You know, I admit this post is kinda a troll... but I have to also admit that I kind of agree with this.
My day-job (Win32 integration with predominantly Linux environment) exists because of this. Basically, the summer before I was hired, several offices (main office, business, support, pr, etc) were shut down because of a rampant virus that they actually spread to eachother (it came attached as a background cycling program... one person liked it and spread it to everyone else). If it wasn't for my efforts here, I'll readily admit that the staff would have been hosed when the DCOM viri began spreading last year, they would probably be being hit pretty hard by these Agobot variants right now.
Now, these staff members aren't stupid in the slightest... but they are pretty darn ignorant with respect to technology. If it wasn't for my BOFH tactics, we'd be awash in viral troubles;-)
Of course, before anyone goes and says "why am I complaining, I have a job from it" let me just say that I/really/ don't want to do Win32 integration for the rest of my life, and what I'd really like is my recent business venture to work out...
What, exactly, is WRONG with the current web standard? HOW IS IT BROKEN?
I think one way the standard is broken is by the fact that there really isn't much of a standard. There are recommendations that people such as the W3C make, but web developers can be very, very liberal in how they actually design their pages due to the lax nature of most browsers.
Browsers these days allow for a lot of abuse simply because if they didn't the vast majority of the WWW would be unreadable in them. This is due to the browser wars which were fought in fervor back in the mid-to-late 90s (and the introduction of all the "unique" compatibility breaking tags and whatnot) as well as the push from novice web developers wanting less stringint rules (such as the requirement that everything has a closing tag.) Hell, in my post here I am even abusing web-standards (I am using [br] tags without the closing '/';-)
So the web-standards are largely broken.
However, this still doesn't warrent the introduction of fee-based patent restrictions. Actually, I can't even see how such patents would solve the web standards problems. Instead, I would expect them to cause more problems as people start using really obscure and ugly things to accomplish the same web-design but without patented techniques/items.
Then, of course, there's the fact that "First Contact between the Klingon Empire and the Federation took place in 2218 ("Day of the Dove" [TOS])" (from page 158 of the "Star Trek Ency.", I know, I know, I'm a geek, get over it;-)
While you could argue the Federation does not yet exist... they could hardly have First Contact with the Klingons in 2218, when members of the Federation-to-be already met them (and even saved their empire) in 2153!
(And don't even get me started on the whole prostetic fore-head issue!!;-)
(Oh, and in spite of all these issues... I still liked the pilot... it was a marked departure from previous ST incarnations, which was welcome in my book;-)
This has happenned in Win32. The BSD license (perhaps not in its present state, but certainly in the past) allows BSD licensed code to be used in a closed-source, proprietary way. No one has been screaming for blood because BSD license allows for certain proprietary uses. Microsoft obeyed the rules set forth by BSD (these rules, of course, being the reason the FSF and others [such as myself] dislike the BSD license, since it allows for just this sort of proprietary "abuse" ["abuse" here is my word... because of the way the BSD license is designed, the BSD authors probably wouldn't classify it as such;-) ]).
The problem here is that you have two very strict and incompatible licenses. Linux uses the GPL, BSD uses BSD. So the problem isn't that the code has gone uncreditted (tho it has;-) its that its copyright has been changed.
One of the cross-platform multimedia libraries that has already been ported to the PS2 is SDL. f you have the PS2 Linux Dev kit (hard to get) then you can just download PS2 SDL from here.
I have no idea how well the support is... or the speed... but it works well enough that there is a port of Maelstrom for it. I have heard that you may also be able to use the SDL OpenGL wrappers to make 3D PS2 apps.
If you are using the PS2 Linux dev kit, you can use the GCC (I think) as well as autoconf|automake.
Again, are you really willing to claim that you don't care about products liability?
No, but that wasn't the original point.
The simple fact of the matter is that software that is released to the public either from a corporation or from a group, community, or individual will almost assuredly have bugs that slipped passed all the fail-safes in spite of great effort and attention. It's just not realistic to think you can make it otherwise. Corporations typically stop checking for bugs when they feel their software is "good enough" and they don't want to throw more money at them. Groups/Individuals and community driven software more often than not have to make releases in order to get any sort of real testing at all. Some bugs will just be beyond what the individual or group can test.
