Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but...if you
bought the Win32 version of Q3, you could go
to id's site and download the Linux versions of the libs and executables. If you bought the Linux version, you could not download the Win32 version. So: get the Windows version, and you have both. Get the Linux version, and you have only the Linux version. This simple fact probably killed the vast majority of the sales of the Linux version of Q3 (not that I think they shouldn't have put made the Linux binaries availabe for download!).
Until the Linux game market matures, there's not going to be much demand for standalone Linux versions of games. In the meantime they should ship the Linux versions with the Windows versions. Linux users will buy a game if it is supported under Linux, but since most people still keep a Windows partition, a lot of them will not buy a Linux version given the choice between getting the Windows-only version and the Linux-only version. It's fantastic when companies offer Linux versions of their games, but the market forces are such that there's still not much of an audience for standalone, Linux-only versions of games.
I'm still not sure where I stand on the MS appeal, it'll require some more thought. But I must admit to having second thoughts about Katz lately. I admit to having been one of the Katz-haters, although not a public Katz-basher. So much of his stuff has been filled with apocalyptic hyperbole or highly idealized black-and-white oversimplifications of complex issues.
However: I thought this was a great piece...it doesn't really even advocate a particular view, it just raises a bunch of interesting questions which I think we all need to consider. This article will probably end up being the ultimate lightning rod for Katz-bashing (given the MS-neutral stance of the content), but I must say it's very refreshing to read some insightful thoughts that go against the grain of much of what the free software intelligentsia (and the majority of Slashdotters) have been saying about this.
We need more diversity of opinion around here, not to mention reasoned opinions based on research into the facts at hand. Heck, I'd rather see one well thought-out question (which is what this piece really is) than read a thousand angry editorials/rants.
This isn't true at all. Everything I've read from RMS has suggested that the need that the GPL addresses is the need for open sharing of code. If there were no copyright, then the GPL would be unable to address that need. Perhaps all source code would be totally redistributable and reusable, but people would still only distribute binaries and keep their sources a closely guarded secret. Heck, if copyright law were to suddenly disappear, all sorts of companies would start doing the same thing with GPL'd code. If what you say about RMS's (the the GPL's) intentions were true, then RMS's ideal license would be an X or BSD-style license, which is most definitely not the case.
As usual, all sorts of Java-related angst on Slashdot ("waaaah, it's too slow", "it's proprietary, boo-hoo", "I'm still in school and I have no industry experience but I know everything about everything and I can tell you that nobody uses it anywhere and it's not good for anything, and goshdarnit, I just love bitching about stuff that isn't even relevant to me anyway").:)
(just wanted to get that out of my system, sorry)
Regarding the whole portability thing: yes, using these sorts of native libraries does introduce some platform dependencies to the programs which use it. There are actually a number of widely-used packages which are basically Java interfaces to libraries which, deep down inside, are partially or entirely composed of native code.
For example, Java3D is implemented on top of both Direct3D and OpenGL, and is portable between the supported platforms. If you want to write 3D apps in Java, it is just not practical to go with a non-native solution. Likewise, if someone wanted to write KDE apps in Java, it makes a lot more sense to use the actual Qt and KDE libraries than it does to try and emulate them in Swing (which, as many have pointed out, is pretty big and slow to begin with). Java is still plenty useful even if you're targeting a specific platform. Also, if we ever see KDE on non-UNIX platforms, any Java apps written using these bindings will be portable to them too.
Is there a double-standard here with regard to Microsoft and Visual J++? Yes and no. Yes, because Microsoft added Windows-specific extensions to Java. And no, because what Microsoft was really trying to do was make the Java programs people wrote with their tools specific to Microsoft's JVM. They changed the language itself in some pretty radical ways, they didn't just add a few native libraries and hoped that everyone would use them. And they were quite blatant and pushy about trying to get everyone to use their extensions. Finally, since most people who are doing Java development are doing it on Windows, what MS did could have been far, far more destructive to Java as a whole than some guy adding KDE bindings for Java under UNIX.
This is not a case of Blizzard unfairly lashing out at anyone using the word "Diablo" without their permission, contrary to the submitter's description. If you read the article it clearly states that Blizzard trademarked the name "Diablo" for a possible movie back in '96. This is a very clear-cut situation and Blizzard is doing the right thing here. You'd think that the guy who submitted this would have at least read the article himself beforehand (especially with the vitriolic commentary).
Of course sufficient experience can make up for the lack of the right piece of paper, but on the other hand that's hardly a good argument for forgoing the CS degree. The 1998-2001 part could've been the first gig out of college, and who knows where that person would've been 10 years later? Just because it's possible to get decent programming jobs without a CS degree doesn't make it a good idea to forgo the CS degree.
Competition breeds excellence
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KDE 2.1 Is Out
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· Score: 5
I've used both Gnome and KDE. They're both very impressive although I prefer KDE myself. The two desktops have got to be the most ambitious and successful free software projects ever, up there with gcc, the Linux kernel, the various BSD OS's, Apache, Perl, and Python (among many others).
One thing that doesn't get said often is, Gnome was probably the greatest thing to ever happen to KDE. Without the heat from the Gnome folks, would stuff like KDevelop, KOffice, KDE's component architecture, and a zillion other things ever have happened? Or would the developers have been satisfied to merely create a CDE-like thing, basically just an integrated window manager, toolbar, file manager, and help system plus a moderate collection of basic apps?
Likewise, if the KDE developers had just stuck to the basic architecture of 1.x, would the Gnome people have been inspired to come as far as they have? I keep hearing people complain about how awful it is that we have two different major desktops, but I bet that if both groups of developers had been working together on a single desktop from day one, that the results would not be nearly as impressive as either of our choices now.
