People have been using this justification for around ten years now. "If you blacklist the bad ISPs, the spam will stop."
Well, close to a decade has passed now, and the spam is still flowing. Meanwhile, innocent third parties - customers of these ISPs and people those customers want to contact - are suffering major disruption because of this.
Nope. It's been 100% about eliminating proprietary software.
If that were literally true, then the FSF would be the biggest bunch of morons on the planet, because the creation of the GPL, the GNU project, et al, does not eliminate any software. All of this work, for nothing!
Unfortunately, it appears it isn't. The FSF isn't about "eliminating proprietary software", it's about making free software the norm. And what you've quoted of me is absolutely, 100%, correct:
The work GNU and others have done on software, licenses, etc, has been 100% about creating that infrastucture.
Without the infrastructure, you're not going to have any free software.
Your original argument was that the FSF was, like the OSI, a bunch of loudmouthed ineffectual blowhards who never do any real work... erm, I mean 100% about publicising free software:
FSF's goal is publicity for the idea of free software. The software it creates is merely a mechanism.
The FSF's goal isn't about publicity. It's about free software. It exists to promote Free Software - promote not just in the sense of a promoter, something the FSF hasn't really done - but to make the concept happen.
I see what the FSF has achieved and how they achieved it. That doesn't mean that the method they chose is their goal!
No, but it doesn't mean their methods don't have subgoals either. To create a world in which Free Software is the norm, you must make free software viable. That's what the FSF has done and spent a large amount of time and resources on.
They're using good means to achieve good ends, yes, but they are separate, which I would like to hear you acknowledge.
Why? What does this have to do with me? You're the one who argued that the FSF's "goal is publicity for the idea of free software." Subsequently, you've used somewhat tortured and misleading rewording of the FSF's goals to try to make it look like I've misrepresented them. Yet even if I had, the difference between what I've said and the version you're now promoting ("eliminating proprietary software" vs "The FSF's goal is to make software free, period.") is fractional, whereas the difference between what you originally claimed and what you now claimed is so wide, I don't think I need to acknowledge anything.
Here's some reading material. It describes the goals of the body you've been disparaging. You'll notice it's entirely constructive. You'll notice that the entire statement is not describing ridding the world of software, but building a world with free software, where users have rights, where, by implication, all software is free.
Of course I understand the FSF's goal. It's to make software free.
Was RMS's action a particularly attractive way of doing it? Of course not. But he was opposed to what Real was doing, and jumped up and said it. He would. He's opposed to non-free software. That's why he formed the FSF.
Did RMS's actions uncreate the GPL, GNU C compiler, GNU project, etc? Of course not. Of the bulk of the stuff done by the FSF over the last couple of decades, would you characterise it as producing things or as jumping up and saying "Don't do it!" in the middle of conferences? Most observers would cite the former, surely!
All of which doesn't change the fact that the FSF has produced an infrastructure for viable Free Software, directly, whereas the OSI has limited itself to advocacy. That's a very real difference. The work GNU and others have done on software, licenses, etc, has been 100% about creating that infrastucture.
Like you (at least, if this thread is to be believed), RMS is far from being a remotely great advocate of anything. Hey, I'm likewise, I admit it, I'm an arsehole. That's one reason I have no plans to start my own "Free Source" movement. But that doesn't mean you can legitimately argue "Oh, on the 21st of August, 1993, RMS stood up and threw an egg at Bill Gates. Therefore, ergo, the FSF, which he founded and heads, must be a lobbying group and nothing more." The argument doesn't stand up. It's silly, and you're silly for using it. Look at what the FSF does. Look at the massive library of software they own, the GPL and what they do with it, and what that library and license does. It certainly doesn't publicise anything.
It doesn't say much for the "Open Source movement" if the OSI really doesn't see what the FSF has achieved and how they achieved it. There are a lot of "political" movements that'd benefit from the FSF's example.
Oops. I made the mistake of going to OpenSource.org rather than trying to find the Slashdot post.
The actual quote from your website that you laughed off was a different quote that described Open Source as a development strategy aimed at businesses:
The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.
We in the open source community have learned that this rapid evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional closed model, in which only a very few programmers can see the source and everybody else must blindly use an opaque block of bits.
Open Source Initiative exists to make this case to the commercial world.
Sorry about that. How was I to know your website would have so much stuff on it that agreed with RMS's characterization of the Open Source movement, when the OSI's Mullah-in-Chief is denying it?
I'm not sure what definition of "Hostile" you're using here. He clearly disagrees with the Open Source movement on a small number of issues that, while low in number, are serious to him. He doesn't have to actively support you in that, and he can be "hostile" in that he has every right to express disagreements with things he doesn't agree with.
You've said several times you disagree with RMS's description of the Open Source movement, but, honestly, to the bulk of us out there, it looks to us like the OSI is doing exactly what RMS claims you're doing. Namely you're ignoring the argument for freedom itself, and instead concentrating on how a particular programming methodology can help businesses, one that happens to involve Free software. For RMS, and for many others, the issue isn't "Can Mozilla/Linux/OpenOffice.org be a better browser/kernel/office suite if we open up development of them to anyone who wants to be involved", it's "What right do you have, simply though giving me software, to dictate what I can do with it, how can you justify locking up my data into some proprietary format and not give me the means to unlock that, how can you give me hardware and then restrict my use of it by giving me software that you refuse to provide me with the means to modify?" and above all "What right do you have to prevent me from helping others?"
The OSI specifically rejected these arguments. It didn't do so because its members necessarily disagree with them, but the OSI was formed to make a case to businesses for Free Software, and in doing so, it ignored everything outside of some obscure set of arguments specific only to the task at hand.
