The Transmeta parts include an integrated northbridge, which the PPC doesn't, so that's going to account for some amount of power difference. The ibook also weighs 2 and a half times what the Sharp does, or twice as much if you go with the extra battery in the Sharp.
But, fundamentally, you're talking about products aimed at two different markets. Even the 12" ibook isn't an ultraportable. This is.
Not really. Most hardware nowadays contains firmware (modern wireless cards are often just ARM cores attached to a radio transmitter), but in many cases it's in ROM or flash and you've never noticed. Older wireless cards with entirely open drivers (such as the orinocos) had similar quantities of firmware, but the cards shipped with it in flash. Requiring it to be loaded by the OS makes hardware implementation slightly easier, and you can upgrade the firmware along with the drivers without involving potentially risky reflashing.
Would you consider Linux closed-source because on most hardware it requires a closed-source BIOS or firmware in order to boot?
(Yes, I know about LinuxBIOS. It supports a subset of x86 hardware)
The nvidia binary code is almost the entirity of the driver, and mostly runs on the host CPU. If it was just GPU firmware, you'd be able to use the driver on PPC or Alpha.
One of the single best things you can do is enable ACPI support, which enables higher levels of CPU power saving when idle. This gives me about half an hour of extra battery power, but suspend support is still somewhat flaky.
And the FSF (and many other copyright holders of GPLed work) believe that a.so and a GPLed application form a derived work of each other when distributed together. So the extra requirement that isn't in the GPL continues to be an issue.
Bluntly: if you distribute a GPLed application alongside and linked against a non-GPL compatible library, you are possibly breaking the terms of the GPL. And without the GPL, you have no right to distribute it.
If the linkage is runtime or dynamic, it doesn't apply. Only in the case of static linkage is there a problem
That's not what the FSF believes, and as the authors of the license their opinion carries some amount of legal weight. As far as they're concerned, dynamic linkage is as much the creation of a derived work as static linkage is. Others disagree, but until it's actually tested it's not clear what the situation there is. Certainly many copyright holders will be of the opinion that dynamic linkage is as much of a problem as static linkage would be.
Copyright law doesn't generally allow you to remove copyright notices, so the requirement to keep them is more a statement of a situation rather than a GPL requirement. It's acceptable for the copyright notice to be in the binary - it's not required that it be included in any documentation or other publications.
The requirement to add an acknowledgement (often called the "advertising clause") is something that's not present in the GPL. The GPL states that GPLed code may only be distributed if further requirements or restrictions above and beyond the GPL are not made. It's therefore impossible to satisfy the terms of both licenses simultaneously, and therefore the extra clause makes the new XFree license GPL incompatible.
Now, why's this a problem? The XFree project doesn't include GPLed code itself, so there are no concerns from that point of view. However, if any of the code in the X libraries falls under this new license, then the FSF's interpretation of the GPL means that you wouldn't be able to link any GPLed program against the X libraries and distribute it. That's fairly bad.
On the plus side, the freedesktop.org x libraries were branched from XFree before the license change - as a result, we can pretty much guarantee that there will be libraries available that can be used with GPLed code. The end result would probably be to reduce the amount of XFree code in a distribution, rather than to increase the credit that the XFree project wants. It's almost certainly a counter-productive move.
NetBSD counts anything that requires a different kernel as an architecture, whereas Debian counts anything that requires a different userspace as an architecture. If you use the same terminology in both cases, the numbers work out pretty even.
1 people are even allowed to copy and distribute copyright material in most cases, noone cares about copying records and cds onto cassete tapes for friends. Noone worries about people recording tv shows onto vhs.
Because in several jurisdictions, there is explicit legal permission to do so. In any case, did you miss the whole "Home taping is killing music" thing?
2 Copyright isnt even criminal law, its civil. The police dont actually care.
In many jurisdictions, distributing copyrighted material for financial gain (even if it only copies the cost of the media) is criminal.
3 Fair use
Is a mostly US concept. Various parts of the world have no fair use provisions at all.
I think if somethings freely downloadable, its pretty safe to assume its ok to pass it on.
There's no simple way for an X application to tell whether a button 2 event is from a 3 button mouse or from a scroll mouse. Clicking the middle button on a 3 button mouse gives you the scrolling behaviour in galeon.
