I would not suggest iPad 2. It suffers from horrible lags when web browsing that are frustrating to the point of unusability. Obviously, it doesn't handle flash sites. It has much less available in the way of quality free apps. The user interface is dumbed down or broken in many little ways that make the experience one long chain of annoyances.
Android tablets are much closer to being true laptop replacements on the road. On my last road trip I brought a netbook and a Xoom. I never used the netbook. I did all the browsing I needed with the Xoom and I edited text files using a bluetooth keyboard. I have QuickOffice on it, but I didn't use it this time. I look forward to the Android version of LibreOffice,I found I didn't really need a mouse, but I will get the Apple trackpad to use with the Xoom, apparently it works fine. Otherwise, I regard Apple's product as mainly for games and spending money. Not the best choice for a serious computer user.
OK, I read the financial report and it shed precious little light on exactly how those many millions were spent on software development. So now I am more worried than before.
Wonderful, but I still worry, because large sums of money have a long and distinguished attracting the wrong sorts of people. See, worry can be a creative force for good.
At the moment I find myself wondering why Mozilla development seems to progress at a snail's pace which such a lot of money behind it. Spending the money on the wrong people perhaps? I mean, development isn't completely stopped, it is just slow. Mozilla still will not stay running indefinitely after so many years, unlike Linux for example, which will run for years without slowing down to a crawl and eventually crashing like Mozilla does. You would think hundreds of millions of dollars would be enough to fix that, what is wrong?
I believe the first idea they had was farming out their search services to places like Yahoo -- which iirc was their first deal. When that didn't keep the VCs happy, they gradually became more advertising oriented and never looked back. So I don't think they had a plan to make money to start with, which is why I initially took issue with the original post when I read it.
That is roughly correct. Of course they always planned to make money, they just didn't know how at first, and the idea you mentioned was a big flop for reasons I won't get into. See here for the more or less accidental way they hit it rich.
According to Wikipedia, JavaScriptCore and WebCore are under LGPL. I don't know if that makes "most of WebKit" or not, but it strikes me that those (WebCore in particular) certainly are the most important part of it.
I agree, "most of" was the wrong term. More like "a significant part of". This does not change the point: Mozilla.org is perfectly free (as are you and I) to put those significant, BSD licensed parts under (L)GPL. It would be a good move. Apple and Google will naturally hate this proposal, but in the end they would probably both benefit in terms of improved code quality, while being gently dissuaded from evildoing of the sort that is all too tempting when source code may be kept secret.
The last two out of two IT managers I have known were basically incompetent to do their jobs. Having faked their way in somehow, their personal objective unsurprisingly becomes to avoid exposing their incompetence. Usually by making lots of arbitrary decisions, usually involving office politics and seldom technically informed, then enforcing these no matter what the pushback. Two out of two, should I draw a line through those two points or what? If the line goes where I think it does then do you really have to ask "why IT?"
As far as I can see, that simple strategy alone would ensure Mozilla never becomes irrelevant, and that neither Apple nor Google can effectively take webkit private, which is a clear and present danger at the moment.
Since WebKit is mostly LGPL unless they plan on violating the license how exactly are they going to take it private?
Most of Webkit is under BSD license. Mozilla foundation (or anybody else, including your or me) could easily re-license all the BSD parts of Webkit under (L)GPL. Of course, making this stick depends on having a good stream of contributions including bug fixes and new features into the (L)GPL code base. Which tends to just happen given that a significant number of developers prefer to contribute to a copyleft code base over non-copyleft, other things being equal, and given that any contribution to the BSD-licensed code base can be merged to the GPL-codebase without legal issues, whereas the the reverse is not true.
...paying 300Million seems a reasonable decision to me.
Totally. But the number is so large that I worry about the money being largely pilfered by the usual sort of people who are attracted to large sums of money, instead of being mostly spent on doing good.
"'Google started out as a search company. But that's not what they are today. Google's primary business is advertising."
Funny, I thought they were always an advertising company. The last time it wasn't, to my knowledge, was when it was still hosted at Stanford.
