From the posted items, it appears the infringement claims may be based on either copyright or patents or both, and that the jurisdiction may be European. As I'm also not a lawyer, the following information may be highly irrelevant, though I hope it's illuminating.
First, it's not clear that there are legal grounds to pull the plug an an entire website based on alleged but not (at least publicly) specified infringemnt. If nothing else, ISPs may face significant backlash risks for violating common carrier covenants to provide equal service to all without prejudice. My reading of the US DMCA (Millenium Copyright Act) is that protection against copyright infringment on the part of customers is offered in return for a clarification of common-carrier status, and liability limitations. This is US law and doesn't apply in the UK, but a similar legal tradition exists there.
Second, there is precedent under US law of a similar type of reverse engineering in the case of either Sega v. Accolade or Atari v. Nintendo (I don't recall which, and it may have been another, but these are the two major cases in the area, and the subject was gaming). The basic premise was that the defendant's hardware require both reverse engineering of software to allow cartridges to run on it, and a literal copying of some small portion (14 bytes?) of code was required by the security or authentication mechanism of the console, including, IIRC, an encoded trademark. These were held to have functional, not expressive, attributes, and the defendents won in both cases.
I suspect a bit of bluster here, and while I wouldn't run for shelter in the information I've provided, I might look to it for some ideas for defense.
I thought that the idea of Slashdot and moderation was that important, insightful, or otherwise high-quality posts would filter to the top.
If Slashdot can't handle bug reports in the article pages, it should at least have a bug reporting system which is open to public access. I don't see this on the slashlist or main page -- and there are certainly enough bug tracking systems around (Bugzilla, etc.).
Believe it or not, there are those of us around who like how/. works, but would like to see the process of helping it work better democratized further. GO ALL THE WAY.
Per your request, this page has also be emailed to you.
This is good, with the possible problem that there are probably a fair number of redundant story submissions, which the moderating process won't handle terribly well. There might need to be some way of clustering a group of related topic posts together. The current moderation system doesn allow for this, there would have to be some sort of editorializing function to do this -- actually saying "foo is similar to bar but is dissimilar to baz".
...though, thinking, there might be a way to indication "relatedness" between stories. Stories with sufficiently high relatedness would appear on the same page. Sort of like Google or some of those idea management software things. Of course, the relatedness level could be set by users. Hmm....
I've asked Rob for a general discussion page, and/or a moderators issues page, several times, he's always nixed it. His argument is that he'd rather get mail on a topic because he reads his mail (funny -- I got an automated rejection to a story item I'd posted but wanted to give him an additional update on). To me this says he doesn't trust Slashdot to do what it should do: let the community bring up issues and moderate up the ones it thinks are important.
I end up posting "about Slashdot" issues to other fora, notably InfoWorld under the "Readers Roam" or "Readers Choice" columns, where a few intelligent minds are known to wander.
Slashdot is an interesting mix -- it's community voice, but only on those topics Slashdot has deemed we should talk about. I'm starting to find this limiting, and view the site a bit more as a news portal than as a discussion. Some things are excellent though -- last week's Bruce Schneier interview was one of the best online-interview format discussions I've ever seen.
Any other suggestions for a good Usenet search engine?
My current choice is Deja, though I hate what's happened to the site as it's been portalized. I use an alternate page. Actually, I've created my own simplified, localhost search pages for the major search engines I frequent -- I don't actually hit the sites until I get results.
There are also tools like dejasearch which provide a command-line interface to search engines, and compile results to a single, local, file for later browsing.
That said, what alternative Usenet archives are there? I've used Remarq on the odd occasion, though it strikes me as too busy and unfriendly as well. Pity.
Sane stuff is for the users (and other developers) to decide. It can include both software issues (features, bugs, supported platforms) and development models (especially "cathedral" vs. "bazaar" models). Where dual licensing is possible, it may even include licensing terms.
The key really isn't forking so much as it's the opportunity to re-merge divergant development paths down the road. SCSL is a non-forkable license -- it's not possible to fork the code base, though, as Mr. Joy rather ineptly points out, it is possible to "fork" the feature set, buy reimplementing from scratch. Incidentally, one fact he declines to mention in his commentary is that Sun makes a not-very-thinly veiled threat to use its other IP rights -- namely patents -- to go after anyone who attempts to pursue independent development.
What's interesting to note is that Joy's other license is a fork-only license. BSD allows software to be incorporated into other projects under different licensing terms (includin proprietary terms). In other words, it greatly facilitates forking. What it does not provide for is re-merging these divergent development threads downstream. It's possible that the BSD license is, in large part, to blame for the oft-cited forking of Unix.
