RMS doesn't say we should call Linux "GNU/Linux" because of the license (GPL). The reason he says that is that, while the kernel is Linux, most of the rest of the OS is GNU tools (i.e., written by and/or donated to the Free Software Foundation).
Since Unreal presumably doesn't use GNU tools, there would be no request to add to the name. ---
When was the last time the US military came out and defended you from an invading force?
Unknown. When was the last time anyone tried to shoot the President? Long time? Secret Service must be obsolete, too.
Point is, the Army is a preventative (ideally) AND curative (sometimes) measure.
How often do they kill people, not involved in forces invading the US, each year?
I don't understand the question. Are you saying you care about the freedom of only those people with the good fortune of having been born a US citizen? ,br> It's pretty clear. They are in the business of killing people.
What do you suggest we do with a tyrant? Explain how nice freedom is and hope he understands? ---
I don't see how my chances of getting the wrong drug are any greater just because some verification is made that I have a prescription.
Because if you have a prescription presumably a doctor gave it to you. Assumption: A doctor is more likely to know what drug you need (if any) than a randomly selected person.
The reason this measure is necessary is that there are a lot of idiots out there who want to self-prescribe Prozac or Ridlin or Viagra or something. I think a BETTER measure would be to give the USERS licenses. Here's the kind of scheme I envision:
Person A is born and has no licenses. At age 8 he is given a test. Tester:"Johnny, pour this hot coffee in your lap". Johnny: "No." Johnny then receives a "Can Eat At McDonald's" license.
The applicable test in this case would be given around age 12/13: Tester: "Janey, take this pill." Janey: "What does it do?" Tester: "Cures your condition." Janey: "What condition? And how?" Tester: "Just take the pill." Janey: "No." Janey now has the "Can Purchase Prescription Drugs Without Body Cavity Search For Perscription" license.
Other licenses include: "Can View Uncensored Internet" (test involves knowing the difference between instructions for making a bomb and a bomb itself) "Can Play Violent Videogames" (test involves knowing the difference between fantasy and reality) "Can Make Right Turn On Red" (test involves being able to recognize oncoming traffic) ---
I'm also not an OS (or arch) expert, BUT I think another advantage is data bus (and register) size. You've already mentioned the address bus with your 4GB physical RAM, but you've neglected to mention that you can get (and use) a full 64 bit word from that address with a 64 bit OS. ---
The best feature of the Alpha is that they are available. Or are they?
I've wanted an Alpha for a while now because (for various geeky reasons: fun, supposed speed, fun, assembly programming, and fun) but I've never been able to find a reasonably priced machine (even for auction) OR good instructions on how to build them.
If Compaq were smart (note the use of a counterfactual conditional) they'd hype Linux on Alpha like all get out. What better way to screw MS than to give geeks hardware that Windows can't touch (anymore)?
But does Compaq want to screw MS? If they're smart they do: Compaq produces an ostensibly competing OS. ---
What is the purpose in posting this story? To tell us that PC Week is for "Joe User" and not "Joe Programmer"? We knew that. To innoculate Slashdotters against the idea that "Internet == WWW = PC"? We don't need that.
No, the only possible reason I can think of for posting this story (especially worded as it is) is to unleash the dreaded Slashdot Effect on an article that doesn't speak the party line.
You've made millions of dollars: now go out and hire a first-year journalism student to do some consulting for you. ---
OK, I am programmer A, I wrote program P under the BSD license. Company C took my code, added some killer features F and released PF under a proprietary license. How was I hurt?
1) Money: I was selling P before, but now everyone buys PF. And I can't add F to P because I have no source code. C benefitted from me, but I didn't benefit in return. Unequal "contract".
2) Respect: Since BSD no longer has the "advertisement clause" (IIRC) no one knows that PF is based on P. *I* may not even know it. Suddenly P is just a "freeware version" of PF. And a shoddy one, because it lacks F.
3) Livelihood/fun: Because of 1 and 2 I no longer want to work on P.
4) Ethics/Morals: We all agree that libre code is a good thing, right? Well here I went and took us down a path that turned P (BSD'd) into PF (proprietary). Whoops, sorry everyone.
In any case, I'm not saying you shouldn't use the BSD (although personally I think it is foolish). What I'm saying is that:
a) Code under the BSD is not "forever free" (your original claim) because it takes no steps to help future iterations. It is only free for it's own lifetime.
b) The GPL does not suffer from that flaw.
c) Despite your inflammatory sloganeering, the GPL is not "viral". It is cooperative. ---
"You have no right to coerce him into giving away his work product for free."
