Doesn't that therefore make commercial apps for linux a violation? They are linking against linux (GPL's) libs....
There's a clause in the GPL which allows non-GPL'ed and GPL'ed code to play nice together if one of them is an integral system library (such as libc.) This is also what allows GPL'ed code for Win32. --
If someone wanted to link to GPL code without using the GPL for their work, could they make a wrapper library which calls the code they want, make dynamically, release it as LGPL and then dynamically link their code to that wrapper library?
Interesting... but I don't think it would work. You're still linking non-GPL'ed code to GPL'ed code, which is explicitly forbidden in the GPL. --
If I have a large commercial app and add 20 lines of GPL'd code (let's say not even an entire function) then there is no way that anyone can reasonably expect that I then just give away the whole app under GPL.
No, but it is reasonable to expect you to remove the GPL'ed code, which you are using in a way which goes against the wishes of the author, and rewrite those 20 lines yourself. --
Although for newcomers to "free" licenses, I would reccomend the GPL at first if they are unsure, since if you later decide i'ts not right for you, you can re-release as BSD. You cannot however do it the other way around.
Why do people have such a hard time grasping this? That's not true! If you own the code and you release it as GPL, you can still go back and rerelease it under a completely different license (commercial closed-source, even) The one thing you can't do is revoke all the other GPL'ed versions out there - they are out for good. But you can prevent new versions from being released.
Basically, if you own the code, you can keep releasing it under different licenses any way you choose. --
What happens if you have a program that is made up of 5 libraries. In order to fully run the program, you need all 5. They use each other's header files and binaries. I GPL 2/5. Is this legal?
Nope - if they link against each other, they must all be GPL'ed (unless either all the GPL'ed libs or all the non GPL'ed libs are integral system libraries such as libc)
What happens when I use a library, such as GnuPG, in a commercial non-GPL app?
You can't - but that's what the LGPL is for. It's basically the same as the GPL but allows linking to non-GPL code. --
One question: Will this get around the "where's the device driver?" problem that Linux faces? Or will every uPNP device still need a specifically developed Linux driver? (I suspect that later.)
I'm sure it will still require OS-specific drivers. Plug-and-play basically lets the peripheral tell the OS "Ok, I'm here! Now do something with me." --
Speaking only for myself, it's not the application framework that pisses me off; it's the fact that my standards-compliant browser was sacrificed at the altar of an application framework that pisses me off.
Chill, dude. It's easy enough for somebody to create a tiny little GTK wrapper around the Mozilla widget. There you go - lightweight, standards-compliant browser. That's actually one of my planned projects once Mozilla is relatively finished. --
Of course not - it still has all the debugging code in there, and they haven't even STARTED optimization of the code yet. I would hate to see what IE5 was like before optimization.
That said, on this machine (P120, 48MB RAM, Win98) Mozilla is almost as fast as IE5, but not as stable. It is in alpha, though. Don't be greedy:-) It'll be great soon enough.
If so, I'll switch. I wish the coders would concentrate on the speed/stability issues before adding eye candy such as switchable skins.
It's not just eye candy - Chrome allows full modification of the app. Somebody wrote a terminal emulator which supports URLs and other bizarre shit (XMLTerm, I don't have the URL here) which is simply Mozilla Chrome. Also, the speed and stability issues seem to COME from the Chrome stuff rather than the HTML rendering engine, which seems pretty complete.
Sorry for the rant, I'm just sick of seeing people complain about why they're doing this or that rather than fixing the stability issues and speed - in a typical development cycle, optimization is usually part of the finishing touches. Once the program is relatively complete, you start profiling it and finding out where the majority of time is spent, and optimizing that section of code. --
I'm using M16 on Win32 right now, and it's a painfully underpowered machine (P120, 48MB of RAM, running Win98) and it's running nicely (I was very surprised:-) It runs about as fast as IE5 on the same machine (but takes FUCKING FOREVER to load... oh well)
I don't know what's wrong with yours but my preferences dialog works fine. When I get home I'll try the Linux version as well. --
It's true that I started having these problems arouns M13 or so. But this is a fresh install of M16, and it's still not working. I'm not sure what to make of it.