The GNU GPL, and other equivalent "Copyleft" licenses, are among the few which provide the essential facilties to both allow forking (users have rights to modify and redistribute modifications) and re-merging of divergent paths: all derived works must be developed under the same terms as the original work, and are therefor fully legally capable of being reintegrated.
...if you want another example of a company which "suddenly emerged". Wal-Mart's market presence was first really noted in the 1980s. The firm had been around since the 1950s (possibly earlier), and was almost completely missed in a competitive analysis done by Sears in the 1970s, except for a brief mention.
It's the lilly-pad (or bacteria) growth phenomenon -- a long period of slow but steady exponential growth takes you from too small to notice to "bit player" to "how'd we miss that!" -- much faster than the old school cares for. It's also why momentum is important.
...in a Nutshell books are quick references for the experienced user, administrator, or developer.
Essential System Administration is a (reasonably) comprehensive guide to administering Unix (and Unix-like) systems -- from single-user workstations to large commercial installations. The emphasis is more on topics which might be encountered in a commercial (or academic) setting than for single-user issues, though it's helpful for both. Emphasis is on maintaining and administering an existing site, not on setting up a new one. x86-specific hardware issues are not covered in much detail.
Running Linux is principally aimed at the new user. Much of the book is aimed at identifying hardware issues, getting Linux installed, setting up subsystems, brief tutorials to editors and other tools, a short introduction to system administration, networking a standalone dialup system, etc. There's also a bit of background for the user transitioning from DOS or (shudder) Windows.
Another excellent book, IMO, is Nemeth, et al, "the red book" -- The Unix Administrator's Handbook. Slightly rustier even than the Frisch book, it's got a solid grounding in experience and philosophy of Unix administration that can't be beat.
Yes, the books serve different audiences. I own all three.
The three-fingered salute can be made to work under Linux as it does for Windows, and it's enabled by default in many distributions. It requires a line 'ctrlaltdel' in/etc/init.
This allows any user sitting at the console to shut down the system safely.
If it's the same as for an existing X server, you'll get an error. If it's different, and the gods smile on you, you'll get a second X session in a different virtual console.
I suspect a reason there isn't more GNOME coverage is the lead time involved in bringing a book to press. Final drafts would have just been being completed at about the time the <cough> 1.0 release of GNOME appeared. Too little time to develop material on a product that was too unstable to recommend to the newbie.
GNOME has progressed significanlty though.
Remember, despite internet time, publishers still operate on a schedule.
I suspect a reason there isn't more GNOME coverage is the lead time involved in bringing a book to press. Final drafts would have just been being completed at about the time the 1.0 release of GNOME appeared. Too little time to develop material on a product that was too unstable to recommend to the newbie.
GNOME has progressed significanlty though.
Remember, despite internet time, publishers still operate on a schedule.
SAS's big push for the past five years has been data warehousing -- it's a growth path outside their traditional academic, DP, insurance, pharmaceutical, and healthcare business. Good as they are, they're having trouble competing due to the cost and complexity of their solutions.
eCommerce is nothing if not a huge data gathering operation -- all of it live and on line -- with incredible opportunities to study customer behavior in detail. (For what it's worth, I see both sides of the ethical coin here -- DW is great for my wallet but really bad for my conscience, and I'm one of those people who pays cash, doesn't get the "club card" at the local grocery store, and supplies false information when I do -- Seymour Cray buys my milk and cereal).
Example: eToys got through Christmas last year with a cluster of 90 P-class PCs running Linux and MySQL. They're not running big Iron, they've just started making the mistake of going to Oracle (well, I can understand why they're doing it but they'll live to regret it as well). Point being -- the growth area right now isn't happening on MVS, NT, or even Solaris. These are Linux or xBSD shops, and that's where their expertise lies.
SI are more than welcome to unload the clip into their own foot if they want, but I'm not planning on waiting around to mop up the blood. I'll note that SI have been supporting Linux for their IntrNet product for a couple of years now. But the main products are not available.
The news that I've heard is that a code port has been done. Some problems were encountered, but they were resolved with the help of RedHat. The question is whether or not Linux fits with SAS Institute's (SI) traditional customer base and business model. SAS is a mature product, with about 30,000 installed sites, roughly 2% base growth per year, and 16% revenue growth in 1998. 52% of revenues are still related to mainframe platforms (with 27% PC and 17% Unix). In short: a market that's not exactly bleeding edge, with more blood being squeezed from the same old turnips.
SAS programmers have been known to rant about several other shortcomings....
