Because he was, wrongly, modding down Linux in order to mod MacOS X up. That gives me reason enough to post a rant.
No, it gives you reason to use arguments to prove him wrong. Ranting is almost always trolling (unless you are very skillful about it). You post didn't have much to do with the one you responded to, you just don't want Linux to be compared to OS X at all, which is a enormously silly argument to make. It shows that you are just a biased zealot, IMNSHO.
Look, I don't really care wether you will or will not use it. It's an unfair situation - that's all that matters. It likes comparing your grandmother who bakes an apple pie to some huge apple pie factory, and telling your grandmother that her pies suck.
I will compare grandma's pie's to factory ones and if they aren't better, grandma is definately losing one of her highlights. I won't dump her of course, but we're related. I'm not related to Linus & co. He doesn't get any special consideration from me, especially since I have to do work on an OS. A not so good pie's is something I can live with, a not so good OS is not.
If I were trolling I would be modding Linux up to the heavens and everything else down to hell. But I was not, I was merely stating that Linux isn't as bad as people think it is.
That's how you started out, fairly stating that Linux isn't as bad as people made it out to be. But after that you changed the rules of the game. Suddenly we may no longer compare Linux to OS X because it would lose. We may not continue the debate that was already going on about the merits of using either OS. I call that trolling. If you wanted to make that point, you should have found another thread that did concern that issue or started your own.
1) A company invests a lot of research and spends 3 years writing supersoftware X, and sells it under a proprietary license.
Case 1 is the typical copyrighted software situation; collectively we gave up the rights to make copies of that code, so that the company would have the incentive to write it in the first place. Then we pay. We pay 2 times: once with our right to copy it, whether we use it or not, and once with our money, if we actually use it.
No, you pay only once. Suppose that this system wasn't in place. The software would probably not have been written (or at least not at the same speed/quality, by a focused, 40hr/week group of developers). I don't see how you can give up the right to copy code that hasn't been written. So you simply pay once for software with certain restrictions. That doesn't differ much with physical products actually. I cannot start producing and selling Dells. Buying one doesn't give me the right to distribute copies. Do you also feel that you pay twice for a Dell computer?
BTW, you don't give up the right to copy, but to distribute copies. Fair use allows me to copy stuff without being sued.
2) A company finds an agency that needs supersoftware X, spends 3 years writing it on contract, and then sells it under a proprietary license.
Case 2 is also unfortunately typical. In this case we pay for our software 3 times: once when we paid to have it written, once when we gave up our rights to copy it, and once when we bought it.
If the company wouldn't get to sell the software it must ask more for writing the software initially. The costs of development will be taxed differently, but the total amount of money you will have to pay will not automatically increase.
I want tax-funded software under the GPL, so that I will never face a copy of MY OWN CODE wrapped up in a new interface being sold to me for $500 under an oppressive EULA.
Why can't I use MY OWN CODE as the basis of a new product that I want to sell? Why can't the government reduce my taxes by selling publicly funded software on my behalf? Valid arguments that can also be expressed in irate sentences.
Copyright is only constitutional in the US as long as it creates an incentive to create more works. Since software written for a government contract is going to be written whether there is coyright or not, there is no new incentive created. Therefore, prosecuting someone for copying and selling software written under government contract is unconstitutional.
If this lowers the price of having the software written, the government is able to afford more software or other copyrighted stuff. More works can thus be created.
Now, since as a society we seem to have collectively decided to ignore that document, maybe constitutionality has no bearing.
That is one possible conclusion. Another is that you don't understand the law.
And you shouldn't look at it from a consumer point of view.
The post you responded to was looking at it from a consumer point of view. Most of us consider that a legitimate concern to discuss. Why do you try to kill that debate with an offtopic rant?
The fact that Apple and MS have more manpower is a fact, it's the reality. If you're going to criticize something, you must also look at wether the situation is fair. Wether the consumer care or not is irrelevant.
Ok, it isn't fair. It still sucks and I won't use it. Happy? Next time I'll diss MS, must I include the lengthy trial against them? Linux and Apple don't have those problems. How sad for MS. Whenever I mention Apple, should I tell people about the awful press they get? Terribly unfair.
Do any of these problems matter when I evaluate a product for it's quality? No. So why did you bring them up in this discussion about quality? Trying to troll?
Remember that Apple and Microsoft have a hell lot more experience and manpower.
That doesn't really matter from a consumer point of view. I'm not going to use a crappy product because the developers are a sad bunch.
It's all Apple hardware, *of course* they can make everything work out-of-the-box.
Impossible, Apple doesn't make printers anymore. The hardware that connects to the printers can be third-party as well (you can buy USB and Ethernet cards). I wonder if you can explain how an Apple motherboard makes it so much easier for Mac OS X to connect to a printer, since your excuse doesn't seem so self-evident as you make it out to be.
If Apple were to develop for x86 however, it wouldn't be so easy.
But they don't. It's like complaining that a Porsche sucks when you want to drive cross-country. Well, duh.
The fact that the guy will be imprisoned/killed if he goes back to his country doesn't mean that he has to agree with everything in your society. I think it's fairly natural for a political refugee to be very critical of the society he lives in. After all, he learned the dangers of a badly construed society and is probably very interested in creating a better society (in the US and in Iran). You can't create a better society without analyzing the existing ones and determining their strenghts and weaknesses.
The true hypocrisy is with nationalists who simply assume that their society is the best or "God's own country"(tm) without a true understanding of other societies in this world and their strengths and weaknesses.
That is true, but RMS clearly does like you to be at his mercy. The default is to have this clause and the option of leaving this out is hidden deeply in the license. If RMS was as considerate to developers as he was to users, he would have put up a clearer warning or leave it as an option to add this clause.
