Thanks for all the hard work you've put into making Linux a viable Java platform. You've made a real difference.
I realize that, as individuals and as a group, you may no longer want to work with Sun. But i do hope that as a group, you will hang together, and find some other way to focus your considerable talents and energies on Linux/Java. Perhaps working with IBM (under better license terms this time)? Or the Kaffe project?
I won't be terribly upset if Sun's betrayal (despite their apology) means the end of Blackdown's relationship with Sun. I will be a lot more upset if it means the death of Blackdown.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
A few things are reasonably clear... first, the Java licensing agreement Blackdown accepted allows Sun to do just what they've done... claim someone else's coding as their own work without crediting the coders. That's why SCSL isn't Open Source.
Second, this was almost certainly an oversight by ignorant marketing/legal staff, not a deliberate attempt to steal Blackdown's work and market it as their own.
So i think Sun should be judged by how they *react* to this criticism. Will they admit they were careless, and give proper (if not legally required) credit to Blackdown? Or will they get defensive and say that this is within their rights? Let's judge them by how they manage their errors, not by the errors themselves.
And, if anyone from Sun is reading this (especially Sun management)... my trust in Sun as the guardian of Java purity, and the trust of many members of the community, is on the line here. If Sun demonstrates now that they will acknowledge the contributions of volunteers to Java, i'll feel a lot better about the justifications Sun has made for not turning Java over to an independent standards committee. But if you take the Blackdown volunteers' work without properly crediting them (even if it is legal to do so), then i will not be able to trust Sun with Java anymore, and will turn to other sources. And i will advise my employer to do so as well.
Think about it, Sun. --- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Oh, i'm hardly "whining" about getting paid. And at present, my remarks are directly quoted, but without quotes or attribution - technically, plagiarism, but Jane's has promised to pay its contributors.
If i really wanted to be a hardcore Open Source advocate, i could have GPL'd my original statement, so they could not have quoted me in the article without GPLing the article itself.:P --- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
My kids have a copy of this. They actually enjoy it, but it isn't very educational, and it positively *reeks* of crufty Windows 3.1 16-bittiness. I'd be surprised if it even stays in their product line without some significant revision.
That being said, i fervently wish and hope that the major children's game companies start working on Linux releases. A lot of children's software is really excellent - worth having Windows, if that's what it takes to use the stuff. One game i really like is Treasure MathStorm. From this game, my five-year-old son has learned to do two-digit addition and subtraction, with carries! This is something school wouldn't get around to doing for another couple of years, and would bore him silly by then.
What i'd really love to see is Linux-based diskless workstations as cheap school networks, but it won't happen unless the children's software happens.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Noted avante-garde improvisational guitarist and all-around lunatic Henry Kaiser once recorded a version of Pinkwater's "The Devil in the Drain". The album is still in print, available from CDNow, et al. For the most part, it's incredibly strange stuff, but that one cut is reasonably accessible for most people.:}
And i suspect Henry Kaiser's music would appeal to a lot of geeks. --- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Simply matching the functionality of Windows isn't enough. Even matching the functionality for Free (both beer and speech) isn't enough. If we want World Domination, we have to be BETTER than Windows. WAY better than Windows.
In general, i think X with modern window managers and KDE or Gnome is already superior to Windows as a desktop. And of course, Linux/*BSD totally kicks Windows' ass as an underlying OS.
But Linux falls short of (or barely on par with) Windows on two fronts - web browsers, and office productivity applications. We have a mediocre, obsolescent, buggy version of Netscape (how many other apps do you kill -9 on a regular basis?), and Office imitations like StarOffice and Applix. We *can* do better than that; we *must* do better.
Work on the browser is already in place with Mozilla. They are clearly on the right track, development-wise. If only other Open Source gui apps had such a well-planned design! (are you listening, Gnome?) Don't rush them. Don't insist on some bug-ridden premature 1.0 release to satisfy some artificial market-hype deadline. They're doing it right, and doing it right takes time and patience.
I hope to see the same fundamental-rethinking wisdom applied to office productivity apps too. The tools are becoming available, in the form of XML and other standard technologies (and maybe Mozilla for a display engine!). I have ideas, but that's another story.
When the Open Source community is turning out *better* browsers and productivity tools than MS can make with all their zillions of dollars, we will win. But the battle shouldn't be with MS... it should be with ourselves, constantly challenging the community to do better.
This "war" is pointless. If your goal is simply to beat Microsoft, you need loftier goals.:} --- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
The time to execute a CGI isn't just the runtime of the program. It's time to run PLUS setup/teardown costs. In a CGI context, this means forking a process, which is an expensive operation even in Unix.