(A personal example I have of this is the fact that one of the projects I'm in charge of, Tux Typing managed to get to a 1.0 release before any DebianPPC users tried the software out, and managed to catch a PPC related bug that we never would have been able to catch on our own [for lack of the hardware to test on, or even the inkling that such a problem would arise]).
Okay, I'll do that if you can show me that it is possible to produce a modern application that is 100% bug-free;-)
(and I'm talking modern code... not "real programmer" code from the olden days when people would fit entire spreadsheet apps into 2k of ASM on a 6502;-)
I'd be pretty pissed off if my car routinely exploded -- there's nothing special about software that should grant it exemptions from warranties, save for shoddy development. I'll cry no tears for programmers that get sued because they left bugs in their code. It was their fault for being sloppy, frankly, and even should they all be sloppy, that doesn't excuse it.
But it's not to protect the programmers from their own ineptitude. The intent is to protect them from the ineptitude of others. For example, let's say that some anonymous Joe at Linux disrto A takes your program (which works, bug-free to the best of your knowledge), tweaks it a bit, and redistributes it.
Let's supposed that in tweaking it, this person broke it and made it a volatile application (something that can really screw things up). By what you're saying, the original programmer would be held responsable for the actions of someone oustide of his control.
This has actually happenned fairly recently (anyone remember Red Hat's little glibc fiasco from a year ago?)
Furthermore... it is impossible to release code that is 100% bug-free (just like it's impossible to have 100% security). Code will be released with bugs. The largest and most advanced debugging team in the world will not find all the bugs in a given program. This is just the way that it is. So by saying "I'll cry no tears for programmers that get sued because they left bugs in their code" you are readily admitting you don't really understand the complexity involved in large programming projects.
So much for making informed decisions, lets just be morally superior and force our views on others.
Yeargh..... You probably haven't really read the GPL or LGPL have you?;-)
These licenses do not force you to use them when starting your own projects or applications.... they only stipulate that if you want to use code from an existing GPL/LGPL project, you must retain the software license. You are free to choose whatever license you want for your own projects.
This is socialism, no matter how you wrap it up in pretty rhetoric.
Double yeargh.... It is not socialism... You can take the GPL or LGPL, retain the copyright of your code/project in your own name, change the copyright at a later date (just not on already published/released code), and even modify the GPL or LGPL to ensure you retain in control (just remove the "or any
later version" from them, and viola!).
While RMS is extreme, and many times arogant and hard to deal with, the one thing you have to realize is that the FSF is not RMS and RMS is not the FSF! There have been many many examples of desent inside the FSF (just take a look at the glibc maintainer's issues with RMS).
The GPL is about power, not freedom; buy into the GPL myth, and you're just exchanging one master (Mr. Gates) for another (Mr. Stallman).
That's not really true. You can retain the copyright in your name (or your company's name, or your group's name). By using the GPL/LGPL you are not inherently giving over control to RMS (or even the FSF)... plus, as was mentionned elsewhere, by removing the words ""any
later version" from the GPL on your code, you can further ensure that changes to the GPL/LGPL in the future do not affect your software (unless you want them to).
But what it really comes down to when choosing a license (and this was the thrust of your post) is your own personal definitions of "freedom" and what you want allowed (or disallowed) with respect to your code.
Many people who use the GPL, and may or may not agree with RMS (such as myself), do not want derivative works to be placed under licenses which cause the work to become property of another entity. People using other licenses, may or may not have strong convictions about this.
For example, one thing that many people don't realize is that the networking code in Windows (I think it was just NT at one point, but now may be in all Windows variants) is actually based upon BSD networking code. The BSD licenses in place allowed Microsoft to legally do this. Some people may not have much of a problem with something like this, but those that typically use the GPL do so to prevent this sort of thing.
Personally, while I use the GPL/LGPL for all my projects, I am not about to try and force others to do the same. Part of my definition of freedom is "freedom of choice". And for any project you personally start or are responsable for, you are (and should be) free to choose whatever license you like.
I think it's actually important to realize here that the FSF is not RMS and that RMS is not the FSF...
Many times people hear RMS's (sometimes;-) flippant or (occassionally;-) arogant remarks, and assume that everyone inside the FSF must feel the same way (or be as arogant or whatever...) There are many people inside the FSF movement (and this really includes anyone who publishes GPL/LGPL code) who patently disagree with many of his statements. So we need to be very careful not to judge the FSF just on RMS alone.