The original poster is correct. Google's original business plan was wildly different from auctioned search terms. Believe it or not, it was... well, you can do your own research, I've done mine.
I am very disappointed in the walled gardens in Android and iOS app-store markets.
I don't care about Apple's walled garden, that will take care of itself, and I don't perceive the Android market as a walled garden. All the excellent free (as in freedom) applications I downloaded without providing a credit card number says the Android market is not walled. But Android development is most definitely a walled garden and that sucks because Google designers and coders are not nearly as good as they think they are, or as they would have us believe. Which translates to real life suckage that hurts me in real life. Like not being able to connect to Wifi networks reliably. A situation that would not have lasted more than a year in the greater open source community, given a healthy, functioning development community as opposed to the current, bespoke and overly corporatized Googly approach. Which tends to produce results that would be comically amusing if they were not so painfully intrusive in practice, like the brain-addled conscious decision not to let users shut down an app in any simple way.
Absolutely true, and with a secondary goal of breaking the power of a GPL code base over which they do not have complete control. Now, Google finds itself in a position of paying $300/million to support a GPL code base, over which they do not have complete control (restated for emphasis). What an excellent situation: mandatory doing of non-evil. It's actually better for Google, and better for us, when Google does non-evil like this. I fear greatly a scenario where Google has complete control of the non-copyleft code base of the dominant web browser. In that situation, I do not believe that Google would be able to resist the temptation to do evil, perhaps just minor evil at first, and later, not minor at all.
That said, I wish that Mozilla foundation would take, say, one of those $300 millions and spend it on replacing Gecko by webkit, putting its own fork of webkit under GPL. As far as I can see, that simple strategy alone would ensure Mozilla never becomes irrelevant, and that neither Apple nor Google can effectively take webkit private, which is a clear and present danger at the moment.
I have done extensive measurements and analysis of performance of recent GCC versions with O3 optimization. Overall, I am very impressed. I have not done such analysis of Microsoft's compiler product, and I am unlikely to. However, I am skeptical about your claim that Microsoft's compiler produces better code than GCC at this point in time.
More mature (which means more crufty code), sure. Less buggy? Debatable. I work on one large codebase that don't support any GCC after 4.2 because they've all introduced new optimiser bugs
Who cares about Microsoft these days? Any damage they cause by lagging behind standards is only to themselves, unlike the bad old days. In the modern world GCC is the bar by which Microsoft is measured, and usually found lacking.
"How will this impact Google's support for Android and open source in general?"
Not at all, or possibly for the better?
Definitely for the better. Truth be told, Google's attitude towards free software sucks in major ways, not least their overt campaign to undermine the GPL and copyleft in general. Yes, this is overt, and shameless. There is one loose cannon in particular whose name I will not mention whose personal vendetta includes not only the entire GPL ecosystem, but Debian too. Might as well have a serial puppy shooter on staff.
Google will do nothing to change their stance, but they will work to better integrate in to Android and make it so people want them not Baidu.
In what way is that not changing their stance? So lets get started with our reasonable demands: first thing is, not being able to drag a running app to the trash or equivalent is pure brain damage. Let's see Google climb down off the patronizing justifications for this design flaw and fix it.