If processing time is a serious concern, then you should be using some built-in web server mechanism for processing - mod_perl, PHP, Java servlets, or even a multithreaded server rather than Apache (AOLServer, or even IIS (although NT will find other ways to screw your performance)).
And then there is reliance on external resources. For example, many web servers are actually selecting from a relational database. Your "efficient" C/C++ program can't easily share a connection, so it will have to start up and tear down yet another connection to your RDBMS. VERY expensive. Compare this to a multithreaded server that pools database connections and doesn't have to fork anything to share them out. See where the performance goes?
Remember, 90% of the time, the performance bottlenecks are not where you think they are. And they are rarely in well-written code, regardless of the language used to write it. Bottlenecks tend to be in things like disk and network I/O, RDBMS engines, excessive swapping, excessive forking, and other infrastructure issues.
Meditate on this, grasshopper, and learn.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Actually, i consider C to be more widespread and viable in the l-o-n-g term than C++. I have significant technical gripes with C++, but i'm not going there right now. HOWEVER... on a purely technical basis, i consider GTK to be a better design than Qt, if only for deliberate language independence. Qt is a C++ library, whereas GTK is a C library designed to be wrapped in other languages. So GTK can be easily managed not only in C, but also in C++, Perl, Python, Scheme (bindings for all of these languages are available and in use), etc. It's my technical opinion, sure, but i think the logic holds up well. If you want to argue that the ability to access a GUI toolkit via scripting languages is irrelevant, be my guest.
As for the ability to "fork" by releasing diffs against the "official" source... puh-leeese! That's a fig leaf of a fork, just barely enough to get Open Source certification. It would seriously hamper any efforts to fork the tree, should forking become necessary. It leaves the fork 100% dependent on the "official" tree, making it exceedingly difficult for the fork to survive. --- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
I see where the problem is... i should have said that TrollTech put their *short term* business interest ahead of the long term health of their code. And, in doing so, put restrictions into the license that will drive a significant number of developers to use its GPL'd competitor GTK. And, as more and more developers concentrate on GTK rather than Qt, then GTK will draw more than just license purists... i believe that GTK will become the standard GUI widget set, and Qt will become an also-ran. If you think this is an unreasonable deduction, than give reasons why. Tell me why Gnome came into being, if not for licensing issues? And tell me why Gnome, which was barely running when the Qt license changed, has survived and thrived, given the big lead in maturity for KDE? I say the reason is mostly licensing.
As for your comments about Netscape, all i can say is "HUH?" Because Netscape is now owned by another company, they're not expected to be profitable? Their license is liberal because they *listened* to the community, not just reacted to it. Of course, Netscape is a relatively broad company that is not dependent on its browser for revenues, and improving the health of the browser market (via a Free alternative) improves Netscape's overall profitability. TrollTech, otoh, appears to be a one-horse company. It's possible, but difficult, to run a company on 100% GPL profits.
Perhaps the best thing for Qt would be for TrollTech to fail... then the license would pass into a more truly open state.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
I never said that all software should be free (either as beer or speech), and anyone who writes code has the right to choose how they share it with others. And i praised Mozilla for a smart corporate license.
The *point*, which you obviously missed, is that the merely semi-free licenses like Qt's are at a serious disadvantage in the "marketplace of ideas" when competing with GPL or BSD licenses. Developers are more likely to work with code they can trust... they can't trust Qt. Which is why, in the end, i expect to see Qt marginalized by GTK, not for GTK's technical superiority, but because the license terms are better for Free software developers. Free speech is better than free beer.
Remember, the ONLY reason TrollTech opened up the Qt license as much as they did was because the community was abandoning KDE for Gnome, almost entirely for licensing reasons. If Qt's license hadn't changed, i think KDE would be nearly irrelevant now. As it is, i think Qt's license didn't change enough, and it only delayed the problem.
Of course, if you think i'm just another fanatical RMS clone, then you won't be able to see beyond your prejudices to the deeper point.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Of *course* developers have a right to choose their own license! But that's not the point... the point is, there is substantial reason to believe that GPL/BSD "free software" licenses make code more likely to survive and thrive in the long run.
Qt's restrictive license, while technically "Open Source", has very much hampered its growth, and led to the rise of serious competition in the form of GTK (which is safely GPL'd). And i expect that, in time, GTK will leave Qt no more than a niche market. Why? Because TrollTech put their own business interest ahead of the long-term health of the software. Free software is no place for half measures.