BTW, what happens when you merge two GPL components, one of which has this clause and the other has not? That seems really messy.
Which for the good reader to see, wasn't my point at all. I was talking about the developer in this case. I'd like to think he should have some rights too.
What a load o' crap. Larry McVoy basically says three things:
1. We very much like to give both the poor and the rich the option of using our software (without illegally using it), the only thing we disagree with is that our competitors use it for free. While it may be short-sighted, in no way is this worse than Perforce or any of the other commercial versioning tools which cannot be used by anyone for free.
2. We don't believe that an open source product can financially be succesful in this market segment (that is what he actually said, not that all OSS is hopeless). You call this arrogant, but where o where is this money making open source versioning tool to disprove Larry? Besides, there is no reason to call someone arrogant for a honest opinion (unless you are part of the thought police).
3. You have every right to create your own ultracool open source product, but don't claim that you have any right to use our work for free unless you follow our rules. If you want a versioning tool that doesn't have these restrictions, build your own instead of whining.
I certainly don't think that Larry is against OSS or its proponents. What he is against, is people who blame him when he is ten times nicer to users than most other developers. Because no matter how you twist the argument, a commercial license is all your gonna get with almost every other commercial product. BitMover gives you another option, one which you may accept or not, but it can never take anything away from the basic proposition that you get with most commercial products: pay to use it. Besides, the commercial license they use is not a shinkwrap EULA, but a legitimate contract that you must sign. So all in all, BitMover doesn't seem to be any more evil than other commercial developers (probably much less actually). I agree that Larry could have used a bit more tact, but the same can be said for RMS. That's why they should both stick to coding IMHO;)
This is just FUD, there isn't a lot that you can do in Cocoa, but not in Carbon (or vice versa). More and more they are just becoming two representations of the same basic API's. In fact, often enough Cocoa calls Carbon to do its thing.
BTW, as long as Photoshop and Word aren't rewritten (yeah right!), Carbon won't vanish.
The problem with EULA's is that they can be changed at any time by the developer, thus creating an unfair situation.
As opposed to the GPL that can be changed at any time by RMS?:
"This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version."
Tell me how this is not the exact same situation, but where RMS has the power to screw developers.
The most far-fetched example is of course a copyright term of infinity minus one. Suppose that such an extension would have been in effect when Keynes wrote his books and that the publishing rights would have been sold by his heirs to Marx Publishing Inc. Marx Publishing has a competing set of books and so they lock up Keynes' works forever (minus one year). This extremely important part of our culture is thus (in essence) destroyed.
I'm not very knowledgable on the subject of the first amendment, but this at the very least sounds extremely scary.
Copyrights are supposed to ENCOURAGE development of works by giving the authors an ability to exclusive use/profit from them. So of course retroactive application of the exentions is silly.
In theory I could benefit from that extension and use that as a justification for creating more works. Of course, it's quite unlikely that the original artists has any benefit after 50 years, so an extension to 70 won't promote anything. However, if the copyright term were fairly short, a retroactive extension could actually encourage new creations. I wonder if that's what Lessig meant when he confused the courts by saying that he would support retrospective extensions that do promote the arts.
There are a LOT of works out there that the copyrights are still legally in force, but no one is around who wants them... but the off chance that there COULD be a massive penalty for infringement, no one will risk republishing that long out-of-date stuff. For example, some short stories, articles, illustrations from long defunct magazines from the 50's.
And so the promotion of arts is hampered. An effect of copyright extensions that congress does not seem to understand.
Requiring copyright holders to renew the copyrights every 20 years will allow authors who are actively still publishing and profiting from a work, or who still want to control its publication, to do so.
I don't think a company should be allowed to lock up a once published book/film/etc for a lifetime. Controlling the publication of a work should not be possible for 70 years. You might require copyrighted works to be available before you can renew, but publishers already lie about books that supposedly are still in their inventory (although they won't sell them to you), so I don't see how renewal can change that. No, I think we should reduce the copyright term to much more reasonable terms (different for some items, like software). Those terms should optimally be the time in which most publishers expect to make the majority of their profits. For instance, hardly any software is still sold in it's original form after 20 years, so software should be copyrighted for less than 20 years.
A way in which renewal might work would be a renewal fee that keeps rising. Once the publisher stops paying the work automatically moves into the public domain. That way you still can lock up a certain work or keep it in print for a very long time, but you will have to pay for the privilege.
That being said, I think a well-developed argument against the insanely long extended copyrights based exclusively on the idea that they are detrimental to the free and open exchange of ideas (read: free speech), and that the costs outweigh whatever benefits are derived from the latest extension to copyrights would have at least as much of a chance in court as does the current arguement.
The problem with that kind of argument is that it's not very objective. It's about weighing the available evidence/research/etc and deciding what the rights of various groups (with different interests) should be. That seems to be about identical to the job description of congress members. I don't see how the supreme court could make such a decision instead.
Lessig's argument makes a lot more sense IMHO. First of all, it's much more difficult to argue that retrospectively extended copyright will have even a mildly reasonable influence on promoting arts. In fact, if one sees the public domain as promoting arts, it's highly questionable whether congress should be allowed to destroy all kinds of interests and business models that are based on the public domain (see the publisher that wanted to publish an out of print, about to expire book). Those people had reasonable expectations that the works they were after wouldn't suddenly be locked up for another x years. An artist/publisher sh/wouldn't expect the copyright term to be extended for works that were created in the past (especially since the constitution uses the words 'limited term' which conflicts (in theory) with a gratuitous extension).