The prehistory of the Open Source Initiative includes the entire history of Unix, Internet free software, and the hacker culture.
The "open source" label itself came out of a strategy session held on February 3rd 1998 in Palo Alto, California. The people present included Todd Anderson, Chris Peterson (of the Foresight Institute), John "maddog" Hall and Larry Augustin (both of Linux International), Sam Ockman (of the Silicon Valley Linux User's Group), and Eric Raymond.
We were reacting to Netscape's announcement that it planned to give away the source of its browser. One of us (Raymond) had been invited out by Netscape to help them plan the release and followon actions. We realized that the Netscape announcement had created a precious window of time within which we might finally be able to get the corporate world to listen to what we have to teach about the superiority of an open development process.
We realized it was time to dump the confrontational attitude that has been associated with "free software" in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that motivated Netscape. We brainstormed about tactics and a new label. "Open source," contributed by Chris Peterson, was the best thing we came up with.
This has been quoted to you before. Your response was to laugh it off and offer to respond to the person quoting it in email. Read it again:
We realized that the Netscape announcement had created a precious window of time within which we might finally be able to get the corporate world to listen to what we have to teach about the superiority of an open development process.
We realized it was time to dump the confrontational attitude that has been associated with "free software" in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that motivated Netscape.
Now, you've been accusing RMS of misrepresenting you. Your own website says the exact same thing as RMS.
RMS is not an open source advocate. He feels fairly strongly that Open Source is not what he's about. If businesses benefit from open development models that rely upon Free Software, then that's just great, but this isn't where he's coming fro
The FSF's goal is to make software free, period. The FSF produces software, maintains and funds the GNU project, maintains the GPL, and defends the copyrights of a large body of copyleft software. The software the FSF creates is created to make free software viable, by producing a body of software that can be exploited by anyone willing to contribute to it. Relatively little of what the FSF does can be called "publicity".
RMS directly created the GPL, wrote the GNU C compiler, and started the GNU project, all under the wing of the FSF. Those, with the addition of Linus's kernel, legitimized Free Software and created an infrastructure in which it can work.
I haven't seen any initiatives from the OSI that are remotely comparable. The OSI issues press releases from time to time, and provides a formalized, if redundant, list of Open Source licenses. By and large its role is entirely about advocacy, and it's hard to really point at any open sourcing that's happened where you can comfortably say "This definitely wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the OSI, the success of GNU/Linux wouldn't have been enough to make this happen."
It's all somewhat ironic. The FSF is usually portrayed as "ideological", yet, for the most part, its work has been to perform practical tasks to make Free Software viable, attainable, and worthwhile, the GPL and creation of software under it being the most obvious example of this. The OSI is portrayed as the "practical face" of FOSS, as non-ideological, yet it's done nothing but advocacy its entire life.
But you don't have the acknowledge the reality of this, if it means you can keep dismissing the contribution of the FSF. Keep drinking the kook-aid Russ, keep drinking.
Actually I think you've hit the reason why many of us consider the OSI a more ideological movement than the FSF - albiet one with an ideology so "practical" and apparently non-political that most people miss it. You appear to miss it too!
RMS doesn't care why you want freedom. He just cares that you want it. His complaint about the OSI has always been that it removed the emphasis from freedom itself in favour of a practical argument.
The OSI has always said "We want freedom because..." and then dropped into an argument designed to appeal to the most efficiency-minded CTO. "We want freedom" because it allows us to develop really good software. No, the best software. And it's cheap too! Hey look, the software will get better by itself because people who want improvements can make them themselves!
In short, it's your side that wants to attach a specific reason to wanting freedom, not RMS and the FSF, who have always believed that freedom is a goal in and of itself. It's your side that has always insisted upon a reason to want freedom. And the reason you give, frankly, while appealing to the average geek who hates "politics" and "just wants to code" (because it sounds so practical) isn't exactly the best of them.
The NPR report from Brazil used the term "Open Source" because you're more successful at the publicity than the FSF.
The thing is, to end programmers, the FSF has actually given us stuff. I think that was the grandparent's point. We don't really give a crap whether "Open Source" is a popular name or not.
Seconded. This entire subthread, starting with Russ's "kook-aid" comment, is something I want to bookmark.
Y'know, ESR may have been a raving pompous redneck, but that was the sole extent of his unmanagability and lack of grace. He was like a James Carville for programmers. Love him or hate him, he was able to get a message out, and do it without necessarily pissing everyone off.
He and RMS had his arguments, but I don't recall them ever dropping this low.
Nelson so far seems to be the precise opposite of ESR. I hope we've just caught him on a day where he's literally drunk after some successful celebratory partying, because if he's really like he's presented himself over the last 24 hours, the OSI is fucked.
Indeed, the last one's interesting because it's an example of what most of the references to "open source", in the context of software, meant before ESR et al stuck their oars in. It was a common phrase meaning "We include the source so you can modify your programs." It was coopted and refined a little, but it would be a massive exaggeration for the OSI to claim it "coined the term".
Interestingly it appears on a whole bunch of spook/militia postings too, related to intelligence models. Makes you wonder...
I agree it shouldn't be. Actually, what I'd like is for copyright to have certain responsibilities associated with it for the copyright holder, one of which is that if you own the copyright, you must make copies available for sale at a fair price. A fair price might include the cost of getting a projectionist to sit for two hours and transfer the entire thing into a Mac, and then spend another few hours turning it into an MPEG2, finally burning it as a crude DVD-R (which means the end cost to the user may total a few hundred dollars), but it should at least be available.
Because Sun said they needed to own the entire copyright so that they could defend the entire program.
Presumably any lawsuit from Microsoft wouldn't be about copyright though, would it?
Patents, yes. But Sun isn't asking developers to sign over patents (not least because I guess they know nobody's going to patent anything), only copyrights.
