You aren't 'forced' to do anything. If you don't like the GPL, then *don't use the fucking code*. It's that simple. Get over it.
Bit disingenuous to not include that clause in the comparison though, isn't it? The PHP license does NOT require you to do that. Ever. And as such, that should be noted in the comparison.
So, the license is viral, doesn't allow changing the license (but is non-copyleft because it doesn't require source code), and has restrictions that the GPL doesn't have... tell me again why this is a *better* license than the GPL?
You forgot the clause where the GPL forces you to release YOUR source code under the GPL if you use the GPL'd code. From your analysis above, PHP doesn't do that. And that's a bigger reason than every single one you listed.
So, if the 'victim' in question started out being able to sell a DVD for a profit to someone, but that someone decided to buy a carton of cigarrettes instead, is that theft?
No, it's not. The person making the profit in that transaction is NOT making their profit off the back of another person's copyrighted intellectual property.
Nope, sorry. Theft means that your "victim" starts out having something, and ends up not having it anymore. It's really that simple.
In this case, the victim started out being able to sell a DVD for profit to someone, and ended up with someone else selling the victim's copyrighted material to someone and making the profit the victim was due on it.
Ergo, net loss to victim is the revenue on the sale by the pirater.
Which part of your last paragraph acknowledged that it wasn't in fact a Microsoft security vulnerability, but was in fact a privilege exposure hole in Mozilla?
Oh right. You didn't say that in your last paragraph.
Just because something is part of the Windows platform, doesn't mean that it's a security hole for it to be there. The end-of-the-line app which exposes the functionality is where the breach lies.
This issue is a vulnerability in a Microsoft technology, that just happens to - also - be accessible through Mozilla. Some people chose to ignore this issue simply because they believed that Microsoft would fix the underlying problem.
No, it's not Microsoft's vulnerability.
Security is like an onion - the outer layers should protect the inner layers. As you go towards the inner layer, you get more and more functionality - and more and more privileged operations.
Mozilla is the outer layer. It's providing uninhibited access to an inner-layer function.
If Mozilla allowed you to delete files from a URI, would you be claiming that Moz shouldn't fix this because it's an OS problem? No.
No idea. It's in the build scripts for Moz, so I don't know why it's not in the build scripts for Firefox.
Similarly, you might only get the benefit if you compile Moz yourself - I don't know if it's in the installer or not.
With open source you can almost *always* say "if you did this and this it'd be just as good." It ain't done, so it ain't as good.
I agree with you. What I'm saying here is that the claims that the only reason IE loads fast is because it's "part of the OS" is an outright misinformed ignorant lie.
That's good advice, but why should a developer have to care in the first place? It sounds like the linker has some serious deficiencies if it's not performing all these steps already to me.
GCC doesn't do it either, so it's not the linker.
Also, it's a platform thing - and on Windows, you have more than one linker or compiler. Platform tools and compiler tools are not the same.
The reason developers have to care in the first place is this: Windows Is Not Unix. Windows has optimizations for loading apps which Unix systems are only just getting.
IEHTML is loaded in the OS to display lots of things (folders, icons, your desktop, etc). It's part of the windows shell. The IE application just loads up the browser chrome, and uses the preloaded IEHTML to display websites.
Wrong.
Folders, icons and the desktop are displayed by explorer.exe - which uses the comctl32.dll library to display all of that stuff.
Who would load up faster, Firefox or IE when both were forced to load everything from scratch? I don't know.
I do, however. Provided that Firefox has been correctly built and installed with all of the perf improvements I've detailed before, it will launch at least as fast as IE - that is, within 2 seconds of double-clicking the icon.
That is because IE is part of the OS unlike Opera and Firefox. If you use WinXP or 2003 open the process manager and set the firefox/opera process to realtime, might do the trick.
1. IE is a set of components that provide HTML rendering support for the OS. It is not loaded with Windows.
2. Setting Firefox/Opera to realtime will cause other system functions to slow to a crawl and/or possibly crash.
3. Mozilla and Firefox can be loaded exceptionally fast on Windows. It's very simple. DO NOT install QuickLaunch, but allow the Mozilla build process to correctly bind and rebase its DLLs. When it's done, you'll have a version of Mozilla which loads AS FAST AS Internet Explorer.