The best corporate-protection license i've seen is MPL, which gives Netscape some special privileges but still allows the community to fork the code.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
GPL, of course, is the standard license for most Open Source software, and for good reason - it does the best job of protecting the source from abuse by others. However, its "viral" nature makes it hard to cooperate with other licenses.
My biggest cooperation concern is MPL, the license for Mozilla's code base. I have great faith in the wisdom and foresight of the Mozilla developers, and i expect it to become the gold standard for browser engines. More importantly, its modular design makes it an easy plug-in for other projects needing a browser interface. And there's the rub... how readily can the Mozilla code be linked to a GPL'd program? I know both the Mozilla and Gnome people are working on the licensing issues, and i hope they'll come up with something that can be extended to use with most other GPL'd software as well.
The other license that worries me is SCSL, associated with Jini and future versions of Java. Again, i think Java is killer technology, and i want to see it grow and mature in cooperation with Linux. But until Java's APIs stabilize, the Open Source variants such as Kaffe (I don't consider SCSL "Open Source") will not be able to catch it in quality. And i want my Java NOW, dammit! So... what sort of licensing hell awaits GPL'd projects that want to use Sun's classes? Yikes!
With the addition of mature Mozilla and Java technology, along with improvements in Linux desktop/WM software, i believe Linux is poised to take the desktop world by storm. I just hope licensing conflicts don't delay it for years to come, and force endless redundant development in order to be compatible with GPL.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
This is good news, and i hate to rain on the parade, but "supporting" Linux is not enough. Handing us the specs and telling us we have their *permission* to write drivers is not nearly enough. Do hardware vendors just hand over specs to Microsoft and tell them to go at it if they want? No, they write their own drivers for Windows, and distribute them with the hardware.
What we really need is for vendors to write their *own* drivers for Linux (hopefully, Open Source), and distribute them with the hardware just like Windows. And i don't mean sticking it in a file cabinet on their web site behind a page that says "Beware of the leopard"... i want to go to Best Buy, pick up the latest greatest video card, see a penguin logo on the box, and find a CD inside with an XFree86 server (with source!), pushbutton installation for all major Linux distributions, and a bunch of throwaway programs, gizmos, and game demos to show off the capabilities of the card. That's what Windows gets (except for the Source, of course), and what Linux deserves.
Are you listening, ATI? You want bragging rights? They're right there for the taking, if you have the courage to reach for them.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
There were a few Semiotext(e) books, i believe. The one that stands out in my mind is Semiotext(e) SF (dunno if it's still in print), with contributions by such luminaries as Gibson, Ballard, Burroughs, R.A.W., Sterling, et al, as well as a smorgasboard of works by lesser-known, more avant-garde writers (Gibson fans... buy it for the other works. His own contribution, "Hippie Hat Brain Parasite", was rather dull). It's hard to pick a favorite from this collection... perhaps Rucker's "Rapture in Space" (about the first zero-G porno), or Ballard's "Jane Fonda's Augmentation Mammoplasty" (which amounted to a dare to sue the publishers for libel... Jane Fonda has always denied having her breasts done, but to sue for libel she would have to deny it under oath!). Heh.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Technically, the Volano tests were conducted on Kaffe 1.0b4, not 1.05. Among the release notes, Kaffe claims the new JIT "improves raw execution speed by a factor of up to 3". It also uses native Linux pthreads, which should be beneficial to real-world multithreading. And then benchmarks are benchmarks... "benchmarketing" should be avoided on both sides.
At any rate, given significant changes to the JVM and threading model, the Volano results aren't totally applicable.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
It seems to me that the point of the Viridian aesthetic IS to get swallowed up into Nike ads. With message intact... environmentally conscious is beautiful. Using art to manipulate politics and society has a long and glorious history. Consider the upper-class socialist circles of George Bernard Shaw (can't remember the name of that group now), or the Situationists in the late 1960s, who almost managed to convince the French people that government was an unnecessary illusion.
If the Viridians can get as far as the Situationists did, i'll be pleased.:}
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
RMS is into Nancarrow? Cool! The man composed some *amazing* music, for those daring enough to try to follow it. He used player pianos as programmable music machines, because human beings were not physically capable of playing the music in his head. One of the most mind-boggling things i have ever encountered was a Nancarrow piece that used all 88 keys with the sustain pedal down and the volume maxed out, with these blindingly fast melodies tearing up and down the keyboard. If you've heard the best Sonic Youth, you've only heard a fraction of what Nancarrow can do that way.