"Buying stocks" is not "trading". I should know:-)
Yes, your generalization is huge. I can say I'm seeing more Android phones in the hands of cab drivers these days, and corporate executives too. I suppose it's all just part of a shift in perception of where the value and utility is. I can also say that on my most recent plane trip I didn't see any iPads and most laptops stayed in their bags but there was a massive amount of interest in the Xoom I was using with a bluetooth keyboard, which turns out to be a workable combination on the teensy dinner tray even when my seat is up and the seat in front of me is reclined. Something I was never able to do with a laptop. It's the portfolio case ($23) that makes this work, and the battery bump on the back of the keyboard, which just happens to hook over the portfolio case in such a way that I can touch type without contorting or dropping everything on the floor. So I'll call this progress, and hey, value. I don't really mind using the touchscreen instead of a mouse, but a lot could be done to reduce the number of times I have to take my hands off the keyboard. What's nice is, with Android I can easily fix a lot of this myself, and I don't need anyone's permission to share it. Last time I brought along a netpad just in case, but I never used it, so next trip I feel I only need two gadgets: Xoom and G2. Either one gives me full connectivity including ssh to my home server, which has been a big help on several occasions. Basically the Xoom gives me a full size keyboard and screen and a front facing camera, otherwise these gadgets provide equivalent functionality. Hmm, now that I'm thinking about it I guess I want to dock one to the other. Both already have a microsd card so that gives some minimal level of file transfer, but you have to pull the battery on the G2. Emergencies only. I tried Bluetooth pairing between the Xoom and G2 just now and it works. You have to make one or the other discoverable. It should also be possible to connect them by USB cable, I think the magic word is "Micro USB Male to USB A Female Adapter", $1.35 on Amazon. This might even charge the G2, then I don't even need to take a charger for the G2 on the road. The Xoom is another story, I forgot to bring its custom charger last time and as a result needed to conserve power by putting it in standby, then it made it through the 3 day trip OK. Next time I will bring at least the car charger ($32 on Amazon) and probably that's it - no sense risking leaving the AC adapter in some hotel room. Anyway, this is turning into an Android advertisement which I didn't intend. What I did intend is to say something about why Android devices satisfy my needs. The flip side of that is, Apple's devices satisfy my needs only if I lower my expectations and spend a lot of money.
I imagine that mePhone owners are more likely to buy the latest Apple product while Android owners are more likely to buy shares on the stock market with their disposable income.
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I would not suggest iPad 2. It suffers from horrible lags when web browsing that are frustrating to the point of unusability. Obviously, it doesn't handle flash sites. It has much less available in the way of quality free apps. The user interface is dumbed down or broken in many little ways that make the experience one long chain of annoyances.
Android tablets are much closer to being true laptop replacements on the road. On my last road trip I brought a netbook and a Xoom. I never used the netbook. I did all the browsing I needed with the Xoom and I edited text files using a bluetooth keyboard. I have QuickOffice on it, but I didn't use it this time. I look forward to the Android version of LibreOffice,I found I didn't really need a mouse, but I will get the Apple trackpad to use with the Xoom, apparently it works fine. Otherwise, I regard Apple's product as mainly for games and spending money. Not the best choice for a serious computer user.
OK, I read the financial report and it shed precious little light on exactly how those many millions were spent on software development. So now I am more worried than before.
Wonderful, but I still worry, because large sums of money have a long and distinguished attracting the wrong sorts of people. See, worry can be a creative force for good.
At the moment I find myself wondering why Mozilla development seems to progress at a snail's pace which such a lot of money behind it. Spending the money on the wrong people perhaps? I mean, development isn't completely stopped, it is just slow. Mozilla still will not stay running indefinitely after so many years, unlike Linux for example, which will run for years without slowing down to a crawl and eventually crashing like Mozilla does. You would think hundreds of millions of dollars would be enough to fix that, what is wrong?
I believe the first idea they had was farming out their search services to places like Yahoo -- which iirc was their first deal. When that didn't keep the VCs happy, they gradually became more advertising oriented and never looked back. So I don't think they had a plan to make money to start with, which is why I initially took issue with the original post when I read it.
That is roughly correct. Of course they always planned to make money, they just didn't know how at first, and the idea you mentioned was a big flop for reasons I won't get into. See here for the more or less accidental way they hit it rich.
According to Wikipedia, JavaScriptCore and WebCore are under LGPL. I don't know if that makes "most of WebKit" or not, but it strikes me that those (WebCore in particular) certainly are the most important part of it.
I agree, "most of" was the wrong term. More like "a significant part of". This does not change the point: Mozilla.org is perfectly free (as are you and I) to put those significant, BSD licensed parts under (L)GPL. It would be a good move. Apple and Google will naturally hate this proposal, but in the end they would probably both benefit in terms of improved code quality, while being gently dissuaded from evildoing of the sort that is all too tempting when source code may be kept secret.