Furthermore, a copyrighted work is never guaranteed to be added to the public domain if its copyright term can be extended again and again. I don't think it's far-fetched to say that this breaks the 'limited duration' as specified by the constitution. If only prospective extensions are allowed, you will at least have a guarantee that the copyrighted work will expire into the public domain at a known date. It might take 1 billion years, but I'm afraid that the only way Americans can prevent that is by voting differently (in theory*).
Why do you think I wasn't serious just because I ended on a light note? It's actually incredibly smart* to write a post like this, since the people who understand it will see the wisdom, while the people who don't (managers) see it as a joke. So my post will be appreciated by everyone and won't cost me my job.
If a company fails because it tries to do the wrong things, the management is at fault because they are supposed to tell the rest of the company what to do. If the rest of the company fails to do the things the management asks of them, the managers are at fault because they hired these guys.
In short, always blame the boss when something goes wrong.;)
As of version 1.2 you no longer have to inform Apple. It's also BSD compatible in the sense that I can use it in a BSD project and the entire project won't be tainted, just the part under the APSL. For instance, were I to put the code cleanly into a seperate library and deploy the project in my organization, I would have to publish the library, but not my own code (this is the only problem the FSF sees with APSL 1.2, BTW). You can use LGPL'ed code in the same way, but if you use GPL'ed code, the entire project would have to be GPL'ed. Your own BSD'ed code would automatically change license (which is why many people call the GPL a viral license).
PS. I think you can mix APSL and GPL code as long as you don't distribute it. The GPL & APSL only kick in when you do (since they are not EULA's). This might not do you much good, but technically, the APSL and the GPL are not mutually exclusive.
WTF are you talking about? Altivec is just the name Motorola uses for a set of instructions. IBM uses the name VMX for the same thing. Apple calls it the Velocity Engine (so they are not bound to Motorola's trademark, hint, hint). These three companies have all got the rights to use this instruction set (IBM worked on it as well, evidenced by a patent they have). And there is nothing stopping IBM from using it (unless you can explain to me why the instruction set that works with one PowerPC is going to be incompatible with another?). How do you convert the Power4 into the PowerPC4?:
1. Take out the expensive cache and a few cores (divide the price by 10;) ). 2. Remove a few Power4 additions (the instruction sets of the POWER4 and PowerPC are mostly the same). 3. Add VMX (which IBM has already implemented in the PowerPC 440, an embedded processor). 4. Sell these animals to Apple and use them in Linux and AIX boxes (fairly high volume, divide the price by at least 5). 5. Profit!
Aargh, I hate that overused joke.
PS. The reason for the divergence is that IBM didn't believe in SIMD. Ever since the success of Altivec and SSE2, they do.
However, when Carbon apps are busy, the user can't move any of it's windows. Very, very frustrating. Also, Carbon apps not written specifically for Mac OS X have definite disadvantages and are pretty easy to spot. Just look for the most ugly and non-conforming applications except for the pure Java ones.
It doesn't have to be that way. A properly threaded, Carbon evented program will run perfectly. Of course there will be Carbon programmers who still have to learn to conform, but that goes for some NeXT-programmers as well.
Plus, it's usually the Carbon apps that don't properly leverage the operating system or contain lots of cruft like 31 character file name limits or have constantly running loops that hog CPU time and consume battery power, even when they're supposed to be totally idle. It's usually the Carbon developers that can't quite "get" daemons and proper modern application architecture.
It seems to me that you don't have a problem with Carbon, but with its programmers. They are rapidly learning, did you seriously expect them to immediatly pick up all this new technology overnight? They were happy to run on OS X for the first release. They are now working on better compliance since their customers are asking for it. Is that not the way it should be?
It's a good thing for them that there's a huge installed base out there that are almost as backwards thinking as they are to keep buying their products. A lot of the rest have moved onto Windows or something else.
Users don't care whether you are using Cocoa or Carbon, they care about good apps. If you think you can provide a better experience for users with a certain API, please do. But don't be an idiot by blaming users for having rational desires like: - I don't want to throw away my experience in using this app unless there is a good reason. - I want to be able to use my old files. - I don't want to spend money if I can avoid it. - I need to cooperate with others, either by using the same apps or having perfect import/export. - I want to use a/the GUI that allows me to work easily and fast. - MacOS X should be able to do just about everything that OS 9 can do.
Disregarding these things is not forward-thinking. Deriding users for having certain preferences isn't smart, reasonable or respectful. But hey, why be nice to the people that pay your salary?
Yeah, there are still a lot of people who use Nextstep / Openstep.
Just like 'a lot' of people still use an Amiga or OS/2? I think that my definition of 'a lot' is a bit different from yours.
It would be trivial to port most Cocoa apps to those old OS's.
Well duh, those are the predecessors to OS X. Of course, I haven't seen any program which was back-ported, because few people use these OS's. Everyone I know who used it moved to OS X or Windows (five people, probably a good part of the NeXT users in the Netherlands;) ).
As a side note, have you ever seen how fucking slow Explorer starts? Or Office X? Then launch a Cocoa app and see the difference. Especially under 10.2!
Those are two badly programmed apps. An empty Carbon app will start up faster than an empty Cocoa app (assuming the Carbon app uses PEF).
The star trek project was anything but comprehensive or complete. Besides, that's a different animal, as the Mac ran on 68xxx hardware then.
It was a proof of concept. Apple decided not to proceed because of strategic concerns, not because of technical problems.
I'm sorry if you feel that Carbon is as good as Cocoa, but you are just plain wrong.
I can't remember saying that. I'm saying that Carbon has advantages and disadvantages compared to Cocoa. Neither is perfect for everything, which is why Carbon shouldn't be and won't be removed from OS X.