Some consider Nancarrow to be one of the fathers of electronic music. He doesn't understand this view. In his mind, he has never composed anything for electronic instruments, so he doesn't see the connection. But any programmer who has used computers to do things humans cannot do can appreciate his brilliance.:}
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
The intense focus on "shut down the power grid" scenarios, and tight analogies with physically violent techniques (unlike CBRN, "Cyber" warfare is not inherently violent/destructive), serve only to ignore much more potentially effective uses of IT in terrorist warfare - intelligence-gathering, counterintelligence, and disinformation. The article does not touch on these points *at all*, and quite frankly is worthless sensationalism without them.
In warfare as well as in business, IT is "the great equalizer". Its low financial barrier to entry, relative to heavy industry, allows even the poorest organizations an IT effectiveness equal (or nearly equal) to the richest, most powerful nations and corporations. The greatest advantage the covert warfare arms of major nation-states (CIA, Mossad, etc) have over small terrorist organizations is the financial wherewithal to develop massive intelligence networks, and to easily spread disinformation via access to public media and an enemy's internal communication channels. IT very much levels the playing field in this regard.
If a terrorist group can penetrate the security of an enemy organization's computer networks, they do not need to do any damage to be militarily effective. Rather, they can quietly copy information to process at their leisure, without having to physically smuggle it out of secure facilities. In particular, this approach, combined with automated "data mining" techniques, can be used to search for useful patterns in vast stores of insecure and apparently unrelated data (c.f. Stoll, Clifford: _The Cuckoo's Egg_ (a very well documented example of state-sponsored computerized intelligence gathering)).
Another use for this access is disinformation. False or misleading information can be planted in (or deleted from) databases, undermining the effectiveness of organizations relying on that information. And in our current world, where authentication via strong encryption is still rare and nonstandard, IT can make forgery easy. Credentials can be forged to fool authorities or the media for purposes of disinformation, or to enhance covert physical activities.
Encryption also provides effective counterintelligence for very low cost, both maintaining information secrecy and providing authentication for otherwise anonymous data. Public key encryption can allow a network of intelligence to communicate secretly, without direct contact, and with sophisticated tools for obsoleting compromised keys and secrets. The major governments, who have long depended on spying on civilians, have good reason to fear this technology.
Another use for IT is the copying and *publication* of encriminating information. For an example, consider an environmentalist "terrorist" organization uncovering and publishing secret corporate or government documents on toxic waste spills, or covering up the hazards of a project. No physical violence need be performed to do terrific practical damage. Remember the Pentagon Papers? Their publication was instrumental in turning the tide of public sentiment against the Vietnam War. Yet those had to be delivered as physical copies by an internal spy to a major media group, and the government nearly succeeded in supressing the evidence in court. With electronic copying and widespread distibution, governments no longer have any power to stop such publications.
Of course, we could go into much greater detail, with more specific examples, but I think the point has been made. The article ignored the most effective uses of IT for terrorists, while simultaneously advancing unrealistic and undocumented doomsday scenarios (shutting down the power grid), and blowing normal organizational activity out of proportion (bin Laden's use of email, for example). Rather than a Slashdot-driven rebuttal, the editors would do well to reconsider publication of the article altogether, until a more comprehensive and realistic article can be written.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
One of the things i enjoy most about your Viridian movement is the idea of designing products that haven't been invented yet, but should be. This is an interesting contrast to a basic principle of Open Source, where a projects' value is measured by its living code, not its high ideals. Although there are many ways to contrast the two movements, i would like to hear what you feel they have in common. Is Open Source a Viridian approach to software? --- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
IMHO, the *real* win of XML is not in replacing plain-text configuration files, but rather in replacing binary file formats and simple databases. One example would be word-processor file formats, which are usually a poorly documented, poorly structured binary mess. XML makes sense there. Another example is the Windows registry.
But XML is a significant *disadvantage* for the plain-text configuration files that dominate the Unix world. Generally, those plain-text files have a comment mechanism to clearly explain what needs to be edited. Adding XML will just add a bunch of unnecessary tags that will make it difficult to hand-edit configuration files - and the ability to easily hand-edit the human-readable configuration files is one of the most powerful advantages of the Unix Philosophy.
What i would like to see in the Unix/Linux world is a GUI that is capable of managing the entire OS via simple graphical tools, but doesn't *prevent* hand-editing of configurations. I don't see XML as a significant boon in that regard.
--- Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for all the hard work you've put into making Linux a viable Java platform. You've made a real difference.
I realize that, as individuals and as a group, you may no longer want to work with Sun. But i do hope that as a group, you will hang together, and find some other way to focus your considerable talents and energies on Linux/Java. Perhaps working with IBM (under better license terms this time)? Or the Kaffe project?
