I think this product comes with some form of support. In that case, Redhat are doing exactly what all proponents of OSS for business say they should be doing - making money from support.
If this is true (and it is hard to tell), then Redhat truely should be appluded for their donation. Otherwise, well... think of it as financial aid for all those hackers who got in on the IPO.
Again, if it is true, feel free to go and donate your $27 to the FSF and buy a cheapbytes CD, but remember to tell your boss at the nameless multinational corporation you work for to go and buy the RMS version on Linux from Redhat, so Redhat will give you support - then the FSF will get $1 from each of the 22,000 licences you buy.:-)
But SGML was always too complex to take off in common acceptance, and the push XML needed was (I believe) more people running into the annoying limitations of HTML, and thinking wouldn't it bw nice....
The point is XML is a good thing, and yes, it is a bit of a bandwagon, but it is a good bandwagon to be on.
I'm not advocating that (as I have seen previously) Linux should get rid of the.rc files and go to a XML based configuration format, but I would like to see more tools on Unix that allow easy production of useful data in XML formats.
Until then, and we blame the media for thinking XML is a Microsoft show? I can't. MS has done an excellent job of getting at least some XML support into their major app. (IE5 & "Data Island" or whatever they are called - need I say more?)
Stuff like this should be a wake up call to the OSS community, not to moan, but to Show me the code.
I think you had better read a little about XML before you start making comments like that.
The whole idea of XML is that it is a self describing file format. Sure, you might make mistakes like creating a new DTD before you check for an existing one, but that is your fault for begin an idiot, not the format.
This is exactly the same as the Glade guys defineing their own DTD for a GTK user interface.
If you really think that MS controls XML, i would advise you to get out a bit. Sure, Linux is behind the times a bit in XML support, but companies like IBM and Oracle are doing significant work in XML, now.
Didn't you read that interview with Tim O'Riely earlier this week?
This is the way to go. It is an open, simple, cross platform, language independant web-based protocol.
MS is basing its new SOAP "standard" for distributed objects around it, too - but don't let that put you off.
The good thing about a standard like this is that it is SO simple that you can write your own server, so you really understand how it is working, if you want.
It is highly scalable, too - all the solutions that have been developed for serving big web sites are immediatly useful, now.
Some comments... (not supposed to be flamebait)
on
KDE Looks Ahead
·
· Score: 2
Kanossa: Shared libraries rather than CORBA - yeah, I bet it is faster - it should be, too. While I agree that for simple applications this is important, I believe the future for Linux on the desktop is in enterprise envrionments. Distrubuted computing is absolutly fundemental to this, and Kanossa appears to give that away for a bit of speed. As for DCOP... don't try and tell me that yados (yet another distributed object scheme) is going to be promoted. DCOM, CORBA, RPC, DCE, XML-RPC is quite enough for me, thanks.
Remember Win95/Office95 back on a 486? Slow, wasn't it? But all those technolgies (COM/DCOM) which were introduced then are just begining to bear fruit now.
I think this is a backwards step for KDE - at least Baboon (or whatever the GNOME component model is called) still uses CORBA.
OTOH, I REALLY like the embedding of Java applets. That is going to be really useful in the future.
Out of all the postings with a rating of >2, only two weren't flamebait or some stupid "Apple should build a Alpha/K7/Whatever chip computer" comments.
Okay, here are my idiotic comments. Can I have a +5, please?:
"Imagine playing quake on a beowulf cluster of these! Gee, that AI is REALLY unpredicatable!"
"This is all a plot by MS to get Transmeta chips into Macs, and kill off Intel."
Firstly, Redhat do sell their software for $80 or whatever it is. Sure, it is less than NT, but I bet they make some money off it.
If MS open sourced NT, and sold it with source & a few support calls, most companies would buy it - sure, MS wouldn't make so much, but the support is needed for corporate peace of mind.
The problem I see is then Microsoft would be forced to move into the service industry more, and compeate with the big outsourcing companies (EDS etc.)
I guess then all the service companies would start competeing on the level of service, which might be good.
OTOH, (and this is just the same as for Linux)what if companies started to keep their bug fixes to themselves?
"Look.. we have a bug fix for the root access by entering the root password bug. Redhat doesn't have that, so you should sign this support deal for the next five years, and you will get exclusive access to out patches"
I realize that once they patch a few machines anyone can distibute it, because it would be GPLed, but in a corporate envrionment, where the user doesn't access to the source....