Look at the libraries in the mozilla/dist/bin or mozilla/package/dist directory (depending on whether or not you installed binary or source) Are there any libraries with the same name as any of them in/usr/lib or/usr/local/lib? If so, delete them.
You could also just try copying all the libs in that directory to/usr/lib, but that would leave a lot of cruft around. That's what I did, though:-) --
The show-stopper, though, is tables. I can't get a single page with tables in it to render correctly. Even mozilla.org's homepage doesn't work, much less Slashdot, Sluggy, and almost everything else nowadays. I haven't been able to do this for several milestones now, though at least now it's consistent; the pages always fail (before it was intermittent). Perhaps, rather than a bug in Gecko, this is a compatibility issue; I don't know which is worse.
Are you sure you don't have older versions of Mozilla's shared libraries floating around in/usr/lib or/usr/local/lib? I was having crazy problems back around M13 or M14, and I deleted all the libraries from/usr/lib with the same name as those in the Mozilla distribution, and suddenly it worked like a charm. It may be that you're using older shared libraries, because table rendering has been nearly flawless for me since then. --
I'm sure if Creative would/could make a DVD player for linux it would.
Interesting example - Creative is, AFAIK, the ONLY DVD decoder card manufacturer that DOES support Linux. I have a Creative Dxr2 decoder card, which works great with Creative's own GPL'ed drivers. Picture quality is equal to that of the Windows drivers, and TV-output even works. --
What mouse is it? I have one of the MS Intellimouse Explorers (5 buttons, USB) and it works great in Linux. The 4th and 5th buttons don't work, but I did some testing on it and X reports these buttons as simple clones of buttons 2 and 3 anyway, which sucks. Anybody know how to enable the 4th and 5th buttons? --
Re:Simple questions for the pro-Napster crowd
on
Napster Wars
·
· Score: 2
What is a "fair price" for a CD, such that you would buy (pay money for) all your music and stop downloading copyrighted music without paying for it? To keep things simple, let's assume that all single CDs are priced the same.
What about being able to download MP3 at maybe a buck apeice (and there was some way to do it and be charged securely WITHOUT having to enter your credit card number every time)? That would be great. Also, I'd do it much more often if a much larger percentage of the money went to the artists themselves (or a kill-the-backstreet-boys fund.) --
especially if you're sick of the "gray fuzzies" that Acrobat's antialiasing produces... (I usually prefer ghostviewing PostScript versions when available.)
Off-topic, but have you tried viewing PDFs in GhostView? They work nicely, since they're basically PostScript anyway. --
Agreed. The one car accident I've ever been in was when I was trying to dial a cell phone and I rear-ended some mexican lady. She proceeded to sue me, but I never found out what happened with that lawsuit since I left for college before it was sorted out. That was 2 years ago:-) --
(I still don't see how power outages could cause worldwide anarchy, it wasn't even until 150 years ago or so that we even had electricity. Have we grown so dependant on technology?)
Is this supposed to be a joke? Our civilization couldn't possibly survive a significant amount of time with no electricity. No electricity means no refrigeration, no heat, no A/C (ok, so this one isn't so important, at least in places other than Texas:-), no banks, no phones (your phone works when the power is out, but the phone company sure won't), no burglar alarms, even *gasp* no SLASHDOT!!!
Electricity and technology is so entrenched in our society that to take it away for a significant amount of time would be a complete disaster. Small generators and backup power supplies would only last so long. 150 years ago people knew how to survive without electricity. Now, few people do.
That said, I know that things aren't as bad as this article makes them out to seem. My mother is working for the NSF right now working on redesigning the country's power grids. So she knows all of the inside information, and she doesn't seem to think there's going to be a problem. --
Heh... in honor of the fucking MPAA's lawyer, Mr. Gold, I am going to "object to the form of this comment."