My feeling is that SAS will come around to supporting Linux eventually. They might even surprise me and make an announcement in the next few weeks -- it's regional user group conference time, a favorite time of year to announce new products (their latest release, v7, has been featured for the last four years running <g>....). But I'd put the probability at about 25%. A leaked internal discussion indicates that there are serious internal conflicts over marketing, and until Jim Goodnight says "SAS will run on Linux", it's not going to happen. I tend to get good information both directly and through the mailing list I maintain, and I've heard nothing. Might try shaking the bushes a bit....
However the open source movement has gathered momentum to the point that SAS is simply going to miss out. Flexible tools, source, server-based and distributed applications, are the new wave. SAS has got itself a neat little niche, but it's got an uphill grade -- getting steeper -- if it wants to catch up with the new wave.
[1] Yeah, I know the site's stale. The sad news is that it's current -- there's simply nothing to report. The mailing list carries more current information, but it's also tooooo quite....
The implementation probably varies by vendor, but every solution I'm familiar with requires recomputation when adding records.
As a result, the usual model for generating a data store is to update the MDDB on a periodic basis rather than on a record-by-record basis. How often depends on the quantity of data and the immediacy of your needs. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual schedules are all used. Keep in mind that there is often (usually <g>) much more processing involved in ensuring data quality and integrity than with simply updating the data store. In businesses I've been involved with (healthcare, finance, pharmaceuticals), 30 - 90 day data lags are commonplace.
Result of this is that typically a "data warehouse" distributes "data marts" -- periodic updates or versions of the data store -- on a regular basis.
I've been programming SAS for seven years, and have begun exploring open source alternatives. I don't know of any general solutions, but components exist.
What specific features do you need in an OLAP tool? Among those I can think of:
Raw data parser -- equivalent to the SAS data step, awk, or Perl -- something to turn raw ASCII (or EBSIDC, or binary) to structured data.
Procedural data language -- a general-use language for string manipulation, numeric conversion, arithetic, date and time manipulation and conversion, statistical functions, probability and statistical functions, data and flow control, etc. Similar to Perl, the SAS data step, PL/I.
Statistical and summarization functions -- at a minimum, frequencies, univariate statistics, ranking, and correlation procedures. R, Perl, and other solutions can provide these.
Performance, scalability, and efficiency options -- basic data manipulation should be quick and efficient, the solution should scale to terabyte or petabyte size data stores, and system resources should be used efficiently with respect to memory, CPU, storage, and bandwidth.
Graphics capability -- ability to generate business and scientific plots and charts.
A data store, or data stores, or interfaces to existing data stores (eg: RDBMSs).
A multidimensional data model.
Metadata management, including descriptions, validation rules, and business rules.
Task control and scheduling.
Front-end development tools.
Interactive data exploration and analysis tools.
I'm not saying that a solution should have all of these features, but they are, in rough ranking, the ones I'd be looking for. My preferred model is to build a solution from existing components, or at least structure it from multiple modules, rather than look for a single integrated system. One thing SAS has taught me is that this isn't the best way to fly.
Anyone else have thoughts on relative importance, unnecessary items, or other features they would want to see?
These are Linux distros with Windows-based installation programs. That's the novel feature -- the installation is like any other Windows program. Simplified transition for the newbie.
Both distros also run on UMSDOS (the Unix on DOS file system), a feature which has been around for ages. It means that you don't need to repartition or create filesystems to run Linux (it also means you can blow away Linux from within Windows or DOS).
Neither distro "runs on top of" windows in an executable sense. You get a dual-boot system. You choose, either, or. But both installation and execution (icon-based launcher) are streamlined.
These aren't power-user systems, they're introductory packages for getting Linux to the masses. Realize that a tool is a tool, and there are different tools for different problems. I think it's a neat concept. I probably won't install it myself (I'd have to go out and buy Windows first....).
I've been working with Michelle Kraus of OpenSales as a member of the free software community in reviewing their license, and am familiar with it and the status of the product.
Suffice to say, both exist, there should be further announcements in October, and we hope the open source and free software communities are thrilled to pieces.
The product is has its roots in the eCommerce engine driving eToys. There are currently six clients, the code base is mature, and the first public release is meant to be production-level, usable code.
The OpenMerchant Community Source License is still being hammered out, there should only be minor changes in details remaining to be changed. It is similar in spirit to the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) -- it should meet the FSF's definition of Copyleft, and should be compliant with the Open Source Definition (OSD) by the Open Source Initiative. It provides specific additional protections for patent and trademark which aren't addressed in the GPL or LGPL.
The following is an interpretation of the license, but not a legal description of it, naturally.
