Not really. The purpose of certifications is a) to lock people into architectures through investments and b) to create a marketing industry making money off doing certifications.
It allows employers to ensure their employees can fill in a form after reading a text. It has little or no bearing on wether or not they can apply knowledge to do their job.
... in which case you cant install a lot of windows software either. But of course, as a solution to that, a lot of sites make winnt writable by anyone and oops, again Joe Schmoe can delete any random dll.
Um. No. There is no difference in the chance. Anyone who can hack a linux telnetd can just as easily hack and install a UN*X telnetd under AIX. They are pretty much interchangable. On our personal workstations at work a large part of AIX/HP-UX/Solaris is usually GNU versions already. I've even had HP support *reccomend* that I scrap HP-UX sed and replace it with GNU sed to solve some problems on servers.
The bottom line is; unless you're running an audited trusted system you are completely and equally utterly dependent on trusting your privilidged users regardless whatever OS you have; source or no source makes absolutely no difference whatsoever; anyone who can hack a trapdoor into an opensource OS can just as easily hack a trapdoor into an opensource replacement and replace the original.
Well, since XFree 4.0 isnt part of the standard distributions yet and even when it is its going to be a 'first version', thats what you get.
When you do get support tho; well, lets just say that it took me about 10 minutes to install a Voodoo 3 PCI card under linux (plug in, boot, autodetect), and three _days_ to get the same card working under Windows '98 (some bug, driver problem, downloads, OS reinstalls, conflicts with old mobo-mounted gfx chipset and drivers). It still locks up with a black screen and goes temporarily unpingable for two minutes every time I boot windows.
YMMV, of course, but in my experience if you check that you arent buying unsupported hardware it's usually easier these days to get it running under linux than it is under windows ('course, sometimes Windows 'Just Does What I Tell It To' too).
Redhat 6.2: Plug in the device. Reboot.
Windows 98: Put the driver disk in. Click install. Reboot. Reinstall hosed '98. Download newer driver from net. Unpack. Click install. Reboot. Reinstall hosed '98. Search technet. Yes you've plugged in the powercord. Install driver through different point'n'click place. Reboot. Reinstall hosed '98... etc.
Heeh, 'course, Chess, Go, Tic-tac-toe etc are all far too algorithmically simplisticly built, so the average computer 'cheat' will wipe out human competition even more throughly than in an fps game:).
Actually, the GNU zealots were whining about motif. There was a considerable amount of discussion about it.
But Motif, just like Qt, is ok under the operating system exception. However, software that is ok under the OS exception may not be shipped _with_ the OS. So, if you've ever wondered why Sun, HP, SGI, etc dont fill up their OS's with GPL software, there's the reason. They have to ship such software separately.
In all likelyhood, people just wouldnt use it. The music industry can have all the security they want, but if noone buys the products in that format it doesnt do much good.
Read it again. The system component exception clause is broad enough to allow GPL programs to be linked against Qt, if it is a part of the operating system, but it also clearly states that in the case you use the system component exception you may _not_ distribute the GPL program with the operating system in that case. So, GPL Qt applications are entirely ok if distributed apart from the OS, but you may not distribute it with the OS.
Software compiled with GCC is ok, because GCC has a *SPECIFIC* license for the parts like crt that gets inserted into the code at compile time. Did you think the GCC authors/FSF didnt think about that? Read the source for GCC, there are specific permissions granted in the concerned parts.
The GPL has been followed in the case that Qt is distributed with the operating system in question, and the concerned GPL applications are not distributed together with the same OS.
Of course, this only applies to an unchanged Qt license. These changes would probably solve the remaining issues.
The GPL restricts distribution of a GPL program unless you can provide the entire source of the program down to virtually the OS level, including libraries and everything needed to make the program work, under terms no less restricive than the GPL, with the exception of components that are part of the operating system.
