches!
Closed source has a smaller review team, and I know for a fact internal developers add back-doors to code all the time. I know many closed-source coders (not necessarily personally) that as a matter of habit throw in back-doors into every piece of code they write, because they hate their job, and the people they work for, and hate the product. Since very few people ever review the code, things can sit there indefinately and never get found.
remember this is a work of pride, something the community really cares about, we really want to see it succeed, and not have the issues like this, or that others have, we want to protect it at all costs, in any way, to ensure a good future, and protect the users out there.
remember, we're users too! If it means that much to you, wouldn't you be checking it too? damn straight! This is exactly why the OSS model is so damn important,
and its exactly why Microcrap, SCO, etc will never "get" it. I'd even add Intel to this list, because I think AMD is really "getting" it.
summary - we like it, we care about it, and aint no way we gonna let some dork attempt to ruin something we've worked so damn hard to build, not just for ourselves, but for everyone, its a matter of pride.
and yes, anyone found out (and they will be!) doing this shit is gonna get their ass kicked into next week...
IBM: We move that SCOs lawsuit against us be dismissed on the basis that SCO is clearly on crack.
I mean, this used to be funny, then it got sad, then SCO got really insane and pathetic, and now, well I'm not sure where they are now. I mean, how much deeper can they go beyond this pittiful insanity?
I have to admit though, I fall off my chair laughing so hard it actually hurts every time I read about SCO's new antics, it literally kills me, so for the pure comedic value it's worth its weight in gold! But it's gotta stop someday.
I mean, how much more insane can they get? I know! SCO will issue a press release saying that the earth is in fact a derivitive work of Unix, and therefore the planet belongs to them, and we must all pay a licensing fee to SCO to continue living on it! yah thats it! (omfg!)
this has gone so far beyond a response like "DOH!" (heck, that's what I said the first time they posted a press release). It's just... I dunno, someone come up with a decent word that describes sadness to this depth! please!
the article was good, but he missed mentioning the biggest difference of all, and the most important point. probably because he thought it was obvious.
but anyhow, the largest reason open source is better and more secure than closed source (or commercial software like microsoft) is because you have millions of people around the world looking at it, testing it, not just coders, but everyone.
If there is a serious flaw, it's going to be found, and very quickly, and what's more, lots of those people are coders, which means they submit suggestions and sometimes even patches and improvements to the developers. and not only that, he misses the whole culture and ideas of sourceforge, where anyone and everyone can review any project, and also development of open source projects for the ones we know most well, are not single person developments, but a team, and that team is reall cohesive, it has to be.
anyone in the world can stamp out an email to the developer(s) of an open source project and say "hey dude, there's a bug when you do this, this and this", even a novice computer user can do that.
ballmer just doesn't get it, and never will. M$ can never beat the sheer magnitude of good coders around the world, 24 hours a day inspecting the code.
the only way M$ can beat open source would be to try to open source windows themselves. but that wouldn't work. M$ has lost the respect of decent coders, and their "cool" factor a long time ago. My bet would be open source coders would look at their code and end up vomitting the rest of the day. it really is that bad.:)
Sun stated they were no longer going to develop the sparc processors, and in fact were switching over to the AMD opteron (or amd64) line. This was part of an internal emailing they sent to solaris customers.
This actually makes a lot of sense, and saves them bundles of money in the process.
of course, there's the other bit of future history not many people know, Suns lofty plans for solaris10. Solaris10 is supposed to use the Linux kernel completely, just how hypocritical they are about all this is obvious with this press release.
I personally like Sun boxes, with solaris, they really cook, especially the higher end enterprise server boxes, where linux doesn't quite work yet (neither does BSD), Suns future plans via solaris10 is to standardize these 3 different flavors of unix, and to heck with anyone that doesn't like it.
solaris10 was supposed to be a solaris, linux, bsd blend, but use the linux kernel. Maybe this is why they're all over the map with what they're press releases say. I guess only time will tell.
Several friends of mine and I are pretty much the best networking engineers (router jocks) and system admins around.