Seriously though... why does he object to the form of every other question? Just goes to show that the MPAA doesn't feel that they have too great of a case and have to win it on legal nitpicking. Bastards. --
UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., PARAMOUNT PICTURES CORPORATION, METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIOS, INC., TRISAR PICTURES, INC., COLOMBIA PICTURES INDUSTRIES, INC., TIME WARNER ENTERTAINMENT CO., L.P., DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC., and TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION,
Plaintiffs,
vs.
ERIC CORLEY a/k/a "EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN" and 2600 ENTERPRISES, INC.,
Defendants.
Am I the only one who's getting visual images of an 18-wheeler hitting a Civic at 110 mph? --
Damn, if people like this are going to be representing either side in this case, I don't hold much hope for anything useful to be accomplished:
Q. Go ahead. What is your understanding of CSS-cat based on its name? A. It is a mechanism for reading files. Q. Do you know who developed CSS-cat? A. I do not. Q. Do you know whether or not it is a Linux BSD program? A. Can you describe Linux BSD? Q. You previously said that CSS-auth was a Linux BSD program. A. I belief I said that CSS-auth was a Linux program.
Say what? What the hell is Linux BSD? If these people have such a feeble grasp on even the names of the technologies that they're fighting over, why are they involved in the trial at all? CSS-cat is a mechanism for reading files? I guess that's... a way of putting it... kinda forgetting the important part of DECRYPTING THE DVD DATA FIRST, which is what this damn thing is all about, yes? --
If you haven't yet, grab a copy of Hummingbird Exceed 6.1. It's a little pricey, but it's by far the best X server out there.
Ehh... don't need it. I use SecureCRT to ssh in, and I mostly only use command line apps. Although I really need to get around to porting PowerShell to Windows:-) --
You make some damn good points. I upgraded from NT4 to Win2k about a week ago, and was PISSED when it hosed my LILO installation and I could no longer boot into Linux (the Release Candidates of Win2k didn't do this, so I wasn't expecting it to.)
Anyway, I decided I'd play around with Win2k for a bit and then get LILO working again and go back to Linux for real work. I haven't yet though - no need to. Win2k does everything I need for a desktop (besides development, but I do that mostly on my Alpha anyway.) I use 3D Studio MAX, Bryce 4, Photoshop (although I like Gimp better), Illustrator (Linux's Illustrator-wannabees are terrible - ever try KIllustrator? Ugh), Poser, Painter 6, Internet Explorer 5, Microsoft Word (occasionally... I prefer vi with LaTeX or DocBook though:-), and Microsoft Access (for work only... stupid secretaries and stuff need access to the main campus Oracle database and I'm the one who has to create the Access/VBS interface... argh, I hate VB). Until there are versions of these for Linux (at the very least, 3D Studio MAX, Bryce, Painter, and either IE or a finished Mozilla) I'm going to have to use Win2k as my main desktop.
Until I upgraded from NT4 to Win2k, working in Windows was painful and I did it as infrequently as possible, but Win2k is very pleasant to work with, and relatively stable too.
Don't get me wrong - I love Linux, and I use it for all my server tasks (all my data is stored on my Alpha running Samba, I can't risk letting Win2k fuck it up. Windows is only for running Apps, IMHO, storing important data under Windows is a mistake), and my email and web server is running on the Alpha as well, but Win2k definately stomps Linux in the desktop area. Even for me, a hardcore Unix user. --
I can see how all of these got in here, but I would expect that the greatest algorithms of all time would last for a bit longer than that. Its not as if the fortran compiler reached its pinnacle of evolution in 1957 and has remained relatively unchanged since.
I'm guessing that the algorithm for optimizing Fortran that was developed in 1957 paved the way for current optimizing compilers, and would bet that many of them use the same techniques that this one did.
Of course, I know less than nothing about compiler technology, so...:-) Good to see that FFT made the list, though. That's a pretty useful algorithm, to say the least. --
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't that therefore make commercial apps for linux a violation? They are linking against linux (GPL's) libs....
There's a clause in the GPL which allows non-GPL'ed and GPL'ed code to play nice together if one of them is an integral system library (such as libc.) This is also what allows GPL'ed code for Win32.