Apple has never said that Carbon is a rewrite. It's likely just the old Mac toolkit with most of the cruft removed.
It's a rewrite in the sense that Apple has examined all the old stuff, scrapped obsolete API's, retooled many others, added quite a bit of new stuff and retested the result in a preemptive PPC-only environment. It's not a complete rewrite, but a rewrite it is.
I have developed for the old Mac OS and refuse to touch Carbon.
I guess that your company doesn't have a big application out for OS 9 (or customers to support on that OS). I guess that you don't have engineers on hand who only have experience with the old MacOS. If you had to choose before Codewarrior supported Cocoa, a move to Cocoa would have meant changing your IDE (and some of your custom little utilities), that is risky as well. You might have a plug-in system in your application. Moving to Cocoa would hurt the plug-in developers greatly. If you want to have a single codebase for multiple platforms, Carbon might be the best decision. I don't know a single cross-platform Cocoa app. A Carbon app can certainly be crossplatform with manageable costs. This hasn't been proven for Cocoa.
Cocoa has been beautiful since the 80's, and IMHO there isn't a development environment that can even come close to matching it.
Yep, but development environments don't get chosen just for being beautiful. In real life there are many other considerations. You might even end up using VB for something and NOT be wrong. It all depends on the circumstances.
Apple is still fighting with application developers to get them to Carbonize their apps. Carbon blows, big time. It's a stopgap solution crafted solely to allow ports from OS 9. (If you are developing a brand-new program for Carbon, allow me to BITCH-SLAP you out of the 80's with the clue stick a few times. ) Apple, and anyone with a brain, knows this. Apple's ultimate plan is to ditch Carbon like a hooker bad case of genital warts.
This is total nonsense. Carbon might not be as easy as Cocoa, but you can do just about everything with it that you can also do in Cocoa (and vice versa). In fact, Cocoa and Carbon are more and more achieving parity. You can choose the solution that you like best and nobody will know*.
*Except that one of the two results in apps that start faster and can run on an old OS that still has a big following.;)
Carbon ties Apple to the Motorola PPC platform which is looking more and more like an evolutionary trichordate (good potential, slow development causes it to be overwhelmed by the competition).
Why? Carbon is a total rewrite, I doubt that it's not portable (why wouldn't it be?). Again, uninformed FUD. Especially if you know that MacOS 7 was ported to x86 by Apple (the Star Trek project). Do you think a port would be impossible for the cleaned up version of (essentially) the same API?
That wasn't the point at all, the point was that you chose to reply to that post. That gives you the obligation to contruct a response that is at least somewhat relevant. Perhaps you should reread the post and your response and tell me the relevance. I see an answer to a question that wasn't asked.
I don't understand why you initially brought up the issue of flag-burning in the way that you did (just like the guy who questioned you). It was very close to being a troll (using non-truths to make a point). That's why I was interested in a serious response to his question. Since you failed to respond properly, I wanted to discuss debating rules, without the intent of proving my moral superiority. Unfortunately you don't seem to understand the problem some of us have with the use of non-truths in a debate (and consequently the meaning of "or are you just a troll?"). That last sentence you wrote casts a gloom over an otherwise excellent post (I'm talking about the 'non-verbal' post). Is it silly to comment on that? Or don't you want to be taken seriously?
PS. I stopped being anon for this more serious discussion. Note that the anonymous post from Friday isn't mine.
I agree that I may have been a bit optimistic. However, if the processor is taped out before/at the time of the conference, it may very well ship 6 months later. Unfortunately I don't have any reliable info on the new chip's schedule. I hope the conference will tell us when to expect the beast.
Altivec was created in a joint effort between Apple, IBM and Motorola. They all have patents on the thing, but use different names for it. Motorola owns the name Altivec, Apple the name Velocity Engine and IBM used to call it VMX. AFAIK they all have the right to use the instruction set (but not a name or specific implementation they don't own). The reason why IBM didn't use it was because they didn't see the use of a vector processing unit (in the past). Of course, the G4, Pentium III & IV and the Athlon have shown the usefulness of a vector unit and IBM has changed their stance. The best proof is of course the new 64 bit PowerPC. It has a vector processing unit which almost certainly is Altivec (although they won't use that name). The Power5 will probably contain a vector processing unit as well.
It is clear that Motorola and Apple have grown apart. Apple has had big problems with them for a long time and has looked at other options. They didn't choose to buy Motorola's awful fabs, it's too late to do that know (nor is it smart). No, credible rumors point to IBM. It makes a lot of sense: - IBM wants to sell more low-range (Linux) servers, so they already need a fast desktop CPU. Why not sell it to someone else as well? - Apple has a lot of experience with Altivec, it makes sense to work with them to produce this chip (Apple employs some very smart chip-designers). - Altivec is a respected instruction set. It's proven to work (no need to reinvent the wheel on a risky venture). Tools are available. GCC supports it (and since their servers will run Linux...).
In 6-9 months we'll probably have a 64 bit PowerMac that is very competitive. I can't wait.
I agree, when someone doesn't lock their front door, you still don't have the right to just come in and steal the furniture. I don't see why the FBI would have the right to enter their computer systems without consent. That cannot be legal even in the US (without a warrant), can it?
Templates are called generics and available as an extension to Java: GJ. This implementation (or at least something very similar) will probably be included in a next version of Java.
BTW. If you are a member of Sun's Java Developer Connection (free), you can vote for the features and bugs you want them to work on. Vote for Generics! Of course, sharing memory between JVM instances is also a good feature to vote for. It has been proven to be possible already (MacOS X' JVM), so they just need a kick in the ass.
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Because he was, wrongly, modding down Linux in order to mod MacOS X up. That gives me reason enough to post a rant.