For those who are concerned about the situation, keep in mind that this is not a situation where you have two incompatible, warring standards. Gnome and KDE are not mutually exclusive choices, as both are merely sets of libraries and apps built on top of X. Gnome-based apps run under KDE and vice-versa; the two environments easily coexist on the same system. Having this kind of a choice makes Unix systems very unique compared to Windows or MacOS. Having a choice between two very mature desktops will draw far more people than it will drive away in confusion.
If you want to provide a sample implementation of something, then BSDL is good because just about anyone else can use the code as a basis for their own implementation. GPL/LGPL is good if you want your implementation to be the only implementation. So, if you're trying to promote a standard rather than an implementation, go with BSDL (the 2-clause variety, that is) or some other X-style license.
This is a perfect example of someone choosing a license based on what their goals are for the code, rather than religious beliefs or whatever. IMO all of the BSDL vs. GPL debates are pretty pointless, since most of the time the participants are arguing that one or the other license is ideal for all open source software. I say, it all comes down to what your goals are for the code you're writing; pick whichever license is most appropriate, rather than mindlessly advocating using one over the other for everything. This goes for proprietary software too.
The question that was debated was, does the system call constitute linkage between glibc and the kernel? It's not linkage in the sense that we usually think of it, but one could argue it on the grounds that both the kernel and glibc are in the same address space, and a thread of execution is crossing back and forth between the two. 'Linking' doesn't have a legal definition, and as a technical term it is somewhat fuzzy, so a clever lawyer might be able to convince a jury of it.
If so, then glibc is GPL'd when it's used on a Linux machine, because it's making calls into a GPL'd kernel. That would in turn make apps which rely on glibc GPL'd as well.
For the record, I don't necessarily buy this argument (I'm 95% sure it wouldn't hold water, IANAL of course), but it's definitely something that could arise in court.
I'm kind of surprised that there aren't more instances of the LGPL being used for things other than libraries- it's a general purpose license, you're not restricted to using it just for libraries.
GPL and LGPL are the same in the sense that derived works must be released under the same license as the original. They are different in the sense that the GPL considers linkage to be producing a derived work, whereas the LGPL does not.
It seems like most of the concerns are from people who are unsure as to what degree GPL'd software and non-GPL'd software can interact before the non-GPL'd software must be GPL'd as well. The LGPL maintains many of the benefits of the GPL (modifications to the original, LGPL'd code must be redistributed under the terms of the LGPL), while removing the 'viral' quality that makes so many people so nervous about using it.
Take the Linux kernel, for example. This is something that would probably have been better to LGPL. There was much debate over whether or not to allow proprietary kernel modules to be written. The terms of the GPL make it pretty clear that this would violate the GPL, as modules are linked at runtime with the kernel. Eventually a special exception was made in the case of kernel modules. If the kernel was LGPL'd, this would never have been an issue, as the LGPL'd and proprietary components and modules could peacefully and unambiguously coexist (not to mention modules under different open source licenses, like BSDL).
There was also a debate as to whether or not making a system call between userland (generally via libc) and kernel space constituted linkage. If so, libc would have to be GPL'd, and hence almost all apps that run on a Linux system would have to be GPL'd as well. My understanding (I would appreciate a clarification if this is incorrect) is that Linus ended the debate by simply declaring that no, that wasn't the case, a system call is not linkage (which is hardly legally binding). Again, using the LGPL instead of the GPL for the kernel would have made all of this a nonissue.
Finally, consider the whole debate about whether or not a plugin for a GPL'd application would itself have to be GPL'd. Again, this hinges on your definition of linkage and how different pieces of code interact, which can mean many different things in different contexts. Is it OK to write a GPL'd browser that could (for example) load Netscape plugins? Is the act of loading a non-GPL plugin a violation of the GPL (also, doesn't Konqueror do this? Did the KDE developers ever address this issue?)?
Anyway, all I'm saying is, people might want to consider using the LGPL for things other than libs, if they would like to keep the door open for plugins and modules and such that are under different licensing terms.
The LGPL seems to occupy the middle ground between the GPL and BSD licenses. Like the GPL, if you reuse the code, you have to redistribute your changes. Like BSDL, it works well with others and eliminates the need to consult with a bunch of lawyers everytime a company is considering releasing free software (or porting something to Linux) but doesn't want to risk being forced to open source stuff that they didn't want to.
It makes sense that software that was developed with taxpayer money should be (whenever possible) released as open source. It also makes perfect sense that such software (whenever possible) should not be GPL'd. If it's released into the public domain (or under an X-style license, like 2-clause BSDL) then what was originally developed with government funding will always remain freely available for anyone to make use of. No one can take that away.
If they released it under the GPL, well, then (obviously) it could only be used in GPL'd projects. This is discriminating against all those who make proprietary software, and against all those who make open source software that isn't GPL (which is a lot, if not the majority of it).
I have no problem with someone making proprietary derived works from government-funded, BSDL/PD/whatever software...the original release is still there for everyone to use. You can use it in your GPL'd project (as long as there's no advertising clause), you can use it in your BSDL project, you can use it in your proprietary project, you can use it whenever or wherever you please, which is how it should be since everyone paid for it (not just developers of GPL'd software).
If you release it under the GPL, then you can only use it with other GPL'd code. If the government releases open source, taxpayer-funded software, they should not be restricting its reuse to only one type of open source software (especially one that invokes as much criticism and controversy as the GPL). And they should not be restricting it to reuse only with other open source software, either.
If everyone paid for it (including proprietary software vendors, or those who have perfectly legitimate reasons for not wanting to release their code for whatever reason), then everyone should have the opportunity to benefit from it. Especially in the case of the GPL, which can be as polarizing as abortion or gun control amongst otherwise friendly and reasonable people.