But we haven't been able to find work for years. We can't get high-paid jobs, because there aren't any. And no one will touch us for low-paid jobs, and I quote: "We can't hire you because when another better paying job comes along, you'll leave". WTF ? what other better paying job?!?
So we sit and watch our savings evaporate, lose our houses, cars, and families. And then what ?
the best job I can find right now pays $25k a year, and that doesnt pay the bills. so wtf ?
btw his artcile is wrong, it'll be maybe 10-20 years, unless opec changes to the euro, in which case it'll be over-night...
can somebody point me to a nice meanial $40k/yr job ? I dont even care if its data entry.
its been done, nothing new here
on
MIT Roofnet
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· Score: 1
this isn't new. jeezus people. stuff like this was out 4 years ago. am I the only guy who keeps up on wireless technology?
theres ad hoc routing technology out there now thats not only 4 years old, its beyond 2nd and 3rd generation development.
unfortunately there's a problem. Its proprietary right now (read in patent cycle).
My question to/.ers would be this - should such a technology be released GPL even if it means giving up hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts?
how do you balance those two things anyhow?...enquiring minds want to know -ps- anyone wants to know about the lovely 4yr old technology that MIT is attempting to re-invent (yet again) you know where to find me...
How many times are we going to re-review the same old crap over and over again?
btw I agree with most readers here, the comparison is useless.
this is aside the fact its pointless for windoze users (the generators of most spam). Where is a review of Popfile ?
Ohh, I love the BS line about (Paraphrased!) "we turned bayesian filters off for spamassassin because 5 other filters were good enough" - wtf ?
With low data-sets like that, the article is useless, plus this is not a valid method of dealing with spam anyhow.
Has anyone else noticed how this topic keeps get regurgitated over and over ad-naseum?
blatant plug - anyone who wants to discuss anti-spam in real terms contact me (I'm in the process of setting up a sourceforge page too!):)
SCO finally reveals how much code it is
on
SCO Nigerian Spam
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· Score: 1
at least we now have Darl making a statement as to how much code is supposedly infringing.
I mean, how hard would it be to rewrite 70 lines (or less) of code if (big if!) its infringing at all? Any of the kernel coders could probably do it in a fraction of a minute, or less.
My guess is that its 70 lines of comments (remember, they went on ad-naseum about comments being copied).
So let me get this right, they want 3 billion $$ for 70 lines of infringing "code" ? They can't be serious!!
Hell, who knows, there could be 70 copyright lines that mention SCO/Caldara/etc in some way. Those would be real easy to fix.
Oh yeah, to Darl and Chris - I hope you enjoy your new cellmate boyfriend Bubba, he'll fix you right up...
Slashdot Mirror
what? you've never heard of "popfile" ? ;)
ah yes, the wonderful windows users..
TMDA works this way too.
none of these are good options. they don't "solve" anything, the spam still flows...
How about this-
/24s preferred)
1) a blacklist (/24s minimum)
2) a whitelist (/32s ok, but
3) an "unblocked" list (people that got blocked by accident). usually individual IPs (/32s)
Like I said, 10 years doing this, it works.
don't need to keep checking it.
and you're wrong about cutting off all the non spam emails too.
why? and how? easy...
"unblocked lists", once a "valid" client has been blocked once, he gets unblocked and never blocked again. simple, easy.
so ONE email gets blocked, big deal. not a headache.
i've been doing this for over 10 years, it works. and I've even done it at some major ISPs, it works...
yes it's definitely profitable, this is part of the problem, a major part of it!
even with all the crap that people are doing, new SMPT clients, new RFCs and bullshit, it's not going to work!
why? because spammers pay their ISPs tens of thousands of $ a month just for the privilege of spamming!
I remember an old story months (or years) ago about a spammer, got tracked down, the whole nine yards, the ISP refused to cut them off because they were paying the ISP over $50,000 a MONTH to send spam. These days they pay even more.
So all your "checks and balances" don't do any good, because the spammers are VALID users (at least in the eyes of the ISP hosting them).