No, it gives you reason to use arguments to prove him wrong. Ranting is almost always trolling (unless you are very skillful about it). You post didn't have much to do with the one you responded to, you just don't want Linux to be compared to OS X at all, which is a enormously silly argument to make. It shows that you are just a biased zealot, IMNSHO.
Look, I don't really care wether you will or will not use it. It's an unfair situation - that's all that matters. It likes comparing your grandmother who bakes an apple pie to some huge apple pie factory, and telling your grandmother that her pies suck.
I will compare grandma's pie's to factory ones and if they aren't better, grandma is definately losing one of her highlights. I won't dump her of course, but we're related. I'm not related to Linus & co. He doesn't get any special consideration from me, especially since I have to do work on an OS. A not so good pie's is something I can live with, a not so good OS is not.
If I were trolling I would be modding Linux up to the heavens and everything else down to hell. But I was not, I was merely stating that Linux isn't as bad as people think it is.
That's how you started out, fairly stating that Linux isn't as bad as people made it out to be. But after that you changed the rules of the game. Suddenly we may no longer compare Linux to OS X because it would lose. We may not continue the debate that was already going on about the merits of using either OS. I call that trolling. If you wanted to make that point, you should have found another thread that did concern that issue or started your own.
1) A company invests a lot of research and spends 3 years writing supersoftware X, and sells it under a proprietary license.
Case 1 is the typical copyrighted software situation; collectively we gave up the rights to make copies of that code, so that the company would have the incentive to write it in the first place. Then we pay. We pay 2 times: once with our right to copy it, whether we use it or not, and once with our money, if we actually use it.
No, you pay only once. Suppose that this system wasn't in place. The software would probably not have been written (or at least not at the same speed/quality, by a focused, 40hr/week group of developers). I don't see how you can give up the right to copy code that hasn't been written. So you simply pay once for software with certain restrictions. That doesn't differ much with physical products actually. I cannot start producing and selling Dells. Buying one doesn't give me the right to distribute copies. Do you also feel that you pay twice for a Dell computer?
BTW, you don't give up the right to copy, but to distribute copies. Fair use allows me to copy stuff without being sued.
2) A company finds an agency that needs supersoftware X, spends 3 years writing it on contract, and then sells it under a proprietary license.
Case 2 is also unfortunately typical. In this case we pay for our software 3 times: once when we paid to have it written, once when we gave up our rights to copy it, and once when we bought it.
If the company wouldn't get to sell the software it must ask more for writing the software initially. The costs of development will be taxed differently, but the total amount of money you will have to pay will not automatically increase.
I want tax-funded software under the GPL, so that I will never face a copy of MY OWN CODE wrapped up in a new interface being sold to me for $500 under an oppressive EULA.
Why can't I use MY OWN CODE as the basis of a new product that I want to sell? Why can't the government reduce my taxes by selling publicly funded software on my behalf? Valid arguments that can also be expressed in irate sentences.
Copyright is only constitutional in the US as long as it creates an incentive to create more works. Since software written for a government contract is going to be written whether there is coyright or not, there is no new incentive created. Therefore, prosecuting someone for copying and selling software written under government contract is unconstitutional.
If this lowers the price of having the software written, the government is able to afford more software or other copyrighted stuff. More works can thus be created.
Now, since as a society we seem to have collectively decided to ignore that document, maybe constitutionality has no bearing.
That is one possible conclusion. Another is that you don't understand the law.
And you shouldn't look at it from a consumer point of view.
The post you responded to was looking at it from a consumer point of view. Most of us consider that a legitimate concern to discuss. Why do you try to kill that debate with an offtopic rant?
The fact that Apple and MS have more manpower is a fact, it's the reality. If you're going to criticize something, you must also look at wether the situation is fair. Wether the consumer care or not is irrelevant.
Ok, it isn't fair. It still sucks and I won't use it. Happy? Next time I'll diss MS, must I include the lengthy trial against them? Linux and Apple don't have those problems. How sad for MS. Whenever I mention Apple, should I tell people about the awful press they get? Terribly unfair.
Do any of these problems matter when I evaluate a product for it's quality? No. So why did you bring them up in this discussion about quality? Trying to troll?
Remember that Apple and Microsoft have a hell lot more experience and manpower.
That doesn't really matter from a consumer point of view. I'm not going to use a crappy product because the developers are a sad bunch.
It's all Apple hardware, *of course* they can make everything work out-of-the-box.
Impossible, Apple doesn't make printers anymore. The hardware that connects to the printers can be third-party as well (you can buy USB and Ethernet cards). I wonder if you can explain how an Apple motherboard makes it so much easier for Mac OS X to connect to a printer, since your excuse doesn't seem so self-evident as you make it out to be.
If Apple were to develop for x86 however, it wouldn't be so easy.
But they don't. It's like complaining that a Porsche sucks when you want to drive cross-country. Well, duh.
The fact that the guy will be imprisoned/killed if he goes back to his country doesn't mean that he has to agree with everything in your society. I think it's fairly natural for a political refugee to be very critical of the society he lives in. After all, he learned the dangers of a badly construed society and is probably very interested in creating a better society (in the US and in Iran). You can't create a better society without analyzing the existing ones and determining their strenghts and weaknesses.
The true hypocrisy is with nationalists who simply assume that their society is the best or "God's own country"(tm) without a true understanding of other societies in this world and their strengths and weaknesses.
That is true, but RMS clearly does like you to be at his mercy. The default is to have this clause and the option of leaving this out is hidden deeply in the license. If RMS was as considerate to developers as he was to users, he would have put up a clearer warning or leave it as an option to add this clause.