I won't be terribly upset if Sun's betrayal (despite their apology) means the end of Blackdown's relationship with Sun. I will be a lot more upset if it means the death of Blackdown.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
A few things are reasonably clear... first, the Java licensing agreement Blackdown accepted allows Sun to do just what they've done... claim someone else's coding as their own work without crediting the coders. That's why SCSL isn't Open Source.
Second, this was almost certainly an oversight by ignorant marketing/legal staff, not a deliberate attempt to steal Blackdown's work and market it as their own.
So i think Sun should be judged by how they *react* to this criticism. Will they admit they were careless, and give proper (if not legally required) credit to Blackdown? Or will they get defensive and say that this is within their rights? Let's judge them by how they manage their errors, not by the errors themselves.
And, if anyone from Sun is reading this (especially Sun management)... my trust in Sun as the guardian of Java purity, and the trust of many members of the community, is on the line here. If Sun demonstrates now that they will acknowledge the contributions of volunteers to Java, i'll feel a lot better about the justifications Sun has made for not turning Java over to an independent standards committee. But if you take the Blackdown volunteers' work without properly crediting them (even if it is legal to do so), then i will not be able to trust Sun with Java anymore, and will turn to other sources. And i will advise my employer to do so as well.
Think about it, Sun.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Oh, i'm hardly "whining" about getting paid. And at present, my remarks are directly quoted, but without quotes or attribution - technically, plagiarism, but Jane's has promised to pay its contributors.
:P
If i really wanted to be a hardcore Open Source advocate, i could have GPL'd my original statement, so they could not have quoted me in the article without GPLing the article itself.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Yep. Glad to see someone caught the reference. :}
It makes me think of my handle... some people recognize it as a literary reference, and some think my name is actually Frank.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
I was quoted pretty extensively (the intelligence-gathering section). I assume this means I will be getting paid.
This is cool, but not nearly as cool as a $2.56 check from Donald Knuth would be.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
My kids have a copy of this. They actually enjoy it, but it isn't very educational, and it positively *reeks* of crufty Windows 3.1 16-bittiness. I'd be surprised if it even stays in their product line without some significant revision.
That being said, i fervently wish and hope that the major children's game companies start working on Linux releases. A lot of children's software is really excellent - worth having Windows, if that's what it takes to use the stuff. One game i really like is Treasure MathStorm. From this game, my five-year-old son has learned to do two-digit addition and subtraction, with carries! This is something school wouldn't get around to doing for another couple of years, and would bore him silly by then.
What i'd really love to see is Linux-based diskless workstations as cheap school networks, but it won't happen unless the children's software happens.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
And i suspect Henry Kaiser's music would appeal to a lot of geeks.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Simply matching the functionality of Windows isn't enough. Even matching the functionality for Free (both beer and speech) isn't enough. If we want World Domination, we have to be BETTER than Windows. WAY better than Windows.
:}
In general, i think X with modern window managers and KDE or Gnome is already superior to Windows as a desktop. And of course, Linux/*BSD totally kicks Windows' ass as an underlying OS.
But Linux falls short of (or barely on par with) Windows on two fronts - web browsers, and office productivity applications. We have a mediocre, obsolescent, buggy version of Netscape (how many other apps do you kill -9 on a regular basis?), and Office imitations like StarOffice and Applix. We *can* do better than that; we *must* do better.
Work on the browser is already in place with Mozilla. They are clearly on the right track, development-wise. If only other Open Source gui apps had such a well-planned design! (are you listening, Gnome?) Don't rush them. Don't insist on some bug-ridden premature 1.0 release to satisfy some artificial market-hype deadline. They're doing it right, and doing it right takes time and patience.
I hope to see the same fundamental-rethinking wisdom applied to office productivity apps too. The tools are becoming available, in the form of XML and other standard technologies (and maybe Mozilla for a display engine!). I have ideas, but that's another story.
When the Open Source community is turning out *better* browsers and productivity tools than MS can make with all their zillions of dollars, we will win. But the battle shouldn't be with MS... it should be with ourselves, constantly challenging the community to do better.
This "war" is pointless. If your goal is simply to beat Microsoft, you need loftier goals.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Because you have to fork a process, that's why.
The time to execute a CGI isn't just the runtime of the program. It's time to run PLUS setup/teardown costs. In a CGI context, this means forking a process, which is an expensive operation even in Unix.
If processing time is a serious concern, then you should be using some built-in web server mechanism for processing - mod_perl, PHP, Java servlets, or even a multithreaded server rather than Apache (AOLServer, or even IIS (although NT will find other ways to screw your performance)).