And this is also why no one does egress filtering. AT&T US, etc won't do it because they get PAID to keep sending the stuff...
face it, spam is BIG business, it makes millions, esp for the ISPs, etc.
all your useless "valid" client checks, checksums, special SMTP servers, blah blah blah won't make a damn of difference.
the only way is with either good (huge) blacklists or bayesian all over the place.
and what someone said about "end users" not caring about bandwidth usage, not true. I'm an end-user, and I care, excess bandwidth costs me money dammit! I am my own mail server, so don't tell me a firewall on my server is gonna slow down the traffic. it doesn't.
I keep to my original proposal, a massive blacklist. headache? yes, but it'd work if kept updated...
doesn't work, and won't work. for various reasons, not all of them technical. Some of the major reasons are political.
this has been bantered about before.
there are two major issues unsolved by this.
This does nothing to address the traffic/bandwidth usage. I've seen spammers continue to hit mail servers for several years (yes YEARS) after they were locked out, they just don't care. The bandwidth costs become seriously problematic.
and the second thing, sort of the first, or related, is what the issue never getting addresses about EGRESS filtering.
Now if everyone, or at least every major ISP would actually use egress filtering, the spam problem would be reduced by, probably, at least 80%.
Here we are talking about this same stupid issue years later, with the same stupid suggestions and the same stupid ideas, over and over and over again. But no one listens.
The other way to combat spam is one I mentioned years ago, and on slashdot many times, in fact, almost every time this subject comes up, which, by the way, is getting more and more frequent. Anyhow, it was an online database of known spammers, by domain and IP. Two seperate lists, one IP, one domain. IPs are by class-C (/24) minimum. It would work if it was pseudo-public, and open, and everyone would keep updating it.
but no, people say "yeah, interesting" but does anyone really get involved? no.... sigh...
My predictions: we'll see this spam issue more and more often with more and more so-called "brillant" solutions like honeypots and crap like that. But will anyone really want to *DO* anything about it? nooooo..... and we'll keep talking about it for eons... nobody cares...
Yes, the derivative works stuff, that's been getting really messy these days.
My understanding is that the GPL doesn't allow the company to license the base product commercially. How do they do that? Contact the author to write a non-GPL version of the same base? Is that even possible?
There are a lot of products that fit into this area, such as "Zebra" which has GPL and non-GPL (read: commercial) licenses. I guess I always wondered how this was done (legally)...
if the code is released GPL, then none of that code can be in the commercial version, or be a derivative of it. What I mean is, I create "hello.c" with "hello world" as GPL, can I then turn around and create "hellofred.c" with "hello fred" using identical code, modules, etc? Or do I, as the originator of the code need to white room my own creations?
This really gets into the future of this, how can commercial entities exist within the GPL universe? As soon as you release it, all your competitors have access to your code.
So how is it done?
ok, let's get really muddy here.
I'll probably get flamed and modded down for this, but I've actually been tossing this around for a few years now...
I've read a lot of these comments, and even Linus' comments on LKML, etc. and it's pretty good coverage.
But I have a question that doesn't seem to be covered, because it'd be considered pretty "Grey" and probably downright underhanded...
Could a company create a commercial proprietary product using GPL code for portions of it (assume even large portions), but have their own proprietary modifications, modules, and additions, AND... could they then keep their modifications/additions private by releasing ONLY the original GPL code source ?
I hope readers can catch the meaning of this. What I mean is, say for example (just example) the "hello world" program was GPL'd (yes, I know it can't be, but that's not the point), and say Fred's company wants to change it to say "Hello Fred" instead, so they modify hello.c, compile it and release it, but only release the original unmodified hello.c with it. Yes, I know this seems to violate the GPL terms, in a sense. but does it?
Let's get really muddy... Take the Linux kernel, make a "ton" of modifications and additions to it, re-release it as a new product, give the original authors, contributors proper notice in copyright files, licenses, and documentation, release the original kernel that was used as source with it, AND, just for kicks, release a document file listing which "lines" in which "files" of the original were modified. Not the modifications themselves, just the "tap" points, as it were. But don't list the actual modifications, and don't list the additions made.