If the dll binding procedure did not make it into the Mozilla installer, that explains why people are still seeing it launch slowly.
This crap about "IE runs faster because it's part of the OS" is a myth propounded by people who really just don't know anything about how Windows loads processes and DLLs. Any time you have an app that loads slower than its competitors, consider this:
1) Is it loading ALL of its DLLs into memory at startup? Or does it dynamically load them as needed? (The latter is faster).
2) Is it loading a lot of potentially unnecessary COM components at startup instead of as needed? (As needed is faster).
3) Are its DLLs rebased correctly so that they don't need to be fixedup by the Application Launcher when they load? Does it have a clean memory map? (Most non-Microsoft apps do NOT take this step - which is fully documented in MSDN - which means that their load times will be 10 to 20 times longer than apps which DO rebase their DLLs).
4) Are its DLLs bound at install-time? Binding DLLs reduces the time necessary to load and patch the import/export table of processes and DLLs, by pre-patching the import/export table and attaching a signature to it to catch if the external DLLs change. (Most non-Microsoft apps Do NOT take this step - which again is fully documented in MSDN - which means that their load times will be another 4 to 7 times longer than apps which DO bind their DLLs).
Sloppy development practices lead to sloppy performance.
As a Mac/Unix programmer, I'd love to find a job in or around Seattle. But for obvious reasons, almost everything up there is Windows-oriented. As far as I can tell, jobs for someone with my set of skills are few and far between.
From my point of view, it's Microsoft that's bad for the job market.
Try learning skills which are in demand in your area. That's the thing about computer programming - you have to remain current on technologies. That includes technologies from companies who you might have an irrational hatred of.
Quick, stop everyone taking snapshots at a wedding because the wedding photographers will go out of business! Video cameras too! The MPAA is under threat! Movie sales will plummet as everyone watches home made flicks.
Stop everyone from learning to paint, because it will starve already starving artists.
Stop anyone from learning to cook, or cooking meals at home, because the chefs will go out of business.
Funny how all of the things you mentioned above do NOT involve the creation of an infinitely copyable and highly distributed thing which displaces other things which are NOT infinitely copyable.
For example, a hobbyist taking photos at a wedding does NOT affect ALL other photographers on the planet forever more. Writing OSS image editing software, however, does affect ALL other image editor authors on the planet forever more.
Gates' arguement makes about as much sense as saying Libraries will destroy Bookstores. I mean why would people pay money to buy a book if they can read it for free?
Libraries allow book stores to survive because they are a limited resource - only one person can rent a single book at any one time. This limits the damage to the book stores, authors and publishers of the books - it's much easier (if you're willing to pay) to buy a book at a store than rent it from the library.
OSS, however, does not have any such limitation.
You might want to reconsider your analogy. The reason libraries don't kill bookstores is the exact opposite of the reason why MP3 "sharing" (aka. stealing music) hurts music companies, musicians, etc. In the MP3 case, it's the LACK of a paucity that is the problem. What used to be a limited problem now becomes millions of people - it does NOT scale.
By helping to commoditize the OS, I am helping to open up the market to anyone else but Microsoft! For absolutely too long, we have been at the mercy of Microsoft, who only waits for someone else to define and develop a market, then marches in and gobbles it all up. And they do it with the most mediocre implementations!
However, the moment any company or person creates anything with any kind of reasonable popularity - say You, for example - the OSS developers will clone what they created, knocking them out of the market.
And because OSS software is always out there, the moment it gets "good enough" in any segment, it locks out ANY other developers from creating software in that market.
But hey, go ahead. I'm sure you'll figure out some way of feeding yourself when there's not more proprietary software houses.
I actually end up disliking the page-duplication feature (which is hard to call a "feature" since it cannot be changed or disabled) as it will also repeat formsubmits that led to whatever page you are on!! That can be bad sometimes
No, it doesn't. It asks you if you want to resubmit the information before doing so.
I am a little confused what problem you have with "Ctrl-Shift-L" that does not make it useful to you... I can open a URL using just the keyboard. It's right there in the menu as "Open Web Location".