And then there is reliance on external resources. For example, many web servers are actually selecting from a relational database. Your "efficient" C/C++ program can't easily share a connection, so it will have to start up and tear down yet another connection to your RDBMS. VERY expensive. Compare this to a multithreaded server that pools database connections and doesn't have to fork anything to share them out. See where the performance goes?
Remember, 90% of the time, the performance bottlenecks are not where you think they are. And they are rarely in well-written code, regardless of the language used to write it. Bottlenecks tend to be in things like disk and network I/O, RDBMS engines, excessive swapping, excessive forking, and other infrastructure issues.
Meditate on this, grasshopper, and learn.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Actually, i consider C to be more widespread and viable in the l-o-n-g term than C++. I have significant technical gripes with C++, but i'm not going there right now. HOWEVER... on a purely technical basis, i consider GTK to be a better design than Qt, if only for deliberate language independence. Qt is a C++ library, whereas GTK is a C library designed to be wrapped in other languages. So GTK can be easily managed not only in C, but also in C++, Perl, Python, Scheme (bindings for all of these languages are available and in use), etc. It's my technical opinion, sure, but i think the logic holds up well. If you want to argue that the ability to access a GUI toolkit via scripting languages is irrelevant, be my guest.
As for the ability to "fork" by releasing diffs against the "official" source... puh-leeese! That's a fig leaf of a fork, just barely enough to get Open Source certification. It would seriously hamper any efforts to fork the tree, should forking become necessary. It leaves the fork 100% dependent on the "official" tree, making it exceedingly difficult for the fork to survive.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
I see where the problem is... i should have said that TrollTech put their *short term* business interest ahead of the long term health of their code. And, in doing so, put restrictions into the license that will drive a significant number of developers to use its GPL'd competitor GTK. And, as more and more developers concentrate on GTK rather than Qt, then GTK will draw more than just license purists... i believe that GTK will become the standard GUI widget set, and Qt will become an also-ran. If you think this is an unreasonable deduction, than give reasons why. Tell me why Gnome came into being, if not for licensing issues? And tell me why Gnome, which was barely running when the Qt license changed, has survived and thrived, given the big lead in maturity for KDE? I say the reason is mostly licensing.
As for your comments about Netscape, all i can say is "HUH?" Because Netscape is now owned by another company, they're not expected to be profitable? Their license is liberal because they *listened* to the community, not just reacted to it. Of course, Netscape is a relatively broad company that is not dependent on its browser for revenues, and improving the health of the browser market (via a Free alternative) improves Netscape's overall profitability. TrollTech, otoh, appears to be a one-horse company. It's possible, but difficult, to run a company on 100% GPL profits.
Perhaps the best thing for Qt would be for TrollTech to fail... then the license would pass into a more truly open state.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
I never said that all software should be free (either as beer or speech), and anyone who writes code has the right to choose how they share it with others. And i praised Mozilla for a smart corporate license.
The *point*, which you obviously missed, is that the merely semi-free licenses like Qt's are at a serious disadvantage in the "marketplace of ideas" when competing with GPL or BSD licenses. Developers are more likely to work with code they can trust... they can't trust Qt. Which is why, in the end, i expect to see Qt marginalized by GTK, not for GTK's technical superiority, but because the license terms are better for Free software developers. Free speech is better than free beer.
Remember, the ONLY reason TrollTech opened up the Qt license as much as they did was because the community was abandoning KDE for Gnome, almost entirely for licensing reasons. If Qt's license hadn't changed, i think KDE would be nearly irrelevant now. As it is, i think Qt's license didn't change enough, and it only delayed the problem.
Of course, if you think i'm just another fanatical RMS clone, then you won't be able to see beyond your prejudices to the deeper point.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Of *course* developers have a right to choose their own license! But that's not the point... the point is, there is substantial reason to believe that GPL/BSD "free software" licenses make code more likely to survive and thrive in the long run.
Qt's restrictive license, while technically "Open Source", has very much hampered its growth, and led to the rise of serious competition in the form of GTK (which is safely GPL'd). And i expect that, in time, GTK will leave Qt no more than a niche market. Why? Because TrollTech put their own business interest ahead of the long-term health of the software. Free software is no place for half measures.
The best corporate-protection license i've seen is MPL, which gives Netscape some special privileges but still allows the community to fork the code.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
GPL, of course, is the standard license for most Open Source software, and for good reason - it does the best job of protecting the source from abuse by others. However, its "viral" nature makes it hard to cooperate with other licenses.