On RMS- the simple fact of the matter (the one thing that everyone always fails to realize when criticizing RMS) is that he is undoubtedly a brilliant person. He is very bright. The trouble with people who are "very bright" is that they can have a hard time dealing with people. This can prove especially troublesome when they have strong personal convictions (such as RMS has;-)
While he has done some things I personally feel are horrible (such as this and this exchange) and very detrimental(sp?) to the FSF... I have respect for him and the strength of his convictions. Unlike a lot of people (hrm... many/.'s [not necessarily the original poster];-) he does hold to his ideals in the face of wavering support and hostile opposition.
It seems that a major concern of the GPL is that if you just USE a program, you do not have to accept the terms of the GPL. By refusing to accept the terms of the GPL, you are also refusing not to hold the authors of the software liable for any failures, leaving the authors open to potential lawsuit.
I am not certain if this is true or not... but even if it were, then all you need to do is prominently display the GPL/LGPL and require your users to accept it before they download or install the program. I know this is sort of what you suggested... but you would not necessarily need a new or different license than the GPL/LGPL to accomplish the same goal.
Personally, I would doubt liability lawsuits of this manner would hold much weight in court if you do in fact have the GPL prominently displayed all over the place (in the source archive, linked from the site, etc.) since the end-user would have to ignore the licenses in order to not know about the liability clause.
Yeah, it's funny... people ask questions like this to "Ask Slashdot" without really trying to research it themselves... A very quick search actually turned up the Tribes 2 FAQ from Loki's website...where it talks about this very thing.
I always thought "Ask Slashdot" would be a *last resort* kind of measure... to be used only after I've already exhausted all other options. But I have been noticing an increasing number of "Ask Slashdot" questions like this (here's another that boggled my mind). Hmm... maybe it's just me;-)
I personally think your experience is not indicative of open-source culture, but rather of human nature.
Some people just suck.... they are prideful, think they're better than everyone else, or are just plain idiotic. It doesn't matter whether they are an open-source guru, or a closed-source coding machine.... they're just people, and have the same frailties and shortcomings we all have..
I am an open-source/free-software developer, and I have had nothing but positive responses from my former employers (Univ of AZ, Intel, etc). I left each former employer on amicable terms. Granted I haven't had a "real" job in 4 months now (just minor consulting work) but that's due more to the downturn in the tech sector than any negative vibes between me and my former employers;-)
Actually, with the tech sector hit as hard as it has been across the board... this last one is very likely.
I am a talented developer... manage a few successful open-source projects... and I have been unemployed for 4 months now. Sure, I have managed to pull a few consulting gigs here and there... but nothing "real" has surfaced...
I think the original poster (the guy who works at Midway) should start checking around some of the open-source developer job hangouts... Like Mojolin and Hot Linux Jobs. Personally, I have worked with quite a few open-source games and manage a fairly successful one myself... and I'd love to get a job working on games "for a living"... I'm just yet to get the phone-call/e-mail;-)
My biggest problem with this ruling (and others which are similar) is that the companies do not have representation (i.e., they do not vote... at least in the US;-)
This, of course, leads to the problems of "campaign contributions", kick-backs and the like, meaning that the individual citizen (real people, not amalgamated masses of people in a company) will be at a disadvantage when it comes to their representation because they cannot usually compete financially with these companies.
Now I know this is redundat.. most people know this... And I am not arguing with you (of course;-)... I'm just pointing out a problem I see and I have with the whole mess.:/
With the latest XFree86 and the latest Qt (as well as the latest KDE2, of course;-), this is no longer the case, as you can use anti-aliased fonts.
As a matter of fact, with the anti-aliased support that Konq has (and Netscape/Mozillla lack), there is an advantage (when it comes to "rendering prettiness;-) to using Konq.
(I know that Opera supports Xrender as well... but I don't like the banner ads;-)
And then there's the people in other fields that pick up a language or two and think they're a computer scientist.
Just some clarification first... I have been a programmer for over 20 years. I have worked in many languages (you name it, chances are I've programmed in it). I went into Mathematics for the challenge.
The only thing I was commenting on before was that most CS programs I have had experience with really do not emphasize math in their departmental programs.
I was also emphasizing that many of these same CS programs seem to have strong emphasises on non-programming program development (such as RAD) instead of focusing more on technical and traditional programming models.
This is creating a large number of "script-kiddies" which are flooding the market. I have been in charge of many of these people, and it usually isn't pretty.