The last version I checked (0.6?) didn't have that feature. I was told that to get to the address bar via keyboard to open up a URL fast, I'd have to hit F6, which didn't always work.
I don't really use the Google toolbar for popup-blocking (I use IE6 SP2 for that). I use it for searching.
I just did that in Firefox. There are several extensions that add page cloning. I happen to use Tab Browser Extensions, which both clone pages and the instance's history. Yeah, the capability isn't in the base install, but the whole point of extensions are that you add these capabilities *only if you want them*.
That's a cop-out. You can get tabbed browsing and more in IE if you are willing to install extensions. Yet that's not good enough for most people, apparently.
Now this is just trollish. Keyboard shortcuts are a *lot* easier in Firefox than they are in IE. there's a comparative rundown at "http://texturizer.net/firefox/keyboard.html". In this case, you'd hit CTRL+L to get to the URL bar. CTRL+L has been the standard way of opening a typed URL since the early 90s for most descendents of Mosaic, with the notable exception of Netscape 4.x. IE, NS2.x, NS3.x and all Mozillas use CTRL+L.
No, it's not just trollish - last time I asked about this, I was told to "hit F6 - you don't need anything like that Ctrl+O shortcut".
Thanks for the useful answer though.
I honestly can't tell the difference between the IE Google Toolbar and the Mozilla Googlebar, except that Googlebar for Mozilla has more options and can integrate into the Multizilla pref bar.
Google Groups, Google News, Froogle, etc. searches are all just a click away with the IE Googlebar. The pagerank display is also interesting.
What "features" does IE have that FireFox is lacking?
1. The ability to open a new browser window and have the old page displayed in it, complete with its history and URL in the address bar. Very useful if you want to fork your browsing path and go down two different branches.
2. The ability to open a new URL from the keyboard alone. All I have to do is hit Ctrl+O, type in the URL, and hit Enter. On Firefox and Moz I have to navigate all over the UI, using F6 (which doesn't always work) to try to get to the right part of the UI.
3. Google Toolbar. Much nicer than the moz/firefox alternative.
Looking over the page, I notice things thta look like Smart Folders and a sketch of a 3D desktop that looks a bit like something Sun just open-sourced.
That 3D desktop that looks a bit like something Sun just open-sourced? Microsoft put toegether something that looked exactly like that in 1997 and even released it as an alpha, but canned it because it didn't pass muster for usability tests.
So how exactly do these magical 'spikes' get through a modern, self-regulated switching power supply?
The modern, self-regulated switching power supply creates those spikes in normal operation.
(One of my coworkers once worked on ECGs... they had to synchronize everything so that all data acquisition occurs directly out of phase with the power supply... even the fans in the case had to be timed with the spikes it would generate... and this was a low-noise, custom generated, several hundred thousand dollars worth of R&D supply).
Amazing. That must be why humans spent so long mucking about in caves. They had to invent copyright law first, so they could get on with inventing and creating our culture.
It's important to realise that copyright is not an obvious thing, that it has a very interesting history, and culture and invention predate it by, well, most of human history.
There are too many people on the planet today for the patronage system to work any more. Unless you like the feudal/original "royalty" system?
Me, I prefer the democratization of artistic endeavors that copyright brought about. Otherwise I'd probably be working in a mine shaft somewhere right about now.
Maybe they attached it to Oxygen or Silicon or somthing? Or maybe that little dodec thing was a container?
It's a container. In real life, containers like that are used for pulsed-laser fusion experiments. They don't float, obviously, but they're made of a mixture of heavy and light elements with an interesting shape - which is classified).
It's designed so that you get an even illumination of the tritium inside... and it's classified because the same technology is very handy for making fusion bombs.
theres a massive difference, with MS you would have no choice , with *nix systems you wouldn't be forced into using it, it would just be a cool show off go faster stripe thats removed after a few days.
Actually, you're lying through your teeth about that - or are just plain ignorant.
You can turn off ALL of the flashy effects on Windows. See this web page for details.
Slashdot Mirror
You aren't 'forced' to do anything. If you don't like the GPL, then *don't use the fucking code*. It's that simple. Get over it.
Bit disingenuous to not include that clause in the comparison though, isn't it? The PHP license does NOT require you to do that. Ever. And as such, that should be noted in the comparison.