I've always wondered about this scenario. It means the company is perhaps "technically" complying with the GPL, but more than likely breaking it. However, in these grey muddy waters, I have no idea where each of these would stand legally.
the idea is this - a company wants to create a product, they have a great idea, but they're not about to re-invent the wheel, they find that there is GPL code that does a "lot" of what they need, but is missing stuff all over the place, and key critical modules and functions are also missing. They can't afford to hire coders to "white room" rewrite all that GPL code and can't afford the time to do this even if they could, and they can't afford to release their unique creation to GPL.
So what are they supposed to do?
This is all based on my thoughts of commercial uses of "GPL" code (note the QUOTES!). and please don't flame me...
None of his points are valid or even close to being reasonable.
My god, look at all the Microsoft ads on it, should give you a clue (cuz the editor of that article sure didn't have one).
I love the "microsoft windows services for unix"...
Uh, just which unix are they talking about? Must be SCO... eeesh
the guy has no clue what the hell he's talking about, yes, if posted here, it'd be modded down into oblivion. It's all wrong, totally off-base.
it's flame-bait, and trolling at it's lowest.
I mean come on, get a clue. sheesh. He's obviously been paid by M$ to say that stuff, to try and pump SCOs stock. ugh. I hate the FUD machines!
For example, and the article uses these points, so I'm going to attack those points...
:)
:)
IBM... well, they are moving to Linux now, I predict AIX is going to be "absorbed" sooner rather than later. You will be assimilated... resistence is futile!
SUN? Well, they're already moving to Linux, in fact, they just announced dropping the Sparc chip in favor of the Athlon FX and Opteron chips. Sparc is dead. Sun Solaris will soon be Linux, as I predicted years ago...
SCO? (falls over laughing). Nuff said.
So that leaves 2 (possibly 3) players in the "Unix" world. Linux, HP (HP-UX) and BSD. BSD has been dying a slow painful death already (no flames please, just accept it).
Besides if Sun has their way BSD will be part of Linux soon. And look at Debian, it's already got some of BSD in it. Hrm, y'know I predicted this over 2 years ago too. gee, funny ain't it?
So in reality we'll have two operating systems (ok, 3), by 2007. Windohs, Linux, and Mac. And Windohs is gonna take a beating when 2.6 arives, and will be pretty dead once the 2.8 kernel comes out.
BTW I just thought of something odd. I wonder if it was intentional or not, on Linus' part?
You know how GNU is an acronym for GNUs Not Unix, and how its recursive? Well, how about Linux?
Has anyone noticed that it TOO is a recursive acronym? Well? come on now...
LINUX = Linux Is Not UniX
There ya go, that should settle everyones confusion... Ok, so half the slashdot readers are going "DOH!" right about now...
I really hope this means people getting into more "ascii" art type things, like games.
:)
It would really great if somebody out there could help out with the Trek7 project over at sourceforge!
http://sourceforge.net/projects/trek7/
I'd also like to get my "Bambi vs Godzilla" ascii art movie online... Yes, movies!
But really, trek7 is the one I need the most help with. Aren't there any Trek7 fans out there?
Then again, anything could beat that pile of cow turds. omg the matrix revulsions was so horribly bad, and I don't mean that in a good way.
:)
There were many times I wished I had a "fast forward" button, many times...
And is it just me or did the actors look totally BORED and completely lacking any energy or enthusism? I mean, really, there are so many scenes where it just seems like the actors are saying "ok, let's just get this overwith so we can all go home", really!
One great example of this is Agent Smiths final speech to Neo (near the end of the movie, of course, you'd have to wade through all the other muck in this film to get that far). His delivery of these lines is so lifeless, and it's actually broken up a few times (pauses in the wrong places). Where it seems like he just couldn't give a damn about saying the line or not...
I remember several of the more "dramatic" or "serious" conversation scenes, where the entire audience actually broke up laughing hysterically, many times.
Also, many times throughout the movie audience members actually got up and walked out. Many times... I considered it myself, but figured I might as well see just how bad it could be...
Ed Wood could have done a better job, on a better budget too. sheesh. And that editor/reporter who said that the Ewoks could have made this movie better was RIGHT! omg it stunk so bad!