Yeah, I realize that, but it isn't real open source, is it?
Somehow, I think people might object if your "open source" licence specified that the code can only be exported in paper form.
I mean, can you imagine working on a software project like that? You want to check in a change, so you send it via snail mail to the central repository, where someone scans in your change, and checks the code back in.
So, can RSADSI legally export their source code (in electronic form)?
I guess they could send their code (in paper form) to an overseas subsidary, and the distribute it from there. Could they do this?
I was going to write that RSADSI could Open Source their products, and that they would probably do quite well out of it at the moment, because it would let them pick up on the favourable buzz surrounding Open Source companies at the moment. (Open Source, E-Commerce & Security.. Gee, there is a market!)
BUT then I realised that they probably cannot, for legal reasons. Quite apart from the patents, they still cannot export (all) their sources despite the recent Crypto law reforms, can they?
I believe that I read somewhere that Silicon Graphics (before they were SGI) wrote a 3D-Web Based-stock-price-analysis (Wow, buzzwords plus) thing in VRML that the New York Stock Exchange liked so much they bought.
Back in July or August, at the height of this debate, when every sensible tech. company on earth was telling our (I'm Aussie) goverment how dumb this plan was, Cabletron (Swich manunfacture & Cisco competitor) wrote to the Alston and said what a wonderful idea it was, and how well their products would deal with it.
Surprise, surprise, Cabletron now have a nice fat government contract!
Can we expect Lotus to annouce some multi-million dollar sale of Dommino server sofware to the the Australian government in the next few weeks? I'd bet on it.
My father was a software engineer, from the 1950s until just a few years ago, working on trajectory systems for spaceships, and eventually solving such problems as, "What is the formula that gets a Volkswagen from Florida to Jupiter?" In all that time he knew of one production bug (notwithstanding having me as a son). When I tell him that I've never heard of a major software release that didn't ship with scores of "known issues," he reacts as if I had thrown acid in his face: he takes off his glasses, shakes his head and rubs his eyes really, really hard. You see, when I was a kid, after a good day of work my dad would bring home pictures of other planets his programs helped make possible. Now, when I visit him, it's everything he can do not to beat me with his walker for my past involvement in ActiveX.
I think this is called the "near enough is good enough" principle of software engineering.
In their defence, having worked on huge, understafted projects, I agree with some of their points.
According to the internet archive (www.archive.org) who have been saving the web and usenet since 1996 (I think - can't quite remember), the internet is "reaching ten terabytes".
Here, we use Delphi, because of this exact thing - it works better than VB, but is (a lot!) easier and quicker to develop in than C++.
Now MS has apparently hired most of the people who wrote Delphi at Borland to do COOL (I just hate that name...). Like it or not, a lot of MS development tools have some pretty good stuff, and something like this would only reinforce the sole (non FUD) advantage Windows has over Linux - A working object model that can be used in real life to develop applications using other components.
Anyway someone needs to develope something like this for Linux. I mean, I can whip up a pretty impressive GUI application that sucks data from Oracle, formats reports, does calculations, mails stuff around in half a day, and do most of it just be dragging and dropping components around.
Sure, under Linux I could write the same thing, and it would probably be more reliable, but writing the GUI alone would take at least twice as long as writing the entire app under Windows.
I was at an Inprise/Borland presentation the other day, and they showed screenshots of JBuilder running under Linux (and GNOME, by the way). That would help, but I want speed, object linking, distrubuted objects etc, and I want it NOW.
Borland did talk a bit about a version of Delphi for Linux (drool!), but they weren't saying anything definate.
(Yes, I know about GLADE, but it has a long way to go, yet, and I want SO much more)
You can already script IE (or any COM/DCOM stuff for that matter) using any language which supports Active Scripting. This includes Perl, Python, JavaScript, VBScript, REXX, etc.
ActiveScripting is includuded in IE, and in the Windows Scripting Host, and can be embedded into your own applications.
I don't like MS much, but some of their stuff (like this) is pretty cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Go and have a look on www.gnu.org for the small, but important difference.
I think this product comes with some form of support. In that case, Redhat are doing exactly what all proponents of OSS for business say they should be doing - making money from support.
If this is true (and it is hard to tell), then Redhat truely should be appluded for their donation. Otherwise, well... think of it as financial aid for all those hackers who got in on the IPO.