So, the license is viral, doesn't allow changing the license (but is non-copyleft because it doesn't require source code), and has restrictions that the GPL doesn't have... tell me again why this is a *better* license than the GPL?
You forgot the clause where the GPL forces you to release YOUR source code under the GPL if you use the GPL'd code. From your analysis above, PHP doesn't do that. And that's a bigger reason than every single one you listed.
Nice try though.
So, if the 'victim' in question started out being able to sell a DVD for a profit to someone, but that someone decided to buy a carton of cigarrettes instead, is that theft?
No, it's not. The person making the profit in that transaction is NOT making their profit off the back of another person's copyrighted intellectual property.
Nope, sorry. Theft means that your "victim" starts out having something, and ends up not having it anymore. It's really that simple.
In this case, the victim started out being able to sell a DVD for profit to someone, and ended up with someone else selling the victim's copyrighted material to someone and making the profit the victim was due on it.
Ergo, net loss to victim is the revenue on the sale by the pirater.
Yeah, uh, I covered that in my last paragraph.
Which part of your last paragraph acknowledged that it wasn't in fact a Microsoft security vulnerability, but was in fact a privilege exposure hole in Mozilla?
Oh right. You didn't say that in your last paragraph.
Just because something is part of the Windows platform, doesn't mean that it's a security hole for it to be there. The end-of-the-line app which exposes the functionality is where the breach lies.
This issue is a vulnerability in a Microsoft technology, that just happens to - also - be accessible through Mozilla. Some people chose to ignore this issue simply because they believed that Microsoft would fix the underlying problem.
No, it's not Microsoft's vulnerability.
Security is like an onion - the outer layers should protect the inner layers. As you go towards the inner layer, you get more and more functionality - and more and more privileged operations.
Mozilla is the outer layer. It's providing uninhibited access to an inner-layer function.
If Mozilla allowed you to delete files from a URI, would you be claiming that Moz shouldn't fix this because it's an OS problem? No.
So why isn't Firefox being built this way?
No idea. It's in the build scripts for Moz, so I don't know why it's not in the build scripts for Firefox.
Similarly, you might only get the benefit if you compile Moz yourself - I don't know if it's in the installer or not.
With open source you can almost *always* say "if you did this and this it'd be just as good." It ain't done, so it ain't as good.
I agree with you. What I'm saying here is that the claims that the only reason IE loads fast is because it's "part of the OS" is an outright misinformed ignorant lie.
Oh, and that's per DLL - so if you have lots of DLLs, you get much more speedup - that's 12-18% speedup each time.
It's a little subjective because it's ballpark numbers based on stop-watch timing. (There's no easy way of getting exact, automated timings).
Haha. That's the funniest quote for the day ! I call you troll.
Big words for someone who obviously hasn't tried this themselves.
I, however, have tried all of this out myself.
That's good advice, but why should a developer have to care in the first place? It sounds like the linker has some serious deficiencies if it's not performing all these steps already to me.
GCC doesn't do it either, so it's not the linker.
Also, it's a platform thing - and on Windows, you have more than one linker or compiler. Platform tools and compiler tools are not the same.
The reason developers have to care in the first place is this: Windows Is Not Unix. Windows has optimizations for loading apps which Unix systems are only just getting.
IEHTML is loaded in the OS to display lots of things (folders, icons, your desktop, etc). It's part of the windows shell. The IE application just loads up the browser chrome, and uses the preloaded IEHTML to display websites.
Wrong.
Folders, icons and the desktop are displayed by explorer.exe - which uses the comctl32.dll library to display all of that stuff.
Who would load up faster, Firefox or IE when both were forced to load everything from scratch? I don't know.
I do, however. Provided that Firefox has been correctly built and installed with all of the perf improvements I've detailed before, it will launch at least as fast as IE - that is, within 2 seconds of double-clicking the icon.
That is because IE is part of the OS unlike Opera and Firefox. If you use WinXP or 2003 open the process manager and set the firefox/opera process to realtime, might do the trick.