To a large extent, 2D quality will depend on the quality of the digital/analog conversion on the graphics card. Traditionally, Matroxes were very good in this respect - I've no idea if this is still true, but given their target market I'd guess so. Nowadays, with large numbers of different companies making basically identical cards, one avenue for cost reduction (and so seeming more appealing than your competitors) is to use cheaper parts in this area, with corresponding reduction in quality. As a result, it's quite possible that one Radeon may have dreadful 2D quality while an almost identical looking card using the same chipset from another manufacturer may have decent 2D quality.
Of course, this all becomes much less of an issue once you start using DVI or some other purely digital connection (in laptops, the limiting factor in 2D quality is generally the screen)
Pragmatically, it's a better plan to try to work this out with the company first before splashing it all over Slashdot. People do make honest mistakes - they ought to read licenses and understand all of their responsibilities before reusing code, but they don't always do so. Pointing these responsibilities out may result in things being worked out significantly faster. Immediately getting them bad publicity is more likely to lead to them never using GPLed code again, which is a bad thing - companies enhancing GPLed code and releasing derived works benefits everyone.
On the other hand, if a company refuses to release the source or never gets back to you, and you're satisfied that the copyright holder hasn't granted them further permissions above and beyond the GPL, then make their lives miserable. While it's desirable to have GPLed code used widely, it's not desirable to allow companies to believe that they can get away with failing to follow their obligations. But don't do that until you've tried doing it nicely. Everyone is happier then.
I'm surprised that this was possible at all with Windows XP. Microsoft's Shared Source program doesn't seem to be as useless as I thought.
Microsoft Research UK is literally next door to the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. Microsoft Research UK desperately wants the university to like it in order to gain more academic credability.
The Win32 accessibility API sucks. Massively. It doesn't work as documented, and even if it did it would be less capable than the Gnome one. I've been working on integrating Dasher (site possibly down at the moment due to a power cut) into the accessibility functions available. Gnome was a piece of cake. Win32 was pain beyond belief.
But sshd is running as root. The problem is in the section of the code that isn't running as a non-privileged user, so UsePrivilegeSeparation won't help. PermitRootLogin isn't much use if the software is being made to do things it's not designed to do.
Learn Dvorak. It's far easier to start from scratch than it is to unlearn your bad QWERTY habits. It'll take a little while to get up to speed, but afterwards you'll probably be happy on both types of keyboard and faster on Dvorak than you are on QWERTY (mainly due to your touchtyping than any significant advantage in the keyboard layout, to be honest)
RFC 1918 recommends that you choose a network randomly in order to reduce the chances of colliding with any other internal network you may ever want to connect to.
Chances are you probably can't return the game -- it's considered software, so most major retailers won't accept a return unless it's defective and in that case will only exchange it for the same item -- which doesn't help because all of the same title will have the same bug.
Under your local laws, perhaps. The UK's consumer protection laws let you make this sort of return, and I've done it several times.
While the OSI think the RPSL is Free, there's some disagreement on debian-legal. The primary issue is probably clause 2.1(d) which requires that changes be made publically available. Now, if you're a political dissident, you may want to modify existing code to some end not encouraged by your government. Under the GPL, you only need to provide your modifications to those that you trust - under the RPSL, you need to provide your modifications publically, which may be equivilent to a big sign saying "Please arrest me, Mr Totalitarian Government"
This is a contrived examples, but it's something that should be possible under a Free license - if you can't do that, then it suggests that the license isn't entirely Free.
(Yes, the idea of a group of political dissidents being worried about strict conformance to the license their code is under is a stupid one. But that's not the point - they ought to be able to modify the code and conform to the license without it then putting their lives at risk more than is strictly necessary)
Strictly speaking, it's probably against clause 3 of the DFSG as well - the unmodified code can be distributed without having to provide source publically, but the modified code can't.
Slashdot Mirror
The Transmeta parts include an integrated northbridge, which the PPC doesn't, so that's going to account for some amount of power difference. The ibook also weighs 2 and a half times what the Sharp does, or twice as much if you go with the extra battery in the Sharp.