So, for your wrapup, that's essentially what KDE does when it takes other peoples GPL code, ports it to the old-style-licensed Qt, and then distribute it. Someones property, made semi-proprietary through dependencies. That is the reason people have been rather upset.
Troll Tech should not be flamed in any case, and this move on their part is, frankly, a lot more than they could be expected to do. All good to them for it. This will probably solve the entire issue either way.
You arent, of course. You may run it however you want, linked to anything at all. You just cannot distribute it. The GPL says nothing about inhouse code use so use away (just dont ever release it in a product)! Distributing GPL software/libraries linked to non-GPL software/libraries is an entirely other thing, and that _is_ covered.
(Altho, you can find many examples in the world of commercial lawyering and licensing that would claim that the very action of running software is actually 'copying' it into RAM).
Nope, no go. The GPL specifically states that you have to distribute the source in machine readable form. Further the source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it, also explicitly stated in the GPL. Good luck trying to convince a court that the preferred form of making modifications to a C program is on paper in Swahili.
The GPL is, like, you know, written by some rather intelligent and jaded individuals.
Exactly. And they could drop a note to the nice federal guys that this nasty company is making a buisness out of violating our copyright and making money on our intellectual property. Copyright violations are (jailtime) frowned upon, systematic for-profit violations are (serious jailtime) really frowned upon.
But in case 2, what does the software company gain? The FSF can just promptly turn around and sue them for a few million dollars on copyright violations and throw the case to the feds and get the company execs in jail for it too. Copyright violation is a federal crime, not some piddly lawsuit.
As the GPL states, the code _is_ copyrighted and nothing but the GPL allows redistribution of the code in question.
I think that most of us would be happy if Rambus never targetted other market levels. Especially since the bleeding edge technology you seem to believe is so good performs a worse than the current-edge technology most use.
I hope you're happy with your RAMBUS, because that 133MHz bus you're not stuck with anymore is actually faster in almost every circumstance except some _very_ contrived test cases.
The lawyer move isnt unfair, it is just counterproductive for capitalism in itself. It adds nothing to the product and it does not reduce price; it does not lead to better products for lower price. This is a suboptimization in the system, and should be dealt with since it threatens the very foundation of capitalism.
The foundation and justification of capitalism is that as a whole, it leads to constantly higher standards of living for everyone, through the constant improvements in products and production that allow more 'value' to be created for less cost, in terms of human work, all the time. Everything 'allowed' in the competetive game must constantly be measured against that; if it is counterproductive it should be removed from the 'allowed' moves.
No. The US constitution grants you no such thing. Read what you wrote again. Congress shall have Power... To Promote the Progress of Science...
It says _nothing_ about any right to charge what you want for what you claim to have invented. ONLY that congress shall have to power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, through permitting you exclusively to charge for your supposed invention.
The problem is that patents and copyright in the current extreme are so horribly abused that they very likely do not promote invention or the creation of art, but rather hinder it.
And, the constitution does NOT say 'The congress shall have the Power... To Supress the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by allowing dubious claimants to extort money through litigational blackmail from inventors'.
Of course, if you want a future where your PDA is the popular thing of the day to write viruses for Im sure thats a healthy idea. You may have the time to constantly run viruscheckers and restore your data from backup or just plain buy a new PDA everytime it gets fried, but some of us dont.
Without hearing the seminar it sounds as if Dr Spafford is talking about Trusted Systems, not security in general.
Trusted systems are usually of the kind where every action is auditable and traceable; system administrators do not have access to delete logs or change audit trails, etc. The 'trustiness' and 'security' of these types of systems is rather designed through system architecture and specification of how, exactly, everything works, and very strict definitions of security access and permission. Bugs and exploits dont even figure into wether or not the system is 'trusted'. It's a measure of how it works; ie, your sysadmin cant add a $50000 bonus to his salary in the economy system (he probably cant even access that data) and wipe the logs of his doing it, bugs notwithstanding.
Of course, no commercial or free 'standard' unix lives up to that, simply because of design (some trusted unix-like systems do tho).