The OpenMerchant Community Source License allows all licensees to use, reproduce, modify, perform, sublicense, distribute, and transmit the licensed work. Other contributors retain copyright to their code but grant license to use modifications under terms of the license. It allows the work to be incorporated into larger works, but requires that all modules, interface definition files, compile and install code, or diffs be considered part of the covered work.
The primary differences from the GNU licenses are extended language on other forms of intellectual property. Necessary grantable patent rights are granted by both the original developer and subsequent modifiers. Use of trademarks of developers is not granted (but you don't have to strip them from the code if they exist there). The original developer reserves the right to distribute its own code (but not contributed modifications) under other terms (a right granted anyway under law, but reported as a good-faith and statement of intent matter).
Distribution of modifications is addressed. These are similar to the [L]GPL, though distinctions between research and commercial use are made. The language tidies up issues now facing the GPL such as use of software on servers -- this is considered commercial, and requires distribution of modificiations. Language similar to the IBM Public License (IPSL, which covers Jikes) and the Netscape Public License (NPL) regarding third party legal claims. Licensee rights to enforce -- any licensee may enforce obligations of the license, though they can't drag other licensees into the fight.
License versioning is similar to GPL, IPSL, NPL, and others -- software may be licensed under the current or future versions of the license.
The termination language includes specific protection against patent infringement claims by licensees, which I think is particularly clever and effective. IBM has also developed some interesting twists which might be reviewed for comparison.
There are the typical disclaimers of liability and warrantee for free software.
Additional language pertains to government use, terms of interpretation and enforcement, jurisdiction, etc.
I DL'd the HPUX version and tried it for an hour or so. Pretty much the same. New buttons are annoying. Things like font sizing are no more convenient to adjust (under *nix, the <ctrl>-[ and <ctrl>-] controls don't work), and any number of other interface bugs are retained. Session finally died in a blaze of glory trying to navigate through the Swatch site (see elsewhere -- popup windows) with Java and Javascript on but images off.
Facelift. Nothing new. Sticking with 4.61 (bugs, warts and all). Wish I had something better. Hoping to give Mozilla following a few other system changes.
Each of these options is to die or (if you're thinking more clearly), to kill for.
<rant> KFM -- the times that I used it -- seemed a nice, minimal, fairly lightweight browser. I use Lynx a fair bit but it suffers grossly from poor page design. Opera is supposed to have a good, clean, client. How about a browser that's just a fscking browser, people? Any other suggestions out there? </rant>
I've been following a discussion on this very topic, with RMS present.
He doesn't care for the term "viral". IMO it's somewhat accurate, not pejorative, and is actually a hot buzzword among Internet-related VCs -- viral marketing is what the idea behind HotMail was dubbed.
Alternative terms suggested:
hereditary -- the terms of the GPL are inherited by all derivative works.
inherited license -- the GPL license is (must be) passed on to all derivative works.
partnership -- the GPL creates|fosters a partnership among developers and users.
persistant -- the GPL license and terms persist through all derivative works.
I'd just as soon the proponents of the GPL latched on to the term "viral" as a positive portrayal of the nature of the license.
First off, the product isn't licensed as free software or OSI Certified -- because there's not yet either product or a license (which is to say, WRT product, there's a program, but it's not yet product).
From what I've pieced together of comments of Larry's (SVLUG), web blurbs (his, others), and the license sketch currently on the download site, terms will be liberal but not quite free. Larry likes the idea of free software, but isn't convinced he can make a commercial go of it all in and of itself. Specifically, my impression was that the source is available and hackable (a specific requirement of Alan Cox, per Larry).
Given that his business model right now is sort of half-software house, half-consulting services (SW: BitKeeper and others, services, Hunkin' Big Clusters), I'd like to hope he eventually discovers he doesn't have to worry quite so much about this. Along the lines of Cygnus.
For insight on licensing, you might want to read:
The current COPYING file of the BitKeeper FTP archive.
An LWN feature on BitKeeper and its licensing|business model.
Note that the most commonly cited alternatives to Larry's solution all have pretty heavy consequences:
Sun Community Source License. As the wags say, it's the (Sun Community) + (Source License), not the (Sun) + (Community Source License). Sun gets some hefty rights reserved to itself, largely so that it can continue to control the direction software to benefit itself.
The Alladin Ghostscript licensing method -- what's been called "Delayed Public License" -- software is licensed under the GPL (largely because Peter Deutsch promised RMS that he always would) -- but only after an initial period in which the software is covered by a proprietary license. This means that the OSS version of the software is always slightly behind the proprietary version.
Shareware|Freeware -- there's lots of software out there that's cost-free to use, but the source isn't available. Convenient, yes. Full benefits of free software, no.
