Yeah, I was quite surprised I had to spell it out so explicitely too. I thought everyone knew this, particularly anyone who knew what NeXTSTeP was, but it appears not.
NeXT went from selling Computers with a BSD-based OS
Err, you mean a Mach kernel with a BSD userspace, right? With a nice GUI written predominantly in ObjC? You know what architecture OS X is, don't you? (And which strange but wonderful C derivative is predominantly used on OS X?)
Most decent server motherboards come with serial console. Quite a few come with a cheap graphics ASIC integrated (nearly always ATi Mach64 for some reason).
A server doesn't need a fast GPU, so no need for a fan on it.
Ehm, why would a server need a GPU at all?
Are you telling me you would spec your server with a GPU (albeit a slow one)? Eek! Round my way servers dont have any GPU at all, not even a graphics card. Console is on a serial line to a terminal server...
Given that there are very few Enzo's on this earth, and that only a very few could afford them anyway, where a mere mortal could afford an Ariel Atom, I'd say that makes the fact the Enzo is 0.5s faster round a track than the Atom quite irrelevant really.:) A mere mortal also is unlikely to be able to take either the Enzo or the Atom to its limit, and hence never will be able to tell the Enzo is 0.5s faster - unlike the Stig:). 0.5s slower at about order of 1/10th the price? I'd say the point that cars dont need to be massively expensive to be as fast, nay faster, than a Porsche Carrera GT is proven.
And therefore it's just plain wrong to talk about the releasing the patents. Those patents aren't even close to dedicated to the public.
Nor is GPL software. The fact of the matter is that if you want to use a CDDLed patent, just take the code, compile it and link to it. (Whether you make your own code available is up to you, as long as you make modifications to the CDDL code available).
Sounds public enough to me.
Most definitely more public than either the IBM patent grants (which were a no-sue for the linux kernel only iirc, on patents covering such useful things as screws and gelpacks) or Nokia's (again covering only the linux kernel iirc, and only specific versions).
It's a journalled, 64-bit (yes they claim 128, but that's junk, as the underlying scsi layer doesn't support it)
You dont quite understand then. ZFS is designed to manage storage, in addition to being a filesystem. A ZFS can have multiple disks in it. SCSI might not have addresses bigger than 64bit, but if you have a filesystem designed to operate over many many disks then 128bit address size internal in the fs is quite a good idea.
So you're wrong, or at least, you missed a crucial point of ZFS when you derided the 128bit aspects of it.;)
Read the CDDL license again. Or possibly Sun's press release. They aren't releasing those patents, they are promising not to sue you under certain circumstances. And those circumstances preclude using GPL or BSD licenses.
That last sentence is misleading. Obviously you must use the CDDL for the code implementing the patent (cause that is what the patent grant extends to), which must somehow be derived from the original CDDL code which the grantor released, however nothing stops you from using GPL or BSD code with CDDL code. (well, the GPL might stop you, if you aren't the copyright holder. If you are, you can give yourself an exception).
Google for kit cars, eg the Ariel Atom or the Westfield XTR. Cheap kit cars which will blow away most expensive, exotic sports cars on a track. The Westfield has a 1.3L Hayabusa motorcycle engine in it btw, less than 200HP iirc.
You can build one of these things in your garage or buy them pre-built. Not hard at all, in relative terms.
The fact that the US has consistently failed to deliver on it's promise to every head of the Saud house to setup a palestinian state has significantly undermined them and caused a lot of the problems. FDR promised US support for this to King Abdulah al-Aziz in return for al-Aziz supporting the creation of the jewish state of Israel. The house of Saud pretty much spoke for all Arabs back then and his support was essential.
Open a history book.
Problem #1 in the middle east, and the reason why Arabs generally now think of America as a country not to be trusted is due to this (and by extension, most muslim's in general). The Saud's patience and continued support of the US despite this has led to the rise of the far more militant and extreme Arab groups.
Another problem was the 'pawning' played by the USSR and the USA as part of the cold war. Both countries helping prop up various tin-pot dictatorships because of this. And that's why the Shia muslim's hate America, because of what was done in Iran by the CIA to help prop up the Shah and his murderous, CIA trained, secret police. (which was done because it was believed to help fight the cold war I guess, by preventing the USSR gaining influence in Iran).