BTW, what happens when you merge two GPL components, one of which has this clause and the other has not? That seems really messy.
Which for the good reader to see, wasn't my point at all. I was talking about the developer in this case. I'd like to think he should have some rights too.
What a load o' crap. Larry McVoy basically says three things:
;)
1. We very much like to give both the poor and the rich the option of using our software (without illegally using it), the only thing we disagree with is that our competitors use it for free. While it may be short-sighted, in no way is this worse than Perforce or any of the other commercial versioning tools which cannot be used by anyone for free.
2. We don't believe that an open source product can financially be succesful in this market segment (that is what he actually said, not that all OSS is hopeless). You call this arrogant, but where o where is this money making open source versioning tool to disprove Larry? Besides, there is no reason to call someone arrogant for a honest opinion (unless you are part of the thought police).
3. You have every right to create your own ultracool open source product, but don't claim that you have any right to use our work for free unless you follow our rules. If you want a versioning tool that doesn't have these restrictions, build your own instead of whining.
I certainly don't think that Larry is against OSS or its proponents. What he is against, is people who blame him when he is ten times nicer to users than most other developers. Because no matter how you twist the argument, a commercial license is all your gonna get with almost every other commercial product. BitMover gives you another option, one which you may accept or not, but it can never take anything away from the basic proposition that you get with most commercial products: pay to use it. Besides, the commercial license they use is not a shinkwrap EULA, but a legitimate contract that you must sign. So all in all, BitMover doesn't seem to be any more evil than other commercial developers (probably much less actually). I agree that Larry could have used a bit more tact, but the same can be said for RMS. That's why they should both stick to coding IMHO
This is just FUD, there isn't a lot that you can do in Cocoa, but not in Carbon (or vice versa). More and more they are just becoming two representations of the same basic API's. In fact, often enough Cocoa calls Carbon to do its thing.
BTW, as long as Photoshop and Word aren't rewritten (yeah right!), Carbon won't vanish.
The problem with EULA's is that they can be changed at any time by the developer, thus creating an unfair situation.
As opposed to the GPL that can be changed at any time by RMS?:
"This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version."
Tell me how this is not the exact same situation, but where RMS has the power to screw developers.
The most far-fetched example is of course a copyright term of infinity minus one. Suppose that such an extension would have been in effect when Keynes wrote his books and that the publishing rights would have been sold by his heirs to Marx Publishing Inc. Marx Publishing has a competing set of books and so they lock up Keynes' works forever (minus one year). This extremely important part of our culture is thus (in essence) destroyed.
I'm not very knowledgable on the subject of the first amendment, but this at the very least sounds extremely scary.
Copyrights are supposed to ENCOURAGE development of works by giving the authors an ability to exclusive use/profit from them. So of course retroactive application of the exentions is silly.
In theory I could benefit from that extension and use that as a justification for creating more works. Of course, it's quite unlikely that the original artists has any benefit after 50 years, so an extension to 70 won't promote anything. However, if the copyright term were fairly short, a retroactive extension could actually encourage new creations. I wonder if that's what Lessig meant when he confused the courts by saying that he would support retrospective extensions that do promote the arts.
There are a LOT of works out there that the copyrights are still legally in force, but no one is around who wants them... but the off chance that there COULD be a massive penalty for infringement, no one will risk republishing that long out-of-date stuff. For example, some short stories, articles, illustrations from long defunct magazines from the 50's.
And so the promotion of arts is hampered. An effect of copyright extensions that congress does not seem to understand.
Requiring copyright holders to renew the copyrights every 20 years will allow authors who are actively still publishing and profiting from a work, or who still want to control its publication, to do so.
I don't think a company should be allowed to lock up a once published book/film/etc for a lifetime. Controlling the publication of a work should not be possible for 70 years. You might require copyrighted works to be available before you can renew, but publishers already lie about books that supposedly are still in their inventory (although they won't sell them to you), so I don't see how renewal can change that. No, I think we should reduce the copyright term to much more reasonable terms (different for some items, like software). Those terms should optimally be the time in which most publishers expect to make the majority of their profits. For instance, hardly any software is still sold in it's original form after 20 years, so software should be copyrighted for less than 20 years.
A way in which renewal might work would be a renewal fee that keeps rising. Once the publisher stops paying the work automatically moves into the public domain. That way you still can lock up a certain work or keep it in print for a very long time, but you will have to pay for the privilege.
That being said, I think a well-developed argument against the insanely long extended copyrights based exclusively on the idea that they are detrimental to the free and open exchange of ideas (read: free speech), and that the costs outweigh whatever benefits are derived from the latest extension to copyrights would have at least as much of a chance in court as does the current arguement.
The problem with that kind of argument is that it's not very objective. It's about weighing the available evidence/research/etc and deciding what the rights of various groups (with different interests) should be. That seems to be about identical to the job description of congress members. I don't see how the supreme court could make such a decision instead.
Lessig's argument makes a lot more sense IMHO. First of all, it's much more difficult to argue that retrospectively extended copyright will have even a mildly reasonable influence on promoting arts. In fact, if one sees the public domain as promoting arts, it's highly questionable whether congress should be allowed to destroy all kinds of interests and business models that are based on the public domain (see the publisher that wanted to publish an out of print, about to expire book). Those people had reasonable expectations that the works they were after wouldn't suddenly be locked up for another x years. An artist/publisher sh/wouldn't expect the copyright term to be extended for works that were created in the past (especially since the constitution uses the words 'limited term' which conflicts (in theory) with a gratuitous extension).