While this is not really a good thing.... it is predictable... as with any other technical area, as soon as it becomes a popular profession you start seeing a dumbing down in the colleges and universities of the subject. I mean, the colleges need to make money, and they can't make the money if all their students are flunking out because they aren't getting it.... can they?
Well... they should be Mathematicians... but speaking as someone who is both a Mathematician and a Programmer (mathematician by degree, programmer by trade) I can honestly say that more often than not they aren't....
Most programmers haven't seen or worked with math much beyond basic discrete algebra. This is because the programming world has evolved into this script-kiddie playground, where persons with relatively little programming knowledge and technical ability can use RADs and IDEs to produce software.
Now I am not saying we aren't without our wizards (and a lot of them are currently in the free-software and open-source movements;-)... but it has been my experience that the vast majority of "programmers" out there are really quite novice...
Recall that the Saturn was introduced at $500 (or was it $600?)
That's not true. The Saturn did debut high... but all new consoles do as well.... And even at these high prices, the consoles are almost always taking a hit (it just goes without saying that consoles don't make money their first few years of production).
But it is the games that make the gaming companies money.... The games (especially CD games) are cheap to produce, and yet sell for large sums of money. The simple fact was that Sega (for the Saturn) did not have the games.
They did have quite a few games that became cult favorites (Panzer Dragoon, Nights, etc.), but none of their "big titles" showed up. When the N64 came out it debuted with Mario64... which was a big hit (the game... many still feel it's one of the N64's finest). At the same time that Mario64 came out, Crash Bandicoot came out for the PSX. So here you had two consoles with big mascot games.
Meanwhile, back in the Sega camp the creator of Sonic had been working on this top secret game... Nights.... which was not a Sonic game and was not advertised much at all. The video game press raked them across the coals for this blunder... At a critical time when the Saturn needed a flagship title they failed to deliver.
The simple fact is that games sell the systems and support the systems. The Saturn had relatively few... and the really good ones were rare.
I think you (and most other people talking about video game history) oversimplify. There is never any one thing that brings a console, game or company down. It's always a large number of things.
I am someone who has researched this stuff quite a bit and even something of a historian on the subject.... And I am constantly amazed at how rich and complicated the history of gaming is.
Re:Hope this means more gamers will buy a PS2.
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I'm hoping gamers looking for a GameCube won't move towards the Xbox. I just don't like Microsoft in the game counsel market. They've invaded my home enough
already.
I agree.... I would suspect that Microsoft could do worse things to the consumer than Nintendo ever did in the 8-bit era.
I mean, take their business model now and extend it into the console gaming market... It would make the Nintendo "intimidation era" look like a good thing.
Is it even an option? Given the worst-case scenario, could Nintendo even opt not to sell the Gamecube? It would completely destroy their main business (hardware) to
rely solely on the N64 (sales of which aren't exactly gathering steam).
This is true....
Nintendo was originally a playing card company.... AFAIK, they have left that market (not that it would be big enough to support them now, anyway;-)
Nintendo has also not had a really solid arcade hit in years, and with the arcade market shrinking (and being one of the factors killing Sega) it wouldn't be enough to support them even if they had.
I think what would happen if the Gamecube did poorly in whatever reviewing arena they are referring to is they would have to go back and redesign it or tweak it.
I mean, it has happenned before... Did the SNES CD ever come out? (I mean, other than the PSX, of couse;-)
Also, maybe it would be a good thing... imagine what could have happened if Nintendo had done the same for the SNES..... Perhaps it's sup-par 16-bit CPU would have been reworked and the SNES's games wouldn't have been plagued with performance problems for years before developers figured out a way to overcome that.
(Then again, the same could be said for most systems... the PS2's small texture-RAM being the most recent blunder which comes to mind)
Bad news for the customers (was Re:bad news??)
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There was an
article published a while back about how a large diversity of gaming systems tends to slow/squash game development, and from there, slows down system development.
Woah.... Where was this article?
Actually, it has been shown time and time again that single console markets lend themselves to abuse of the customers and that you get very rapid game development, deployment, and innovation (ick, not that word again!) in multi-system markets.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I admit this post is kinda a troll... but I have to also admit that I kind of agree with this.
;-)
/really/ don't want to do Win32 integration for the rest of my life, and what I'd really like is my recent business venture to work out...