And isn't the usual reason for "owning the entire copyright" to "defend" the license (requiring third parties abide by it - ie you sue them) rather than to defend against copyright suits? That's always how I've read the FSF's arguments for getting people to sign over copyrights to them. It's hard for me to see how a developer transferring a bogus copyright to Sun would actually defend either the developer or Sun if the real copyright belongs to someone else. Both would be sue-able, and Sun wouldn't have a leg to stand on. It certainly wouldn't have any extra defenses at its disposal because it owns the rest of OpenOffice.org.
I see a lot of knee-jerk stuff against Sun. I don't think you're the kind of person to do that, but at the same time, I'm asking myself "What does this have to do with anything?" I'd like Sun to help defend OOo developers in patent suits, but I don't see it as 100% evil for them not do so, just fucking ungrateful. In a copyright lawsuit, the case should be fairly clear cut - either a developer submitted code they copied or they didn't. If they did, then they're an ass, and in the current world, given the obligations that go with using code written by someone else, they deserve to be sued, and Sun has a right to not want to have anything to do with them.
Java is still a rival to.NET. Sun is still trying to claw marketshare away from NT (2000/2003) boxes with Solaris. They're still, obviously, rivals.
If Sun says "We will not sue", then it's probably true that most courts will through out a lawsuit from Sun (see other replies.)
However, if Sun sells the patents to someone else, there's nothing that binds them to make the same promise, and I believe such situations have occured before (for example, with the JPEG patents that are now causing some concern. The original patent holder promised the JPEG committee there'd be no enforcement, but went bust and the patents now belong to someone who never made any such promise.)
Sun probably will not sell the patents to someone else unless it has to. But there's a twenty year time span involved here, and you can judge for yourself how likely it is that Sun will still be around, in its present form, at the end of that time period.
What we probably need from Sun is something akin to a "class license", an unrevokable license that allows a class of person to use the patents at no cost and with no limitations. That could include end users and anyone using them within the context of an FOSS product.
But those toolkits are written in C and C++, not in Objective-C and they don't require DPS.
And?
It's just not worth debating you on all those points in detail: even if you were right on every single one of them, even if GNUStep were the best GUI in the world, it wouldn't have been a viable choice as an alternative to Gnome and KDE: it was based on technologies that just weren't going to make it and it wasn't even anywhere near ready when it mattered.
I never argued it was the best in the world, quite the opposite. But it's unquestionably true that your assertion that GNUStep doesn't support network transparency, or doesn't support it quite as well as GNOME and KDE, is utter bullshit.
And today, something like Mono/Gnome/X11 is just a technically better platform than Objective-C/GNUStep/DPS in my opinion.
We're not talking about today, we're talking about the situation over the last decade. Gnome is mature. GNUStep, thanks to the lack of development, isn't. Had the choosen path been different five-ten years ago, the reverse would be true. If GNOME is "superior" today, it's not because of the design, it's merely that it is more complete because - as the discussion started by pointing out - relatively few people worked on GNUStep, the bulk of development work went on KDE and GNOME.
And despite this, Mono/Gnome/X11 is a kludge. It's attempting to combine two completely incompatable operating systems, and it shows. It doesn't feel right. It frequently implements metaphors that are entirely opposite to the underlying operating system. If you proposing Mono/Gnome/ReactOS, that'd be one thing. But over X11? Over GNU/Linux? What the f---'s the point?
And Objective-C/GNUStep/DPS is a nonsense that nobody's promoting. GNUStep runs over X11, it supports DPS but doesn't, itself, rely upon it. The primary development platform is Objective C but bindings for Java and Ruby are mainstream and others would have been developed had the project had the same level of resources that were thrown at GNOME.
I have no idea what you are getting at. twm, Motif/CDE, Gnome, and KDE are all choices for different people, and that's a good thing. That kind of flexibility and modularity is why X11 is still around, while both Microsoft and Apple had to start over, basically from scratch.
Wow. So I guess it's true: in your parallel universe, where the GNOME people decided to work on GNUStep instead, there's no twm, Motif/CDE, etc. How, exactly, did that happen? Did these people go back in time and uninvent them?
I'm sorry, but I don't have access to that parallel universe. How GNUStep could possibly result in the death of these choices is beyond me. If you can come up with an explanation, by all means do. The only one I can think of is that GNUStep would be so good, all other choices would wither and die, which to me seems highly unlikely.
Cingular bought AT&T Wireless. Cingular is co-owned by BellSouth and SBC. SBC owns about 60% of Cingular...
I don't believe BellSouth is the number 1 Bell either. Verizon is definitely larger. SBC might even be larger, I'm not sure. Verizon has pretty much the entire North East under its oppresive boot, and SBC has much of the South West, California, and North West under its. BellSouth has a collection of not-very-populous southern states, the only biggie being Florida, which it shares with Verizon.
Imagine, if you will, the inventor of the oscilloscope raving about his device in 1857 (ok, time period is completely wrong, but for the sake of argument, pretend the CRT's first use was in oscilloscopes. I know that's not what happened. Look, it's an analogy ok? And this analogy relies upon a version of events that didn't happen, but the fact they didn't happen doesn't matter, a lot of them do. Ask Plato or Socrates. Do you think a rabbit really had a race with a tortoise? Ok. Let's continue.)
Where was I? Ok, yeah, this inventor. He looks at it, proud as punch, and turns to his friend and says "Wow, you should look at this. Think of all of the applications! I can hook this up to these two pieces of metal and measure the temperature! Or I can, I don't know, put these two metal plates together and put some of this radium stuff in between them, and wow, look at it all move around, it's so much fun! Dude, I predict that in a hundred years, everyone will have one of these in their homes, using them for everything from getting weather reports to entertaining themselves!"