I'm going to get moderated into oblivion for this post no doubt, but if you think US actions in middle-east the last 20 years have all been "advancing democracy!" and generally good, then you really need to learn more about the history of that region and the US's involvement there. Particularly when the 30 years *before* that were *definitely* not about advancing freedom - quite the contrary.
The stated goals may have been promoting democracy and freedom (even if done by blocking the USSR), those who decided on and carried out the US policies may well have believed that's what they've been doing. However through short-sightedness and a general lack of a long-term policy or policies, at least in execution, the US has (at best) managed to not achieve anything in the middle east other than generally being hated and despised by Arabs and muslims. At worst, the US (along with the USSR) has prolonged and possibly even been the cause of much of the instability and oppression in the middle-east.
Open a history book. A real one. Not the ones you got in secondary school.
Anyway, my karma is laid bare. Mods do your worst:)
For example, Intel's fabs are in Costa Rica, the Philippines among other places.
According to Intel, both Costa Rica and Philipines sites are assembly / testing facilities, no Fabs. The actual Fabs are in New Mexico, California (possibly), MA (the old DEC facility I think), Oregon, Ireland and Isreal.
Are "Animal Farm" or "1984" any less valid because they are anti-communist propaganda (no my US friends, that isn't meant as flame bait!)?
Note that Orwell hated fascism as much as he did communism. Indeed, Orwell fought in the spanish Civil war on the side of the socialists and communists against Franco. He was a socialist, but one disillusioned with communism (socialism and communism in the twenties and thirties being seen as close to the same thing). "Animal Farm" obviously being a parody (not propaganda) of how the socialist/communist "utopia" can become as oppresive and dictatorial as the hated Bourgeois and (later) Fascist regimes it sought to replace and/or competed against.
Right, this is going to sound snide (and it is slightly - but it's meant partly in jest too), but if you think that taking m, n and o % of X and adding them up is an order of magnitude more complex, you need to go back to primary school for revision.
Anyway... I don't agree at all, I see no difference in complexity between either approach, except one approach requires you to keep note of the different amounts, the other requires you to get the order but that's me, I guess.
X*(n/100) + X*(m/100) + X
versus
X*(n/100+1)*(m/100+1)
whatever. I guess the latter is a continious calculation, granted, but order of magnitude difference - sorry. They both have the same number of additions, divisions and multiplications.
Re non-cummulative, sorry but it's bloody trivial arithmetic either way. VAT and VRT are both assesed by the vendor, so it's not like the pre-tax price is something that would be hard to discern. Anyway..
Don't they realise this amazingly exorbitant taxation will only lead to illegal importing?
There is (almost) no such thing as illegal importation from another EU country. Countries like the UK, with very high duties on cigarettes & alcohol, have found citizens heading over to france and coming back with van-loads full:). For quite a few years UK customs & excise penalised these people (confiscating their vehicles, etc.), in contravention of EU free trade agreements but finally they were told to stop it by EU.
Ireland does the same thing with vehicles. We used to have a massive sales tax on cars, until the EU slapped Ireland for it and they had to stop it. However, they simply introduced a new "Vehicle Registration" Tax, which the EU is not happy about. Even better VRT is assessed on the cost of the car after sales tax (VAT), so you're being taxed partially on the cost of a tax. Hopefully the EU will slap down VRT too.
Anyway, free trade. The ipod tax in the Netherlands will just result in sales of MP3 players dropping to close to 0. Every person in NL is no more than a few hours away from either Belgie or Germany by either car or train, or a day away from online sellers by post.
The Alpha NT port was 32 bit. DEC's linker (and also binutils for AXP) supported a 'restrict addresses to 32bit and clear most significant 32bits of addresses' mode for ease of porting applications to Digital Unix, eg Netscape was (effectively) 32bit on AXP. Google for 'taso linker'.
Well, the CDDL simply is more liberal about mingling. I'm not sure what other restrictions it has over the GPL as you don't bother to specify them (there's the patent grant and MAD stuff - but those are good things, and probably the next GPL will similar restrictions).