Many of the plotlines and stuff just didn't make sense, or were just so completely wrong, it was just unbearable after a while. I could name things, but that'd be considered some serious spoilers... Neo's abilities, his "disconnection", I mean, come on. puh-leeze!
omg the ending was lame. They should have hired some real writers and done something decent with it, it's hard to imagine that #3 is actually worse than #2 (returded)... yuck...
I will end this like many editorials do:
"at least its finally over!"
Gates and Ballmer are gonna have conoraries once they read about this...
:)
I always saw Opus and Tux as cousins...
Not really any question per se, except maybe the most obvious one: "Why?!?"
For me, I stopped using RedHat years ago, long before the 7.2 release.
I always found it buggy and unreliable, things just didnt work, were intermittent, or just a general pain. Sometimes the support for whatever hardware just wasn't there.
I've always thought of RedHat as the "Microsoft" of Linux distros. RedHat has seemed to be more concerned with corporate policies or whatever "marketing direction" BS, instead of what it's supposed to be about -- the users! (includes all classes, developers, etc)
I never even really liked the distro, I used Slackware since it came out way back when, until around slack 4-7, then it also got real ugly.
Lots of people say debian is great and harp on it, to me, debian is aweful! (no flames please), I hate it, it's horrible. slack beat it any time.
Does RedHat have any thoughts towards consideration of their users, some of which who have bought distributions from retail channels or otherwise, looking for long-term support ? I mean, you never expect your favorite distro (or most popular anyhow) to suddenly up and pull out like this. BTW Fedora is beyond aweful, nuff said.
these days I'm actually using Mandrake, at least it's one of the larger distros, and has real user support behind it, even non-paying club members can vote on package includes, now thats a bit of democracy you hardly see any more. It has also supported all my hardware, been dirt-simple to install and configure, and has never crashed (unless I forced one myself manually). Sure betas had their bugs, but that's what betas are for. so to me, Mandrake is and will be #1, I really hope they become the new defacto standard of choice for most common users and developers.
I guess Redhat just doesn't care about the users, its all about the bottom line. And just when the SCO stuff is getting really insane, RedHat bails, great timing ya morons!
if there are any of you out there (and there must be a few), though I really hope most of you have gotten out by now. The rest maybe trapped or something, and don't really want to acknowledge you actually work there or anything (who the hell would blame you for that?)... certainly not us! If you can't get out now, at least get out soon, even flipping burgers is a better fate than what's in store for you...
:)
Anyhow, I really wanted to say that if ANY of you want to come forward for ANY reason, with some sort of "smoking gun" as some have put it, PLEASE do so, make it anonymous, send it to me, send it to someone at slashdot or groklaw, we'll protect your identity and see the info gets out in some obscure untraceable way (have to protect our sourcees) and yes, that last pun was intentional.
So anyhow, slip out something that'll be a real killer, do it anonymously or whatever you like, we promise we won't tell anyone where it came from. And who knows, you might just end up getting offered a job at IBM (standing up to the BS really shows some guts, and earns you a few brownie points). So get to it...
assuming anyone is actually left at SCO...
please note, I'm not a lawyer or even pretend to be one, do not take my suggestions as legal counsel or in any legal way what-so-ever, heck what I've suggested just might be illegal, how the hell do I know... it's just my own personal opinion, and far as I know, that's still protected (oops, that might be SCO's next target!) oi...
I see some people posting some negative replies, or lamenting on OSS process, etc and saying how it didnt work, or how a psuedo-trusted patch would get in, if it went through proper channels, or some such crap.
this couldn't be further from the truth, you are all forgetting many things, #1 - the checking scripts run daily now, and Larry has mentioned he's going to step that up, still fixed within 24hrs is a damn good response time! closed-source could never be this fast.
