Well, I agree that it *is* a good example, but not for proving the point you're trying to make.
It clearly shows that the GPL is by no means business unfriendly for the developers/copyright holders, only for others who wish to profit off their work without contributing back.
On the contrary, it conveniently shows that the GPL is not "business friendly", simply from the existence of a dual license. If the GPL was "business friendly", the dual licensing wouldn't be necessary.
The point here is that you can't make money selling GPLed software, without tying it to some other product.
You have little to lose from the GPL unless you want absolute control, but potentially much to gain if there are enough interested contributors.
What you have to lose from the GPL is the likelihood of ever selling your software. What you have to gain is the relatively remote possibility that other people will be nice enough to improve your product for free.
Who derives a primary revenue stream only from selling software?
Microsoft. Most game companies. There's no shortage of companies (or corporate departments) who derive most of their money from selling software (or software licenses).
Most software companies also sell support, either per incident or through a contract. Training tends to be quite lucrative as well. I find it humorous how much is spent on training and support for e.g. IBM/Rational and Oracle products somewhere that I won't mention, but I can't argue that it's a good business model for the vendors.
I didn't say companies who had _no_ other sources of revenue, I said companies who derive most of their money from software sales. The GPL makes that essentially impossible and, hence, removes those companies' business models. *THAT* is why TrollTech dual-licence QT - because they know if they didn't they would have a great deal of trouble making enough money to stay in business.
What I find ironic is that even the people who steadfastly insist the GPL is "business friendly" usually do so in the same breath they say "because you can just dual license" - seemingly unaware they're shooting down their own argument.
I don't have X or any bloatware desktop running at startup so I log into to the VT console and , guess what , I don't get a startup sound. So , where does your "irrelevant semantics" argument fit in now exactly?
For the kind of people Microsoft (and Apple, for that matter) create startup sounds for, "Computer" == "Windows" (or "OS X"). That there is, technically, a distinction between the hardware starting, the kernel starting, the GUI starting (or not) and a login event is completely and utterly irrelevant to them.
But men, by contrast, find many of their innate predispositions largely useless. You can hunt for fun, (provided you avoid the Vice President); you can go to the gym and do your feats of strength; you can get into fights in the street and end up in jail; and you can join the army and fight -- but these are choices with many obvious drawbacks.
This is why we have sport. Sport is, essentially, an outlet for all the "manly stuff" that "men" don't get to do anymore. Team sport is basically warfare without all the dying and stuff.
Computer games, of course, are so lazy people can do it without having to get all hot and sweaty.
Not necessarily... Trolltech was under proessure to release QT under the GPL. They did it... did it hurt their business? Not in the slightest... in fact, they became even more successful.
Poor example. QT is dual licensed (the GPLed version is only usable if you are developing GPLed software).
Ninenine has an axe to grind with free software, that's all. His "GPL'ing a product has NEVER been successful for the company or person owning it" just shows how uninformed he is.
Who derives a primary revenue stream only from selling GPLed software ?
Actually, for the most part there had been a decent amount of female students in Comp.Sci. classes. However, it's seemed to decline a bit more recently. Whereas a couple years ago (I believe it was about five or six) the local college had an almost 50/50 ratio of men to women in the Computer Programming Technology/Analyst course. This past year there where no females whatsoever.
That's because those women were in it for the money, whereas the blokes are in it because they're interested.
Wrong. The question should be about respecting private property of all kinds, no matter who it belongs to. The alternative is a slippery slope on which the government tells you what you are allowed and aren't allowed to own.
The Government already tells you that.
In addition, there are fundamental differences between "copyrights" (and patents, etc) and "property". Information and ideas are not physical property and are fundamentally different to physical property, no matter how much certain people might try to tell you otherwise and no matter how many attempts there are to create laws dictating otherwise.
I can't decide whether Sun has balls of spent Uranium or if they're just really disparate. Possibly both. But I really like this, and I hope their services and hardware businesses benefit accordingly.