My biggest cooperation concern is MPL, the license for Mozilla's code base. I have great faith in the wisdom and foresight of the Mozilla developers, and i expect it to become the gold standard for browser engines. More importantly, its modular design makes it an easy plug-in for other projects needing a browser interface. And there's the rub... how readily can the Mozilla code be linked to a GPL'd program? I know both the Mozilla and Gnome people are working on the licensing issues, and i hope they'll come up with something that can be extended to use with most other GPL'd software as well.
The other license that worries me is SCSL, associated with Jini and future versions of Java. Again, i think Java is killer technology, and i want to see it grow and mature in cooperation with Linux. But until Java's APIs stabilize, the Open Source variants such as Kaffe (I don't consider SCSL "Open Source") will not be able to catch it in quality. And i want my Java NOW, dammit! So... what sort of licensing hell awaits GPL'd projects that want to use Sun's classes? Yikes!
With the addition of mature Mozilla and Java technology, along with improvements in Linux desktop/WM software, i believe Linux is poised to take the desktop world by storm. I just hope licensing conflicts don't delay it for years to come, and force endless redundant development in order to be compatible with GPL.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
My employer, Lawson Software, is just finishing its new corporate headquarters in downtown St Paul. The name of this building?
Lawson.Commons. (pronounced "Lawson dot commons")
I kid you not.
I give it five years on the outside for the "." to be quietly dropped from the building's name...
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
This is good news, and i hate to rain on the parade, but "supporting" Linux is not enough. Handing us the specs and telling us we have their *permission* to write drivers is not nearly enough. Do hardware vendors just hand over specs to Microsoft and tell them to go at it if they want? No, they write their own drivers for Windows, and distribute them with the hardware.
What we really need is for vendors to write their *own* drivers for Linux (hopefully, Open Source), and distribute them with the hardware just like Windows. And i don't mean sticking it in a file cabinet on their web site behind a page that says "Beware of the leopard"... i want to go to Best Buy, pick up the latest greatest video card, see a penguin logo on the box, and find a CD inside with an XFree86 server (with source!), pushbutton installation for all major Linux distributions, and a bunch of throwaway programs, gizmos, and game demos to show off the capabilities of the card. That's what Windows gets (except for the Source, of course), and what Linux deserves.
Are you listening, ATI? You want bragging rights? They're right there for the taking, if you have the courage to reach for them.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
There were a few Semiotext(e) books, i believe. The one that stands out in my mind is Semiotext(e) SF (dunno if it's still in print), with contributions by such luminaries as Gibson, Ballard, Burroughs, R.A.W., Sterling, et al, as well as a smorgasboard of works by lesser-known, more avant-garde writers (Gibson fans... buy it for the other works. His own contribution, "Hippie Hat Brain Parasite", was rather dull). It's hard to pick a favorite from this collection... perhaps Rucker's "Rapture in Space" (about the first zero-G porno), or Ballard's "Jane Fonda's Augmentation Mammoplasty" (which amounted to a dare to sue the publishers for libel... Jane Fonda has always denied having her breasts done, but to sue for libel she would have to deny it under oath!). Heh.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Technically, the Volano tests were conducted on Kaffe 1.0b4, not 1.05. Among the release notes, Kaffe claims the new JIT "improves raw execution speed by a factor of up to 3". It also uses native Linux pthreads, which should be beneficial to real-world multithreading. And then benchmarks are benchmarks... "benchmarketing" should be avoided on both sides.
At any rate, given significant changes to the JVM and threading model, the Volano results aren't totally applicable.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Try his "Studies for Player Piano" series, which i believe are still in print. Check cdnow.com or somesuch.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
It seems to me that the point of the Viridian aesthetic IS to get swallowed up into Nike ads. With message intact... environmentally conscious is beautiful. Using art to manipulate politics and society has a long and glorious history. Consider the upper-class socialist circles of George Bernard Shaw (can't remember the name of that group now), or the Situationists in the late 1960s, who almost managed to convince the French people that government was an unnecessary illusion.
:}
If the Viridians can get as far as the Situationists did, i'll be pleased.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
RMS is into Nancarrow? Cool! The man composed some *amazing* music, for those daring enough to try to follow it. He used player pianos as programmable music machines, because human beings were not physically capable of playing the music in his head. One of the most mind-boggling things i have ever encountered was a Nancarrow piece that used all 88 keys with the sustain pedal down and the volume maxed out, with these blindingly fast melodies tearing up and down the keyboard. If you've heard the best Sonic Youth, you've only heard a fraction of what Nancarrow can do that way.