Correct, I don't. That's why I don't coerce. By placing the GPL on my code, I give people the option of playing nice with me (i.e. sharing back) or going away. BSD developers, on the other hand, give people the choice of playing nice or screwing me hard. ---
Let's say for the sake of argument that this is true (but see point #2 below). The source code that I copied IS NO LONGER FREE. *GASP* Just like I said!
In any case, I doubt your statement will remain true. As I explained on my website, if there are two programs P1 and P2, one being BSD'd and the other under a proprietary license L, P2 will eventually dominate. Why? Because for P2 to get all of P1's features (including stability, robustness, etc) is a simple matter of copying the source code. That means that P2 is always as good as P1 and probably better. P1 eventually dies. Good-bye freedom of that source code.
The GPL fixes this flaw by only sharing with people who share back. ---
I can see why so many people hate you. Talk about viral. First, my statement are not FUD. Why? Because 1) they are fact and 2) they are not marketing related.
Second, just why can't the BSD license be withdrawn from P? Since "[t]he source is available for you to do whatsover you please with it", what's to stop me from take large (not to say full) portions and incorporate them into my own, non-free application?
And before you respond with comments about "FUD" or how stupid or lame I am, why not go back and copy my example into your next reply? That will make it easier to respond to the actual issues. ---
Ridiculous or not, you haven't answered the question. Your statement: "Once something is placed under the BSDL, that code remains forever free." is demonstrably false. Conversely, the GPL has no such (known--your point about not being tested in court is well-taken) flaws.
In anycase, the problem doesn't have to be simply "misplacing the code". What if company C forks P (creating P') and adds new killer feature F to it? Nobody has that source code either. Again, only with the GPL (and similar protective licenses) can once-free code remain so.
I used to have an online paper discussing the BSD, GPL and other licenses from a game-theory point of view, but I've moved and cancelled my ISP service so it's gone now. So instead of pointing you there I'll refer you to Richard Dawkins "The Selfish Gene", particularly the section(s) on Evolutionarily Stable Strategies. Then ask yourself: "Can a world of BSD software be 'invaded' by non-sharers? And if so, what does that mean for the BSD population?" ---
Let's say I have program P licensed under BSD. People contribute code, P excels at it's job, time marches on. People get hit by buses (meaning they leave P-development for whatever reason). Eventually company C has the last remaining copy of P. P is still good, so C compiles it and sells the binaries but keeps the source secret. Uh-oh, P is no longer free.
About 2 years ago I asked about Y2k and Linux on linux-newbie. Here's a rough paraphrase of how someone responded:
Me: Is Linux Y2k? Random l-n Person: Linux is based on UNIX which uses time_t and is good for 40 more years. Me: Yes, I know that, but what about the apps? RLNP: Apps should use time_t. Me: Yes, "should". Do they? Furthermore, what about stored dates? RLNP: If a programmer has not used time_t or has stored a date incorrectly, they are stupid. Me: Yes, I know that. That's what we want to test. AAAAAAaaagghghghghghghghghhhhhhh ---
Three years ago RedHat estimated there were 7-10 million Linux users (in the US?). I also heard that up until then the marketshare was doubling every year.
Well, I think it's obvious that Linux is growing faster now, but let's say it is still x2 every year. That somewhere between 56 and 80 million Linux users, right now.
1) Are any of these numbers still accurate?
2) If so, and Linux is doubling (or more) every year, why did RedHat do so poorly (24% vs 100%)? ---
WTF are you talking about? When I lived in Bellingham, WA (about 2.5 hours north of Seattle) I usually got the books THE NEXT DAY.
Now that I live on the east coast they take about 2-3 days total. That's business days from the point of "one-click" to where I am sitting down reading the book and using normal shipping.
In fact, I'm torn on whether to participate in this boycott because except for this one item I love Amazon. ---
No, I don't have a reference handy. But I could swear we did this in a senior level computation theory class about 4 years ago.
I'm not angling to repeat the nightmares that were my attempts to reduce problems to other NP-complete problems, but it seems pretty obvious that PF is in NP. I can definitely verify a solution in polynomial time. All that would remain is to show that the number of primes increases at the same rate as the number of possible solutions to a SAT problem. Now that I think about it, I don't think the number of primes grows exponentially, so maybe PF isn't NP-complete. Huh. ---
Problems are NP-complete if it is proven that there is no algorithm which solves it in polynomial time.