But, fundamentally, you're talking about products aimed at two different markets. Even the 12" ibook isn't an ultraportable. This is.
ACPI offers better power saving on laptops than APM does, and many modern laptops don't have any APM support at all.
Not really. Most hardware nowadays contains firmware (modern wireless cards are often just ARM cores attached to a radio transmitter), but in many cases it's in ROM or flash and you've never noticed. Older wireless cards with entirely open drivers (such as the orinocos) had similar quantities of firmware, but the cards shipped with it in flash. Requiring it to be loaded by the OS makes hardware implementation slightly easier, and you can upgrade the firmware along with the drivers without involving potentially risky reflashing.
Would you consider Linux closed-source because on most hardware it requires a closed-source BIOS or firmware in order to boot?
(Yes, I know about LinuxBIOS. It supports a subset of x86 hardware)
The nvidia binary code is almost the entirity of the driver, and mostly runs on the host CPU. If it was just GPU firmware, you'd be able to use the driver on PPC or Alpha.
One of the single best things you can do is enable ACPI support, which enables higher levels of CPU power saving when idle. This gives me about half an hour of extra battery power, but suspend support is still somewhat flaky.
Some amount of the library code is entirely copyright the XFree project - check Clip.c in Xmu, for instance. This ends up linked into Xaw.
And the FSF (and many other copyright holders of GPLed work) believe that a .so and a GPLed application form a derived work of each other when distributed together. So the extra requirement that isn't in the GPL continues to be an issue.
Bluntly: if you distribute a GPLed application alongside and linked against a non-GPL compatible library, you are possibly breaking the terms of the GPL. And without the GPL, you have no right to distribute it.
They can link to it
No, they can't. That's the entire problem.
"Unless that component itself accompanies the executable".
Which would make it impossible to ship both XFree and a GPLed xlibs-using application on the same CD.
If the linkage is runtime or dynamic, it doesn't apply. Only in the case of static linkage is there a problem
That's not what the FSF believes, and as the authors of the license their opinion carries some amount of legal weight. As far as they're concerned, dynamic linkage is as much the creation of a derived work as static linkage is. Others disagree, but until it's actually tested it's not clear what the situation there is. Certainly many copyright holders will be of the opinion that dynamic linkage is as much of a problem as static linkage would be.
Copyright law doesn't generally allow you to remove copyright notices, so the requirement to keep them is more a statement of a situation rather than a GPL requirement. It's acceptable for the copyright notice to be in the binary - it's not required that it be included in any documentation or other publications.
The requirement to add an acknowledgement (often called the "advertising clause") is something that's not present in the GPL. The GPL states that GPLed code may only be distributed if further requirements or restrictions above and beyond the GPL are not made. It's therefore impossible to satisfy the terms of both licenses simultaneously, and therefore the extra clause makes the new XFree license GPL incompatible.
Now, why's this a problem? The XFree project doesn't include GPLed code itself, so there are no concerns from that point of view. However, if any of the code in the X libraries falls under this new license, then the FSF's interpretation of the GPL means that you wouldn't be able to link any GPLed program against the X libraries and distribute it. That's fairly bad.
On the plus side, the freedesktop.org x libraries were branched from XFree before the license change - as a result, we can pretty much guarantee that there will be libraries available that can be used with GPLed code. The end result would probably be to reduce the amount of XFree code in a distribution, rather than to increase the credit that the XFree project wants. It's almost certainly a counter-productive move.
NetBSD counts anything that requires a different kernel as an architecture, whereas Debian counts anything that requires a different userspace as an architecture. If you use the same terminology in both cases, the numbers work out pretty even.
1 people are even allowed to copy and distribute copyright material in most cases, noone cares about copying records and cds onto cassete tapes for friends. Noone worries about people recording tv shows onto vhs.
Because in several jurisdictions, there is explicit legal permission to do so. In any case, did you miss the whole "Home taping is killing music" thing?
2 Copyright isnt even criminal law, its civil. The police dont actually care.
In many jurisdictions, distributing copyrighted material for financial gain (even if it only copies the cost of the media) is criminal.
3 Fair use
Is a mostly US concept. Various parts of the world have no fair use provisions at all.
I think if somethings freely downloadable, its pretty safe to assume its ok to pass it on.