--
If someone wanted to link to GPL code without using the GPL for their work, could they make a wrapper library which calls the code they want, make dynamically, release it as LGPL and then dynamically link their code to that wrapper library?
Interesting... but I don't think it would work. You're still linking non-GPL'ed code to GPL'ed code, which is explicitly forbidden in the GPL.
--
If I have a large commercial app and add 20 lines of GPL'd code (let's say not even an entire function) then there is no way that anyone can reasonably expect that I then just give away the whole app under GPL.
No, but it is reasonable to expect you to remove the GPL'ed code, which you are using in a way which goes against the wishes of the author, and rewrite those 20 lines yourself.
--
Although for newcomers to "free" licenses, I would reccomend the GPL at first if they are unsure, since if you later decide i'ts not right for you, you can re-release as BSD. You cannot however do it the other way around.
Why do people have such a hard time grasping this? That's not true! If you own the code and you release it as GPL, you can still go back and rerelease it under a completely different license (commercial closed-source, even) The one thing you can't do is revoke all the other GPL'ed versions out there - they are out for good. But you can prevent new versions from being released.
Basically, if you own the code, you can keep releasing it under different licenses any way you choose.
--
What happens if you have a program that is made up of 5 libraries. In order to fully run the program, you need all 5. They use each other's header files and binaries. I GPL 2/5. Is this legal?
Nope - if they link against each other, they must all be GPL'ed (unless either all the GPL'ed libs or all the non GPL'ed libs are integral system libraries such as libc)
What happens when I use a library, such as GnuPG, in a commercial non-GPL app?
You can't - but that's what the LGPL is for. It's basically the same as the GPL but allows linking to non-GPL code.
--
FYI, IE loads quickly because much of it is loaded upon the startup of windows. Microsoft cheated.
Microsoft didn't cheat, it's used in Windows' interface, the same way that starting Konquerer (I assume) is fast in KDE2 if you have KFM running.
--
One question: Will this get around the "where's the device driver?" problem that Linux faces? Or will every uPNP device still need a specifically developed Linux driver? (I suspect that later.)
I'm sure it will still require OS-specific drivers. Plug-and-play basically lets the peripheral tell the OS "Ok, I'm here! Now do something with me."
--
Speaking only for myself, it's not the application framework that pisses me off; it's the fact that my standards-compliant browser was sacrificed at the altar of an application framework that pisses me off.
Chill, dude. It's easy enough for somebody to create a tiny little GTK wrapper around the Mozilla widget. There you go - lightweight, standards-compliant browser. That's actually one of my planned projects once Mozilla is relatively finished.
--
Under Windows, is Mozilla:
... than IE 5 ?
:-) It'll be great soon enough.
* Faster
* More stable
Of course not - it still has all the debugging code in there, and they haven't even STARTED optimization of the code yet. I would hate to see what IE5 was like before optimization.
That said, on this machine (P120, 48MB RAM, Win98) Mozilla is almost as fast as IE5, but not as stable. It is in alpha, though. Don't be greedy
If so, I'll switch. I wish the coders would concentrate on the speed/stability issues before adding eye candy such as switchable skins.
It's not just eye candy - Chrome allows full modification of the app. Somebody wrote a terminal emulator which supports URLs and other bizarre shit (XMLTerm, I don't have the URL here) which is simply Mozilla Chrome. Also, the speed and stability issues seem to COME from the Chrome stuff rather than the HTML rendering engine, which seems pretty complete.
Sorry for the rant, I'm just sick of seeing people complain about why they're doing this or that rather than fixing the stability issues and speed - in a typical development cycle, optimization is usually part of the finishing touches. Once the program is relatively complete, you start profiling it and finding out where the majority of time is spent, and optimizing that section of code.
--
I'm using M16 on Win32 right now, and it's a painfully underpowered machine (P120, 48MB of RAM, running Win98) and it's running nicely (I was very surprised :-) It runs about as fast as IE5 on the same machine (but takes FUCKING FOREVER to load... oh well)
I don't know what's wrong with yours but my preferences dialog works fine. When I get home I'll try the Linux version as well.