#2 - all this talk of peer review, saying it didn't catch this or whatever nonsense, yes in a way it did, and whats more it's exactly what will keep semi-valid attempts or those through "proper channels" out of the code. You forget, millions of people around the world review this stuff, and someone, somewhere will find it relatively quickly, and not just because all the good developers (which is most of the millions) really LIKE linux and do their utmost to protect it, and ensure that no twits do things like this.
on the oft-side billions to one chance someone does something stupid like people said hire someone to do good patches for a long time, get trusted, and submit a patch with this kind of code in it, well, first of all, this is just stupid, it would take years to get that trusted from "zero", second, even assuming all that, the code would still get caught very quickly.
Like I said, someone, somewhere is gonna notice real quick, because the millions of us out in the world really happen to LIKE linux, and protect the kernel most of all, and I'm sure as the code worked its way into the tree, one of the people would catch it, and I'd be willing to bet several would see it at the same moment, including Linus, et all.
You simply can't pull a fast one over the great coders we have, these aren't your average coders, and remember, not just them, but all of us, really, in a way, put our heart and soul into supporting Linux, its a confidence we dont share lightly, the kernel is the most protected of it all, yes, for obvious reasons, its the most critical code.
But even outside the kernel, remember millions of people around the world are reviewing code 24hrs a day, every day, and posting notes about issues, patches, etc.
It's simply much harder to get by all that. Like I said, and I'll say it again, someone's gonna notice, and probably LONG before it even gets into the main BK tree, because even those reviewers ain't slouches!
Closed source has a smaller review team, and I know for a fact internal developers add back-doors to code all the time. I know many closed-source coders (not necessarily personally) that as a matter of habit throw in back-doors into every piece of code they write, because they hate their job, and the people they work for, and hate the product. Since very few people ever review the code, things can sit there indefinately and never get found.
remember this is a work of pride, something the community really cares about, we really want to see it succeed, and not have the issues like this, or that others have, we want to protect it at all costs, in any way, to ensure a good future, and protect the users out there.
remember, we're users too! If it means that much to you, wouldn't you be checking it too? damn straight! This is exactly why the OSS model is so damn important,
and its exactly why Microcrap, SCO, etc will never "get" it. I'd even add Intel to this list, because I think AMD is really "getting" it.
summary - we like it, we care about it, and aint no way we gonna let some dork attempt to ruin something we've worked so damn hard to build, not just for ourselves, but for everyone, its a matter of pride.
and yes, anyone found out (and they will be!) doing this shit is gonna get their ass kicked into next week...
come on now, don't you guys check?
;)
This is an obvious duplicate...
must be damn slow cuz there's no SCO news
and all it has to say is-
;)
IBM: We move that SCOs lawsuit against us be dismissed on the basis that SCO is clearly on crack.
I mean, this used to be funny, then it got sad, then SCO got really insane and pathetic, and now, well I'm not sure where they are now. I mean, how much deeper can they go beyond this pittiful insanity?
I have to admit though, I fall off my chair laughing so hard it actually hurts every time I read about SCO's new antics, it literally kills me, so for the pure comedic value it's worth its weight in gold! But it's gotta stop someday.
I mean, how much more insane can they get? I know!
SCO will issue a press release saying that the earth is in fact a derivitive work of Unix, and therefore the planet belongs to them, and we must all pay a licensing fee to SCO to continue living on it! yah thats it! (omfg!)
this has gone so far beyond a response like "DOH!" (heck, that's what I said the first time they posted a press release). It's just... I dunno, someone come up with a decent word that describes sadness to this depth! please!
ps-no I cant spell, so sue me
the article was good, but he missed mentioning the biggest difference of all, and the most important point. probably because he thought it was obvious.
:)
but anyhow, the largest reason open source is better and more secure than closed source (or commercial software like microsoft) is because you have millions of people around the world looking at it, testing it, not just coders, but everyone.
If there is a serious flaw, it's going to be found, and very quickly, and what's more, lots of those people are coders, which means they submit suggestions and sometimes even patches and improvements to the developers. and not only that, he misses the whole culture and ideas of sourceforge, where anyone and everyone can review any project, and also development of open source projects for the ones we know most well, are not single person developments, but a team, and that team is reall cohesive, it has to be.
anyone in the world can stamp out an email to the developer(s) of an open source project and say "hey dude, there's a bug when you do this, this and this", even a novice computer user can do that.
ballmer just doesn't get it, and never will. M$ can never beat the sheer magnitude of good coders around the world, 24 hours a day inspecting the code.
the only way M$ can beat open source would be to try to open source windows themselves. but that wouldn't work. M$ has lost the respect of decent coders, and their "cool" factor a long time ago.