I totally agree with you. I started to think about architecture but that's one where there's a very fuzzy line between art and simple elegance. When I think of cathedrals (or Frank Lloyd Wright, for that matter) I would definitely consider the architects to be artists in a sense, but that would seem to go against my earlier statements. It's tough to say. I guess everyone has their own ideas about what constitutes art.
I dunno, it's got all of the standard Unix command line utils and then some. I'm not sure what you're missing. Maybe they don't stick as much third-party stuff on there by default as, say, Redhat or Mandrake do, but then again I don't think they should. Even as it is, they install a ton more 'extras' than any commercial Unix or any of the BSDs. If there's any other things you're missing you just grab the rpm's and away you go. I can't think of any standard-issue core components that would be found on any Unix box that are notably absent in Caldera.
Re:The end of the Microsoft era?
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Rebel Code
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· Score: 1
I agree, MS is not going away anytime soon, and may even get bigger than they are now. I think it is the end of the MS-as-dictator era, though. Throughout the '90s it seemed like MS was seen by the public (outside of the computer industry) as being one of the greatest companies ever, making fantastic products and not doing anything bad ever. The truth is a lot more complicated than that (MS does good stuff and bad stuff, and they make some good software and some bad software), as it always is.
In that same period it seemed like MS had the power to make or break any technology- if MS didn't like it, it was doomed, if MS approved (especially if they came up with it in the first place), then it would inevitably take over. MS and their technologies seem to be more heavily scrutinized now, and they don't seem to have nearly as much mindshare or power (within the industry) that they used to.
MS is still a major player and will probably continue to be one indefinitely (much like IBM), but these days they seem more like another citizen of the industry rather than its supreme leader. Their free ride from the media is over and their cash cows have been milked; from here on out they will have to succeed on merit rather than inertia.
I've tried their most recent release and was extremely impressed with it. It is without a doubt the most polished and professional commercial Linux distribution out there. It seems they have zero hacker credibility, but on the other hand I'm starting to think that maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing:) ('the hacker community', a la ESR's 'tribe' *blech* has gone way downhill in recent years, if it ever really existed as a cohesive group to begin with, being ever more dominated by the script kiddie/perpetually-enraged-teenage-Slashbot/bearde d-middle-aged-zealot-living-in-mom's-basement/just -plain-rude-and-annoying-person consituencies).
Installing it and administering it, you really get the feeling that a whole bunch of people were paid a whole bunch of money to spend months and months going over every inch of it, dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't', making sure everything worked together properly and that everything was consistent and uniform and complied with their policies on how things should be laid out. With Redhat, there's always the feeling that it's just a bunch of stuff that they threw together and stuck on a CD.
I use Debian but I would not hesitate to recommend Caldera to someone who wanted to deploy Linux in a business environment (or just for personal use). It's too bad that they aren't more popular than they are (anyone know the market share percentages for the various distros? Not that it matters, it'd just be interesting to see the figures).
To answer the original question, I think that someone like a level designer is neither and artist nor a programmer. He is creating content that requires some technical knowledge, but I don't think that puts him at any point on the spectrum with 'artist' at one end and 'coder' on the other. He's something else; I'm not sure what though. He's not writing code, and he's not creating art (in general; there are exceptions of course).
But my main point is, I totally do not buy the concept that code can be art if it is exceptionally elegant. I often hear my fellow coders (and buddies in other engineering disciplines) talk about how they think that what they do is art in some sense.
Perhaps this is my own personal definition of art...everybody seems to have one. Calling code art is sort of like calling a particularly elegant mathematical proof art, or calling a particularly well-constructed brick wall art. At least to me, art is a lot more than simply implementing something really well. I can appreciate the aesthetic qualities of a particularly elegant design or implementation of something, but I consider art to be a whole lot more than mere cleverness or aesthetics. To me art has to affect me emotionally, it's a lot more than just arranging objects in an attractive or particularly useful way (which is how I see coding).
I guess mere cleverness and elegance is enough to meet just about anyone's definition of art. It just really bugs me whenever my coder/engineer buddies go on about it. Most of those sorts of people that I know are incredibly ignorant of what most people consider 'true' forms of art (films, literature, music, etc.); they tend to be very knowledgeable of their own very specialized field and not much else. So it bugs me when they try to boost their egos by elevating themselves to the level of artists, when they have no appreciation for creativity in general (not to mention, many of these same people view people who make a living with their art (musicians, writers, etc.) in contempt, like they are above them somehow).
Maybe I'm making incorrect assumptions about coders and engineers in general based on the people I've known personally, I dunno. I'm a coder myself. But from reading Slashdot, K5, newsgroups, etc. there seems to be a common mentality in the online tech community that these people like to think they are everything to everyone, and that they can do anything anyone else does better. Claiming to be artists too both denigrates what I consider to be 'real' art and gives them a totally undeserved ego boost.
None of this of course (except for the first paragraph) has anything to do with the original poster's question, I'm just ranting.:)
I really don't think this type of thinking is a recent phenomena. A lot of people just don't have much common sense when it comes to differentiating between facts and paranoia. Being explained on TV gives even the most outlandish conspiracy theories an air of credibility to a lot of people. It's also much more exciting to think that one lives in a world full of conspiracies and aliens and ghosts, meaning there are a lot of people who (deep down inside) want to believe in this kind of stuff. Reality is so plain and boring and incomprehensible to them.:)
People have always been this way and probably always will be. For example, back in the 19th century, belief in fairies (at least in Great Britain) was widespread, even among educated people (I read that Benjamin Disraeli was among the believers, dunno if it's true though). UFOs are like the fairies of the 20th/21st centuries...there's just a bunch of people who need to believe in outlandish stuff like this, their little brains just can't seem to function without a certain degree of mystery in the world, they need to believe in something and for whatever reason religion just doesn't do it for them.