The BitKeeper license is most like the SCSL, though the intent seems to be to build a code escrow term into it which reverts to GPL should BitKeeper fold or fail to maintain the source.
Addressing specific points of your post, certain libs of BitKeeper will be GPLd or LGPLd, allowing them to be redistributed or incorporated into projects under terms of the GNU [L]GPL.
WRT your bugfix and feature comments -- the BitKeeper license is oriented around limiting potential for fragmentation. It's got some elements of the common view of the xBSD development model (centrally controlled cabal), and I'll share your view that this is, if not a Bad Thing, at least a Thing of Questionable Worth (TM).
I can't see how your last point (source is still closed) stands with your other arguments. The source is available, it can be reviewd, modified, and mucked with, It's not compliante with the OSD, but it's certainly not proprietary either.
Larry's blazing a new path here, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Slashdot Mirror
From the posted items, it appears the infringement claims may be based on either copyright or patents or both, and that the jurisdiction may be European. As I'm also not a lawyer, the following information may be highly irrelevant, though I hope it's illuminating.
First, it's not clear that there are legal grounds to pull the plug an an entire website based on alleged but not (at least publicly) specified infringemnt. If nothing else, ISPs may face significant backlash risks for violating common carrier covenants to provide equal service to all without prejudice. My reading of the US DMCA (Millenium Copyright Act) is that protection against copyright infringment on the part of customers is offered in return for a clarification of common-carrier status, and liability limitations. This is US law and doesn't apply in the UK, but a similar legal tradition exists there.
Second, there is precedent under US law of a similar type of reverse engineering in the case of either Sega v. Accolade or Atari v. Nintendo (I don't recall which, and it may have been another, but these are the two major cases in the area, and the subject was gaming). The basic premise was that the defendant's hardware require both reverse engineering of software to allow cartridges to run on it, and a literal copying of some small portion (14 bytes?) of code was required by the security or authentication mechanism of the console, including, IIRC, an encoded trademark. These were held to have functional, not expressive, attributes, and the defendents won in both cases.
I suspect a bit of bluster here, and while I wouldn't run for shelter in the information I've provided, I might look to it for some ideas for defense.
Very good point. Unfortunately, I can't post and mod, could someone else catch this?
I thought that the idea of Slashdot and moderation was that important, insightful, or otherwise high-quality posts would filter to the top.
If Slashdot can't handle bug reports in the article pages, it should at least have a bug reporting system which is open to public access. I don't see this on the slashlist or main page -- and there are certainly enough bug tracking systems around (Bugzilla, etc.).
Believe it or not, there are those of us around who like how /. works, but would like to see the process of helping it work better democratized further. GO ALL THE WAY.
Per your request, this page has also be emailed to you.
This is good, with the possible problem that there are probably a fair number of redundant story submissions, which the moderating process won't handle terribly well. There might need to be some way of clustering a group of related topic posts together. The current moderation system doesn allow for this, there would have to be some sort of editorializing function to do this -- actually saying "foo is similar to bar but is dissimilar to baz".
...though, thinking, there might be a way to indication "relatedness" between stories. Stories with sufficiently high relatedness would appear on the same page. Sort of like Google or some of those idea management software things. Of course, the relatedness level could be set by users. Hmm....
I've asked Rob for a general discussion page, and/or a moderators issues page, several times, he's always nixed it. His argument is that he'd rather get mail on a topic because he reads his mail (funny -- I got an automated rejection to a story item I'd posted but wanted to give him an additional update on). To me this says he doesn't trust Slashdot to do what it should do: let the community bring up issues and moderate up the ones it thinks are important.
I end up posting "about Slashdot" issues to other fora, notably InfoWorld under the "Readers Roam" or "Readers Choice" columns, where a few intelligent minds are known to wander.
Slashdot is an interesting mix -- it's community voice, but only on those topics Slashdot has deemed we should talk about. I'm starting to find this limiting, and view the site a bit more as a news portal than as a discussion. Some things are excellent though -- last week's Bruce Schneier interview was one of the best online-interview format discussions I've ever seen.
Any other suggestions for a good Usenet search engine?
My current choice is Deja, though I hate what's happened to the site as it's been portalized. I use an alternate page. Actually, I've created my own simplified, localhost search pages for the major search engines I frequent -- I don't actually hit the sites until I get results.
There are also tools like dejasearch which provide a command-line interface to search engines, and compile results to a single, local, file for later browsing.
That said, what alternative Usenet archives are there? I've used Remarq on the odd occasion, though it strikes me as too busy and unfriendly as well. Pity.
Sane stuff is for the users (and other developers) to decide. It can include both software issues (features, bugs, supported platforms) and development models (especially "cathedral" vs. "bazaar" models). Where dual licensing is possible, it may even include licensing terms.