Wrong. Problem A is NP-complete if there are no problems in the set NP that are harder than A.
Furthermore, no one has yet proved that NP problems cannot be solved in polynomial time, although it is widely suspected this is true.
What he describes is NP-hard.
The classes *I* took used "NP-complete", "NP-hard" and "hard for NP" synonymously.
...factorization being NP which has not been proven
Again, just plain wrong. Prime Factorization is known to be NP (NP-complete, in fact). What is NOT known is whether PF can be solved in polynomial time.
It sounds very much like you picked up your Computation Theory knowledge by reading posts on Slashdot. I don't recommend that for people who enjoy flaming. ---
I don't know much about James Lovelock or his "Gaia Hypothesis" (and what I HAVE heard sounded like crap), so I'll just respond to your tests (which sound reasonable).
No preferred state of data transfer Sure there is: Efficiency. Efficient data transfer can mean two different things and I think both apply (on different levels).
1) Getting packets across the Net via a least path (time, cost, etc). Sounds like routing to me. And the Internet moves toward an ideal state on this.
2) Getting information into the hands of the people who want it. Again, this is getting better and better with things like Google (for searching) and Babelfish (for translating).
No non-trivial negative feedback loop I'm not sure what you mean here. What non-trivial negative feedback loops does a human have? The Net slows down when you try to send to much over it. That's low-level neg feedback. There's also reputation (company, individual, site) that provides negative feedback at an information level. For instance, I no longer read anything from The Register since I've found that all they publish is speculation that has no basis in reality. ---
Slashdot Mirror
When you say "Linux", do you refer to the Linux kernel or the Linux "Operating System"?
---
What "other people's work" is RMS trying to take credit for?
---
RMS doesn't say we should call Linux "GNU/Linux" because of the license (GPL). The reason he says that is that, while the kernel is Linux, most of the rest of the OS is GNU tools (i.e., written by and/or donated to the Free Software Foundation).
Since Unreal presumably doesn't use GNU tools, there would be no request to add to the name.
---
When was the last time the US military came out and defended you from an invading force?
Unknown. When was the last time anyone tried to shoot the President? Long time? Secret Service must be obsolete, too.
Point is, the Army is a preventative (ideally) AND curative (sometimes) measure.
How often do they kill people, not involved in forces invading the US, each year?
I don't understand the question. Are you saying you care about the freedom of only those people with the good fortune of having been born a US citizen?
,br> It's pretty clear. They are in the business of killing people.
What do you suggest we do with a tyrant? Explain how nice freedom is and hope he understands?
---
I don't see how my chances of getting the wrong drug are any greater just because some verification is made that I have a prescription.
Because if you have a prescription presumably a doctor gave it to you. Assumption: A doctor is more likely to know what drug you need (if any) than a randomly selected person.
The reason this measure is necessary is that there are a lot of idiots out there who want to self-prescribe Prozac or Ridlin or Viagra or something. I think a BETTER measure would be to give the USERS licenses. Here's the kind of scheme I envision:
Person A is born and has no licenses. At age 8 he is given a test.
Tester:"Johnny, pour this hot coffee in your lap".
Johnny: "No."
Johnny then receives a "Can Eat At McDonald's" license.
The applicable test in this case would be given around age 12/13:
Tester: "Janey, take this pill."
Janey: "What does it do?"
Tester: "Cures your condition."
Janey: "What condition? And how?"
Tester: "Just take the pill."
Janey: "No."
Janey now has the "Can Purchase Prescription Drugs Without Body Cavity Search For Perscription" license.
Other licenses include:
"Can View Uncensored Internet" (test involves knowing the difference between instructions for making a bomb and a bomb itself)
"Can Play Violent Videogames" (test involves knowing the difference between fantasy and reality)
"Can Make Right Turn On Red" (test involves being able to recognize oncoming traffic)
---
I'm also not an OS (or arch) expert, BUT I think another advantage is data bus (and register) size. You've already mentioned the address bus with your 4GB physical RAM, but you've neglected to mention that you can get (and use) a full 64 bit word from that address with a 64 bit OS.
---
The best feature of the Alpha is that they are available. Or are they?