The sad fact of the matter is that to users, IT is just a bunch of computer janitors.
With attitude.
So why IT?
The last two out of two IT managers I have known were basically incompetent to do their jobs. Having faked their way in somehow, their personal objective unsurprisingly becomes to avoid exposing their incompetence. Usually by making lots of arbitrary decisions, usually involving office politics and seldom technically informed, then enforcing these no matter what the pushback. Two out of two, should I draw a line through those two points or what? If the line goes where I think it does then do you really have to ask "why IT?"
As far as I can see, that simple strategy alone would ensure Mozilla never becomes irrelevant, and that neither Apple nor Google can effectively take webkit private, which is a clear and present danger at the moment.
Since WebKit is mostly LGPL unless they plan on violating the license how exactly are they going to take it private?
Most of Webkit is under BSD license. Mozilla foundation (or anybody else, including your or me) could easily re-license all the BSD parts of Webkit under (L)GPL. Of course, making this stick depends on having a good stream of contributions including bug fixes and new features into the (L)GPL code base. Which tends to just happen given that a significant number of developers prefer to contribute to a copyleft code base over non-copyleft, other things being equal, and given that any contribution to the BSD-licensed code base can be merged to the GPL-codebase without legal issues, whereas the the reverse is not true.
...paying 300Million seems a reasonable decision to me.
Totally. But the number is so large that I worry about the money being largely pilfered by the usual sort of people who are attracted to large sums of money, instead of being mostly spent on doing good.
I hope it means that Mozilla foundation can now afford to pay to put the reload button back where it belongs.
The vast majority of TV stations get their revenue from advertising. That doesn't make NBC an advertising company.
Are you sure about that? Anyway, Google owns Doubleclick, which is most assuredly an advertising operation.
"'Google started out as a search company. But that's not what they are today. Google's primary business is advertising."
Funny, I thought they were always an advertising company. The last time it wasn't, to my knowledge, was when it was still hosted at Stanford.
The original poster is correct. Google's original business plan was wildly different from auctioned search terms. Believe it or not, it was... well, you can do your own research, I've done mine.
I am very disappointed in the walled gardens in Android and iOS app-store markets.
I don't care about Apple's walled garden, that will take care of itself, and I don't perceive the Android market as a walled garden. All the excellent free (as in freedom) applications I downloaded without providing a credit card number says the Android market is not walled. But Android development is most definitely a walled garden and that sucks because Google designers and coders are not nearly as good as they think they are, or as they would have us believe. Which translates to real life suckage that hurts me in real life. Like not being able to connect to Wifi networks reliably. A situation that would not have lasted more than a year in the greater open source community, given a healthy, functioning development community as opposed to the current, bespoke and overly corporatized Googly approach. Which tends to produce results that would be comically amusing if they were not so painfully intrusive in practice, like the brain-addled conscious decision not to let users shut down an app in any simple way.
...Google only created Chrome for pushing ads.
Absolutely true, and with a secondary goal of breaking the power of a GPL code base over which they do not have complete control. Now, Google finds itself in a position of paying $300/million to support a GPL code base, over which they do not have complete control (restated for emphasis). What an excellent situation: mandatory doing of non-evil. It's actually better for Google, and better for us, when Google does non-evil like this. I fear greatly a scenario where Google has complete control of the non-copyleft code base of the dominant web browser. In that situation, I do not believe that Google would be able to resist the temptation to do evil, perhaps just minor evil at first, and later, not minor at all.
That said, I wish that Mozilla foundation would take, say, one of those $300 millions and spend it on replacing Gecko by webkit, putting its own fork of webkit under GPL. As far as I can see, that simple strategy alone would ensure Mozilla never becomes irrelevant, and that neither Apple nor Google can effectively take webkit private, which is a clear and present danger at the moment.