My day-job (Win32 integration with predominantly Linux environment) exists because of this. Basically, the summer before I was hired, several offices (main office, business, support, pr, etc) were shut down because of a rampant virus that they actually spread to eachother (it came attached as a background cycling program... one person liked it and spread it to everyone else). If it wasn't for my efforts here, I'll readily admit that the staff would have been hosed when the DCOM viri began spreading last year, they would probably be being hit pretty hard by these Agobot variants right now.
Now, these staff members aren't stupid in the slightest... but they are pretty darn ignorant with respect to technology. If it wasn't for my BOFH tactics, we'd be awash in viral troubles
Of course, before anyone goes and says "why am I complaining, I have a job from it" let me just say that I
What, exactly, is WRONG with the current web standard? HOW IS IT BROKEN?
;-)
I think one way the standard is broken is by the fact that there really isn't much of a standard. There are recommendations that people such as the W3C make, but web developers can be very, very liberal in how they actually design their pages due to the lax nature of most browsers.
Browsers these days allow for a lot of abuse simply because if they didn't the vast majority of the WWW would be unreadable in them. This is due to the browser wars which were fought in fervor back in the mid-to-late 90s (and the introduction of all the "unique" compatibility breaking tags and whatnot) as well as the push from novice web developers wanting less stringint rules (such as the requirement that everything has a closing tag.) Hell, in my post here I am even abusing web-standards (I am using [br] tags without the closing '/'
So the web-standards are largely broken.
However, this still doesn't warrent the introduction of fee-based patent restrictions. Actually, I can't even see how such patents would solve the web standards problems. Instead, I would expect them to cause more problems as people start using really obscure and ugly things to accomplish the same web-design but without patented techniques/items.
Then, of course, there's the fact that "First Contact between the Klingon Empire and the Federation took place in 2218 ("Day of the Dove" [TOS])" (from page 158 of the "Star Trek Ency.", I know, I know, I'm a geek, get over it ;-)
;-)
;-)
While you could argue the Federation does not yet exist... they could hardly have First Contact with the Klingons in 2218, when members of the Federation-to-be already met them (and even saved their empire) in 2153!
(And don't even get me started on the whole prostetic fore-head issue!!
(Oh, and in spite of all these issues... I still liked the pilot... it was a marked departure from previous ST incarnations, which was welcome in my book
This has happenned in Win32. The BSD license (perhaps not in its present state, but certainly in the past) allows BSD licensed code to be used in a closed-source, proprietary way. No one has been screaming for blood because BSD license allows for certain proprietary uses. Microsoft obeyed the rules set forth by BSD (these rules, of course, being the reason the FSF and others [such as myself] dislike the BSD license, since it allows for just this sort of proprietary "abuse" ["abuse" here is my word... because of the way the BSD license is designed, the BSD authors probably wouldn't classify it as such ;-) ]).
;-) its that its copyright has been changed.
The problem here is that you have two very strict and incompatible licenses. Linux uses the GPL, BSD uses BSD. So the problem isn't that the code has gone uncreditted (tho it has
One of the cross-platform multimedia libraries that has already been ported to the PS2 is SDL. f you have the PS2 Linux Dev kit (hard to get) then you can just download PS2 SDL from here.
I have no idea how well the support is... or the speed... but it works well enough that there is a port of Maelstrom for it. I have heard that you may also be able to use the SDL OpenGL wrappers to make 3D PS2 apps.
If you are using the PS2 Linux dev kit, you can use the GCC (I think) as well as autoconf|automake.
Again, are you really willing to claim that you don't care about products liability?
No, but that wasn't the original point.
The simple fact of the matter is that software that is released to the public either from a corporation or from a group, community, or individual will almost assuredly have bugs that slipped passed all the fail-safes in spite of great effort and attention. It's just not realistic to think you can make it otherwise. Corporations typically stop checking for bugs when they feel their software is "good enough" and they don't want to throw more money at them. Groups/Individuals and community driven software more often than not have to make releases in order to get any sort of real testing at all. Some bugs will just be beyond what the individual or group can test.
(A personal example I have of this is the fact that one of the projects I'm in charge of, Tux Typing managed to get to a 1.0 release before any DebianPPC users tried the software out, and managed to catch a PPC related bug that we never would have been able to catch on our own [for lack of the hardware to test on, or even the inkling that such a problem would arise]).