Lo and behold, a hundred years have passed (more than that, actually) and we all have devices that include CRTs as part of the designs that provide us with entertainment and, er, weather reports.
Was he right?
I say all of this because I looked at the ad yesterday and got annoyed with it. It's not that you can't come up with an argument to say "Wow! They said that then, and it's kind of relevent today too!" It's just... well, it's a bunch of coincidences and/or marketing hype, for the most part.
Claim 1, for instance, predicts a future of WORM drives. WORM drives replacing hard disks. "That's kind of relevent!" we could say, "We use optical drives today, and one variant, CD-R (or DVR+/-R) is write once", but, er, not quite. It's not the same technology, it just happens to involve lasers and optical disks. CD drives replaced floppies, not hard drives, and floppies (including their replacements) were "demoted" by hard disk technology. Today we use hard disks. Back in 1987, or whenever this ad came out, floppies were commonly the only form of storage, and NeXT was basically saying "They say hard disks are the answer, but we say huge kick-ass floppies that use optical technology are".
WORM drives were used in a way similar to regular hard drives with the exception that they filled up as you used them - you couldn't recover space by deleting old files. What we use today couldn't be more different. The only thing they have in common are the lasers.
Claim 2 is marketing hype, and the sole future prediction - that we'll all be taking advantage of the power of UNIX - was, by and large, not true. The 1990s were dominated by Windows. Worse, they were dominated by DOS Windows, not Windows NT. GNU/Linux was making inroads in the geek market. Apple dropped their sole version of Unix, A/UX, and many people throughout the 1990s believed Unix and its clones were obsolete and we'd have a Windows future. That's changed at bit over the last few years, but few people are using Unix.
Claim 3 was largely drivel. Mainframes? Oh yeah, I remember the huge tape readers I had to use with NeXT's machines...;-) VLSI, the one prediction that has some resemblance to reality, was widely used throughout the computer industry at the time NeXT was hailing this as a new innovation.
Claim 4 didn't come true. Unified imaging models continued to exist in the same way as they existed when NeXT made their ads - GDI and bitmaps.
Claim 5 is largely a minor improvement being blown out of all proportion. "CD quality" makes it look like there's some major breakthrough, but the major breakthrough appeared years before in terms of most computers, from 1984 onwards, having stereo, sampled, sound. The IBM PC is the glaring exception to that, and the Mac had sampled sound but not stereo. NeXT's major improvement was simply to use 16 bit samples instead of 8 bit ones.
Roughly, yes. X11, C, and C++ were the standard for UNIX workstations and toolkits. Anything even remotely involving Objective-C or Postscript was DOA
I don't think anyone's programmed X11 directly in C since the mid-eighties. In almost all cases, a toolkit is used. Early X11 programming was done using Athena.
In any case, I don't understand your answer. My question to you was would GNUStep have failed because it would have made GNU/Linux expensive and obscure? You say yes, and then you argue something about X11 and C/C++. Is the answer yes, or no? Would GNUStep have failed for the same reasons as NextStep, or would it have failed because of Objective C and Postscript? (It wouldn't have failed because of X11, that's a given, GNUStep runs over X11, just as GNOME and KDE do.)
I stand by my statements. You may think that NeXTStep, OpenStep, and/or GNUStep fulfill these and other criteria, I don't.
Can you back up your statements? In what way does GNOME and KDE have network transparency that GNUStep doesn't? Unless you actually show a way, I can't help but feel that your "dismissal" is simply an attempt to avoid admitting you're wrong by pretending there's some criteria here that hasn't been mentioned.
GNUStep, like GNOME and KDE, runs over X11. OpenStep doesn't, but it had network transparency anyway, an efficient form that GNUStep could duplicate if the wish ever exists. On every level, you're simply wrong about this. GNOME and KDE has network transparency only as a function of running over X11, and if you chose to run KDE and GNOME outside of X11, they don't have it at all. GNUStep runs over X11 too.
On every level, you're objectively wrong in this argument. If GNUStep replaced X11, that'd be one thing, but even then, such a GNUStep would almost certainly have implemented the network transparency of the original, because doing so would no longer have been redundant.
And I don't think NeXTStep would have been much better.
Why?
No, what we have ended up with is a wide range of choices for desktop environments, from classic (tvm) to commercial UNIX workstation (Motif/CDE) to mainstream (Gnome, KDE). And, unlike what Apple and Microsoft had to do, Linux+X11 will support the next generation of desktop paradigm, whatever it will be, as well, without having to throw away everything. And that's altogether a really good thing.
So, if I understand this correctly: In some parallel universe, Miguel De Icaza is working on GNUStep. In that parallel universe, we'd not have twm, not have Motif/CDE, and not have people's pet desktop environment projects?
Why? How do you come up with that argument?
Or is that not your claim, in which case, what is?
I think he meant from 95 to XP, as 95 was the version of Windows mentioned, and XP is the current thing marketed as Windows.
XP has pretty little in common with 95 other than a similar user interface and APIs. The underlying code, for the most part, amounts to a complete redesign and rewrite.
WindowsXP is the user interface of what is essentially a single user system bolted onto a multiuser system.
A bit like GNOME and KDE then? (Both UIs designed, for the most part, to look and feel like Windows because users are too stupid to understand anything but Windows. Well, that's what people like Miguel de Icaza and his fans have been saying anyway.)
WindowMaker and GNUStep would have done for the Linux desktop what NeXT did a decade earlier: they would have made the Linux desktop fail, and pretty much for the same reasons.
You mean GNUStep would have made the GNU/Linux desktop absurdly expensive and virtually unknown outside of academia?