Perhaps relativism and postmodernism are reflections of this mentality. You seem to be suggesting the opposite, that people think like this because of postmodernism, etc. I strongly disagree- there've always been dumb people, and there always will be. I like to believe that on average, people are getting smarter and more rational as the years/decades/centuries go by, but who knows.
It's highly unlikely that you have more experience than all of them put together. If you really think that, then (1) you probably have an ego problem, and (2) you obviously don't respect the people you're trying to convince. When you communicate with them this might come through (even if you try to conceal it), and they end up dismissing you as some smartass kid (whether or not it's true).
You also have to consider the notion that maybe you're not the smartest guy in the universe. I know when I was 24 (just a few years ago, after learning lots of stuff but before having much professional work experience, and before I had much experience in dealing with a wide range of poeple), that was exactly how I was.
I think I'm a hell of a lot stupider and more inexperienced right now (I'm 29) than I thought I was at that time. Knowledge can be intoxicating and it's easy to get carried away with thinking that anyone who doesn't appreciate your genius is obviously just discriminating against you for age or doesn't consider you part of the old boy's network or some other form of unfair victimizing, but that's not necessarily the case. Basically, hardly anyone is ever going to accept anyone else at face value- there's always going to be people that you'll have to prove yourself to, either by having oodles of experience to throw in their face, or by just getting the job done and not making a big deal out of it. Just work hard and give it time, you will eventually earn the respect you deserve.
Yeah, but you're assuming that it's his peers who are being egocentric and not him, and that he is in fact more knowledgable the the people he is working for/with. I know that during my first few years learning about programming, my head inflated at an exponential rate. I had become so much more knowledgeable over such a short period of time (2-3 years) that I automatically assumed I was gifted or something, and that I knew better than other people who (on the surface at least) didn't seem as geeky as me. He could be in a situation where people aren't giving him a fair shake because of his age, or it could be his own ego talking. If he really thinks he's smarter than the older and more experienced people he's working with, then maybe he's the one with the ego problem, and as a result he's not communicating his ideas as well or as professionally as he could be.
In addition, even the smartest people (especially the smartest people) aren't the best communicators when they're in their teens and early twenties. If he's being the least bit smug or obnoxious about it when he's contradicting his peers and managers, they'll get annoyed, and his age will double or triple the annoyance factor.
I'm not saying he's in the wrong here- there are plenty of times when people unfairly disregard the input of people who are much younger than they are, or assume that just because someone's a teenager or in their early-to-mid twenties that they don't know what they're talking about. But it's probably a little bit of both (a little unfair discrimination as well as him not being as brilliant as he thinks he is).
Mostly I'm saying don't always take the little guy's side. Everytime someone posts a David and Goliath story on Slashdot (some teenager tired of not getting the respect he feels he deserves, or some big company coming down on some guy for domain squatting, or the government coming down on someone for whatever), it seems like all the posters automatically take the little guy's side, and assume that the story he tells is the Truth, and that there aren't any other angles to it.
I see what you're saying now, and I don't think that Linus (or anyone else) should step down just because IBM (or some other company) tells him to. Linus is definitely the boss when it comes to the kernel and everyone else is free to fork it. I just don't think we can continue thinking of the engineers at these companies as second-class citizens or that these companies are not part of the free software community. It's just not a cut-and-dried line. This is probably not what you were saying but I hear that from a lot of people on Slashdot.
Like 10 or 15 years ago, one could defintely say that there were few if any companies mingling with the free software community. But you did have a lot of academics and research people from various government and corporate labs contributing a lot of free software to the world. These people would probably not have been doing that if they were not being paid to do so.
Likewise you now have a situation where companies like IBM and Red Hat and SGI are paying people to develop free software. The people who develop that software probably wouldn't be doing it if their company wasn't paying them to do so, so I don't see the difference between these guys and the guys from CMU or MIT or NASA or NIH or wherever that have contributed much free software in the past. The organization they work for is bankrolling free software, perhaps for less selfless reasons (although you'd be surprised- a lot of companies are contributing stuff purely out of charity, just to maintain the goodwill of the community). But that doesn't make those engineers any better or worse people or any more or less sleazy; in all cases they are doing it because it's their job, and everyone benefits from being nice to them and working with them (not for them, but with them).
IMHO the amount of sway any organization (be it a company or a research group or a university) should have over the community at large is directly proportional to how much that organization gives back, how much free software and assistance do they provide to the community, and how generally cooperative they are. The fact that the organization's management is doing it out of self-interest doesn't really bother me. The people at companies like the late LinuxOne are just a bunch of guys with a get-rich-quick scheme who don't really care about giving anything back, so of course they can't really be considered "part of the community". But Cygnus (now part of Red Hat), IBM, SGI, et al contribute a lot and make genuine efforts to be good citizens of the community and deserve to be treated as such and given some consideration.
None of this rant is really directed at you, rather at the really extreme "all corporations are evil" kiddies who post to Slashdot all the time. It doesn't take much provocation to get a long-winded rant out of me.:)
Having a Linux industry is the best thing to ever happen to Linux. Much more time and money and manpower is going into Linux kernel development and applications than ever before. Having a Linux industry is also helpful in the sense that hardware manufacturers are much more likely to make sure their stuff works with Linux, or to release the specs needed to get their stuff supported under Linux.
Right now you've got two groups working on making Linux better- you've got the traditional hackers working on a purely voluntary basis, doing it for fun or education or reputation or whatever. Then you've got the companies like Red Hat and IBM who want to make money from Linux, who have the resources and the desire to pay professional engineers to work full time on enhancing Linux in one way or another. In reality I don't think these are two distinct groups...there's lots of big gray areas in between the two. Lots of stuff is getting done only because companies are willing to sponsor it and contribute their resources (their people and in some cases their IP.