Show me that *all* code *must* have a bug
;-)
;-)
Okay, I'll do that if you can show me that it is possible to produce a modern application that is 100% bug-free
(and I'm talking modern code... not "real programmer" code from the olden days when people would fit entire spreadsheet apps into 2k of ASM on a 6502
I'd be pretty pissed off if my car routinely exploded -- there's nothing special about software that should grant it exemptions from warranties, save for shoddy development. I'll cry no tears for programmers that get sued because they left bugs in their code. It was their fault for being sloppy, frankly, and even should they all be sloppy, that doesn't excuse it.
But it's not to protect the programmers from their own ineptitude. The intent is to protect them from the ineptitude of others. For example, let's say that some anonymous Joe at Linux disrto A takes your program (which works, bug-free to the best of your knowledge), tweaks it a bit, and redistributes it.
Let's supposed that in tweaking it, this person broke it and made it a volatile application (something that can really screw things up). By what you're saying, the original programmer would be held responsable for the actions of someone oustide of his control.
This has actually happenned fairly recently (anyone remember Red Hat's little glibc fiasco from a year ago?)
Furthermore... it is impossible to release code that is 100% bug-free (just like it's impossible to have 100% security). Code will be released with bugs. The largest and most advanced debugging team in the world will not find all the bugs in a given program. This is just the way that it is. So by saying "I'll cry no tears for programmers that get sued because they left bugs in their code" you are readily admitting you don't really understand the complexity involved in large programming projects.
But it's the volunteers that make the movement. Without them, the FSF would be nowhere. So, the FSF is the volunteers.
glibc is part of the FSF. And here we have an example of the very desent am talking about.
So much for making informed decisions, lets just be morally superior and force our views on others.
;-)
Yeargh..... You probably haven't really read the GPL or LGPL have you?
These licenses do not force you to use them when starting your own projects or applications.... they only stipulate that if you want to use code from an existing GPL/LGPL project, you must retain the software license. You are free to choose whatever license you want for your own projects.
This is socialism, no matter how you wrap it up in pretty rhetoric.
Double yeargh.... It is not socialism... You can take the GPL or LGPL, retain the copyright of your code/project in your own name, change the copyright at a later date (just not on already published/released code), and even modify the GPL or LGPL to ensure you retain in control (just remove the "or any
later version" from them, and viola!).
While RMS is extreme, and many times arogant and hard to deal with, the one thing you have to realize is that the FSF is not RMS and RMS is not the FSF! There have been many many examples of desent inside the FSF (just take a look at the glibc maintainer's issues with RMS).
The GPL is about power, not freedom; buy into the GPL myth, and you're just exchanging one master (Mr. Gates) for another (Mr. Stallman).
That's not really true. You can retain the copyright in your name (or your company's name, or your group's name). By using the GPL/LGPL you are not inherently giving over control to RMS (or even the FSF)... plus, as was mentionned elsewhere, by removing the words ""any
later version" from the GPL on your code, you can further ensure that changes to the GPL/LGPL in the future do not affect your software (unless you want them to).
But what it really comes down to when choosing a license (and this was the thrust of your post) is your own personal definitions of "freedom" and what you want allowed (or disallowed) with respect to your code.
Many people who use the GPL, and may or may not agree with RMS (such as myself), do not want derivative works to be placed under licenses which cause the work to become property of another entity. People using other licenses, may or may not have strong convictions about this.
For example, one thing that many people don't realize is that the networking code in Windows (I think it was just NT at one point, but now may be in all Windows variants) is actually based upon BSD networking code. The BSD licenses in place allowed Microsoft to legally do this. Some people may not have much of a problem with something like this, but those that typically use the GPL do so to prevent this sort of thing.
Personally, while I use the GPL/LGPL for all my projects, I am not about to try and force others to do the same. Part of my definition of freedom is "freedom of choice". And for any project you personally start or are responsable for, you are (and should be) free to choose whatever license you like.
I think it's actually important to realize here that the FSF is not RMS and that RMS is not the FSF...
;-) flippant or (occassionally ;-) arogant remarks, and assume that everyone inside the FSF must feel the same way (or be as arogant or whatever...) There are many people inside the FSF movement (and this really includes anyone who publishes GPL/LGPL code) who patently disagree with many of his statements. So we need to be very careful not to judge the FSF just on RMS alone.
;-)
/.'s [not necessarily the original poster] ;-) he does hold to his ideals in the face of wavering support and hostile opposition.