Sun makes the vast bulk of their money from hardware sales and support. They have little (if anything) to lose from GPLing Solaris.
Contrast this to, say, Microsoft, who makes most of their money from software sales. Clearly, GPLing their software would be financial suicide.
Sun has made some of the worst strategic decisions in the IT industry for the past decade or so. Why would GPL'ing their main products be any better? Where are they going to make money? Bake sales? Are they going to pay their people with warm fuzzy feelings? Yeah, Sun may do it. But I'm betting it'll kill them long term. In fact, now may be a good time to short the stock, and expect the payoff to be complete in about 5 years.
Sun will make money exactly the same way they do now - hardware sales and support contract.
Solaris has never been a significant revenue stream for Sun. Heck, they haven't even had a nominal charge on it for years.
GPL'ing a product has NEVER been successful for the company or person owning it. This won't be any different.
Well, it'd be pretty disastrous for a company with a revenue stream derived primarily from software sales, but that hardly describes Sun.
I'm against publicly funded education entirely [...]
While it's not at all surprising someone thinks the public education system could be improved (and from what I've gathered, the US has one of the worst systems in the world), the mind-boggling clusterfuck that would result from fully-privatised education would be infinitely worse.
(Unless, of course, you're trying to go back to the good old days of distinct societal classes, in which case it'd work a treat.)
Universal, publically-funded education might not be the best system, but it's better than any of the alternatives.
That's a pretty ridiculous concept, actually, considering that the free market of competition helps the poor more than it helps the rich.
How do you figure that ?
For example, look at Jiffy Lube. Sure, everyone can probably change their oil themselves, but I get my oil changes for all my vehicles for $17.99 (with coupon) at Jiffy Lube. So do a lot of poor people.
Exactly. And because you're "rich", you have more disposable income leftover after paying for a service with a price set so the poor can afford it.
How, exactly, are the "poor" benefitting more than you in this situation ?
Can you provide even a _theoretical_ example of the free market benefitting the poor more than the rich ?
If a school took advantage of the poor, another school who cares for the income would step up.
More likely, the school closes because it isn't profitable and nothing opens to replace it.
Show me one truely competitive market that is bad to the poor -- I haven't found any in all my history of debating this debate.
This is such a blatantly loaded challenge (and substantially different to your initial assertion) that it's not at all surprising you've "never found" anyone who can meet it.
Startup sound on login is not Linux starting up. It is the desktop environment starting. Gnome and KDE are not Linux.
Congratulations. You have succesfully focused so closely on irrelevant semantics that the point has flown right over your head and made it safely home.
MS insisting that the startup sound be tolerable after 1000 times hearing it alludes to the fact that they know how unstable and badly architected Windows (including Vista) is.
Why is that, exactly ?
You *do* realise the vast majority of people turn their computer off every night, right ? And that a fairly significant proportion power their machines on and off multiple times a day ?
And no, this is not a direct correlation to Gnome/KDE startup sounds, which would only be played when Gnome/KDE or X is started, not the entire OS.
So just like this sound, which will play on login, right ?
OSX, iirc, embeds the Mac startup sound in the harware, so it plays long before the desktop reaches memory.
WTF has that got to do with anything ?
As for the sound itself, the four notes immediately struck me as a blatant attempt at brand strengthening.
You do realise that's one of the purposes of these sorts of things, right ? On *every* platform ?
The mind boggles at what some people will whine about...
Windows NT is a single user operating system that allows multiple, but not simultanious logins, unix and linux are true multi-user systems.
Windows NT is, and always has been, a multiuser OS.
Unix and linux are posix complient, which windows is only barely able to manage in any incarnation, and conform to open standards for operating system design, NT doesn't.
What "open standards for operating system design" ?
Unix and linux are more easily bent to the distributed processing model, by their design, the availability and low cost of software, and their multi-core support.
You need to be more specific. Windows NT was designed from the ground up for multiprocessor systems and supported them a lot better than Linux did, a lot sooner.