The key really isn't forking so much as it's the opportunity to re-merge divergant development paths down the road. SCSL is a non-forkable license -- it's not possible to fork the code base, though, as Mr. Joy rather ineptly points out, it is possible to "fork" the feature set, buy reimplementing from scratch. Incidentally, one fact he declines to mention in his commentary is that Sun makes a not-very-thinly veiled threat to use its other IP rights -- namely patents -- to go after anyone who attempts to pursue independent development.
What's interesting to note is that Joy's other license is a fork-only license. BSD allows software to be incorporated into other projects under different licensing terms (includin proprietary terms). In other words, it greatly facilitates forking. What it does not provide for is re-merging these divergent development threads downstream. It's possible that the BSD license is, in large part, to blame for the oft-cited forking of Unix.
The GNU GPL, and other equivalent "Copyleft" licenses, are among the few which provide the essential facilties to both allow forking (users have rights to modify and redistribute modifications) and re-merging of divergent paths: all derived works must be developed under the same terms as the original work, and are therefor fully legally capable of being reintegrated.
...if you want another example of a company which "suddenly emerged". Wal-Mart's market presence was first really noted in the 1980s. The firm had been around since the 1950s (possibly earlier), and was almost completely missed in a competitive analysis done by Sears in the 1970s, except for a brief mention.
It's the lilly-pad (or bacteria) growth phenomenon -- a long period of slow but steady exponential growth takes you from too small to notice to "bit player" to "how'd we miss that!" -- much faster than the old school cares for. It's also why momentum is important.
...in a Nutshell books are quick references for the experienced user, administrator, or developer.
Essential System Administration is a (reasonably) comprehensive guide to administering Unix (and Unix-like) systems -- from single-user workstations to large commercial installations. The emphasis is more on topics which might be encountered in a commercial (or academic) setting than for single-user issues, though it's helpful for both. Emphasis is on maintaining and administering an existing site, not on setting up a new one. x86-specific hardware issues are not covered in much detail.
Running Linux is principally aimed at the new user. Much of the book is aimed at identifying hardware issues, getting Linux installed, setting up subsystems, brief tutorials to editors and other tools, a short introduction to system administration, networking a standalone dialup system, etc. There's also a bit of background for the user transitioning from DOS or (shudder) Windows.
Another excellent book, IMO, is Nemeth, et al, "the red book" -- The Unix Administrator's Handbook. Slightly rustier even than the Frisch book, it's got a solid grounding in experience and philosophy of Unix administration that can't be beat.
Yes, the books serve different audiences. I own all three.
The three-fingered salute can be made to work under Linux as it does for Windows, and it's enabled by default in many distributions. It requires a line 'ctrlaltdel' in /etc/init.
This allows any user sitting at the console to shut down the system safely.
The Only Ultimate Idiot's Guide to Running Linux for Complete Klutz Dummies Unleashed in 21 Days * 24 Hours in a Nutshell You'll Ever Need
If it's the same as for an existing X server, you'll get an error. If it's different, and the gods smile on you, you'll get a second X session in a different virtual console.
I suspect a reason there isn't more GNOME coverage is the lead time involved in bringing a book to press. Final drafts would have just been being completed at about the time the <cough> 1.0 release of GNOME appeared. Too little time to develop material on a product that was too unstable to recommend to the newbie.
GNOME has progressed significanlty though.
Remember, despite internet time, publishers still operate on a schedule.
I suspect a reason there isn't more GNOME coverage is the lead time involved in bringing a book to press. Final drafts would have just been being completed at about the time the 1.0 release of GNOME appeared. Too little time to develop material on a product that was too unstable to recommend to the newbie.
GNOME has progressed significanlty though.
Remember, despite internet time, publishers still operate on a schedule.
The link posted above requires javascript to be enabled. This is unstable in many Linux versions of Netscape.
This is a direct URL
SAS's big push for the past five years has been data warehousing -- it's a growth path outside their traditional academic, DP, insurance, pharmaceutical, and healthcare business. Good as they are, they're having trouble competing due to the cost and complexity of their solutions.
eCommerce is nothing if not a huge data gathering operation -- all of it live and on line -- with incredible opportunities to study customer behavior in detail. (For what it's worth, I see both sides of the ethical coin here -- DW is great for my wallet but really bad for my conscience, and I'm one of those people who pays cash, doesn't get the "club card" at the local grocery store, and supplies false information when I do -- Seymour Cray buys my milk and cereal).