Many times people hear RMS's (sometimes
On RMS- the simple fact of the matter (the one thing that everyone always fails to realize when criticizing RMS) is that he is undoubtedly a brilliant person. He is very bright. The trouble with people who are "very bright" is that they can have a hard time dealing with people. This can prove especially troublesome when they have strong personal convictions (such as RMS has
While he has done some things I personally feel are horrible (such as this and this exchange) and very detrimental(sp?) to the FSF... I have respect for him and the strength of his convictions. Unlike a lot of people (hrm... many
It seems that a major concern of the GPL is that if you just USE a program, you do not have to accept the terms of the GPL. By refusing to accept the terms of the GPL, you are also refusing not to hold the authors of the software liable for any failures, leaving the authors open to potential lawsuit.
I am not certain if this is true or not... but even if it were, then all you need to do is prominently display the GPL/LGPL and require your users to accept it before they download or install the program. I know this is sort of what you suggested... but you would not necessarily need a new or different license than the GPL/LGPL to accomplish the same goal.
Personally, I would doubt liability lawsuits of this manner would hold much weight in court if you do in fact have the GPL prominently displayed all over the place (in the source archive, linked from the site, etc.) since the end-user would have to ignore the licenses in order to not know about the liability clause.
Yeah, it's funny... people ask questions like this to "Ask Slashdot" without really trying to research it themselves... A very quick search actually turned up the Tribes 2 FAQ from Loki's website...where it talks about this very thing.
;-)
I always thought "Ask Slashdot" would be a *last resort* kind of measure... to be used only after I've already exhausted all other options. But I have been noticing an increasing number of "Ask Slashdot" questions like this (here's another that boggled my mind). Hmm... maybe it's just me
I personally think your experience is not indicative of open-source culture, but rather of human nature.
;-)
Some people just suck.... they are prideful, think they're better than everyone else, or are just plain idiotic. It doesn't matter whether they are an open-source guru, or a closed-source coding machine.... they're just people, and have the same frailties and shortcomings we all have..
I am an open-source/free-software developer, and I have had nothing but positive responses from my former employers (Univ of AZ, Intel, etc). I left each former employer on amicable terms. Granted I haven't had a "real" job in 4 months now (just minor consulting work) but that's due more to the downturn in the tech sector than any negative vibes between me and my former employers
or just plain unemployed
;-)
Actually, with the tech sector hit as hard as it has been across the board... this last one is very likely.
I am a talented developer... manage a few successful open-source projects... and I have been unemployed for 4 months now. Sure, I have managed to pull a few consulting gigs here and there... but nothing "real" has surfaced...
I think the original poster (the guy who works at Midway) should start checking around some of the open-source developer job hangouts... Like Mojolin and Hot Linux Jobs. Personally, I have worked with quite a few open-source games and manage a fairly successful one myself... and I'd love to get a job working on games "for a living"... I'm just yet to get the phone-call/e-mail
My biggest problem with this ruling (and others which are similar) is that the companies do not have representation (i.e., they do not vote... at least in the US ;-)
;-)... I'm just pointing out a problem I see and I have with the whole mess. :/
This, of course, leads to the problems of "campaign contributions", kick-backs and the like, meaning that the individual citizen (real people, not amalgamated masses of people in a company) will be at a disadvantage when it comes to their representation because they cannot usually compete financially with these companies.
Now I know this is redundat.. most people know this... And I am not arguing with you (of course
With the latest XFree86 and the latest Qt (as well as the latest KDE2, of course ;-), this is no longer the case, as you can use anti-aliased fonts.
;-) to using Konq.
;-)
As a matter of fact, with the anti-aliased support that Konq has (and Netscape/Mozillla lack), there is an advantage (when it comes to "rendering prettiness
(I know that Opera supports Xrender as well... but I don't like the banner ads
And then there's the people in other fields that pick up a language or two and think they're a computer scientist.
Just some clarification first... I have been a programmer for over 20 years. I have worked in many languages (you name it, chances are I've programmed in it). I went into Mathematics for the challenge.
The only thing I was commenting on before was that most CS programs I have had experience with really do not emphasize math in their departmental programs.
I was also emphasizing that many of these same CS programs seem to have strong emphasises on non-programming program development (such as RAD) instead of focusing more on technical and traditional programming models.