Linux has more efficient process management.
You need to be more specific.
Windows NT is moderatelly competant in it's role, but not superior to unix or linux.
There are numerous areas where Windows NT is superior or, at worst, equivalent.
Windows NT does not implement pipes.
What definition of "implement" are you using here ? AFAIK Windows NT has pipes.
A goodly portion of the unix and linux code was written for the love of coding, producing undeniably superior results. This is, I will admit, a subjective view, but one that is shared by many.
I doubt there are many people working on NT who don't enjoy coding.
Most of your complaints sound very much like "it isn't unix, so it sucks". That's an opinion you're welcome to, but UNIX is not Operating System utopia - it's not even close.
No one, or company should be allowed to act this way in any modern society.
Uh, on the "corporate evilness" scale, the _worst_ thing Microsoft has ever done would struggle to get past the bottom quarter.
Geeks living in their basements need to get out into the real world and acquire some perspective if they think Microsoft is a standout example of corporate "arrogance" or "misbehaviour".
In a free market, Windows XP would become cheaper and due to the fact that it's battle-tested, will probably be more desirable for some time, than Vista.
What other commercial software are you thinking of that behaves like this ?
I actually don't think much needs to be done to break the Microsoft monopoly. Unlike when the first Anti-trust law was going on, there is now a real choice of operating system.
The variety of choice then was no worse (or better, it must be said) than it is now. *Especially* when you don't take hindsight into account.
There have *always* be viable, functionally equivalent alternatives to Windows (and all other pieces of Microsoft software).
What I'd like to know is what in the hell is going on with the Aero theme that it is so absurdly demanding on the hardware.
It's not.
I guess I don't understand the intricacies of what's going on because I see no reason whatsoever for a GUI to be more damanding than any contemporary PC game. The only excuse I see is sloppy and inefficient programming. It really leaves me with the impression that one of the big goals of Vista is to promote hardware sales.
The minimum video card for Aero is ~5 years old. A modern equivalent costs US$30ish. How well do "contemporary" games run well on such video cards ?
New OS' from Redmond always need more CPU and RAM. Interestingly, I was also recently shocked at how usable Tiger was on a G3 233 with 256MB RAM. DARN usable. Try that with a current MS OS and hardware built in 1999!:)
If you find Tiger "usable" on a 233Mhz G3 (_especially_ a laptop) then XP is going to be - at worst - similarly "usable" on a ca. 1999 PC.
Unless you're applying double standards, of course...
I've been using Windows since 3.0, and I must say, this is the first major version (I'm not counting ME) that has me completely uninterested in upgrading my PC. It's not just the hardware requirement; I'll buy a new PC. It's just that I appear to be getting a slightly upgraded XP that has as it's major feature a cool windowing system and a lot of DRM thrown into the box.
Which is a rather strange attitude, because from a technical perspective, Vista is probably the biggest Windows update ever released...
I installed VIsta RC2 on an old PC I had spare - 900Mhz P3, 768MB RAM, 20G 5400rpm drive, 64M GeForce 5200. Mainly to compare to my 1Ghz iBook (768MB, 40G 5400rpm) running OS X. I used the machine for a solid week to get a good feel for it.
I was pleasantly surprised. Vista is noticably more responsive on the PC than OS X is on the iBook, and quite usable for basic tasks. Some more RAM would certainly be nice (on the iBook to) but it's far from unusable.
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Actually, this is an excellent example.
Well, I agree that it *is* a good example, but not for proving the point you're trying to make.
It clearly shows that the GPL is by no means business unfriendly for the developers/copyright holders, only for others who wish to profit off their work without contributing back.
On the contrary, it conveniently shows that the GPL is not "business friendly", simply from the existence of a dual license. If the GPL was "business friendly", the dual licensing wouldn't be necessary.
The point here is that you can't make money selling GPLed software, without tying it to some other product.
You have little to lose from the GPL unless you want absolute control, but potentially much to gain if there are enough interested contributors.