Again, if it is true, feel free to go and donate your $27 to the FSF and buy a cheapbytes CD, but remember to tell your boss at the nameless multinational corporation you work for to go and buy the RMS version on Linux from Redhat, so Redhat will give you support - then the FSF will get $1 from each of the 22,000 licences you buy. :-)
As much as I hate to say it: Exactly
But SGML was always too complex to take off in common acceptance, and the push XML needed was (I believe) more people running into the annoying limitations of HTML, and thinking wouldn't it bw nice....
The point is XML is a good thing, and yes, it is a bit of a bandwagon, but it is a good bandwagon to be on.
I'm not advocating that (as I have seen previously) Linux should get rid of the .rc files and go to a XML based configuration format, but I would like to see more tools on Unix that allow easy production of useful data in XML formats.
Until then, and we blame the media for thinking XML is a Microsoft show? I can't. MS has done an excellent job of getting at least some XML support into their major app. (IE5 & "Data Island" or whatever they are called - need I say more?)
Stuff like this should be a wake up call to the OSS community, not to moan, but to Show me the code.
That is what DTDs are for.
I think you had better read a little about XML before you start making comments like that.
The whole idea of XML is that it is a self describing file format. Sure, you might make mistakes like creating a new DTD before you check for an existing one, but that is your fault for begin an idiot, not the format.
This is exactly the same as the Glade guys defineing their own DTD for a GTK user interface.
If you really think that MS controls XML, i would advise you to get out a bit. Sure, Linux is behind the times a bit in XML support, but companies like IBM and Oracle are doing significant work in XML, now.
Didn't you read that interview with Tim O'Riely earlier this week?
You might want to go and have a look at IBM's XML workshop
As for M-POST, it is a good thing. It allows increased HTTP capabilties through firewalls.
In this case, Microsoft has done a good job. You can be anti-MS all you want, but don't try posting FUD - make sure your facts are straight.
This is the way to go. It is an open, simple, cross platform, language independant web-based protocol.
MS is basing its new SOAP "standard" for distributed objects around it, too - but don't let that put you off.
The good thing about a standard like this is that it is SO simple that you can write your own server, so you really understand how it is working, if you want.
It is highly scalable, too - all the solutions that have been developed for serving big web sites are immediatly useful, now.
See Userland for more info.
How does a chipset like this compare to something like the SGI's or Intergraph Graphics workstations use?
Also, what is the price for those adaptors?
I agree with your comment about CORBA (although I haven't used the C++ bindings). It does run slow and appear bloated.
DCOM, OTOH is quite nice - at least via Delphi. It is the configuration needed to get that running which sets it back.
So what is left? XML-RPC appears nice & simple, but slow.
I really don't like the idea of trying to get another standard accepted.
Yes, I'm a proud pico user. (Hey - I'm a programmer, I write a perl script to do anything pico can't do)
Is it less than 50 times?
Kanossa: Shared libraries rather than CORBA - yeah, I bet it is faster - it should be, too. While I agree that for simple applications this is important, I believe the future for Linux on the desktop is in enterprise envrionments. Distrubuted computing is absolutly fundemental to this, and Kanossa appears to give that away for a bit of speed. As for DCOP... don't try and tell me that yados (yet another distributed object scheme) is going to be promoted. DCOM, CORBA, RPC, DCE, XML-RPC is quite enough for me, thanks.
Remember Win95/Office95 back on a 486? Slow, wasn't it? But all those technolgies (COM/DCOM) which were introduced then are just begining to bear fruit now.
I think this is a backwards step for KDE - at least Baboon (or whatever the GNOME component model is called) still uses CORBA.
OTOH, I REALLY like the embedding of Java applets. That is going to be really useful in the future.
Comments would be appreciated.
Geeze!
Out of all the postings with a rating of >2, only two weren't flamebait or some stupid "Apple should build a Alpha/K7/Whatever chip computer" comments.
Okay, here are my idiotic comments. Can I have a +5, please?:
Come on, at least they are midly amusing!
Firstly, Redhat do sell their software for $80 or whatever it is. Sure, it is less than NT, but I bet they make some money off it.
If MS open sourced NT, and sold it with source & a few support calls, most companies would buy it - sure, MS wouldn't make so much, but the support is needed for corporate peace of mind.
The problem I see is then Microsoft would be forced to move into the service industry more, and compeate with the big outsourcing companies (EDS etc.)
I guess then all the service companies would start competeing on the level of service, which might be good.