Furthermore, a copyrighted work is never guaranteed to be added to the public domain if its copyright term can be extended again and again. I don't think it's far-fetched to say that this breaks the 'limited duration' as specified by the constitution. If only prospective extensions are allowed, you will at least have a guarantee that the copyrighted work will expire into the public domain at a known date. It might take 1 billion years, but I'm afraid that the only way Americans can prevent that is by voting differently (in theory*).
*See [Two party system] & [bribes]
Why do you think I wasn't serious just because I ended on a light note? It's actually incredibly smart* to write a post like this, since the people who understand it will see the wisdom, while the people who don't (managers) see it as a joke. So my post will be appreciated by everyone and won't cost me my job.
;)
*Figured this out later though
Yep, it's all very simple:
;)
If a company fails because it tries to do the wrong things, the management is at fault because they are supposed to tell the rest of the company what to do. If the rest of the company fails to do the things the management asks of them, the managers are at fault because they hired these guys.
In short, always blame the boss when something goes wrong.
As of version 1.2 you no longer have to inform Apple. It's also BSD compatible in the sense that I can use it in a BSD project and the entire project won't be tainted, just the part under the APSL. For instance, were I to put the code cleanly into a seperate library and deploy the project in my organization, I would have to publish the library, but not my own code (this is the only problem the FSF sees with APSL 1.2, BTW). You can use LGPL'ed code in the same way, but if you use GPL'ed code, the entire project would have to be GPL'ed. Your own BSD'ed code would automatically change license (which is why many people call the GPL a viral license).
PS. I think you can mix APSL and GPL code as long as you don't distribute it. The GPL & APSL only kick in when you do (since they are not EULA's). This might not do you much good, but technically, the APSL and the GPL are not mutually exclusive.
WTF are you talking about? Altivec is just the name Motorola uses for a set of instructions. IBM uses the name VMX for the same thing. Apple calls it the Velocity Engine (so they are not bound to Motorola's trademark, hint, hint). These three companies have all got the rights to use this instruction set (IBM worked on it as well, evidenced by a patent they have). And there is nothing stopping IBM from using it (unless you can explain to me why the instruction set that works with one PowerPC is going to be incompatible with another?). How do you convert the Power4 into the PowerPC4? :
;) ).
1. Take out the expensive cache and a few cores (divide the price by 10
2. Remove a few Power4 additions (the instruction sets of the POWER4 and PowerPC are mostly the same).
3. Add VMX (which IBM has already implemented in the PowerPC 440, an embedded processor).
4. Sell these animals to Apple and use them in Linux and AIX boxes (fairly high volume, divide the price by at least 5).
5. Profit!
Aargh, I hate that overused joke.
PS. The reason for the divergence is that IBM didn't believe in SIMD. Ever since the success of Altivec and SSE2, they do.
However, when Carbon apps are busy, the user can't move any of it's windows. Very, very frustrating. Also, Carbon apps not written specifically for Mac OS X have definite disadvantages and are pretty easy to spot. Just look for the most ugly and non-conforming applications except for the pure Java ones.
It doesn't have to be that way. A properly threaded, Carbon evented program will run perfectly. Of course there will be Carbon programmers who still have to learn to conform, but that goes for some NeXT-programmers as well.
Plus, it's usually the Carbon apps that don't properly leverage the operating system or contain lots of cruft like 31 character file name limits or have constantly running loops that hog CPU time and consume battery power, even when they're supposed to be totally idle. It's usually the Carbon developers that can't quite "get" daemons and proper modern application architecture.
It seems to me that you don't have a problem with Carbon, but with its programmers. They are rapidly learning, did you seriously expect them to immediatly pick up all this new technology overnight? They were happy to run on OS X for the first release. They are now working on better compliance since their customers are asking for it. Is that not the way it should be?
It's a good thing for them that there's a huge installed base out there that are almost as backwards thinking as they are to keep buying their products. A lot of the rest have moved onto Windows or something else.
Users don't care whether you are using Cocoa or Carbon, they care about good apps. If you think you can provide a better experience for users with a certain API, please do. But don't be an idiot by blaming users for having rational desires like:
- I don't want to throw away my experience in using this app unless there is a good reason.
- I want to be able to use my old files.
- I don't want to spend money if I can avoid it.
- I need to cooperate with others, either by using the same apps or having perfect import/export.
- I want to use a/the GUI that allows me to work easily and fast.
- MacOS X should be able to do just about everything that OS 9 can do.
Disregarding these things is not forward-thinking. Deriding users for having certain preferences isn't smart, reasonable or respectful. But hey, why be nice to the people that pay your salary?
Yeah, there are still a lot of people who use Nextstep / Openstep.
;) ).
Just like 'a lot' of people still use an Amiga or OS/2? I think that my definition of 'a lot' is a bit different from yours.
It would be trivial to port most Cocoa apps to those old OS's.
Well duh, those are the predecessors to OS X. Of course, I haven't seen any program which was back-ported, because few people use these OS's. Everyone I know who used it moved to OS X or Windows (five people, probably a good part of the NeXT users in the Netherlands
As a side note, have you ever seen how fucking slow Explorer starts? Or Office X? Then launch a Cocoa app and see the difference. Especially under 10.2!
Those are two badly programmed apps. An empty Carbon app will start up faster than an empty Cocoa app (assuming the Carbon app uses PEF).
The star trek project was anything but comprehensive or complete. Besides, that's a different animal, as the Mac ran on 68xxx hardware then.
It was a proof of concept. Apple decided not to proceed because of strategic concerns, not because of technical problems.
I'm sorry if you feel that Carbon is as good as Cocoa, but you are just plain wrong.
I can't remember saying that. I'm saying that Carbon has advantages and disadvantages compared to Cocoa. Neither is perfect for everything, which is why Carbon shouldn't be and won't be removed from OS X.