What you have to lose from the GPL is the likelihood of ever selling your software. What you have to gain is the relatively remote possibility that other people will be nice enough to improve your product for free.
Who derives a primary revenue stream only from selling software?
Microsoft. Most game companies. There's no shortage of companies (or corporate departments) who derive most of their money from selling software (or software licenses).
Most software companies also sell support, either per incident or through a contract. Training tends to be quite lucrative as well. I find it humorous how much is spent on training and support for e.g. IBM/Rational and Oracle products somewhere that I won't mention, but I can't argue that it's a good business model for the vendors.
I didn't say companies who had _no_ other sources of revenue, I said companies who derive most of their money from software sales. The GPL makes that essentially impossible and, hence, removes those companies' business models. *THAT* is why TrollTech dual-licence QT - because they know if they didn't they would have a great deal of trouble making enough money to stay in business.
What I find ironic is that even the people who steadfastly insist the GPL is "business friendly" usually do so in the same breath they say "because you can just dual license" - seemingly unaware they're shooting down their own argument.
I don't have X or any bloatware desktop running at startup so I log into to the VT console and , guess what , I don't get a startup sound. So , where does your "irrelevant semantics" argument fit in now exactly?
For the kind of people Microsoft (and Apple, for that matter) create startup sounds for, "Computer" == "Windows" (or "OS X"). That there is, technically, a distinction between the hardware starting, the kernel starting, the GUI starting (or not) and a login event is completely and utterly irrelevant to them.
But men, by contrast, find many of their innate predispositions largely useless. You can hunt for fun, (provided you avoid the Vice President); you can go to the gym and do your feats of strength; you can get into fights in the street and end up in jail; and you can join the army and fight -- but these are choices with many obvious drawbacks.
This is why we have sport. Sport is, essentially, an outlet for all the "manly stuff" that "men" don't get to do anymore. Team sport is basically warfare without all the dying and stuff.
Computer games, of course, are so lazy people can do it without having to get all hot and sweaty.
Not necessarily... Trolltech was under proessure to release QT under the GPL. They did it ... did it hurt their business? Not in the slightest... in fact, they became even more successful.
Poor example. QT is dual licensed (the GPLed version is only usable if you are developing GPLed software).
Ninenine has an axe to grind with free software, that's all. His "GPL'ing a product has NEVER been successful for the company or person owning it" just shows how uninformed he is.
Who derives a primary revenue stream only from selling GPLed software ?
Making computer science more appealing in general would do oodles more for getting more women in the system than anything else.
Have you considered that computer science isn't more appealing to women in general because it's computer science ?
Actually, for the most part there had been a decent amount of female students in Comp.Sci. classes. However, it's seemed to decline a bit more recently. Whereas a couple years ago (I believe it was about five or six) the local college had an almost 50/50 ratio of men to women in the Computer Programming Technology/Analyst course. This past year there where no females whatsoever.
That's because those women were in it for the money, whereas the blokes are in it because they're interested.
Wrong. The question should be about respecting private property of all kinds, no matter who it belongs to. The alternative is a slippery slope on which the government tells you what you are allowed and aren't allowed to own.
The Government already tells you that.
In addition, there are fundamental differences between "copyrights" (and patents, etc) and "property". Information and ideas are not physical property and are fundamentally different to physical property, no matter how much certain people might try to tell you otherwise and no matter how many attempts there are to create laws dictating otherwise.
I can't decide whether Sun has balls of spent Uranium or if they're just really disparate. Possibly both. But I really like this, and I hope their services and hardware businesses benefit accordingly.
Sun makes the vast bulk of their money from hardware sales and support. They have little (if anything) to lose from GPLing Solaris.
Contrast this to, say, Microsoft, who makes most of their money from software sales. Clearly, GPLing their software would be financial suicide.