I've wanted an Alpha for a while now because (for various geeky reasons: fun, supposed speed, fun, assembly programming, and fun) but I've never been able to find a reasonably priced machine (even for auction) OR good instructions on how to build them.
If Compaq were smart (note the use of a counterfactual conditional) they'd hype Linux on Alpha like all get out. What better way to screw MS than to give geeks hardware that Windows can't touch (anymore)?
But does Compaq want to screw MS? If they're smart they do: Compaq produces an ostensibly competing OS.
---
What is the purpose in posting this story? To tell us that PC Week is for "Joe User" and not "Joe Programmer"? We knew that. To innoculate Slashdotters against the idea that "Internet == WWW = PC"? We don't need that.
No, the only possible reason I can think of for posting this story (especially worded as it is) is to unleash the dreaded Slashdot Effect on an article that doesn't speak the party line.
You've made millions of dollars: now go out and hire a first-year journalism student to do some consulting for you.
---
This discussion is already being held right here
---
And please, no "Why doesn't every vendor do this." posts.
Let's be careful with our non-sequiters, there, pardner.
I agree that "cracking contests" like this do NOT prove you have unbreakable security. But that doesn't mean that crack attempts are useless.
For instance, all security experts recommend that you should try to crack your own boxes to test them. How is this different?
---
OK, I am programmer A, I wrote program P under the BSD license. Company C took my code, added some killer features F and released PF under a proprietary license. How was I hurt?
1) Money: I was selling P before, but now everyone buys PF. And I can't add F to P because I have no source code. C benefitted from me, but I didn't benefit in return. Unequal "contract".
2) Respect: Since BSD no longer has the "advertisement clause" (IIRC) no one knows that PF is based on P. *I* may not even know it. Suddenly P is just a "freeware version" of PF. And a shoddy one, because it lacks F.
3) Livelihood/fun: Because of 1 and 2 I no longer want to work on P.
4) Ethics/Morals: We all agree that libre code is a good thing, right? Well here I went and took us down a path that turned P (BSD'd) into PF (proprietary). Whoops, sorry everyone.
In any case, I'm not saying you shouldn't use the BSD (although personally I think it is foolish). What I'm saying is that:
a) Code under the BSD is not "forever free" (your original claim) because it takes no steps to help future iterations. It is only free for it's own lifetime.
b) The GPL does not suffer from that flaw.
c) Despite your inflammatory sloganeering, the GPL is not "viral". It is cooperative.
---
"You have no right to coerce him into giving away his work product for free."
Correct, I don't. That's why I don't coerce. By placing the GPL on my code, I give people the option of playing nice with me (i.e. sharing back) or going away. BSD developers, on the other hand, give people the choice of playing nice or screwing me hard.
---
"The original didn't die."
Let's say for the sake of argument that this is true (but see point #2 below). The source code that I copied IS NO LONGER FREE. *GASP* Just like I said!
In any case, I doubt your statement will remain true. As I explained on my website, if there are two programs P1 and P2, one being BSD'd and the other under a proprietary license L, P2 will eventually dominate. Why? Because for P2 to get all of P1's features (including stability, robustness, etc) is a simple matter of copying the source code. That means that P2 is always as good as P1 and probably better. P1 eventually dies. Good-bye freedom of that source code.
The GPL fixes this flaw by only sharing with people who share back.
---
I can see why so many people hate you. Talk about viral. First, my statement are not FUD. Why? Because 1) they are fact and 2) they are not marketing related.
Second, just why can't the BSD license be withdrawn from P? Since "[t]he source is available for you to do whatsover you please with it", what's to stop me from take large (not to say full) portions and incorporate them into my own, non-free application?
And before you respond with comments about "FUD" or how stupid or lame I am, why not go back and copy my example into your next reply? That will make it easier to respond to the actual issues.
---
I bet Jim really cringes every time he hears the phrase "paperless office".
---
Ridiculous or not, you haven't answered the question. Your statement: "Once something is placed under the BSDL, that code remains forever free." is demonstrably false. Conversely, the GPL has no such (known--your point about not being tested in court is well-taken) flaws.
In anycase, the problem doesn't have to be simply "misplacing the code". What if company C forks P (creating P') and adds new killer feature F to it? Nobody has that source code either. Again, only with the GPL (and similar protective licenses) can once-free code remain so.