--
It's true that I started having these problems arouns M13 or so. But this is a fresh install of M16, and it's still not working. I'm not sure what to make of it.
/usr/lib or /usr/local/lib? If so, delete them.
/usr/lib, but that would leave a lot of cruft around. That's what I did, though :-)
Look at the libraries in the mozilla/dist/bin or mozilla/package/dist directory (depending on whether or not you installed binary or source) Are there any libraries with the same name as any of them in
You could also just try copying all the libs in that directory to
--
The show-stopper, though, is tables. I can't get a single page with tables in it to render correctly. Even mozilla.org's homepage doesn't work, much less Slashdot, Sluggy, and almost everything else nowadays. I haven't been able to do this for several milestones now, though at least now it's consistent; the pages always fail (before it was intermittent). Perhaps, rather than a bug in Gecko, this is a compatibility issue; I don't know which is worse.
/usr/lib or /usr/local/lib? I was having crazy problems back around M13 or M14, and I deleted all the libraries from /usr/lib with the same name as those in the Mozilla distribution, and suddenly it worked like a charm. It may be that you're using older shared libraries, because table rendering has been nearly flawless for me since then.
Are you sure you don't have older versions of Mozilla's shared libraries floating around in
--
I'm sure if Creative would/could make a DVD player for linux it would.
Interesting example - Creative is, AFAIK, the ONLY DVD decoder card manufacturer that DOES support Linux. I have a Creative Dxr2 decoder card, which works great with Creative's own GPL'ed drivers. Picture quality is equal to that of the Windows drivers, and TV-output even works.
--
What mouse is it? I have one of the MS Intellimouse Explorers (5 buttons, USB) and it works great in Linux. The 4th and 5th buttons don't work, but I did some testing on it and X reports these buttons as simple clones of buttons 2 and 3 anyway, which sucks. Anybody know how to enable the 4th and 5th buttons?
--
What is a "fair price" for a CD, such that you would buy (pay money for) all your music and stop downloading copyrighted music without paying for it? To keep things simple, let's assume that all single CDs are priced the same.
What about being able to download MP3 at maybe a buck apeice (and there was some way to do it and be charged securely WITHOUT having to enter your credit card number every time)? That would be great. Also, I'd do it much more often if a much larger percentage of the money went to the artists themselves (or a kill-the-backstreet-boys fund.)
--
especially if you're sick of the "gray fuzzies" that Acrobat's antialiasing produces... (I usually prefer ghostviewing PostScript versions when available.)
Off-topic, but have you tried viewing PDFs in GhostView? They work nicely, since they're basically PostScript anyway.
--
Agreed. The one car accident I've ever been in was when I was trying to dial a cell phone and I rear-ended some mexican lady. She proceeded to sue me, but I never found out what happened with that lawsuit since I left for college before it was sorted out. That was 2 years ago :-)
--
(I still don't see how power outages could cause worldwide anarchy, it wasn't even until 150 years ago or so that we even had electricity. Have we grown so dependant on technology?)
:-), no banks, no phones (your phone works when the power is out, but the phone company sure won't), no burglar alarms, even *gasp* no SLASHDOT!!!
Is this supposed to be a joke? Our civilization couldn't possibly survive a significant amount of time with no electricity. No electricity means no refrigeration, no heat, no A/C (ok, so this one isn't so important, at least in places other than Texas
Electricity and technology is so entrenched in our society that to take it away for a significant amount of time would be a complete disaster. Small generators and backup power supplies would only last so long. 150 years ago people knew how to survive without electricity. Now, few people do.
That said, I know that things aren't as bad as this article makes them out to seem. My mother is working for the NSF right now working on redesigning the country's power grids. So she knows all of the inside information, and she doesn't seem to think there's going to be a problem.
--
Heh... in honor of the fucking MPAA's lawyer, Mr. Gold, I am going to "object to the form of this comment."