Which, I think, would be his point; no open source OS currently exists that implements something like that, and the usual design methods in opensource favour functionality and features above things like total fascistic control and auditing of every action taken in the system.
That is not to say an opensource model wouldnt work for a trusted system; it would probably even be better, but bugs are irrelevant to the very idea of wether a system is considered a Trusted System or not.
Actually, a PDA needs a multiuser OS just as much (or even more, since you might actually have something important on it) than a desktop. root privilidges to install software, guest accounts for people who borrow it to play games, etc. The need for this doesnt go away on a PDA.
Hmmm, a few reboots in a month? I had a Linux development machine up for 497 days and logged in and out of X maybe 4 times in that time (mostly because X leaks a bit when you do development stuff and dont free up allocated resources always, and a relog every few months frees up some memory).
Actually, I had it up for more than 497 days, but discovered that the 1.2 kernel series still had a problem with ticks wrapping after that uptime so a few processes went haywire when they got a negative or zero elapsed time. The machine went on running tho, just the apps crashed out.
A few reboots per month isnt even remotely close to 'stable' if you're just developing userspace applications. Maybe for kernel modules.
Windowing toolkits like GTK+ are portable across most or all unix platforms. It changes nothing. Use autoconf/automake/gcc and you get an even higher compatibility degree (because those tools know about the 'features' of the os's and what to define/include/etc). Writing GUI applications I've had them compile flawlessly on linux, aix, hpux and solaris without even thinking about compatibility. I run into more problems with network code portability than I do with GUI portability.
Oh, they probably offered the usual choice. "Either you take this money and become part of Microsoft or we will make sure no title you ever produce will ever work on Windows again. Accidents happen you know, and it would be so tragic if your sequence of API calls happen to make DirectX go Boom.".
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Not really. The purpose of certifications is a) to lock people into architectures through investments and b) to create a marketing industry making money off doing certifications.
It allows employers to ensure their employees can fill in a form after reading a text. It has little or no bearing on wether or not they can apply knowledge to do their job.
... in which case you cant install a lot of windows software either. But of course, as a solution to that, a lot of sites make winnt writable by anyone and oops, again Joe Schmoe can delete any random dll.
Um. No. There is no difference in the chance. Anyone who can hack a linux telnetd can just as easily hack and install a UN*X telnetd under AIX. They are pretty much interchangable. On our personal workstations at work a large part of AIX/HP-UX/Solaris is usually GNU versions already. I've even had HP support *reccomend* that I scrap HP-UX sed and replace it with GNU sed to solve some problems on servers.
The bottom line is; unless you're running an audited trusted system you are completely and equally utterly dependent on trusting your privilidged users regardless whatever OS you have; source or no source makes absolutely no difference whatsoever; anyone who can hack a trapdoor into an opensource OS can just as easily hack a trapdoor into an opensource replacement and replace the original.
Well, since XFree 4.0 isnt part of the standard distributions yet and even when it is its going to be a 'first version', thats what you get.
When you do get support tho; well, lets just say that it took me about 10 minutes to install a Voodoo 3 PCI card under linux (plug in, boot, autodetect), and three _days_ to get the same card working under Windows '98 (some bug, driver problem, downloads, OS reinstalls, conflicts with old mobo-mounted gfx chipset and drivers). It still locks up with a black screen and goes temporarily unpingable for two minutes every time I boot windows.
YMMV, of course, but in my experience if you check that you arent buying unsupported hardware it's usually easier these days to get it running under linux than it is under windows ('course, sometimes Windows 'Just Does What I Tell It To' too).
Redhat 6.2: Plug in the device. Reboot. Windows 98: Put the driver disk in. Click install. Reboot. Reinstall hosed '98. Download newer driver from net. Unpack. Click install. Reboot. Reinstall hosed '98. Search technet. Yes you've plugged in the powercord. Install driver through different point'n'click place. Reboot. Reinstall hosed '98... etc.