Sun has made some of the worst strategic decisions in the IT industry for the past decade or so. Why would GPL'ing their main products be any better? Where are they going to make money? Bake sales? Are they going to pay their people with warm fuzzy feelings? Yeah, Sun may do it. But I'm betting it'll kill them long term. In fact, now may be a good time to short the stock, and expect the payoff to be complete in about 5 years.
Sun will make money exactly the same way they do now - hardware sales and support contract.
Solaris has never been a significant revenue stream for Sun. Heck, they haven't even had a nominal charge on it for years.
GPL'ing a product has NEVER been successful for the company or person owning it. This won't be any different.
Well, it'd be pretty disastrous for a company with a revenue stream derived primarily from software sales, but that hardly describes Sun.
I'm against publicly funded education entirely [...]
While it's not at all surprising someone thinks the public education system could be improved (and from what I've gathered, the US has one of the worst systems in the world), the mind-boggling clusterfuck that would result from fully-privatised education would be infinitely worse.
(Unless, of course, you're trying to go back to the good old days of distinct societal classes, in which case it'd work a treat.)
Universal, publically-funded education might not be the best system, but it's better than any of the alternatives.
That's a pretty ridiculous concept, actually, considering that the free market of competition helps the poor more than it helps the rich.
How do you figure that ?
For example, look at Jiffy Lube. Sure, everyone can probably change their oil themselves, but I get my oil changes for all my vehicles for $17.99 (with coupon) at Jiffy Lube. So do a lot of poor people.
Exactly. And because you're "rich", you have more disposable income leftover after paying for a service with a price set so the poor can afford it.
How, exactly, are the "poor" benefitting more than you in this situation ?
Can you provide even a _theoretical_ example of the free market benefitting the poor more than the rich ?
If a school took advantage of the poor, another school who cares for the income would step up.
More likely, the school closes because it isn't profitable and nothing opens to replace it.
Show me one truely competitive market that is bad to the poor -- I haven't found any in all my history of debating this debate.
This is such a blatantly loaded challenge (and substantially different to your initial assertion) that it's not at all surprising you've "never found" anyone who can meet it.
Startup sound on login is not Linux starting up. It is the desktop environment starting. Gnome and KDE are not Linux.
Congratulations. You have succesfully focused so closely on irrelevant semantics that the point has flown right over your head and made it safely home.
MS insisting that the startup sound be tolerable after 1000 times hearing it alludes to the fact that they know how unstable and badly architected Windows (including Vista) is.
Why is that, exactly ?
You *do* realise the vast majority of people turn their computer off every night, right ? And that a fairly significant proportion power their machines on and off multiple times a day ?
And no, this is not a direct correlation to Gnome/KDE startup sounds, which would only be played when Gnome/KDE or X is started, not the entire OS.
So just like this sound, which will play on login, right ?
OSX, iirc, embeds the Mac startup sound in the harware, so it plays long before the desktop reaches memory.
WTF has that got to do with anything ?
As for the sound itself, the four notes immediately struck me as a blatant attempt at brand strengthening.
You do realise that's one of the purposes of these sorts of things, right ? On *every* platform ?
The mind boggles at what some people will whine about...
Yes, they do. Certainly every distro I've ever used that includes GNOME or KDE has some sort of startup sound when they login.
(That sound you hear when you turn on your Mac is NOT the operating system starting.)
Doesn't matter. As far as Apple marketing (which is why these sorts of soundbits exist) is concerned, Mac == OS X.
Windows NT is a single user operating system that allows multiple, but not simultanious logins, unix and linux are true multi-user systems.
Windows NT is, and always has been, a multiuser OS.
Unix and linux are posix complient, which windows is only barely able to manage in any incarnation, and conform to open standards for operating system design, NT doesn't.
What "open standards for operating system design" ?
Unix and linux are more easily bent to the distributed processing model, by their design, the availability and low cost of software, and their multi-core support.
You need to be more specific. Windows NT was designed from the ground up for multiprocessor systems and supported them a lot better than Linux did, a lot sooner.