I mean, those were the reasons NextStep/OpenStep failed. It was user friendly, and (almost) everyone who used it apparently liked it. But the original NeXTs were sold with the suicidal marketing strategy of selling boxes that started at $10,000 only to people associated with academic institutions. As time went on, the prices dropped and marketing limitations removed, but the machines still cost $4,000 and up, putting them in the workstation market but well out of reach of the majority of regular users.
Compared to OS X, right of the top of my head, Gnome has XML-based GUI specifications, a network transparent window system, theming, language neutrality (so you can write GUIs in modern OOLs like Python and C#--possible but a lot harder on OS X), and a consistent look-and-feel (as opposed to the Carbon/Cocoa Metal/Glass mess on Macintosh)
OpenStep was network transparent and GNUStep certainly is. GNUStep runs over X11, like GNOME and KDE. GNOME and KDE are no more network transparent than GNUStep (they get it for free via X11 but their underlying toolkits provide no inherent network transparency), GNUStep has the potential to be more if they get around to replicating OpenStep's network transparency.
Current versions of Cocoa (yes, I know, I'm moving goalposts by combining OS X and earlier versions, but the point is GNUStep can be all of these, it's not like the development of one undermined the others) use XML based GUI specifications, if XML is considered a good thing. GNUStep's migrating to such a thing. What makes this a little galling is that the real nice aspect of this is merely that the GUI is seperated from the code in nice, editable, files. It's not the XML that's nice, it's the seperation. And, guess what, that's been a part of OpenStep since the beginning.
The OS X desktop is themable, though not with Apple's blessing, but GNUStep is themable anyway.
Cocoa bindings exist for multiple languages, Apple's (and GNUStep's) most supported being Objective C and Java, but it's pretty obvious any language can have them.
OS X has a consistant look and feel. So does GNUStep. I don't particularly like the former's, but metal and glass does not an inconsistant look and feel make. It's ugly, but there's logic in terms of what windows use what.
I can't think of anything in OpenStep and OS X that's done better, overall, in GNOME or KDE. I especially don't believe that GNUStep would be worse or similar to either if development on GNOME and KDE had actually been concentrated on GNUStep instead, I think it'd be light-years ahead, probably better than OS X too in terms of what I'd want to do with it.
The major problem is simply that GNUStep didn't get the development and ended up being a project largely run by nostalgic NeXT users, so it's, until recently, been stuck in a 1992 mentality. It's, thankfully, beginning to move forward now, as people who've taken an interest in OS X see the potential.
I don't see OpenStep as being the ultimate GUI. Far from it. But I think it was better out of the box than the Windows-inspired KDE and GNOME when it came to providing a suitable user interface for a Unix-like operating system. Both KDE and GNOME upon principles designed for an operating system that doesn't resemble Unix in any real way. The results have always felt awkward in the environment in which they run. GNOME and KDE would have made great projects for something like ReactOS. What we ended up with is GNU/Linux becoming a kind of Frankenstein OS. GNUStep would, if it had become mainstream and had the same degree of effort poured into it, made it elegant.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, close to a decade has passed now, and the spam is still flowing. Meanwhile, innocent third parties - customers of these ISPs and people those customers want to contact - are suffering major disruption because of this.
It just isn't working.
Unfortunately, it appears it isn't. The FSF isn't about "eliminating proprietary software", it's about making free software the norm. And what you've quoted of me is absolutely, 100%, correct:
Without the infrastructure, you're not going to have any free software.Your original argument was that the FSF was, like the OSI, a bunch of loudmouthed ineffectual blowhards who never do any real work... erm, I mean 100% about publicising free software:
The FSF's goal isn't about publicity. It's about free software. It exists to promote Free Software - promote not just in the sense of a promoter, something the FSF hasn't really done - but to make the concept happen. No, but it doesn't mean their methods don't have subgoals either. To create a world in which Free Software is the norm, you must make free software viable. That's what the FSF has done and spent a large amount of time and resources on. Why? What does this have to do with me? You're the one who argued that the FSF's "goal is publicity for the idea of free software." Subsequently, you've used somewhat tortured and misleading rewording of the FSF's goals to try to make it look like I've misrepresented them. Yet even if I had, the difference between what I've said and the version you're now promoting ("eliminating proprietary software" vs "The FSF's goal is to make software free, period.") is fractional, whereas the difference between what you originally claimed and what you now claimed is so wide, I don't think I need to acknowledge anything.Here's some reading material. It describes the goals of the body you've been disparaging. You'll notice it's entirely constructive. You'll notice that the entire statement is not describing ridding the world of software, but building a world with free software, where users have rights, where, by implication, all software is free.
Was RMS's action a particularly attractive way of doing it? Of course not. But he was opposed to what Real was doing, and jumped up and said it. He would. He's opposed to non-free software. That's why he formed the FSF.
Did RMS's actions uncreate the GPL, GNU C compiler, GNU project, etc? Of course not. Of the bulk of the stuff done by the FSF over the last couple of decades, would you characterise it as producing things or as jumping up and saying "Don't do it!" in the middle of conferences? Most observers would cite the former, surely!
All of which doesn't change the fact that the FSF has produced an infrastructure for viable Free Software, directly, whereas the OSI has limited itself to advocacy. That's a very real difference. The work GNU and others have done on software, licenses, etc, has been 100% about creating that infrastucture.
Like you (at least, if this thread is to be believed), RMS is far from being a remotely great advocate of anything. Hey, I'm likewise, I admit it, I'm an arsehole. That's one reason I have no plans to start my own "Free Source" movement. But that doesn't mean you can legitimately argue "Oh, on the 21st of August, 1993, RMS stood up and threw an egg at Bill Gates. Therefore, ergo, the FSF, which he founded and heads, must be a lobbying group and nothing more." The argument doesn't stand up. It's silly, and you're silly for using it. Look at what the FSF does. Look at the massive library of software they own, the GPL and what they do with it, and what that library and license does. It certainly doesn't publicise anything.