This is creating a large number of "script-kiddies" which are flooding the market. I have been in charge of many of these people, and it usually isn't pretty.
While this is not really a good thing.... it is predictable... as with any other technical area, as soon as it becomes a popular profession you start seeing a dumbing down in the colleges and universities of the subject. I mean, the colleges need to make money, and they can't make the money if all their students are flunking out because they aren't getting it.... can they?
Well... they should be Mathematicians... but speaking as someone who is both a Mathematician and a Programmer (mathematician by degree, programmer by trade) I can honestly say that more often than not they aren't....
;-) ... but it has been my experience that the vast majority of "programmers" out there are really quite novice...
Most programmers haven't seen or worked with math much beyond basic discrete algebra. This is because the programming world has evolved into this script-kiddie playground, where persons with relatively little programming knowledge and technical ability can use RADs and IDEs to produce software.
Now I am not saying we aren't without our wizards (and a lot of them are currently in the free-software and open-source movements
Recall that the Saturn was introduced at $500 (or was it $600?)
That's not true. The Saturn did debut high... but all new consoles do as well.... And even at these high prices, the consoles are almost always taking a hit (it just goes without saying that consoles don't make money their first few years of production).
But it is the games that make the gaming companies money.... The games (especially CD games) are cheap to produce, and yet sell for large sums of money. The simple fact was that Sega (for the Saturn) did not have the games.
They did have quite a few games that became cult favorites (Panzer Dragoon, Nights, etc.), but none of their "big titles" showed up. When the N64 came out it debuted with Mario64... which was a big hit (the game... many still feel it's one of the N64's finest). At the same time that Mario64 came out, Crash Bandicoot came out for the PSX. So here you had two consoles with big mascot games.
Meanwhile, back in the Sega camp the creator of Sonic had been working on this top secret game... Nights.... which was not a Sonic game and was not advertised much at all. The video game press raked them across the coals for this blunder... At a critical time when the Saturn needed a flagship title they failed to deliver.
The simple fact is that games sell the systems and support the systems. The Saturn had relatively few... and the really good ones were rare.
I think you (and most other people talking about video game history) oversimplify. There is never any one thing that brings a console, game or company down. It's always a large number of things.
I am someone who has researched this stuff quite a bit and even something of a historian on the subject.... And I am constantly amazed at how rich and complicated the history of gaming is.
I'm hoping gamers looking for a GameCube won't move towards the Xbox. I just don't like Microsoft in the game counsel market. They've invaded my home enough already.
I agree.... I would suspect that Microsoft could do worse things to the consumer than Nintendo ever did in the 8-bit era.
I mean, take their business model now and extend it into the console gaming market... It would make the Nintendo "intimidation era" look like a good thing.
Is it even an option? Given the worst-case scenario, could Nintendo even opt not to sell the Gamecube? It would completely destroy their main business (hardware) to rely solely on the N64 (sales of which aren't exactly gathering steam).
;-)
;-)
This is true....
Nintendo was originally a playing card company.... AFAIK, they have left that market (not that it would be big enough to support them now, anyway
Nintendo has also not had a really solid arcade hit in years, and with the arcade market shrinking (and being one of the factors killing Sega) it wouldn't be enough to support them even if they had.
I think what would happen if the Gamecube did poorly in whatever reviewing arena they are referring to is they would have to go back and redesign it or tweak it.
I mean, it has happenned before... Did the SNES CD ever come out? (I mean, other than the PSX, of couse
Also, maybe it would be a good thing... imagine what could have happened if Nintendo had done the same for the SNES..... Perhaps it's sup-par 16-bit CPU would have been reworked and the SNES's games wouldn't have been plagued with performance problems for years before developers figured out a way to overcome that.
(Then again, the same could be said for most systems... the PS2's small texture-RAM being the most recent blunder which comes to mind)
There was an article published a while back about how a large diversity of gaming systems tends to slow/squash game development, and from there, slows down system development.
Woah.... Where was this article?
Actually, it has been shown time and time again that single console markets lend themselves to abuse of the customers and that you get very rapid game development, deployment, and innovation (ick, not that word again!) in multi-system markets.
Competition fuels innovation.
Conker's Bad Fur Day is about as far from mature as it's possible to get, of course. :^)
;-)
:/
How about we day it deals with "mature themes" then
Sin and Punishment
The only problem is that this wont likely see the light of days in the states other than via an import