Heeh, 'course, Chess, Go, Tic-tac-toe etc are all far too algorithmically simplisticly built, so the average computer 'cheat' will wipe out human competition even more throughly than in an fps game :).
Actually, the GNU zealots were whining about motif. There was a considerable amount of discussion about it.
But Motif, just like Qt, is ok under the operating system exception. However, software that is ok under the OS exception may not be shipped _with_ the OS. So, if you've ever wondered why Sun, HP, SGI, etc dont fill up their OS's with GPL software, there's the reason. They have to ship such software separately.
In all likelyhood, people just wouldnt use it. The music industry can have all the security they want, but if noone buys the products in that format it doesnt do much good.
Read it again. The system component exception clause is broad enough to allow GPL programs to be linked against Qt, if it is a part of the operating system, but it also clearly states that in the case you use the system component exception you may _not_ distribute the GPL program with the operating system in that case. So, GPL Qt applications are entirely ok if distributed apart from the OS, but you may not distribute it with the OS.
Software compiled with GCC is ok, because GCC has a *SPECIFIC* license for the parts like crt that gets inserted into the code at compile time. Did you think the GCC authors/FSF didnt think about that? Read the source for GCC, there are specific permissions granted in the concerned parts.
The GPL has been followed in the case that Qt is distributed with the operating system in question, and the concerned GPL applications are not distributed together with the same OS.
Of course, this only applies to an unchanged Qt license. These changes would probably solve the remaining issues.
The GPL restricts distribution of a GPL program unless you can provide the entire source of the program down to virtually the OS level, including libraries and everything needed to make the program work, under terms no less restricive than the GPL, with the exception of components that are part of the operating system.
So, for your wrapup, that's essentially what KDE does when it takes other peoples GPL code, ports it to the old-style-licensed Qt, and then distribute it. Someones property, made semi-proprietary through dependencies. That is the reason people have been rather upset.
Troll Tech should not be flamed in any case, and this move on their part is, frankly, a lot more than they could be expected to do. All good to them for it. This will probably solve the entire issue either way.
Actually, its only barely even relevant between processors of the same exact model... in which case you can usually just compare the MHz.
The speed rating between different models is isnt only not reliably represented, it isnt represented *at all*.
You arent, of course. You may run it however you want, linked to anything at all. You just cannot distribute it. The GPL says nothing about inhouse code use so use away (just dont ever release it in a product)! Distributing GPL software/libraries linked to non-GPL software/libraries is an entirely other thing, and that _is_ covered.
(Altho, you can find many examples in the world of commercial lawyering and licensing that would claim that the very action of running software is actually 'copying' it into RAM).
Nope, no go. The GPL specifically states that you have to distribute the source in machine readable form. Further the source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it, also explicitly stated in the GPL. Good luck trying to convince a court that the preferred form of making modifications to a C program is on paper in Swahili.
The GPL is, like, you know, written by some rather intelligent and jaded individuals.
Exactly. And they could drop a note to the nice federal guys that this nasty company is making a buisness out of violating our copyright and making money on our intellectual property. Copyright violations are (jailtime) frowned upon, systematic for-profit violations are (serious jailtime) really frowned upon.
But in case 2, what does the software company gain? The FSF can just promptly turn around and sue them for a few million dollars on copyright violations and throw the case to the feds and get the company execs in jail for it too. Copyright violation is a federal crime, not some piddly lawsuit.
As the GPL states, the code _is_ copyrighted and nothing but the GPL allows redistribution of the code in question.
I think that most of us would be happy if Rambus never targetted other market levels. Especially since the bleeding edge technology you seem to believe is so good performs a worse than the current-edge technology most use.
I hope you're happy with your RAMBUS, because that 133MHz bus you're not stuck with anymore is actually faster in almost every circumstance except some _very_ contrived test cases.