The mostly symbiotic relationship that exists between these two groups (volunteer hackers and the industry) is much, much greater than the sum of its parts. You say, "who cares?", but I think lots and lots of people on both sides of the fence should care a lot, regardless of their interests or motivations. This symbiotic relationship should be preserved if at all possible, and at the expense of neither group's interests.
Also, the painfully obvious answer to "who cares?" is, those companies and the people who work for them. You seem to strongly identify with the volunteers, and consider the industry people to be some sort of parasitic, second-class citizens of the Linux community, like they don't do any good for anyone but themselves. I don't agree with this, and in fact I don't think the volunteers are on any sort of moral or ideological high ground with respect to the industry folks. Maybe the execs who run those companies wouldn't be doing anything with Linux if not for self-interest, but the fact remains that those companies are doing as much or (potentially) more good for Linux and the Linux community than all of the volunteers put together. You have to look at the positive impact that they are having; you can't just denounce them because you think their motivations are somehow impure. It's not like the engineers who work for those companies are only motivated by profit- probably most of them are glad that they are in a position to help out with Linux and get paid for it and not have to compromise their obligations to support their families, etc.
People need to get off their high horses and stop flinging shit at everyone they perceive as not being as selflessly motivated as they are.
It's just such a petty, silly, and childish thing to crusade about. I mean, who really cares. Don't like Windows, don't use it- there's alternatives.
I was about as rabid an MS-hater as there ever was at one time, but in hindsight I think it was just due to the fact that I spent an unhealthy amount of time with computers (instead of people) and I had acquired this incredible tunnel vision where everything was black and white and anything non-computer-related just didn't matter to me. I've since grown up a lot.
Seeing people like Rob get that extreme and emotional and dramatic about it just seems really bizarre and silly, not to mention intellectually dishonest. I tend to dismiss such people as still being stuck in the phase that I was in, and hope they grow out of it eventually. Even if MS was twice as bad as people like Rob make it out to be (and they've certainly done plenty of stupid and/or arguably unethical things), it still wouldn't justify the level of emotion and drama and hyperbole that the MS-haters spew all the time.
The computer industry is just not collectively significant enough in the grand scheme of things to justify getting that worked up over one of its more powerful and Machiavellian citizens.
Finally, Rob's brand of MS-hating is of the shrill, whiney variety that ends up getting totally ignored by everyone who isn't just as bad about it as he is. Whenever anyone goes off on a shrill MS rant in any kind of social setting, inevitably whatever the person is saying gets ignored or forgotten, the only lasting result being the earning of a few hundred dork points in the eyes of his unfortunate audience.
Sorry, I guess this was a rant too.:) It's just something that's close to home...been there, done that, saw the light, and now spend my time worrying about things that actually matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Aha! So you're the bastard who stole my bold tags. Well, I demand that you return them at once!
Until the Linux game market matures, there's not going to be much demand for standalone Linux versions of games. In the meantime they should ship the Linux versions with the Windows versions. Linux users will buy a game if it is supported under Linux, but since most people still keep a Windows partition, a lot of them will not buy a Linux version given the choice between getting the Windows-only version and the Linux-only version. It's fantastic when companies offer Linux versions of their games, but the market forces are such that there's still not much of an audience for standalone, Linux-only versions of games.
However: I thought this was a great piece...it doesn't really even advocate a particular view, it just raises a bunch of interesting questions which I think we all need to consider. This article will probably end up being the ultimate lightning rod for Katz-bashing (given the MS-neutral stance of the content), but I must say it's very refreshing to read some insightful thoughts that go against the grain of much of what the free software intelligentsia (and the majority of Slashdotters) have been saying about this.
We need more diversity of opinion around here, not to mention reasoned opinions based on research into the facts at hand. Heck, I'd rather see one well thought-out question (which is what this piece really is) than read a thousand angry editorials/rants.
Of course, I meant to say "(and the GPL's)", not "(the the GPL's)". Duh (yes, I even previewed :).
This isn't true at all. Everything I've read from RMS has suggested that the need that the GPL addresses is the need for open sharing of code. If there were no copyright, then the GPL would be unable to address that need. Perhaps all source code would be totally redistributable and reusable, but people would still only distribute binaries and keep their sources a closely guarded secret. Heck, if copyright law were to suddenly disappear, all sorts of companies would start doing the same thing with GPL'd code. If what you say about RMS's (the the GPL's) intentions were true, then RMS's ideal license would be an X or BSD-style license, which is most definitely not the case.
(just wanted to get that out of my system, sorry)
Regarding the whole portability thing: yes, using these sorts of native libraries does introduce some platform dependencies to the programs which use it. There are actually a number of widely-used packages which are basically Java interfaces to libraries which, deep down inside, are partially or entirely composed of native code.
For example, Java3D is implemented on top of both Direct3D and OpenGL, and is portable between the supported platforms. If you want to write 3D apps in Java, it is just not practical to go with a non-native solution. Likewise, if someone wanted to write KDE apps in Java, it makes a lot more sense to use the actual Qt and KDE libraries than it does to try and emulate them in Swing (which, as many have pointed out, is pretty big and slow to begin with). Java is still plenty useful even if you're targeting a specific platform. Also, if we ever see KDE on non-UNIX platforms, any Java apps written using these bindings will be portable to them too.