:}
Some consider Nancarrow to be one of the fathers of electronic music. He doesn't understand this view. In his mind, he has never composed anything for electronic instruments, so he doesn't see the connection. But any programmer who has used computers to do things humans cannot do can appreciate his brilliance.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
No, the purpose of Linux is to pool our resources so we can build one giant penis that everyone can use at once, and customize to our own needs!
:}
That, and to make Microsoft's penis smaller. But, with a name like Microsoft...
Maybe i should just go back to promiscuous packet-sniffing...
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
The intense focus on "shut down the power grid" scenarios, and tight analogies with physically violent techniques (unlike CBRN, "Cyber" warfare is not inherently violent/destructive), serve only to ignore much more potentially effective uses of IT in terrorist warfare - intelligence-gathering, counterintelligence, and disinformation. The article does not touch on these points *at all*, and quite frankly is worthless sensationalism without them.
In warfare as well as in business, IT is "the great equalizer". Its low financial barrier to entry, relative to heavy industry, allows even the poorest organizations an IT effectiveness equal (or nearly equal) to the richest, most powerful nations and corporations. The greatest advantage the covert warfare arms of major nation-states (CIA, Mossad, etc) have over small terrorist organizations is the financial wherewithal to develop massive intelligence networks, and to easily spread disinformation via access to public media and an enemy's internal communication channels. IT very much levels the playing field in this regard.
If a terrorist group can penetrate the security of an enemy organization's computer networks, they do not need to do any damage to be militarily effective. Rather, they can quietly copy information to process at their leisure, without having to physically smuggle it out of secure facilities. In particular, this approach, combined with automated "data mining" techniques, can be used to search for useful patterns in vast stores of insecure and apparently unrelated data (c.f. Stoll, Clifford: _The Cuckoo's Egg_ (a very well documented example of state-sponsored computerized intelligence gathering)).
Another use for this access is disinformation. False or misleading information can be planted in (or deleted from) databases, undermining the effectiveness of organizations relying on that information. And in our current world, where authentication via strong encryption is still rare and nonstandard, IT can make forgery easy. Credentials can be forged to fool authorities or the media for purposes of disinformation, or to enhance covert physical activities.
Encryption also provides effective counterintelligence for very low cost, both maintaining information secrecy and providing authentication for otherwise anonymous data. Public key encryption can allow a network of intelligence to communicate secretly, without direct contact, and with sophisticated tools for obsoleting compromised keys and secrets. The major governments, who have long depended on spying on civilians, have good reason to fear this technology.
Another use for IT is the copying and *publication* of encriminating information. For an example, consider an environmentalist "terrorist" organization uncovering and publishing secret corporate or government documents on toxic waste spills, or covering up the hazards of a project. No physical violence need be performed to do terrific practical damage. Remember the Pentagon Papers? Their publication was instrumental in turning the tide of public sentiment against the Vietnam War. Yet those had to be delivered as physical copies by an internal spy to a major media group, and the government nearly succeeded in supressing the evidence in court. With electronic copying and widespread distibution, governments no longer have any power to stop such publications.
Of course, we could go into much greater detail, with more specific examples, but I think the point has been made. The article ignored the most effective uses of IT for terrorists, while simultaneously advancing unrealistic and undocumented doomsday scenarios (shutting down the power grid), and blowing normal organizational activity out of proportion (bin Laden's use of email, for example). Rather than a Slashdot-driven rebuttal, the editors would do well to reconsider publication of the article altogether, until a more comprehensive and realistic article can be written.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
One of the things i enjoy most about your Viridian movement is the idea of designing products that haven't been invented yet, but should be. This is an interesting contrast to a basic principle of Open Source, where a projects' value is measured by its living code, not its high ideals. Although there are many ways to contrast the two movements, i would like to hear what you feel they have in common. Is Open Source a Viridian approach to software?
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
IMHO, the *real* win of XML is not in replacing plain-text configuration files, but rather in replacing binary file formats and simple databases. One example would be word-processor file formats, which are usually a poorly documented, poorly structured binary mess. XML makes sense there. Another example is the Windows registry.
But XML is a significant *disadvantage* for the plain-text configuration files that dominate the Unix world. Generally, those plain-text files have a comment mechanism to clearly explain what needs to be edited. Adding XML will just add a bunch of unnecessary tags that will make it difficult to hand-edit configuration files - and the ability to easily hand-edit the human-readable configuration files is one of the most powerful advantages of the Unix Philosophy.
What i would like to see in the Unix/Linux world is a GUI that is capable of managing the entire OS via simple graphical tools, but doesn't *prevent* hand-editing of configurations. I don't see XML as a significant boon in that regard.
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.