It doesn't say much for the "Open Source movement" if the OSI really doesn't see what the FSF has achieved and how they achieved it. There are a lot of "political" movements that'd benefit from the FSF's example.
The actual quote from your website that you laughed off was a different quote that described Open Source as a development strategy aimed at businesses:
Sorry about that. How was I to know your website would have so much stuff on it that agreed with RMS's characterization of the Open Source movement, when the OSI's Mullah-in-Chief is denying it?You've said several times you disagree with RMS's description of the Open Source movement, but, honestly, to the bulk of us out there, it looks to us like the OSI is doing exactly what RMS claims you're doing. Namely you're ignoring the argument for freedom itself, and instead concentrating on how a particular programming methodology can help businesses, one that happens to involve Free software. For RMS, and for many others, the issue isn't "Can Mozilla/Linux/OpenOffice.org be a better browser/kernel/office suite if we open up development of them to anyone who wants to be involved", it's "What right do you have, simply though giving me software, to dictate what I can do with it, how can you justify locking up my data into some proprietary format and not give me the means to unlock that, how can you give me hardware and then restrict my use of it by giving me software that you refuse to provide me with the means to modify?" and above all "What right do you have to prevent me from helping others?"
The OSI specifically rejected these arguments. It didn't do so because its members necessarily disagree with them, but the OSI was formed to make a case to businesses for Free Software, and in doing so, it ignored everything outside of some obscure set of arguments specific only to the task at hand.
This has been quoted to you before. Your response was to laugh it off and offer to respond to the person quoting it in email. Read it again:
Now, you've been accusing RMS of misrepresenting you. Your own website says the exact same thing as RMS.
RMS is not an open source advocate. He feels fairly strongly that Open Source is not what he's about. If businesses benefit from open development models that rely upon Free Software, then that's just great, but this isn't where he's coming fro
RMS directly created the GPL, wrote the GNU C compiler, and started the GNU project, all under the wing of the FSF. Those, with the addition of Linus's kernel, legitimized Free Software and created an infrastructure in which it can work.
I haven't seen any initiatives from the OSI that are remotely comparable. The OSI issues press releases from time to time, and provides a formalized, if redundant, list of Open Source licenses. By and large its role is entirely about advocacy, and it's hard to really point at any open sourcing that's happened where you can comfortably say "This definitely wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the OSI, the success of GNU/Linux wouldn't have been enough to make this happen."
It's all somewhat ironic. The FSF is usually portrayed as "ideological", yet, for the most part, its work has been to perform practical tasks to make Free Software viable, attainable, and worthwhile, the GPL and creation of software under it being the most obvious example of this. The OSI is portrayed as the "practical face" of FOSS, as non-ideological, yet it's done nothing but advocacy its entire life.
But you don't have the acknowledge the reality of this, if it means you can keep dismissing the contribution of the FSF. Keep drinking the kook-aid Russ, keep drinking.
RMS doesn't care why you want freedom. He just cares that you want it. His complaint about the OSI has always been that it removed the emphasis from freedom itself in favour of a practical argument.
The OSI has always said "We want freedom because..." and then dropped into an argument designed to appeal to the most efficiency-minded CTO. "We want freedom" because it allows us to develop really good software. No, the best software. And it's cheap too! Hey look, the software will get better by itself because people who want improvements can make them themselves!
In short, it's your side that wants to attach a specific reason to wanting freedom, not RMS and the FSF, who have always believed that freedom is a goal in and of itself. It's your side that has always insisted upon a reason to want freedom. And the reason you give, frankly, while appealing to the average geek who hates "politics" and "just wants to code" (because it sounds so practical) isn't exactly the best of them.
The thing is, to end programmers, the FSF has actually given us stuff. I think that was the grandparent's point. We don't really give a crap whether "Open Source" is a popular name or not.
Y'know, ESR may have been a raving pompous redneck, but that was the sole extent of his unmanagability and lack of grace. He was like a James Carville for programmers. Love him or hate him, he was able to get a message out, and do it without necessarily pissing everyone off.
He and RMS had his arguments, but I don't recall them ever dropping this low.
Nelson so far seems to be the precise opposite of ESR. I hope we've just caught him on a day where he's literally drunk after some successful celebratory partying, because if he's really like he's presented himself over the last 24 hours, the OSI is fucked.
They think they did, but they didn't and were using a term that, while vaguely defined, was certainly in common use before 1998.
For examples of "open source" in use where clearly something resembling free software was intended here are some examples:
This guy wants an open source ray tracer.
These guys are making an operating system's code "open-source", back in 1996. Wonder where they are now, these plucky open source pioneers. (Hmmm, is this one scary or what?)
Here's an early variant, from 1997. This guy declares his project "Freeware with open source", meaning, essentially, that it's Free software but not really sure how to word it. The OSI's definition is essentially a slightly broader one than the one this guy's using.
Indeed, the last one's interesting because it's an example of what most of the references to "open source", in the context of software, meant before ESR et al stuck their oars in. It was a common phrase meaning "We include the source so you can modify your programs." It was coopted and refined a little, but it would be a massive exaggeration for the OSI to claim it "coined the term".
Interestingly it appears on a whole bunch of spook/militia postings too, related to intelligence models. Makes you wonder...