All of your criticisms in fact been vague and imprecise and hence nigh on impossible to either refute or acknowledge. Have Sun made mistakes? Sure. Have they flip-flopped, on Solaris x86, yep. But I think Sun listened and learned and is trying now to correct those mistakes. Personally, I like a company that is big enough to accept they were wrong and back-track on (retrospectively) bad decisions.
Jonathan's blog: I don't think it is a diatribe. It's usually quite insightful and worth reading, even if you don't agree with all of it. There was the blog entry (which he essentially also delivered as a speec) recently which was misreported in various places, including here on slashdot, as "Schwartz attacks GPL". If you actually read the blog, he's not attacking the GPL. But "Schwartz reports on fears of developing countries of GPL, suggests they would better off building upon CDDL code" doesn't make for a catchy headline. You can disagree about whether CDDL or GPL is the more suitable, but that's quite subjective and anyway, Sun own Solaris - if Sun want to allow others to add proprietary code alongisde and/or on top of Solaris to build their own products then that's fine. If those in developing countries would prefer to keep their code proprietary, then that's their choice too, and that choice would be easier to exercise building on a CDDL OS than a GPL one, and I don't see why it is unreasonable and the makings of a diatribe for Jonathan to point this out in a blog.
What *DOES* the CDDL offer a developer who isn't working for Sun?
A slightly more liberal licence than the GPL wrt mingling code with different licences, plus explicit patent grants, plus some patent litigation protection via a MAD clause.
As to why the "anit-Sun hysteria", you might read your chairman's blog, for a hint. Sun has earned itself the reputation as a company that feels compelled to blacken your eye as soon as it does you a favor. (Sounds crazy doesn't it? Want a crazy busines partner?) This means that those who would normally defend them tend to keep quiet. And it gives plenty of ammunition to those who dislike all big organizations.
I do read his blog, and he generally makes sense to me. Do you have specific examples?
I dont quite share my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss views on software patents: I tend to think they should not be allowed at all while the patent system is broken, but Jonathan has blogged that he thinks the patent system needs serious reform and I would suspect that Jonathan and Sun are trying to impress this on legislators, which is a good thing. The president of a major corporation urging patent reform is far more likely to be listened to than random joe-public engineers who believe software patents should be banned altogether (at least, given the current dysfunctional patent offices/systems we have in place in most countries - if there were reforms to raise either raise the bar on quality of examination and grants, or else accept low-quality but make silly patents easy to challenge, i could reconsider).
OTOH, I'm still peeved at the way they dropped the professional edition and expected me to switch over to a rebranded RawHide [Fedora]. I ended up using Debian, and think it a better choice that Red Hat Professional was, and FAR better than Fedora is.)
Hey, well download Solaris 10. Very stable and $free.;). If you want support, $99.:) Sun will sell you a Linux based JDS too.
I don't think you can find (easily at least) Kool-Aid over this side of the atlantic, and from what I hear it's rather disgusting anyway. Ie, I don't drink any flavour.
Hardware manufacturers will be highly unlikely to even care about Solaris on x86 because it has a market share that is a rounding fo OS/2 let alone Linux.
Gosh, good point. I hadn't realised that nohardware vendors provided Solaris drivers. Thanks for pointing that out. (And thats just a small sample). Further, some code included with Solaris is provided by ISVs and could not be GPLed.
Sun is simply using fear of GPL to hide the fact they sat on their butts when the battle for market share was being waged.
Sun are not afraid of the GPL, as I explained above, the GPL just wasn't right for opening Solaris, for practical reasons. If Sun were afraid of the GPL then why would Sun have spent so much engineer resources on getting GNOME into shape to replace CDE on Solaris? Why would Sun have LGPLed OpenOffice? Why would I be working on a GPL project?
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I got his point, I was pedanting one little mistake in his post.
Yeah, I was quite surprised I had to spell it out so explicitely too. I thought everyone knew this, particularly anyone who knew what NeXTSTeP was, but it appears not.
OS X derives from the OS which NeXT used to sell.