1. IE is a set of components that provide HTML rendering support for the OS. It is not loaded with Windows.
2. Setting Firefox/Opera to realtime will cause other system functions to slow to a crawl and/or possibly crash.
3. Mozilla and Firefox can be loaded exceptionally fast on Windows. It's very simple. DO NOT install QuickLaunch, but allow the Mozilla build process to correctly bind and rebase its DLLs. When it's done, you'll have a version of Mozilla which loads AS FAST AS Internet Explorer.
If the dll binding procedure did not make it into the Mozilla installer, that explains why people are still seeing it launch slowly.
This crap about "IE runs faster because it's part of the OS" is a myth propounded by people who really just don't know anything about how Windows loads processes and DLLs. Any time you have an app that loads slower than its competitors, consider this:
1) Is it loading ALL of its DLLs into memory at startup? Or does it dynamically load them as needed? (The latter is faster).
2) Is it loading a lot of potentially unnecessary COM components at startup instead of as needed? (As needed is faster).
3) Are its DLLs rebased correctly so that they don't need to be fixedup by the Application Launcher when they load? Does it have a clean memory map? (Most non-Microsoft apps do NOT take this step - which is fully documented in MSDN - which means that their load times will be 10 to 20 times longer than apps which DO rebase their DLLs).
4) Are its DLLs bound at install-time? Binding DLLs reduces the time necessary to load and patch the import/export table of processes and DLLs, by pre-patching the import/export table and attaching a signature to it to catch if the external DLLs change. (Most non-Microsoft apps Do NOT take this step - which again is fully documented in MSDN - which means that their load times will be another 4 to 7 times longer than apps which DO bind their DLLs).
Sloppy development practices lead to sloppy performance.
As a Mac/Unix programmer, I'd love to find a job in or around Seattle. But for obvious reasons, almost everything up there is Windows-oriented. As far as I can tell, jobs for someone with my set of skills are few and far between.
From my point of view, it's Microsoft that's bad for the job market.
Try learning skills which are in demand in your area. That's the thing about computer programming - you have to remain current on technologies. That includes technologies from companies who you might have an irrational hatred of.
Alternatively, get a job at Amazon.
Quick, stop everyone taking snapshots at a wedding because the wedding photographers will go out of business! Video cameras too! The MPAA is under threat! Movie sales will plummet as everyone watches home made flicks.
Stop everyone from learning to paint, because it will starve already starving artists.
Stop anyone from learning to cook, or cooking meals at home, because the chefs will go out of business.
Funny how all of the things you mentioned above do NOT involve the creation of an infinitely copyable and highly distributed thing which displaces other things which are NOT infinitely copyable.
For example, a hobbyist taking photos at a wedding does NOT affect ALL other photographers on the planet forever more. Writing OSS image editing software, however, does affect ALL other image editor authors on the planet forever more.
Gates' arguement makes about as much sense as saying Libraries will destroy Bookstores. I mean why would people pay money to buy a book if they can read it for free?
Libraries allow book stores to survive because they are a limited resource - only one person can rent a single book at any one time. This limits the damage to the book stores, authors and publishers of the books - it's much easier (if you're willing to pay) to buy a book at a store than rent it from the library.
OSS, however, does not have any such limitation.
You might want to reconsider your analogy. The reason libraries don't kill bookstores is the exact opposite of the reason why MP3 "sharing" (aka. stealing music) hurts music companies, musicians, etc. In the MP3 case, it's the LACK of a paucity that is the problem. What used to be a limited problem now becomes millions of people - it does NOT scale.
By helping to commoditize the OS, I am helping to open up the market to anyone else but Microsoft! For absolutely too long, we have been at the mercy of Microsoft, who only waits for someone else to define and develop a market, then marches in and gobbles it all up. And they do it with the most mediocre implementations!
However, the moment any company or person creates anything with any kind of reasonable popularity - say You, for example - the OSS developers will clone what they created, knocking them out of the market.
And because OSS software is always out there, the moment it gets "good enough" in any segment, it locks out ANY other developers from creating software in that market.
But hey, go ahead. I'm sure you'll figure out some way of feeding yourself when there's not more proprietary software houses.
I actually end up disliking the page-duplication feature (which is hard to call a "feature" since it cannot be changed or disabled) as it will also repeat formsubmits that led to whatever page you are on!! That can be bad sometimes
No, it doesn't. It asks you if you want to resubmit the information before doing so.