Seriously though... why does he object to the form of every other question? Just goes to show that the MPAA doesn't feel that they have too great of a case and have to win it on legal nitpicking. Bastards.
--
Look at this:
UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., PARAMOUNT
PICTURES CORPORATION, METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER
STUDIOS, INC., TRISAR PICTURES, INC.,
COLOMBIA PICTURES INDUSTRIES, INC.,
TIME WARNER ENTERTAINMENT CO., L.P.,
DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC., and TWENTIETH
CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION,
Plaintiffs,
vs.
ERIC CORLEY a/k/a "EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN"
and 2600 ENTERPRISES, INC.,
Defendants.
Am I the only one who's getting visual images of an 18-wheeler hitting a Civic at 110 mph?
--
Wierd... I was just coming back here to post that part of the transcript :-)
--
Damn, if people like this are going to be representing either side in this case, I don't hold much hope for anything useful to be accomplished:
Q. Go ahead. What is your understanding of CSS-cat based on its name?
A. It is a mechanism for reading files.
Q. Do you know who developed CSS-cat?
A. I do not.
Q. Do you know whether or not it is a Linux BSD program?
A. Can you describe Linux BSD?
Q. You previously said that CSS-auth was a Linux BSD program.
A. I belief I said that CSS-auth was a Linux program.
Say what? What the hell is Linux BSD? If these people have such a feeble grasp on even the names of the technologies that they're fighting over, why are they involved in the trial at all? CSS-cat is a mechanism for reading files? I guess that's... a way of putting it... kinda forgetting the important part of DECRYPTING THE DVD DATA FIRST, which is what this damn thing is all about, yes?
--
If you haven't yet, grab a copy of Hummingbird Exceed 6.1. It's a little pricey, but it's by far the best X server out there.
:-)
Ehh... don't need it. I use SecureCRT to ssh in, and I mostly only use command line apps. Although I really need to get around to porting PowerShell to Windows
--
You make some damn good points. I upgraded from NT4 to Win2k about a week ago, and was PISSED when it hosed my LILO installation and I could no longer boot into Linux (the Release Candidates of Win2k didn't do this, so I wasn't expecting it to.)
:-), and Microsoft Access (for work only... stupid secretaries and stuff need access to the main campus Oracle database and I'm the one who has to create the Access/VBS interface... argh, I hate VB). Until there are versions of these for Linux (at the very least, 3D Studio MAX, Bryce, Painter, and either IE or a finished Mozilla) I'm going to have to use Win2k as my main desktop.
Anyway, I decided I'd play around with Win2k for a bit and then get LILO working again and go back to Linux for real work. I haven't yet though - no need to. Win2k does everything I need for a desktop (besides development, but I do that mostly on my Alpha anyway.) I use 3D Studio MAX, Bryce 4, Photoshop (although I like Gimp better), Illustrator (Linux's Illustrator-wannabees are terrible - ever try KIllustrator? Ugh), Poser, Painter 6, Internet Explorer 5, Microsoft Word (occasionally... I prefer vi with LaTeX or DocBook though
Until I upgraded from NT4 to Win2k, working in Windows was painful and I did it as infrequently as possible, but Win2k is very pleasant to work with, and relatively stable too.
Don't get me wrong - I love Linux, and I use it for all my server tasks (all my data is stored on my Alpha running Samba, I can't risk letting Win2k fuck it up. Windows is only for running Apps, IMHO, storing important data under Windows is a mistake), and my email and web server is running on the Alpha as well, but Win2k definately stomps Linux in the desktop area. Even for me, a hardcore Unix user.
--
I can see how all of these got in here, but I would expect that the greatest algorithms of all time would last for a bit longer than that. Its not as if the fortran compiler reached its pinnacle of evolution in 1957 and has remained relatively unchanged since.
:-) Good to see that FFT made the list, though. That's a pretty useful algorithm, to say the least.
I'm guessing that the algorithm for optimizing Fortran that was developed in 1957 paved the way for current optimizing compilers, and would bet that many of them use the same techniques that this one did.
Of course, I know less than nothing about compiler technology, so...
--