Linux has more efficient process management.
You need to be more specific.
Windows NT is moderatelly competant in it's role, but not superior to unix or linux.
There are numerous areas where Windows NT is superior or, at worst, equivalent.
Windows NT does not implement pipes.
What definition of "implement" are you using here ? AFAIK Windows NT has pipes.
A goodly portion of the unix and linux code was written for the love of coding, producing undeniably superior results. This is, I will admit, a subjective view, but one that is shared by many.
I doubt there are many people working on NT who don't enjoy coding.
Most of your complaints sound very much like "it isn't unix, so it sucks". That's an opinion you're welcome to, but UNIX is not Operating System utopia - it's not even close.
Forcing users to pay for features they don't use is what an evil monopoly does.
By that measure, I can't think of a single company I've ever dealt with that doesn't qualify as an "evil monopoly".
No one, or company should be allowed to act this way in any modern society.
Uh, on the "corporate evilness" scale, the _worst_ thing Microsoft has ever done would struggle to get past the bottom quarter.
Geeks living in their basements need to get out into the real world and acquire some perspective if they think Microsoft is a standout example of corporate "arrogance" or "misbehaviour".
In a free market, Windows XP would become cheaper and due to the fact that it's battle-tested, will probably be more desirable for some time, than Vista.
What other commercial software are you thinking of that behaves like this ?
I actually don't think much needs to be done to break the Microsoft monopoly. Unlike when the first Anti-trust law was going on, there is now a real choice of operating system.
The variety of choice then was no worse (or better, it must be said) than it is now. *Especially* when you don't take hindsight into account.
There have *always* be viable, functionally equivalent alternatives to Windows (and all other pieces of Microsoft software).
Does anyone have a side by side comparison with OS 10.4?
I do. See this post.
What I'd like to know is what in the hell is going on with the Aero theme that it is so absurdly demanding on the hardware.
It's not.
I guess I don't understand the intricacies of what's going on because I see no reason whatsoever for a GUI to be more damanding than any contemporary PC game. The only excuse I see is sloppy and inefficient programming. It really leaves me with the impression that one of the big goals of Vista is to promote hardware sales.
The minimum video card for Aero is ~5 years old. A modern equivalent costs US$30ish. How well do "contemporary" games run well on such video cards ?
New OS' from Redmond always need more CPU and RAM. Interestingly, I was also recently shocked at how usable Tiger was on a G3 233 with 256MB RAM. DARN usable. Try that with a current MS OS and hardware built in 1999! :)
If you find Tiger "usable" on a 233Mhz G3 (_especially_ a laptop) then XP is going to be - at worst - similarly "usable" on a ca. 1999 PC.
Unless you're applying double standards, of course...
I've been using Windows since 3.0, and I must say, this is the first major version (I'm not counting ME) that has me completely uninterested in upgrading my PC. It's not just the hardware requirement; I'll buy a new PC. It's just that I appear to be getting a slightly upgraded XP that has as it's major feature a cool windowing system and a lot of DRM thrown into the box.
Which is a rather strange attitude, because from a technical perspective, Vista is probably the biggest Windows update ever released...
pardon me, but I'm 40, a parent, and frankly I know more about operating systems then my son does, and he's supposedly adept at computers.
Then you should be able to explain how/why linux and unix are "real operating systems" and Windows NT isn't.
While you're at it, can you explain why using 'then' instead of 'than' is such a common error ? At 40, you should be able to offer a good perspective.
I installed VIsta RC2 on an old PC I had spare - 900Mhz P3, 768MB RAM, 20G 5400rpm drive, 64M GeForce 5200. Mainly to compare to my 1Ghz iBook (768MB, 40G 5400rpm) running OS X. I used the machine for a solid week to get a good feel for it.
I was pleasantly surprised. Vista is noticably more responsive on the PC than OS X is on the iBook, and quite usable for basic tasks. Some more RAM would certainly be nice (on the iBook to) but it's far from unusable.