The lawyer move isnt unfair, it is just counterproductive for capitalism in itself. It adds nothing to the product and it does not reduce price; it does not lead to better products for lower price. This is a suboptimization in the system, and should be dealt with since it threatens the very foundation of capitalism.
The foundation and justification of capitalism is that as a whole, it leads to constantly higher standards of living for everyone, through the constant improvements in products and production that allow more 'value' to be created for less cost, in terms of human work, all the time. Everything 'allowed' in the competetive game must constantly be measured against that; if it is counterproductive it should be removed from the 'allowed' moves.
No. The US constitution grants you no such thing. Read what you wrote again. Congress shall have Power ... To Promote the Progress of Science...
... To Supress the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by allowing dubious claimants to extort money through litigational blackmail from inventors'.
It says _nothing_ about any right to charge what you want for what you claim to have invented. ONLY that congress shall have to power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, through permitting you exclusively to charge for your supposed invention.
The problem is that patents and copyright in the current extreme are so horribly abused that they very likely do not promote invention or the creation of art, but rather hinder it.
And, the constitution does NOT say 'The congress shall have the Power
Of course, if you want a future where your PDA is the popular thing of the day to write viruses for Im sure thats a healthy idea. You may have the time to constantly run viruscheckers and restore your data from backup or just plain buy a new PDA everytime it gets fried, but some of us dont.
Without hearing the seminar it sounds as if Dr Spafford is talking about Trusted Systems, not security in general.
Trusted systems are usually of the kind where every action is auditable and traceable; system administrators do not have access to delete logs or change audit trails, etc. The 'trustiness' and 'security' of these types of systems is rather designed through system architecture and specification of how, exactly, everything works, and very strict definitions of security access and permission. Bugs and exploits dont even figure into wether or not the system is 'trusted'. It's a measure of how it works; ie, your sysadmin cant add a $50000 bonus to his salary in the economy system (he probably cant even access that data) and wipe the logs of his doing it, bugs notwithstanding.
Of course, no commercial or free 'standard' unix lives up to that, simply because of design (some trusted unix-like systems do tho).
Which, I think, would be his point; no open source OS currently exists that implements something like that, and the usual design methods in opensource favour functionality and features above things like total fascistic control and auditing of every action taken in the system.
That is not to say an opensource model wouldnt work for a trusted system; it would probably even be better, but bugs are irrelevant to the very idea of wether a system is considered a Trusted System or not.
Actually, a PDA needs a multiuser OS just as much (or even more, since you might actually have something important on it) than a desktop. root privilidges to install software, guest accounts for people who borrow it to play games, etc. The need for this doesnt go away on a PDA.
Hmmm, a few reboots in a month? I had a Linux development machine up for 497 days and logged in and out of X maybe 4 times in that time (mostly because X leaks a bit when you do development stuff and dont free up allocated resources always, and a relog every few months frees up some memory).
Actually, I had it up for more than 497 days, but discovered that the 1.2 kernel series still had a problem with ticks wrapping after that uptime so a few processes went haywire when they got a negative or zero elapsed time. The machine went on running tho, just the apps crashed out.
A few reboots per month isnt even remotely close to 'stable' if you're just developing userspace applications. Maybe for kernel modules.
You can write a locate 'workalike-good-enough' on any unix in just a few lines :).
/var/spool/filedb
/var/spool/filedb
updatedb:
find / -type f -print >
locate:
grep $1
Windowing toolkits like GTK+ are portable across most or all unix platforms. It changes nothing. Use autoconf/automake/gcc and you get an even higher compatibility degree (because those tools know about the 'features' of the os's and what to define/include/etc). Writing GUI applications I've had them compile flawlessly on linux, aix, hpux and solaris without even thinking about compatibility. I run into more problems with network code portability than I do with GUI portability.
Oh, they probably offered the usual choice. "Either you take this money and become part of Microsoft or we will make sure no title you ever produce will ever work on Windows again. Accidents happen you know, and it would be so tragic if your sequence of API calls happen to make DirectX go Boom.".