Is there a double-standard here with regard to Microsoft and Visual J++? Yes and no. Yes, because Microsoft added Windows-specific extensions to Java. And no, because what Microsoft was really trying to do was make the Java programs people wrote with their tools specific to Microsoft's JVM. They changed the language itself in some pretty radical ways, they didn't just add a few native libraries and hoped that everyone would use them. And they were quite blatant and pushy about trying to get everyone to use their extensions. Finally, since most people who are doing Java development are doing it on Windows, what MS did could have been far, far more destructive to Java as a whole than some guy adding KDE bindings for Java under UNIX.
This is not a case of Blizzard unfairly lashing out at anyone using the word "Diablo" without their permission, contrary to the submitter's description. If you read the article it clearly states that Blizzard trademarked the name "Diablo" for a possible movie back in '96. This is a very clear-cut situation and Blizzard is doing the right thing here. You'd think that the guy who submitted this would have at least read the article himself beforehand (especially with the vitriolic commentary).
Of course sufficient experience can make up for the lack of the right piece of paper, but on the other hand that's hardly a good argument for forgoing the CS degree. The 1998-2001 part could've been the first gig out of college, and who knows where that person would've been 10 years later? Just because it's possible to get decent programming jobs without a CS degree doesn't make it a good idea to forgo the CS degree.
One thing that doesn't get said often is, Gnome was probably the greatest thing to ever happen to KDE. Without the heat from the Gnome folks, would stuff like KDevelop, KOffice, KDE's component architecture, and a zillion other things ever have happened? Or would the developers have been satisfied to merely create a CDE-like thing, basically just an integrated window manager, toolbar, file manager, and help system plus a moderate collection of basic apps?
Likewise, if the KDE developers had just stuck to the basic architecture of 1.x, would the Gnome people have been inspired to come as far as they have? I keep hearing people complain about how awful it is that we have two different major desktops, but I bet that if both groups of developers had been working together on a single desktop from day one, that the results would not be nearly as impressive as either of our choices now.
For those who are concerned about the situation, keep in mind that this is not a situation where you have two incompatible, warring standards. Gnome and KDE are not mutually exclusive choices, as both are merely sets of libraries and apps built on top of X. Gnome-based apps run under KDE and vice-versa; the two environments easily coexist on the same system. Having this kind of a choice makes Unix systems very unique compared to Windows or MacOS. Having a choice between two very mature desktops will draw far more people than it will drive away in confusion.
This is a perfect example of someone choosing a license based on what their goals are for the code, rather than religious beliefs or whatever. IMO all of the BSDL vs. GPL debates are pretty pointless, since most of the time the participants are arguing that one or the other license is ideal for all open source software. I say, it all comes down to what your goals are for the code you're writing; pick whichever license is most appropriate, rather than mindlessly advocating using one over the other for everything. This goes for proprietary software too.
If so, then glibc is GPL'd when it's used on a Linux machine, because it's making calls into a GPL'd kernel. That would in turn make apps which rely on glibc GPL'd as well.
For the record, I don't necessarily buy this argument (I'm 95% sure it wouldn't hold water, IANAL of course), but it's definitely something that could arise in court.
GPL and LGPL are the same in the sense that derived works must be released under the same license as the original. They are different in the sense that the GPL considers linkage to be producing a derived work, whereas the LGPL does not.
It seems like most of the concerns are from people who are unsure as to what degree GPL'd software and non-GPL'd software can interact before the non-GPL'd software must be GPL'd as well. The LGPL maintains many of the benefits of the GPL (modifications to the original, LGPL'd code must be redistributed under the terms of the LGPL), while removing the 'viral' quality that makes so many people so nervous about using it.
Take the Linux kernel, for example. This is something that would probably have been better to LGPL. There was much debate over whether or not to allow proprietary kernel modules to be written. The terms of the GPL make it pretty clear that this would violate the GPL, as modules are linked at runtime with the kernel. Eventually a special exception was made in the case of kernel modules. If the kernel was LGPL'd, this would never have been an issue, as the LGPL'd and proprietary components and modules could peacefully and unambiguously coexist (not to mention modules under different open source licenses, like BSDL).
There was also a debate as to whether or not making a system call between userland (generally via libc) and kernel space constituted linkage. If so, libc would have to be GPL'd, and hence almost all apps that run on a Linux system would have to be GPL'd as well. My understanding (I would appreciate a clarification if this is incorrect) is that Linus ended the debate by simply declaring that no, that wasn't the case, a system call is not linkage (which is hardly legally binding). Again, using the LGPL instead of the GPL for the kernel would have made all of this a nonissue.
Finally, consider the whole debate about whether or not a plugin for a GPL'd application would itself have to be GPL'd. Again, this hinges on your definition of linkage and how different pieces of code interact, which can mean many different things in different contexts. Is it OK to write a GPL'd browser that could (for example) load Netscape plugins? Is the act of loading a non-GPL plugin a violation of the GPL (also, doesn't Konqueror do this? Did the KDE developers ever address this issue?)?
Anyway, all I'm saying is, people might want to consider using the LGPL for things other than libs, if they would like to keep the door open for plugins and modules and such that are under different licensing terms.
The LGPL seems to occupy the middle ground between the GPL and BSD licenses. Like the GPL, if you reuse the code, you have to redistribute your changes. Like BSDL, it works well with others and eliminates the need to consult with a bunch of lawyers everytime a company is considering releasing free software (or porting something to Linux) but doesn't want to risk being forced to open source stuff that they didn't want to.
If they released it under the GPL, well, then (obviously) it could only be used in GPL'd projects. This is discriminating against all those who make proprietary software, and against all those who make open source software that isn't GPL (which is a lot, if not the majority of it).
I have no problem with someone making proprietary derived works from government-funded, BSDL/PD/whatever software...the original release is still there for everyone to use. You can use it in your GPL'd project (as long as there's no advertising clause), you can use it in your BSDL project, you can use it in your proprietary project, you can use it whenever or wherever you please, which is how it should be since everyone paid for it (not just developers of GPL'd software).