A-ha ha ha. No.
There's no simple way for an X application to tell whether a button 2 event is from a 3 button mouse or from a scroll mouse. Clicking the middle button on a 3 button mouse gives you the scrolling behaviour in galeon.
its just digital, digital, digital right up until the images hit your eyes...
Uh. How is a cathode ray being steered by a magnetic field digital?
To a large extent, 2D quality will depend on the quality of the digital/analog conversion on the graphics card. Traditionally, Matroxes were very good in this respect - I've no idea if this is still true, but given their target market I'd guess so. Nowadays, with large numbers of different companies making basically identical cards, one avenue for cost reduction (and so seeming more appealing than your competitors) is to use cheaper parts in this area, with corresponding reduction in quality. As a result, it's quite possible that one Radeon may have dreadful 2D quality while an almost identical looking card using the same chipset from another manufacturer may have decent 2D quality.
Of course, this all becomes much less of an issue once you start using DVI or some other purely digital connection (in laptops, the limiting factor in 2D quality is generally the screen)
Pragmatically, it's a better plan to try to work this out with the company first before splashing it all over Slashdot. People do make honest mistakes - they ought to read licenses and understand all of their responsibilities before reusing code, but they don't always do so. Pointing these responsibilities out may result in things being worked out significantly faster. Immediately getting them bad publicity is more likely to lead to them never using GPLed code again, which is a bad thing - companies enhancing GPLed code and releasing derived works benefits everyone.
On the other hand, if a company refuses to release the source or never gets back to you, and you're satisfied that the copyright holder hasn't granted them further permissions above and beyond the GPL, then make their lives miserable. While it's desirable to have GPLed code used widely, it's not desirable to allow companies to believe that they can get away with failing to follow their obligations. But don't do that until you've tried doing it nicely. Everyone is happier then.
I'm surprised that this was possible at all with Windows XP. Microsoft's Shared Source program doesn't seem to be as useless as I thought.
Microsoft Research UK is literally next door to the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. Microsoft Research UK desperately wants the university to like it in order to gain more academic credability.
The Win32 accessibility API sucks. Massively. It doesn't work as documented, and even if it did it would be less capable than the Gnome one. I've been working on integrating Dasher (site possibly down at the moment due to a power cut) into the accessibility functions available. Gnome was a piece of cake. Win32 was pain beyond belief.
But sshd is running as root. The problem is in the section of the code that isn't running as a non-privileged user, so UsePrivilegeSeparation won't help. PermitRootLogin isn't much use if the software is being made to do things it's not designed to do.
Learn Dvorak. It's far easier to start from scratch than it is to unlearn your bad QWERTY habits. It'll take a little while to get up to speed, but afterwards you'll probably be happy on both types of keyboard and faster on Dvorak than you are on QWERTY (mainly due to your touchtyping than any significant advantage in the keyboard layout, to be honest)
RFC 1918 recommends that you choose a network randomly in order to reduce the chances of colliding with any other internal network you may ever want to connect to.
Chances are you probably can't return the game -- it's considered software, so most major retailers won't accept a return unless it's defective and in that case will only exchange it for the same item -- which doesn't help because all of the same title will have the same bug.
Under your local laws, perhaps. The UK's consumer protection laws let you make this sort of return, and I've done it several times.
While the OSI think the RPSL is Free, there's some disagreement on debian-legal. The primary issue is probably clause 2.1(d) which requires that changes be made publically available. Now, if you're a political dissident, you may want to modify existing code to some end not encouraged by your government. Under the GPL, you only need to provide your modifications to those that you trust - under the RPSL, you need to provide your modifications publically, which may be equivilent to a big sign saying "Please arrest me, Mr Totalitarian Government"
This is a contrived examples, but it's something that should be possible under a Free license - if you can't do that, then it suggests that the license isn't entirely Free.
(Yes, the idea of a group of political dissidents being worried about strict conformance to the license their code is under is a stupid one. But that's not the point - they ought to be able to modify the code and conform to the license without it then putting their lives at risk more than is strictly necessary)
Strictly speaking, it's probably against clause 3 of the DFSG as well - the unmodified code can be distributed without having to provide source publically, but the modified code can't.