I have done extensive measurements and analysis of performance of recent GCC versions with O3 optimization. Overall, I am very impressed. I have not done such analysis of Microsoft's compiler product, and I am unlikely to. However, I am skeptical about your claim that Microsoft's compiler produces better code than GCC at this point in time.
So your evidence is anecdotal, perhaps stronger evidence would be in order.
...VC beats gcc on optimization quality.
That claim requires support. GCC optimization quality has improved dramatically all through the 4 series. O3 is very impressive.
More mature (which means more crufty code), sure. Less buggy? Debatable. I work on one large codebase that don't support any GCC after 4.2 because they've all introduced new optimiser bugs
Specifics?
Who cares about Microsoft these days? Any damage they cause by lagging behind standards is only to themselves, unlike the bad old days. In the modern world GCC is the bar by which Microsoft is measured, and usually found lacking.
"How will this impact Google's support for Android and open source in general?"
Not at all, or possibly for the better?
Definitely for the better. Truth be told, Google's attitude towards free software sucks in major ways, not least their overt campaign to undermine the GPL and copyleft in general. Yes, this is overt, and shameless. There is one loose cannon in particular whose name I will not mention whose personal vendetta includes not only the entire GPL ecosystem, but Debian too. Might as well have a serial puppy shooter on staff.
Google will do nothing to change their stance, but they will work to better integrate in to Android and make it so people want them not Baidu.
In what way is that not changing their stance? So lets get started with our reasonable demands: first thing is, not being able to drag a running app to the trash or equivalent is pure brain damage. Let's see Google climb down off the patronizing justifications for this design flaw and fix it.
"Buying stocks" is not "trading". I should know :-)
Yes, your generalization is huge. I can say I'm seeing more Android phones in the hands of cab drivers these days, and corporate executives too. I suppose it's all just part of a shift in perception of where the value and utility is. I can also say that on my most recent plane trip I didn't see any iPads and most laptops stayed in their bags but there was a massive amount of interest in the Xoom I was using with a bluetooth keyboard, which turns out to be a workable combination on the teensy dinner tray even when my seat is up and the seat in front of me is reclined. Something I was never able to do with a laptop. It's the portfolio case ($23) that makes this work, and the battery bump on the back of the keyboard, which just happens to hook over the portfolio case in such a way that I can touch type without contorting or dropping everything on the floor. So I'll call this progress, and hey, value. I don't really mind using the touchscreen instead of a mouse, but a lot could be done to reduce the number of times I have to take my hands off the keyboard. What's nice is, with Android I can easily fix a lot of this myself, and I don't need anyone's permission to share it. Last time I brought along a netpad just in case, but I never used it, so next trip I feel I only need two gadgets: Xoom and G2. Either one gives me full connectivity including ssh to my home server, which has been a big help on several occasions. Basically the Xoom gives me a full size keyboard and screen and a front facing camera, otherwise these gadgets provide equivalent functionality. Hmm, now that I'm thinking about it I guess I want to dock one to the other. Both already have a microsd card so that gives some minimal level of file transfer, but you have to pull the battery on the G2. Emergencies only. I tried Bluetooth pairing between the Xoom and G2 just now and it works. You have to make one or the other discoverable. It should also be possible to connect them by USB cable, I think the magic word is "Micro USB Male to USB A Female Adapter", $1.35 on Amazon. This might even charge the G2, then I don't even need to take a charger for the G2 on the road. The Xoom is another story, I forgot to bring its custom charger last time and as a result needed to conserve power by putting it in standby, then it made it through the 3 day trip OK. Next time I will bring at least the car charger ($32 on Amazon) and probably that's it - no sense risking leaving the AC adapter in some hotel room. Anyway, this is turning into an Android advertisement which I didn't intend. What I did intend is to say something about why Android devices satisfy my needs. The flip side of that is, Apple's devices satisfy my needs only if I lower my expectations and spend a lot of money.
Actually, this troll article hit my funny bone.
I imagine that mePhone owners are more likely to buy the latest Apple product while Android owners are more likely to buy shares on the stock market with their disposable income.
Apple device owners are spendthrifts, Android owners are frugal. And the news is?