If you release it under the GPL, then you can only use it with other GPL'd code. If the government releases open source, taxpayer-funded software, they should not be restricting its reuse to only one type of open source software (especially one that invokes as much criticism and controversy as the GPL). And they should not be restricting it to reuse only with other open source software, either.
If everyone paid for it (including proprietary software vendors, or those who have perfectly legitimate reasons for not wanting to release their code for whatever reason), then everyone should have the opportunity to benefit from it. Especially in the case of the GPL, which can be as polarizing as abortion or gun control amongst otherwise friendly and reasonable people.
I totally agree with you. I started to think about architecture but that's one where there's a very fuzzy line between art and simple elegance. When I think of cathedrals (or Frank Lloyd Wright, for that matter) I would definitely consider the architects to be artists in a sense, but that would seem to go against my earlier statements. It's tough to say. I guess everyone has their own ideas about what constitutes art.
I dunno, it's got all of the standard Unix command line utils and then some. I'm not sure what you're missing. Maybe they don't stick as much third-party stuff on there by default as, say, Redhat or Mandrake do, but then again I don't think they should. Even as it is, they install a ton more 'extras' than any commercial Unix or any of the BSDs. If there's any other things you're missing you just grab the rpm's and away you go. I can't think of any standard-issue core components that would be found on any Unix box that are notably absent in Caldera.
In that same period it seemed like MS had the power to make or break any technology- if MS didn't like it, it was doomed, if MS approved (especially if they came up with it in the first place), then it would inevitably take over. MS and their technologies seem to be more heavily scrutinized now, and they don't seem to have nearly as much mindshare or power (within the industry) that they used to.
MS is still a major player and will probably continue to be one indefinitely (much like IBM), but these days they seem more like another citizen of the industry rather than its supreme leader. Their free ride from the media is over and their cash cows have been milked; from here on out they will have to succeed on merit rather than inertia.
Installing it and administering it, you really get the feeling that a whole bunch of people were paid a whole bunch of money to spend months and months going over every inch of it, dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't', making sure everything worked together properly and that everything was consistent and uniform and complied with their policies on how things should be laid out. With Redhat, there's always the feeling that it's just a bunch of stuff that they threw together and stuck on a CD.
I use Debian but I would not hesitate to recommend Caldera to someone who wanted to deploy Linux in a business environment (or just for personal use). It's too bad that they aren't more popular than they are (anyone know the market share percentages for the various distros? Not that it matters, it'd just be interesting to see the figures).
But my main point is, I totally do not buy the concept that code can be art if it is exceptionally elegant. I often hear my fellow coders (and buddies in other engineering disciplines) talk about how they think that what they do is art in some sense.
Perhaps this is my own personal definition of art...everybody seems to have one. Calling code art is sort of like calling a particularly elegant mathematical proof art, or calling a particularly well-constructed brick wall art. At least to me, art is a lot more than simply implementing something really well. I can appreciate the aesthetic qualities of a particularly elegant design or implementation of something, but I consider art to be a whole lot more than mere cleverness or aesthetics. To me art has to affect me emotionally, it's a lot more than just arranging objects in an attractive or particularly useful way (which is how I see coding).
I guess mere cleverness and elegance is enough to meet just about anyone's definition of art. It just really bugs me whenever my coder/engineer buddies go on about it. Most of those sorts of people that I know are incredibly ignorant of what most people consider 'true' forms of art (films, literature, music, etc.); they tend to be very knowledgeable of their own very specialized field and not much else. So it bugs me when they try to boost their egos by elevating themselves to the level of artists, when they have no appreciation for creativity in general (not to mention, many of these same people view people who make a living with their art (musicians, writers, etc.) in contempt, like they are above them somehow).
Maybe I'm making incorrect assumptions about coders and engineers in general based on the people I've known personally, I dunno. I'm a coder myself. But from reading Slashdot, K5, newsgroups, etc. there seems to be a common mentality in the online tech community that these people like to think they are everything to everyone, and that they can do anything anyone else does better. Claiming to be artists too both denigrates what I consider to be 'real' art and gives them a totally undeserved ego boost.
None of this of course (except for the first paragraph) has anything to do with the original poster's question, I'm just ranting. :)
People have always been this way and probably always will be. For example, back in the 19th century, belief in fairies (at least in Great Britain) was widespread, even among educated people (I read that Benjamin Disraeli was among the believers, dunno if it's true though). UFOs are like the fairies of the 20th/21st centuries...there's just a bunch of people who need to believe in outlandish stuff like this, their little brains just can't seem to function without a certain degree of mystery in the world, they need to believe in something and for whatever reason religion just doesn't do it for them.
Perhaps relativism and postmodernism are reflections of this mentality. You seem to be suggesting the opposite, that people think like this because of postmodernism, etc. I strongly disagree- there've always been dumb people, and there always will be. I like to believe that on average, people are getting smarter and more rational as the years/decades/centuries go by, but who knows.
You also have to consider the notion that maybe you're not the smartest guy in the universe. I know when I was 24 (just a few years ago, after learning lots of stuff but before having much professional work experience, and before I had much experience in dealing with a wide range of poeple), that was exactly how I was.
I think I'm a hell of a lot stupider and more inexperienced right now (I'm 29) than I thought I was at that time. Knowledge can be intoxicating and it's easy to get carried away with thinking that anyone who doesn't appreciate your genius is obviously just discriminating against you for age or doesn't consider you part of the old boy's network or some other form of unfair victimizing, but that's not necessarily the case. Basically, hardly anyone is ever going to accept anyone else at face value- there's always going to be people that you'll have to prove yourself to, either by having oodles of experience to throw in their face, or by just getting the job done and not making a big deal out of it. Just work hard and give it time, you will eventually earn the respect you deserve.