NeXT went from selling Computers with a BSD-based OS
Err, you mean a Mach kernel with a BSD userspace, right? With a nice GUI written predominantly in ObjC? You know what architecture OS X is, don't you? (And which strange but wonderful C derivative is predominantly used on OS X?)
Can you put two+two together?
You mean kafka-esque, surely?
Most decent server motherboards come with serial console. Quite a few come with a cheap graphics ASIC integrated (nearly always ATi Mach64 for some reason).
A server doesn't need a fast GPU, so no need for a fan on it.
Ehm, why would a server need a GPU at all?
Are you telling me you would spec your server with a GPU (albeit a slow one)? Eek! Round my way servers dont have any GPU at all, not even a graphics card. Console is on a serial line to a terminal server...
Your memory is wrong. The Atom was the second fastest car ever around Top Gear's track, faster than the Carrera GT - only the Ferrari Enzo could beat the Atom.
Given that there are very few Enzo's on this earth, and that only a very few could afford them anyway, where a mere mortal could afford
an Ariel Atom, I'd say that makes the fact the Enzo is 0.5s faster round a track than the Atom quite irrelevant really.
unlikely to be able to take either the Enzo or the Atom to its limit, and hence never will be able to tell the Enzo is 0.5s faster - unlike the Stig
And therefore it's just plain wrong to talk about the releasing the patents. Those patents aren't even close to dedicated to the public.
Nor is GPL software. The fact of the matter is that if you want to use a CDDLed patent, just take the code, compile it and link to it. (Whether you make your own code available is up to you, as long as you make modifications to the CDDL code available).
Sounds public enough to me.
Most definitely more public than either the IBM patent grants (which were a no-sue for the linux kernel only iirc, on patents covering such useful things as screws and gelpacks) or Nokia's (again covering only the linux kernel iirc, and only specific versions).
It's a journalled, 64-bit (yes they claim 128, but that's junk, as the underlying scsi layer doesn't support it)
;)
You dont quite understand then. ZFS is designed to manage storage, in addition to being a filesystem. A ZFS can have multiple disks in it. SCSI might not have addresses bigger than 64bit, but if you have a filesystem designed to operate over many many disks then 128bit address size internal in the fs is quite a good idea.
So you're wrong, or at least, you missed a crucial point of ZFS when you derided the 128bit aspects of it.
Read the CDDL license again. Or possibly Sun's press release. They aren't releasing those patents, they are promising not to sue you under certain circumstances. And those circumstances preclude using GPL or BSD licenses.
That last sentence is misleading. Obviously you must use the CDDL for the code implementing the patent (cause that is what the patent grant extends to), which must somehow be derived from the original CDDL code which the grantor released, however nothing stops you from using GPL or BSD code with CDDL code. (well, the GPL might stop you, if you aren't the copyright holder. If you are, you can give yourself an exception).
You havn't a clue.
Google for kit cars, eg the Ariel Atom or the Westfield XTR. Cheap kit cars which will blow away most expensive, exotic sports cars on a track. The Westfield has a 1.3L Hayabusa motorcycle engine in it btw, less than 200HP iirc.
You can build one of these things in your garage or buy them pre-built. Not hard at all, in relative terms.
The fact that the US has consistently failed to deliver on it's promise to every head of the Saud house to setup a palestinian state has significantly undermined them and caused a lot of the problems. FDR promised US support for this to King Abdulah al-Aziz in return for al-Aziz supporting the creation of the jewish state of Israel. The house of Saud pretty much spoke for all Arabs back then and his support was essential.
:)
Open a history book.
Problem #1 in the middle east, and the reason why Arabs generally now think of America as a country not to be trusted is due to this (and by extension, most muslim's in general). The Saud's patience and continued support of the US despite this has led to the rise of the far more militant
and extreme Arab groups.
Another problem was the 'pawning' played by the USSR and the USA as part of the cold war. Both countries helping prop up various tin-pot dictatorships because of this. And that's why the Shia muslim's hate America, because of what was done in Iran by the CIA to help prop up the Shah and his murderous, CIA trained, secret police. (which was done because it was believed to help fight the cold war I guess, by preventing the USSR gaining influence in Iran).