Example: eToys got through Christmas last year with a cluster of 90 P-class PCs running Linux and MySQL. They're not running big Iron, they've just started making the mistake of going to Oracle (well, I can understand why they're doing it but they'll live to regret it as well). Point being -- the growth area right now isn't happening on MVS, NT, or even Solaris. These are Linux or xBSD shops, and that's where their expertise lies.
SI are more than welcome to unload the clip into their own foot if they want, but I'm not planning on waiting around to mop up the blood. I'll note that SI have been supporting Linux for their IntrNet product for a couple of years now. But the main products are not available.
Does this mean that all of SAS is to be ported to linux?
Don't hold your breath. I know a thing or two on the topic [1].
The news that I've heard is that a code port has been done. Some problems were encountered, but they were resolved with the help of RedHat. The question is whether or not Linux fits with SAS Institute's (SI) traditional customer base and business model. SAS is a mature product, with about 30,000 installed sites, roughly 2% base growth per year, and 16% revenue growth in 1998. 52% of revenues are still related to mainframe platforms (with 27% PC and 17% Unix). In short: a market that's not exactly bleeding edge, with more blood being squeezed from the same old turnips.
SAS programmers have been known to rant about several other shortcomings....
My feeling is that SAS will come around to supporting Linux eventually. They might even surprise me and make an announcement in the next few weeks -- it's regional user group conference time, a favorite time of year to announce new products (their latest release, v7, has been featured for the last four years running <g>....). But I'd put the probability at about 25%. A leaked internal discussion indicates that there are serious internal conflicts over marketing, and until Jim Goodnight says "SAS will run on Linux", it's not going to happen. I tend to get good information both directly and through the mailing list I maintain, and I've heard nothing. Might try shaking the bushes a bit....
However the open source movement has gathered momentum to the point that SAS is simply going to miss out. Flexible tools, source, server-based and distributed applications, are the new wave. SAS has got itself a neat little niche, but it's got an uphill grade -- getting steeper -- if it wants to catch up with the new wave.
[1] Yeah, I know the site's stale. The sad news is that it's current -- there's simply nothing to report. The mailing list carries more current information, but it's also tooooo quite....
The implementation probably varies by vendor, but every solution I'm familiar with requires recomputation when adding records.
As a result, the usual model for generating a data store is to update the MDDB on a periodic basis rather than on a record-by-record basis. How often depends on the quantity of data and the immediacy of your needs. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual schedules are all used. Keep in mind that there is often (usually <g>) much more processing involved in ensuring data quality and integrity than with simply updating the data store. In businesses I've been involved with (healthcare, finance, pharmaceuticals), 30 - 90 day data lags are commonplace.
Result of this is that typically a "data warehouse" distributes "data marts" -- periodic updates or versions of the data store -- on a regular basis.
I've been programming SAS for seven years, and have begun exploring open source alternatives. I don't know of any general solutions, but components exist.
What specific features do you need in an OLAP tool? Among those I can think of:
I'm not saying that a solution should have all of these features, but they are, in rough ranking, the ones I'd be looking for. My preferred model is to build a solution from existing components, or at least structure it from multiple modules, rather than look for a single integrated system. One thing SAS has taught me is that this isn't the best way to fly.
Anyone else have thoughts on relative importance, unnecessary items, or other features they would want to see?
These are Linux distros with Windows-based installation programs. That's the novel feature -- the installation is like any other Windows program. Simplified transition for the newbie.
Both distros also run on UMSDOS (the Unix on DOS file system), a feature which has been around for ages. It means that you don't need to repartition or create filesystems to run Linux (it also means you can blow away Linux from within Windows or DOS).
Neither distro "runs on top of" windows in an executable sense. You get a dual-boot system. You choose, either, or. But both installation and execution (icon-based launcher) are streamlined.
These aren't power-user systems, they're introductory packages for getting Linux to the masses. Realize that a tool is a tool, and there are different tools for different problems. I think it's a neat concept. I probably won't install it myself (I'd have to go out and buy Windows first ....).
I've been working with Michelle Kraus of OpenSales as a member of the free software community in reviewing their license, and am familiar with it and the status of the product.
Suffice to say, both exist, there should be further announcements in October, and we hope the open source and free software communities are thrilled to pieces.
The product is has its roots in the eCommerce engine driving eToys. There are currently six clients, the code base is mature, and the first public release is meant to be production-level, usable code.
The OpenMerchant Community Source License is still being hammered out, there should only be minor changes in details remaining to be changed. It is similar in spirit to the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) -- it should meet the FSF's definition of Copyleft, and should be compliant with the Open Source Definition (OSD) by the Open Source Initiative. It provides specific additional protections for patent and trademark which aren't addressed in the GPL or LGPL.