I agree it shouldn't be. Actually, what I'd like is for copyright to have certain responsibilities associated with it for the copyright holder, one of which is that if you own the copyright, you must make copies available for sale at a fair price. A fair price might include the cost of getting a projectionist to sit for two hours and transfer the entire thing into a Mac, and then spend another few hours turning it into an MPEG2, finally burning it as a crude DVD-R (which means the end cost to the user may total a few hundred dollars), but it should at least be available.
Patents, yes. But Sun isn't asking developers to sign over patents (not least because I guess they know nobody's going to patent anything), only copyrights.
And isn't the usual reason for "owning the entire copyright" to "defend" the license (requiring third parties abide by it - ie you sue them) rather than to defend against copyright suits? That's always how I've read the FSF's arguments for getting people to sign over copyrights to them. It's hard for me to see how a developer transferring a bogus copyright to Sun would actually defend either the developer or Sun if the real copyright belongs to someone else. Both would be sue-able, and Sun wouldn't have a leg to stand on. It certainly wouldn't have any extra defenses at its disposal because it owns the rest of OpenOffice.org.
I see a lot of knee-jerk stuff against Sun. I don't think you're the kind of person to do that, but at the same time, I'm asking myself "What does this have to do with anything?" I'd like Sun to help defend OOo developers in patent suits, but I don't see it as 100% evil for them not do so, just fucking ungrateful. In a copyright lawsuit, the case should be fairly clear cut - either a developer submitted code they copied or they didn't. If they did, then they're an ass, and in the current world, given the obligations that go with using code written by someone else, they deserve to be sued, and Sun has a right to not want to have anything to do with them.
Java is still a rival to .NET. Sun is still trying to claw marketshare away from NT (2000/2003) boxes with Solaris. They're still, obviously, rivals.
If Sun says "We will not sue", then it's probably true that most courts will through out a lawsuit from Sun (see other replies.)
However, if Sun sells the patents to someone else, there's nothing that binds them to make the same promise, and I believe such situations have occured before (for example, with the JPEG patents that are now causing some concern. The original patent holder promised the JPEG committee there'd be no enforcement, but went bust and the patents now belong to someone who never made any such promise.)
Sun probably will not sell the patents to someone else unless it has to. But there's a twenty year time span involved here, and you can judge for yourself how likely it is that Sun will still be around, in its present form, at the end of that time period.
What we probably need from Sun is something akin to a "class license", an unrevokable license that allows a class of person to use the patents at no cost and with no limitations. That could include end users and anyone using them within the context of an FOSS product.
And despite this, Mono/Gnome/X11 is a kludge. It's attempting to combine two completely incompatable operating systems, and it shows. It doesn't feel right. It frequently implements metaphors that are entirely opposite to the underlying operating system. If you proposing Mono/Gnome/ReactOS, that'd be one thing. But over X11? Over GNU/Linux? What the f---'s the point?
And Objective-C/GNUStep/DPS is a nonsense that nobody's promoting. GNUStep runs over X11, it supports DPS but doesn't, itself, rely upon it. The primary development platform is Objective C but bindings for Java and Ruby are mainstream and others would have been developed had the project had the same level of resources that were thrown at GNOME.
Wow. So I guess it's true: in your parallel universe, where the GNOME people decided to work on GNUStep instead, there's no twm, Motif/CDE, etc. How, exactly, did that happen? Did these people go back in time and uninvent them?I'm sorry, but I don't have access to that parallel universe. How GNUStep could possibly result in the death of these choices is beyond me. If you can come up with an explanation, by all means do. The only one I can think of is that GNUStep would be so good, all other choices would wither and die, which to me seems highly unlikely.
Quite. Especially as it's featured fairly prominantly on SBC's home page.
You appear to be right, I stand corrected!
I don't believe BellSouth is the number 1 Bell either. Verizon is definitely larger. SBC might even be larger, I'm not sure. Verizon has pretty much the entire North East under its oppresive boot, and SBC has much of the South West, California, and North West under its. BellSouth has a collection of not-very-populous southern states, the only biggie being Florida, which it shares with Verizon.
I think SBC is Southwestern Bell. Southern Bell renamed itself to BellSouth.
SBC is regulated. The FCC regulates the long distance and mobile arms, the PUCs regulate the bulk of the local services.
I thought the original name Raskin came up with was "Bicycle"?
Where was I? Ok, yeah, this inventor. He looks at it, proud as punch, and turns to his friend and says "Wow, you should look at this. Think of all of the applications! I can hook this up to these two pieces of metal and measure the temperature! Or I can, I don't know, put these two metal plates together and put some of this radium stuff in between them, and wow, look at it all move around, it's so much fun! Dude, I predict that in a hundred years, everyone will have one of these in their homes, using them for everything from getting weather reports to entertaining themselves!"
Lo and behold, a hundred years have passed (more than that, actually) and we all have devices that include CRTs as part of the designs that provide us with entertainment and, er, weather reports.
Was he right?
I say all of this because I looked at the ad yesterday and got annoyed with it. It's not that you can't come up with an argument to say "Wow! They said that then, and it's kind of relevent today too!" It's just... well, it's a bunch of coincidences and/or marketing hype, for the most part.
Claim 1, for instance, predicts a future of WORM drives. WORM drives replacing hard disks. "That's kind of relevent!" we could say, "We use optical drives today, and one variant, CD-R (or DVR+/-R) is write once", but, er, not quite. It's not the same technology, it just happens to involve lasers and optical disks. CD drives replaced floppies, not hard drives, and floppies (including their replacements) were "demoted" by hard disk technology. Today we use hard disks. Back in 1987, or whenever this ad came out, floppies were commonly the only form of storage, and NeXT was basically saying "They say hard disks are the answer, but we say huge kick-ass floppies that use optical technology are".
WORM drives were used in a way similar to regular hard drives with the exception that they filled up as you used them - you couldn't recover space by deleting old files. What we use today couldn't be more different. The only thing they have in common are the lasers.