In addition, even the smartest people (especially the smartest people) aren't the best communicators when they're in their teens and early twenties. If he's being the least bit smug or obnoxious about it when he's contradicting his peers and managers, they'll get annoyed, and his age will double or triple the annoyance factor.
I'm not saying he's in the wrong here- there are plenty of times when people unfairly disregard the input of people who are much younger than they are, or assume that just because someone's a teenager or in their early-to-mid twenties that they don't know what they're talking about. But it's probably a little bit of both (a little unfair discrimination as well as him not being as brilliant as he thinks he is).
Mostly I'm saying don't always take the little guy's side. Everytime someone posts a David and Goliath story on Slashdot (some teenager tired of not getting the respect he feels he deserves, or some big company coming down on some guy for domain squatting, or the government coming down on someone for whatever), it seems like all the posters automatically take the little guy's side, and assume that the story he tells is the Truth, and that there aren't any other angles to it.
Like 10 or 15 years ago, one could defintely say that there were few if any companies mingling with the free software community. But you did have a lot of academics and research people from various government and corporate labs contributing a lot of free software to the world. These people would probably not have been doing that if they were not being paid to do so.
Likewise you now have a situation where companies like IBM and Red Hat and SGI are paying people to develop free software. The people who develop that software probably wouldn't be doing it if their company wasn't paying them to do so, so I don't see the difference between these guys and the guys from CMU or MIT or NASA or NIH or wherever that have contributed much free software in the past. The organization they work for is bankrolling free software, perhaps for less selfless reasons (although you'd be surprised- a lot of companies are contributing stuff purely out of charity, just to maintain the goodwill of the community). But that doesn't make those engineers any better or worse people or any more or less sleazy; in all cases they are doing it because it's their job, and everyone benefits from being nice to them and working with them (not for them, but with them).
IMHO the amount of sway any organization (be it a company or a research group or a university) should have over the community at large is directly proportional to how much that organization gives back, how much free software and assistance do they provide to the community, and how generally cooperative they are. The fact that the organization's management is doing it out of self-interest doesn't really bother me. The people at companies like the late LinuxOne are just a bunch of guys with a get-rich-quick scheme who don't really care about giving anything back, so of course they can't really be considered "part of the community". But Cygnus (now part of Red Hat), IBM, SGI, et al contribute a lot and make genuine efforts to be good citizens of the community and deserve to be treated as such and given some consideration.
None of this rant is really directed at you, rather at the really extreme "all corporations are evil" kiddies who post to Slashdot all the time. It doesn't take much provocation to get a long-winded rant out of me. :)
Right now you've got two groups working on making Linux better- you've got the traditional hackers working on a purely voluntary basis, doing it for fun or education or reputation or whatever. Then you've got the companies like Red Hat and IBM who want to make money from Linux, who have the resources and the desire to pay professional engineers to work full time on enhancing Linux in one way or another. In reality I don't think these are two distinct groups...there's lots of big gray areas in between the two. Lots of stuff is getting done only because companies are willing to sponsor it and contribute their resources (their people and in some cases their IP.
The mostly symbiotic relationship that exists between these two groups (volunteer hackers and the industry) is much, much greater than the sum of its parts. You say, "who cares?", but I think lots and lots of people on both sides of the fence should care a lot, regardless of their interests or motivations. This symbiotic relationship should be preserved if at all possible, and at the expense of neither group's interests.
Also, the painfully obvious answer to "who cares?" is, those companies and the people who work for them. You seem to strongly identify with the volunteers, and consider the industry people to be some sort of parasitic, second-class citizens of the Linux community, like they don't do any good for anyone but themselves. I don't agree with this, and in fact I don't think the volunteers are on any sort of moral or ideological high ground with respect to the industry folks. Maybe the execs who run those companies wouldn't be doing anything with Linux if not for self-interest, but the fact remains that those companies are doing as much or (potentially) more good for Linux and the Linux community than all of the volunteers put together. You have to look at the positive impact that they are having; you can't just denounce them because you think their motivations are somehow impure. It's not like the engineers who work for those companies are only motivated by profit- probably most of them are glad that they are in a position to help out with Linux and get paid for it and not have to compromise their obligations to support their families, etc.
People need to get off their high horses and stop flinging shit at everyone they perceive as not being as selflessly motivated as they are.
I was about as rabid an MS-hater as there ever was at one time, but in hindsight I think it was just due to the fact that I spent an unhealthy amount of time with computers (instead of people) and I had acquired this incredible tunnel vision where everything was black and white and anything non-computer-related just didn't matter to me. I've since grown up a lot.
Seeing people like Rob get that extreme and emotional and dramatic about it just seems really bizarre and silly, not to mention intellectually dishonest. I tend to dismiss such people as still being stuck in the phase that I was in, and hope they grow out of it eventually. Even if MS was twice as bad as people like Rob make it out to be (and they've certainly done plenty of stupid and/or arguably unethical things), it still wouldn't justify the level of emotion and drama and hyperbole that the MS-haters spew all the time.
The computer industry is just not collectively significant enough in the grand scheme of things to justify getting that worked up over one of its more powerful and Machiavellian citizens.
Finally, Rob's brand of MS-hating is of the shrill, whiney variety that ends up getting totally ignored by everyone who isn't just as bad about it as he is. Whenever anyone goes off on a shrill MS rant in any kind of social setting, inevitably whatever the person is saying gets ignored or forgotten, the only lasting result being the earning of a few hundred dork points in the eyes of his unfortunate audience.
Sorry, I guess this was a rant too. :) It's just something that's close to home...been there, done that, saw the light, and now spend my time worrying about things that actually matter.