Apple has never said that Carbon is a rewrite. It's likely just the old Mac toolkit with most of the cruft removed.
It's a rewrite in the sense that Apple has examined all the old stuff, scrapped obsolete API's, retooled many others, added quite a bit of new stuff and retested the result in a preemptive PPC-only environment. It's not a complete rewrite, but a rewrite it is.
I have developed for the old Mac OS and refuse to touch Carbon.
I guess that your company doesn't have a big application out for OS 9 (or customers to support on that OS). I guess that you don't have engineers on hand who only have experience with the old MacOS. If you had to choose before Codewarrior supported Cocoa, a move to Cocoa would have meant changing your IDE (and some of your custom little utilities), that is risky as well. You might have a plug-in system in your application. Moving to Cocoa would hurt the plug-in developers greatly. If you want to have a single codebase for multiple platforms, Carbon might be the best decision. I don't know a single cross-platform Cocoa app. A Carbon app can certainly be crossplatform with manageable costs. This hasn't been proven for Cocoa.
Cocoa has been beautiful since the 80's, and IMHO there isn't a development environment that can even come close to matching it.
Yep, but development environments don't get chosen just for being beautiful. In real life there are many other considerations. You might even end up using VB for something and NOT be wrong. It all depends on the circumstances.
Apple is still fighting with application developers to get them to Carbonize their apps. Carbon blows, big time. It's a stopgap solution crafted solely to allow ports from OS 9. (If you are developing a brand-new program for Carbon, allow me to BITCH-SLAP you out of the 80's with the clue stick a few times. ) Apple, and anyone with a brain, knows this. Apple's ultimate plan is to ditch Carbon like a hooker bad case of genital warts.
;)
This is total nonsense. Carbon might not be as easy as Cocoa, but you can do just about everything with it that you can also do in Cocoa (and vice versa). In fact, Cocoa and Carbon are more and more achieving parity. You can choose the solution that you like best and nobody will know*.
*Except that one of the two results in apps that start faster and can run on an old OS that still has a big following.
Carbon ties Apple to the Motorola PPC platform which is looking more and more like an evolutionary trichordate (good potential, slow development causes it to be overwhelmed by the competition).
Why? Carbon is a total rewrite, I doubt that it's not portable (why wouldn't it be?). Again, uninformed FUD. Especially if you know that MacOS 7 was ported to x86 by Apple (the Star Trek project). Do you think a port would be impossible for the cleaned up version of (essentially) the same API?
That wasn't the point at all, the point was that you chose to reply to that post. That gives you the obligation to contruct a response that is at least somewhat relevant. Perhaps you should reread the post and your response and tell me the relevance. I see an answer to a question that wasn't asked.
I don't understand why you initially brought up the issue of flag-burning in the way that you did (just like the guy who questioned you). It was very close to being a troll (using non-truths to make a point). That's why I was interested in a serious response to his question. Since you failed to respond properly, I wanted to discuss debating rules, without the intent of proving my moral superiority. Unfortunately you don't seem to understand the problem some of us have with the use of non-truths in a debate (and consequently the meaning of "or are you just a troll?"). That last sentence you wrote casts a gloom over an otherwise excellent post (I'm talking about the 'non-verbal' post). Is it silly to comment on that? Or don't you want to be taken seriously?
PS. I stopped being anon for this more serious discussion. Note that the anonymous post from Friday isn't mine.
I agree that I may have been a bit optimistic. However, if the processor is taped out before/at the time of the conference, it may very well ship 6 months later. Unfortunately I don't have any reliable info on the new chip's schedule. I hope the conference will tell us when to expect the beast.
Altivec was created in a joint effort between Apple, IBM and Motorola. They all have patents on the thing, but use different names for it. Motorola owns the name Altivec, Apple the name Velocity Engine and IBM used to call it VMX. AFAIK they all have the right to use the instruction set (but not a name or specific implementation they don't own). The reason why IBM didn't use it was because they didn't see the use of a vector processing unit (in the past). Of course, the G4, Pentium III & IV and the Athlon have shown the usefulness of a vector unit and IBM has changed their stance. The best proof is of course the new 64 bit PowerPC. It has a vector processing unit which almost certainly is Altivec (although they won't use that name). The Power5 will probably contain a vector processing unit as well.
It is clear that Motorola and Apple have grown apart. Apple has had big problems with them for a long time and has looked at other options. They didn't choose to buy Motorola's awful fabs, it's too late to do that know (nor is it smart). No, credible rumors point to IBM. It makes a lot of sense:
- IBM wants to sell more low-range (Linux) servers, so they already need a fast desktop CPU. Why not sell it to someone else as well?
- Apple has a lot of experience with Altivec, it makes sense to work with them to produce this chip (Apple employs some very smart chip-designers).
- Altivec is a respected instruction set. It's proven to work (no need to reinvent the wheel on a risky venture). Tools are available. GCC supports it (and since their servers will run Linux...).
In 6-9 months we'll probably have a 64 bit PowerMac that is very competitive. I can't wait.
I agree, when someone doesn't lock their front door, you still don't have the right to just come in and steal the furniture. I don't see why the FBI would have the right to enter their computer systems without consent. That cannot be legal even in the US (without a warrant), can it?
Templates are called generics and available as an extension to Java: GJ. This implementation (or at least something very similar) will probably be included in a next version of Java.
BTW. If you are a member of Sun's Java Developer Connection (free), you can vote for the features and bugs you want them to work on. Vote for Generics! Of course, sharing memory between JVM instances is also a good feature to vote for. It has been proven to be possible already (MacOS X' JVM), so they just need a kick in the ass.