Claim 2 is marketing hype, and the sole future prediction - that we'll all be taking advantage of the power of UNIX - was, by and large, not true. The 1990s were dominated by Windows. Worse, they were dominated by DOS Windows, not Windows NT. GNU/Linux was making inroads in the geek market. Apple dropped their sole version of Unix, A/UX, and many people throughout the 1990s believed Unix and its clones were obsolete and we'd have a Windows future. That's changed at bit over the last few years, but few people are using Unix.
Claim 3 was largely drivel. Mainframes? Oh yeah, I remember the huge tape readers I had to use with NeXT's machines... ;-) VLSI, the one prediction that has some resemblance to reality, was widely used throughout the computer industry at the time NeXT was hailing this as a new innovation.
Claim 4 didn't come true. Unified imaging models continued to exist in the same way as they existed when NeXT made their ads - GDI and bitmaps.
Claim 5 is largely a minor improvement being blown out of all proportion. "CD quality" makes it look like there's some major breakthrough, but the major breakthrough appeared years before in terms of most computers, from 1984 onwards, having stereo, sampled, sound. The IBM PC is the glaring exception to that, and the Mac had sampled sound but not stereo. NeXT's major improvement was simply to use 16 bit samples instead of 8 bit ones.
It was, in short, a linear improve
In any case, I don't understand your answer. My question to you was would GNUStep have failed because it would have made GNU/Linux expensive and obscure? You say yes, and then you argue something about X11 and C/C++. Is the answer yes, or no? Would GNUStep have failed for the same reasons as NextStep, or would it have failed because of Objective C and Postscript? (It wouldn't have failed because of X11, that's a given, GNUStep runs over X11, just as GNOME and KDE do.)
Can you back up your statements? In what way does GNOME and KDE have network transparency that GNUStep doesn't? Unless you actually show a way, I can't help but feel that your "dismissal" is simply an attempt to avoid admitting you're wrong by pretending there's some criteria here that hasn't been mentioned.GNUStep, like GNOME and KDE, runs over X11. OpenStep doesn't, but it had network transparency anyway, an efficient form that GNUStep could duplicate if the wish ever exists. On every level, you're simply wrong about this. GNOME and KDE has network transparency only as a function of running over X11, and if you chose to run KDE and GNOME outside of X11, they don't have it at all. GNUStep runs over X11 too.
On every level, you're objectively wrong in this argument. If GNUStep replaced X11, that'd be one thing, but even then, such a GNUStep would almost certainly have implemented the network transparency of the original, because doing so would no longer have been redundant.
Why? So, if I understand this correctly: In some parallel universe, Miguel De Icaza is working on GNUStep. In that parallel universe, we'd not have twm, not have Motif/CDE, and not have people's pet desktop environment projects?Why? How do you come up with that argument?
Or is that not your claim, in which case, what is?
XP has pretty little in common with 95 other than a similar user interface and APIs. The underlying code, for the most part, amounts to a complete redesign and rewrite.
I mean, those were the reasons NextStep/OpenStep failed. It was user friendly, and (almost) everyone who used it apparently liked it. But the original NeXTs were sold with the suicidal marketing strategy of selling boxes that started at $10,000 only to people associated with academic institutions. As time went on, the prices dropped and marketing limitations removed, but the machines still cost $4,000 and up, putting them in the workstation market but well out of reach of the majority of regular users.
OpenStep was network transparent and GNUStep certainly is. GNUStep runs over X11, like GNOME and KDE. GNOME and KDE are no more network transparent than GNUStep (they get it for free via X11 but their underlying toolkits provide no inherent network transparency), GNUStep has the potential to be more if they get around to replicating OpenStep's network transparency.Current versions of Cocoa (yes, I know, I'm moving goalposts by combining OS X and earlier versions, but the point is GNUStep can be all of these, it's not like the development of one undermined the others) use XML based GUI specifications, if XML is considered a good thing. GNUStep's migrating to such a thing. What makes this a little galling is that the real nice aspect of this is merely that the GUI is seperated from the code in nice, editable, files. It's not the XML that's nice, it's the seperation. And, guess what, that's been a part of OpenStep since the beginning.
The OS X desktop is themable, though not with Apple's blessing, but GNUStep is themable anyway.
Cocoa bindings exist for multiple languages, Apple's (and GNUStep's) most supported being Objective C and Java, but it's pretty obvious any language can have them.
OS X has a consistant look and feel. So does GNUStep. I don't particularly like the former's, but metal and glass does not an inconsistant look and feel make. It's ugly, but there's logic in terms of what windows use what.
I can't think of anything in OpenStep and OS X that's done better, overall, in GNOME or KDE. I especially don't believe that GNUStep would be worse or similar to either if development on GNOME and KDE had actually been concentrated on GNUStep instead, I think it'd be light-years ahead, probably better than OS X too in terms of what I'd want to do with it.
The major problem is simply that GNUStep didn't get the development and ended up being a project largely run by nostalgic NeXT users, so it's, until recently, been stuck in a 1992 mentality. It's, thankfully, beginning to move forward now, as people who've taken an interest in OS X see the potential.
I don't see OpenStep as being the ultimate GUI. Far from it. But I think it was better out of the box than the Windows-inspired KDE and GNOME when it came to providing a suitable user interface for a Unix-like operating system. Both KDE and GNOME upon principles designed for an operating system that doesn't resemble Unix in any real way. The results have always felt awkward in the environment in which they run. GNOME and KDE would have made great projects for something like ReactOS. What we ended up with is GNU/Linux becoming a kind of Frankenstein OS. GNUStep would, if it had become mainstream and had the same degree of effort poured into it, made it elegant.