I am a little confused what problem you have with "Ctrl-Shift-L" that does not make it useful to you... I can open a URL using just the keyboard. It's right there in the menu as "Open Web Location".
The last version I checked (0.6?) didn't have that feature. I was told that to get to the address bar via keyboard to open up a URL fast, I'd have to hit F6, which didn't always work.
I don't really use the Google toolbar for popup-blocking (I use IE6 SP2 for that). I use it for searching.
I just did that in Firefox. There are several extensions that add page cloning. I happen to use Tab Browser Extensions, which both clone pages and the instance's history. Yeah, the capability isn't in the base install, but the whole point of extensions are that you add these capabilities *only if you want them*.
That's a cop-out. You can get tabbed browsing and more in IE if you are willing to install extensions. Yet that's not good enough for most people, apparently.
Now this is just trollish. Keyboard shortcuts are a *lot* easier in Firefox than they are in IE. there's a comparative rundown at "http://texturizer.net/firefox/keyboard.html". In this case, you'd hit CTRL+L to get to the URL bar. CTRL+L has been the standard way of opening a typed URL since the early 90s for most descendents of Mosaic, with the notable exception of Netscape 4.x. IE, NS2.x, NS3.x and all Mozillas use CTRL+L.
No, it's not just trollish - last time I asked about this, I was told to "hit F6 - you don't need anything like that Ctrl+O shortcut".
Thanks for the useful answer though.
I honestly can't tell the difference between the IE Google Toolbar and the Mozilla Googlebar, except that Googlebar for Mozilla has more options and can integrate into the Multizilla pref bar.
Google Groups, Google News, Froogle, etc. searches are all just a click away with the IE Googlebar. The pagerank display is also interesting.
What "features" does IE have that FireFox is lacking?
1. The ability to open a new browser window and have the old page displayed in it, complete with its history and URL in the address bar. Very useful if you want to fork your browsing path and go down two different branches.
2. The ability to open a new URL from the keyboard alone. All I have to do is hit Ctrl+O, type in the URL, and hit Enter. On Firefox and Moz I have to navigate all over the UI, using F6 (which doesn't always work) to try to get to the right part of the UI.
3. Google Toolbar. Much nicer than the moz/firefox alternative.
Looking over the page, I notice things thta look like Smart Folders and a sketch of a 3D desktop that looks a bit like something Sun just open-sourced.
That 3D desktop that looks a bit like something Sun just open-sourced? Microsoft put toegether something that looked exactly like that in 1997 and even released it as an alpha, but canned it because it didn't pass muster for usability tests.
It was called Chrome.
So how exactly do these magical 'spikes' get through a modern, self-regulated switching power supply?
The modern, self-regulated switching power supply creates those spikes in normal operation.
(One of my coworkers once worked on ECGs... they had to synchronize everything so that all data acquisition occurs directly out of phase with the power supply... even the fans in the case had to be timed with the spikes it would generate... and this was a low-noise, custom generated, several hundred thousand dollars worth of R&D supply).
Amazing. That must be why humans spent so long mucking about in caves. They had to invent copyright law first, so they could get on with inventing and creating our culture.
It's important to realise that copyright is not an obvious thing, that it has a very interesting history, and culture and invention predate it by, well, most of human history.
There are too many people on the planet today for the patronage system to work any more. Unless you like the feudal/original "royalty" system?
Me, I prefer the democratization of artistic endeavors that copyright brought about. Otherwise I'd probably be working in a mine shaft somewhere right about now.
Maybe they attached it to Oxygen or Silicon or somthing? Or maybe that little dodec thing was a container?
It's a container. In real life, containers like that are used for pulsed-laser fusion experiments. They don't float, obviously, but they're made of a mixture of heavy and light elements with an interesting shape - which is classified).
It's designed so that you get an even illumination of the tritium inside... and it's classified because the same technology is very handy for making fusion bombs.
theres a massive difference, with MS you would have no choice , with *nix systems you wouldn't be forced into using it, it would just be a cool show off go faster stripe thats removed after a few days.
Actually, you're lying through your teeth about that - or are just plain ignorant.
You can turn off ALL of the flashy effects on Windows. See this web page for details.