I'm going to get moderated into oblivion for this post no doubt, but if you think US actions in middle-east the last 20 years have all been "advancing democracy!" and generally good, then you really need to learn more about the history of that region and the US's involvement there. Particularly when the 30 years *before* that were *definitely* not about advancing freedom - quite the contrary.
The stated goals may have been promoting democracy and freedom (even if done by blocking the USSR), those who decided on and carried out the US policies may well have believed that's what they've been doing. However through short-sightedness and a general lack of a long-term policy or policies, at least in execution, the US has (at best) managed to not achieve anything in the middle east other than generally being hated and despised by Arabs and muslims. At worst, the US (along with the USSR) has prolonged and possibly even been the cause of much of the instability and oppression in the middle-east.
Open a history book. A real one. Not the ones you got in secondary school.
Anyway, my karma is laid bare. Mods do your worst
For example, Intel's fabs are in Costa Rica, the Philippines among other places.
According to Intel, both Costa Rica and Philipines sites are assembly / testing facilities, no Fabs. The actual Fabs are in New Mexico, California (possibly), MA (the old DEC facility I think), Oregon, Ireland and Isreal.
Are "Animal Farm" or "1984" any less valid because they are anti-communist propaganda (no my US friends, that isn't meant as flame bait!)?
Note that Orwell hated fascism as much as he did communism. Indeed, Orwell fought in the spanish Civil war on the side of the socialists and communists against Franco. He was a socialist, but one disillusioned with communism (socialism and communism in the twenties and thirties being seen as close to the same thing). "Animal Farm" obviously being a parody (not propaganda) of how the socialist/communist "utopia" can become as oppresive and dictatorial as the hated Bourgeois and (later) Fascist regimes it sought to replace and/or competed against.
The poster you're replying to was referring to Bill Joy (creator of vi, co-founder of Sun, etc..). Learn some history.
Right, this is going to sound snide (and it is slightly - but it's meant partly in jest too), but if you think that taking m, n and o % of X and adding them up is an order of magnitude more complex, you need to go back to primary school for revision.
Anyway... I don't agree at all, I see no difference in complexity between either approach, except one approach requires you to keep note of the different amounts, the other requires you to get the order but that's me, I guess.
X*(n/100) + X*(m/100) + X
versus
X*(n/100+1)*(m/100+1)
whatever. I guess the latter is a continious calculation, granted, but order of magnitude difference - sorry. They both have the same number of additions, divisions and multiplications.
I can appreciate they'd just charge higher %.
Re non-cummulative, sorry but it's bloody trivial arithmetic either way. VAT and VRT are both assesed by the vendor, so it's not like the pre-tax price is something that would be hard to discern. Anyway..
Don't they realise this amazingly exorbitant taxation will only lead to illegal importing?
:). For quite a few years UK customs & excise penalised these people (confiscating their vehicles, etc.), in contravention of EU free trade agreements but finally they were told to stop it by EU.
There is (almost) no such thing as illegal importation from another EU country. Countries like the UK, with very high duties on cigarettes & alcohol, have found citizens heading over to france and coming back with van-loads full
Ireland does the same thing with vehicles. We used to have a massive sales tax on cars, until the EU slapped Ireland for it and they had to stop it. However, they simply introduced a new "Vehicle Registration" Tax, which the EU is not happy about. Even better VRT is assessed on the cost of the car after sales tax (VAT), so you're being taxed partially on the cost of a tax. Hopefully the EU will slap down VRT too.
Anyway, free trade. The ipod tax in the Netherlands will just result in sales of MP3 players dropping to close to 0. Every person in NL is no more than a few hours away from either Belgie or Germany by either car or train, or a day away from online sellers by post.
The Alpha NT port was 32 bit. DEC's linker (and also binutils for AXP) supported a 'restrict addresses to 32bit and clear most significant 32bits of addresses' mode for ease of porting applications to Digital Unix, eg Netscape was (effectively) 32bit on AXP. Google for 'taso linker'.
Well, the CDDL simply is more liberal about mingling. I'm not sure what other restrictions it has over the GPL as you don't bother to specify them (there's the patent grant and MAD stuff - but those are good things, and probably the next GPL will similar restrictions).