OTOH, (and this is just the same as for Linux)what if companies started to keep their bug fixes to themselves?
"Look.. we have a bug fix for the root access by entering the root password bug. Redhat doesn't have that, so you should sign this support deal for the next five years, and you will get exclusive access to out patches"
I realize that once they patch a few machines anyone can distibute it, because it would be GPLed, but in a corporate envrionment, where the user doesn't access to the source....
Do you think this is a potential problem?
Gee, is nothing useful unless it is for advertising these days?
Things I want to use it for after thinking for 30 seconds (if it is really that cheap...)
A big (IMAX size) TV screen.
Cover all the walls in my house with it and somehow hook up a quake-type engine. VR here we come!
Fold out screens for handheld PCs
Road warning signs (on the road itself)
I liked that idea about adaptive camoflage, too.
Lets start a VC fund, buy these guys out, and really make some money!
Yeah, I realize that, but it isn't real open source, is it?
Somehow, I think people might object if your "open source" licence specified that the code can only be exported in paper form.
I mean, can you imagine working on a software project like that? You want to check in a change, so you send it via snail mail to the central repository, where someone scans in your change, and checks the code back in.
So, can RSADSI legally export their source code (in electronic form)?
I guess they could send their code (in paper form) to an overseas subsidary, and the distribute it from there. Could they do this?
I was going to write that RSADSI could Open Source their products, and that they would probably do quite well out of it at the moment, because it would let them pick up on the favourable buzz surrounding Open Source companies at the moment. (Open Source, E-Commerce & Security.. Gee, there is a market!)
BUT then I realised that they probably cannot, for legal reasons. Quite apart from the patents, they still cannot export (all) their sources despite the recent Crypto law reforms, can they?
Can someone expand on this, please.
I believe that I read somewhere that Silicon Graphics (before they were SGI) wrote a 3D-Web Based-stock-price-analysis (Wow, buzzwords plus) thing in VRML that the New York Stock Exchange liked so much they bought.
It would be pretty cool... Neuromancer like.
Back in July or August, at the height of this debate, when every sensible tech. company on earth was telling our (I'm Aussie) goverment how dumb this plan was, Cabletron (Swich manunfacture & Cisco competitor) wrote to the Alston and said what a wonderful idea it was, and how well their products would deal with it.
Surprise, surprise, Cabletron now have a nice fat government contract!
Can we expect Lotus to annouce some multi-million dollar sale of Dommino server sofware to the the Australian government in the next few weeks? I'd bet on it.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/Welcome/dsmsdn /stone033099.htm
(You may need a free Online MSDN account ?)
I quote:
I think this is called the "near enough is good enough" principle of software engineering.
In their defence, having worked on huge, understafted projects, I agree with some of their points.
According to the internet archive (www.archive.org) who have been saving the web and usenet since 1996 (I think - can't quite remember), the internet is "reaching ten terabytes".
Yep, I'd agree with this.
Here, we use Delphi, because of this exact thing - it works better than VB, but is (a lot!) easier and quicker to develop in than C++.
Now MS has apparently hired most of the people who wrote Delphi at Borland to do COOL (I just hate that name...). Like it or not, a lot of MS development tools have some pretty good stuff, and something like this would only reinforce the sole (non FUD) advantage Windows has over Linux - A working object model that can be used in real life to develop applications using other components.
Anyway someone needs to develope something like this for Linux. I mean, I can whip up a pretty impressive GUI application that sucks data from Oracle, formats reports, does calculations, mails stuff around in half a day, and do most of it just be dragging and dropping components around.
Sure, under Linux I could write the same thing, and it would probably be more reliable, but writing the GUI alone would take at least twice as long as writing the entire app under Windows.
I was at an Inprise/Borland presentation the other day, and they showed screenshots of JBuilder running under Linux (and GNOME, by the way). That would help, but I want speed, object linking, distrubuted objects etc, and I want it NOW.
Borland did talk a bit about a version of Delphi for Linux (drool!), but they weren't saying anything definate.
(Yes, I know about GLADE, but it has a long way to go, yet, and I want SO much more)
You can already script IE (or any COM/DCOM stuff for that matter) using any language which supports Active Scripting. This includes Perl, Python, JavaScript, VBScript, REXX, etc.
ActiveScripting is includuded in IE, and in the Windows Scripting Host, and can be embedded into your own applications.
I don't like MS much, but some of their stuff (like this) is pretty cool.