I used to have an online paper discussing the BSD, GPL and other licenses from a game-theory point of view, but I've moved and cancelled my ISP service so it's gone now. So instead of pointing you there I'll refer you to Richard Dawkins "The Selfish Gene", particularly the section(s) on Evolutionarily Stable Strategies. Then ask yourself: "Can a world of BSD software be 'invaded' by non-sharers? And if so, what does that mean for the BSD population?"
---
How is BSD "forever free"?
Let's say I have program P licensed under BSD. People contribute code, P excels at it's job, time marches on. People get hit by buses (meaning they leave P-development for whatever reason). Eventually company C has the last remaining copy of P. P is still good, so C compiles it and sells the binaries but keeps the source secret. Uh-oh, P is no longer free.
If P was GPL'd this would not have happened.
---
About 2 years ago I asked about Y2k and Linux on linux-newbie. Here's a rough paraphrase of how someone responded:
Me: Is Linux Y2k?
Random l-n Person: Linux is based on UNIX which uses time_t and is good for 40 more years.
Me: Yes, I know that, but what about the apps?
RLNP: Apps should use time_t.
Me: Yes, "should". Do they? Furthermore, what about stored dates?
RLNP: If a programmer has not used time_t or has stored a date incorrectly, they are stupid.
Me: Yes, I know that. That's what we want to test. AAAAAAaaagghghghghghghghghhhhhhh
---
Three years ago RedHat estimated there were 7-10 million Linux users (in the US?). I also heard that up until then the marketshare was doubling every year.
Well, I think it's obvious that Linux is growing faster now, but let's say it is still x2 every year. That somewhere between 56 and 80 million Linux users, right now.
1) Are any of these numbers still accurate?
2) If so, and Linux is doubling (or more) every year, why did RedHat do so poorly (24% vs 100%)?
---
WTF are you talking about? When I lived in Bellingham, WA (about 2.5 hours north of Seattle) I usually got the books THE NEXT DAY.
Now that I live on the east coast they take about 2-3 days total. That's business days from the point of "one-click" to where I am sitting down reading the book and using normal shipping.
In fact, I'm torn on whether to participate in this boycott because except for this one item I love Amazon.
---
That "FAQ" doesn't appear to have any questions, frequently asked or otherwise.
---
No, I don't have a reference handy. But I could swear we did this in a senior level computation theory class about 4 years ago.
I'm not angling to repeat the nightmares that were my attempts to reduce problems to other NP-complete problems, but it seems pretty obvious that PF is in NP. I can definitely verify a solution in polynomial time. All that would remain is to show that the number of primes increases at the same rate as the number of possible solutions to a SAT problem. Now that I think about it, I don't think the number of primes grows exponentially, so maybe PF isn't NP-complete. Huh.
---
Problems are NP-complete if it is proven that there is no algorithm which solves it in polynomial time.
...factorization being NP which has not been proven
Wrong. Problem A is NP-complete if there are no problems in the set NP that are harder than A.
Furthermore, no one has yet proved that NP problems cannot be solved in polynomial time, although it is widely suspected this is true.
What he describes is NP-hard.
The classes *I* took used "NP-complete", "NP-hard" and "hard for NP" synonymously.
Again, just plain wrong. Prime Factorization is known to be NP (NP-complete, in fact). What is NOT known is whether PF can be solved in polynomial time.
It sounds very much like you picked up your Computation Theory knowledge by reading posts on Slashdot. I don't recommend that for people who enjoy flaming.
---
I don't know much about James Lovelock or his "Gaia Hypothesis" (and what I HAVE heard sounded like crap), so I'll just respond to your tests (which sound reasonable).
No preferred state of data transfer Sure there is: Efficiency. Efficient data transfer can mean two different things and I think both apply (on different levels).
1) Getting packets across the Net via a least path (time, cost, etc). Sounds like routing to me. And the Internet moves toward an ideal state on this.
2) Getting information into the hands of the people who want it. Again, this is getting better and better with things like Google (for searching) and Babelfish (for translating).
No non-trivial negative feedback loop I'm not sure what you mean here. What non-trivial negative feedback loops does a human have? The Net slows down when you try to send to much over it. That's low-level neg feedback. There's also reputation (company, individual, site) that provides negative feedback at an information level. For instance, I no longer read anything from The Register since I've found that all they publish is speculation that has no basis in reality.
---
I think that You need to use fewer new lines
---