All of your criticisms in fact been vague and imprecise and hence nigh on impossible to either refute or acknowledge. Have Sun made mistakes? Sure. Have they flip-flopped, on Solaris x86, yep. But I think Sun listened and learned and is trying now to correct those mistakes. Personally, I like a company that is big enough to accept they were wrong and back-track on (retrospectively) bad decisions.
Jonathan's blog: I don't think it is a diatribe. It's usually quite insightful and worth reading, even if you don't agree with all of it. There was the blog entry (which he essentially also delivered as a speec) recently which was misreported in various places, including here on slashdot, as "Schwartz attacks GPL". If you actually read the blog, he's not attacking the GPL. But "Schwartz reports on fears of developing countries of GPL, suggests they would better off building upon CDDL code" doesn't make for a catchy headline. You can disagree about whether CDDL or GPL is the more suitable, but that's quite subjective and anyway, Sun own Solaris - if Sun want to allow others to add proprietary code alongisde and/or on top of Solaris to build their own products then that's fine. If those in developing countries would prefer to keep their code proprietary, then that's their choice too, and that choice would be easier to exercise building on a CDDL OS than a GPL one, and I don't see why it is unreasonable and the makings of a diatribe for Jonathan to point this out in a blog.
What *DOES* the CDDL offer a developer who isn't working for Sun?
;). If you want support, $99. :) Sun will sell you a Linux based JDS too.
A slightly more liberal licence than the GPL wrt mingling code with different licences, plus explicit patent grants, plus some patent litigation protection via a MAD clause.
As to why the "anit-Sun hysteria", you might read your chairman's blog, for a hint. Sun has earned itself the reputation as a company that feels compelled to blacken your eye as soon as it does you a favor. (Sounds crazy doesn't it? Want a crazy busines partner?) This means that those who would normally defend them tend to keep quiet. And it gives plenty of ammunition to those who dislike all big organizations.
I do read his blog, and he generally makes sense to me. Do you have specific examples?
I dont quite share my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss views on software patents: I tend to think they should not be allowed at all while the patent system is broken, but Jonathan has blogged that he thinks the patent system needs serious reform and I would suspect that Jonathan and Sun are trying to impress this on legislators, which is a good thing. The president of a major corporation urging patent reform is far more likely to be listened to than random joe-public engineers who believe software patents should be banned altogether (at least, given the current dysfunctional patent offices/systems we have in place in most countries - if there were reforms to raise either raise the bar on quality of examination and grants, or else accept low-quality but make silly patents easy to challenge, i could reconsider).
OTOH, I'm still peeved at the way they dropped the professional edition and expected me to switch over to a rebranded RawHide [Fedora]. I ended up using Debian, and think it a better choice that Red Hat Professional was, and FAR better than Fedora is.)
Hey, well download Solaris 10. Very stable and $free.
What flavor Kool-Aid are you drinking?
I don't think you can find (easily at least) Kool-Aid over this side of the atlantic, and from what I hear it's rather disgusting anyway. Ie, I don't drink any flavour.
Hardware manufacturers will be highly unlikely to even care about Solaris on x86 because it has a market share that is a rounding fo OS/2 let alone Linux.
Gosh, good point. I hadn't realised that no hardware
vendors provided Solaris drivers. Thanks for pointing that out. (And thats just a small sample). Further, some code included with Solaris is provided by ISVs and could not be GPLed.
Sun is simply using fear of GPL to hide the fact they sat on their butts when the battle for market share was being waged.
Sun are not afraid of the GPL, as I explained above, the GPL just wasn't right for opening Solaris, for practical reasons. If Sun were afraid of the GPL then why would Sun have spent so much engineer resources on getting GNOME into shape to replace CDE on Solaris? Why would Sun have LGPLed OpenOffice? Why would I be working on a GPL project?
Which version of Solaris? I'm guessing an old version.
Comparing old versions of Solaris to Linux today is as fair as comparing Linux circa kernel-2.0-era to Solaris 10.
Sun will never able to withdraw any OpenSolaris code which is released, read the CDDL.
Once it's out there, it's out there for good. Sun will not have any specific right to terminate OpenSolaris licences.