The following is an interpretation of the license, but not a legal description of it, naturally.
The OpenMerchant Community Source License allows all licensees to use, reproduce, modify, perform, sublicense, distribute, and transmit the licensed work. Other contributors retain copyright to their code but grant license to use modifications under terms of the license. It allows the work to be incorporated into larger works, but requires that all modules, interface definition files, compile and install code, or diffs be considered part of the covered work.
The primary differences from the GNU licenses are extended language on other forms of intellectual property. Necessary grantable patent rights are granted by both the original developer and subsequent modifiers. Use of trademarks of developers is not granted (but you don't have to strip them from the code if they exist there). The original developer reserves the right to distribute its own code (but not contributed modifications) under other terms (a right granted anyway under law, but reported as a good-faith and statement of intent matter).
Distribution of modifications is addressed. These are similar to the [L]GPL, though distinctions between research and commercial use are made. The language tidies up issues now facing the GPL such as use of software on servers -- this is considered commercial, and requires distribution of modificiations. Language similar to the IBM Public License (IPSL, which covers Jikes) and the Netscape Public License (NPL) regarding third party legal claims. Licensee rights to enforce -- any licensee may enforce obligations of the license, though they can't drag other licensees into the fight.
License versioning is similar to GPL, IPSL, NPL, and others -- software may be licensed under the current or future versions of the license.
The termination language includes specific protection against patent infringement claims by licensees, which I think is particularly clever and effective. IBM has also developed some interesting twists which might be reviewed for comparison.
There are the typical disclaimers of liability and warrantee for free software.
Additional language pertains to government use, terms of interpretation and enforcement, jurisdiction, etc.
I DL'd the HPUX version and tried it for an hour or so. Pretty much the same. New buttons are annoying. Things like font sizing are no more convenient to adjust (under *nix, the <ctrl>-[ and <ctrl>-] controls don't work), and any number of other interface bugs are retained. Session finally died in a blaze of glory trying to navigate through the Swatch site (see elsewhere -- popup windows) with Java and Javascript on but images off.
Facelift. Nothing new. Sticking with 4.61 (bugs, warts and all). Wish I had something better. Hoping to give Mozilla following a few other system changes.
(Sounds better than "me too").
Each of these options is to die or (if you're thinking more clearly), to kill for.
<rant> KFM -- the times that I used it -- seemed a nice, minimal, fairly lightweight browser. I use Lynx a fair bit but it suffers grossly from poor page design. Opera is supposed to have a good, clean, client. How about a browser that's just a fscking browser, people? Any other suggestions out there?
</rant>
I've been following a discussion on this very topic, with RMS present.
He doesn't care for the term "viral". IMO it's somewhat accurate, not pejorative, and is actually a hot buzzword among Internet-related VCs -- viral marketing is what the idea behind HotMail was dubbed.
Alternative terms suggested:
I'd just as soon the proponents of the GPL latched on to the term "viral" as a positive portrayal of the nature of the license.
First off, the product isn't licensed as free software or OSI Certified -- because there's not yet either product or a license (which is to say, WRT product, there's a program, but it's not yet product).
From what I've pieced together of comments of Larry's (SVLUG), web blurbs (his, others), and the license sketch currently on the download site, terms will be liberal but not quite free. Larry likes the idea of free software, but isn't convinced he can make a commercial go of it all in and of itself. Specifically, my impression was that the source is available and hackable (a specific requirement of Alan Cox, per Larry).
Given that his business model right now is sort of half-software house, half-consulting services (SW: BitKeeper and others, services, Hunkin' Big Clusters), I'd like to hope he eventually discovers he doesn't have to worry quite so much about this. Along the lines of Cygnus.
For insight on licensing, you might want to read:
Note that the most commonly cited alternatives to Larry's solution all have pretty heavy consequences:
The BitKeeper license is most like the SCSL, though the intent seems to be to build a code escrow term into it which reverts to GPL should BitKeeper fold or fail to maintain the source.
Addressing specific points of your post, certain libs of BitKeeper will be GPLd or LGPLd, allowing them to be redistributed or incorporated into projects under terms of the GNU [L]GPL.
WRT your bugfix and feature comments -- the BitKeeper license is oriented around limiting potential for fragmentation. It's got some elements of the common view of the xBSD development model (centrally controlled cabal), and I'll share your view that this is, if not a Bad Thing, at least a Thing of Questionable Worth (TM).
I can't see how your last point (source is still closed) stands with your other arguments. The source is available, it can be reviewd, modified, and mucked with, It's not compliante with the OSD, but it's certainly not proprietary either.
Larry's blazing a new path here, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.