My bet would be open source coders would look at their code and end up vomitting the rest of the day. it really is that bad.
Sun stated they were no longer going to develop the sparc processors, and in fact were switching over to the AMD opteron (or amd64) line. This was part of an internal emailing they sent to solaris customers.
This actually makes a lot of sense, and saves them bundles of money in the process.
of course, there's the other bit of future history not many people know, Suns lofty plans for solaris10. Solaris10 is supposed to use the Linux kernel completely, just how hypocritical they are about all this is obvious with this press release.
I personally like Sun boxes, with solaris, they really cook, especially the higher end enterprise server boxes, where linux doesn't quite work yet (neither does BSD), Suns future plans via solaris10 is to standardize these 3 different flavors of unix, and to heck with anyone that doesn't like it.
solaris10 was supposed to be a solaris, linux, bsd blend, but use the linux kernel. Maybe this is why they're all over the map with what they're press releases say. I guess only time will tell.
Several friends of mine and I are pretty much the best networking engineers (router jocks) and system admins around.
But we haven't been able to find work for years. We can't get high-paid jobs, because there aren't any.
And no one will touch us for low-paid jobs, and I quote: "We can't hire you because when another better paying job comes along, you'll leave".
WTF ? what other better paying job?!?
So we sit and watch our savings evaporate, lose our houses, cars, and families. And then what ?
the best job I can find right now pays $25k a year, and that doesnt pay the bills. so wtf ?
btw his artcile is wrong, it'll be maybe 10-20 years, unless opec changes to the euro, in which case it'll be over-night...
can somebody point me to a nice meanial $40k/yr job ? I dont even care if its data entry.
this isn't new. jeezus people.
/.ers would be this - should such a technology be released GPL even if it means giving up hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts?
...enquiring minds want to know
stuff like this was out 4 years ago.
am I the only guy who keeps up on wireless technology?
theres ad hoc routing technology out there now thats not only 4 years old, its beyond 2nd and 3rd generation development.
unfortunately there's a problem. Its proprietary right now (read in patent cycle).
My question to
how do you balance those two things anyhow?
-ps- anyone wants to know about the lovely 4yr old technology that MIT is attempting to re-invent (yet again) you know where to find me...
Slashdot already has this article posted, including the links.
My post, like this entire thread is redundant.
sorry I didnt have time to do the actual lookups, but I figure those too, would also be redundant.
cant Darl and the rest of SCO just go back to surfing porn and leave the rest of us alone...
How many times are we going to re-review the same old crap over and over again?
:)
btw I agree with most readers here, the comparison is useless.
this is aside the fact its pointless for windoze users (the generators of most spam). Where is a review of Popfile ?
Ohh, I love the BS line about (Paraphrased!) "we turned bayesian filters off for spamassassin because 5 other filters were good enough" - wtf ?
With low data-sets like that, the article is useless, plus this is not a valid method of dealing with spam anyhow.
Has anyone else noticed how this topic keeps get regurgitated over and over ad-naseum?
blatant plug - anyone who wants to discuss anti-spam in real terms contact me (I'm in the process of setting up a sourceforge page too!)
at least we now have Darl making a statement as to how much code is supposedly infringing.
I mean, how hard would it be to rewrite 70 lines (or less) of code if (big if!) its infringing at all?
Any of the kernel coders could probably do it in a fraction of a minute, or less.
My guess is that its 70 lines of comments (remember, they went on ad-naseum about comments being copied).
So let me get this right, they want 3 billion $$ for 70 lines of infringing "code" ? They can't be serious!!
Hell, who knows, there could be 70 copyright lines that mention SCO/Caldara/etc in some way. Those would be real easy to fix.
Oh yeah, to Darl and Chris - I hope you enjoy your new cellmate boyfriend Bubba, he'll fix you right up...