That's the problem in a nutshell: Apple's Terms of Service impose restrictive limits on use and distribution for any software distributed through the App Store, and the GPL doesn't allow that. This specific case involves other issues, but this is the one that's most unique and deserves explanation.
All I ask is that the device I pay for allow me to use it as I please instead of requiring the company's permission for each little chunk of code that executes. Give me just that and I'll be happy to buy.
That must be the most retarded and uninformed statement I've read all night. And I've been browsing/. all night.
I have the App Store on my MacBook right now. I can download stuff from the App Store, or I can choose to ignore it altogether.
You are aware that this was VLC for iOS, which is an OS where, absent a jailbreak, you can only run applications from the App Store (well, modulo being a developer or an enterprise distributing internal applications or using whatever that "you can distribute 100 copies to others" thing is), not VLC for Mac OS X, which is an OS where you can run applications from elsewhere (which was true before there was an App Store for Mac OS X), right?
But people's well founded fear is that this trend does not stop at iDevice.
How well-founded it is is a matter of opinion. Just because person A is convinced, by person A's argument, that it's well-founded, that doesn't mean person B will be convinced - or that it will turn out to be well-founded.
If it spreads to Macs, expect Windows 9 to do the same thing.
Because <cliche>Microsoft have always copied Apple</cliche>? (I can just hear Uncle Fester's mother saying "if Steve Jobs jumped off a bridge, would you do that, too?")
Linux Users will have to build beige boxes, and depending on how many congress critters are purchased, may find themselves on the wrong side of the law.
Which law might that be? (But, hey, saying that certainly helps some Linux fans think of themselves as Daring Rebels Against The Empire rather than just people who have chosen to run a different OS on their machines.)
As such, any GPL'd app should be perfectly fine on the app store so long as it is free, and providing that it follows the requirements for offers of source.
For the GPLv3, those requirements appear to require that you can get the source from the App Store:
6. Conveying Non-Source Forms.
You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, in one of these ways:
...
d) Convey the object code by offering access from a designated place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no further charge. You need not require recipients to copy the Corresponding Source along with the object code. If the place to copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party) that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.
(the other clauses refer to offering the object code "in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium)" or "using peer-to-peer transmission"). The GPLv3 might also require that you provide "Installation Information" so that you can install versions of the app built from source, which might mean that you'd have to let the user sign the app to make it installable, depending on how you read the bit about "[retaining] the ability to install modified object code on the User Product":
“Installation Information” for a User Product means any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made.
If you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied by the Installation Information. But this requirement does not apply if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code on the User Product (for example, the work has been installed in ROM).
The GPLv2 doesn't appear to address those code-signing issues (which might be one of the reasons why the GPLv3 was created).
Look, don't mind me. Follow the leader. No skin off my back.
Here's a deal: you don't bogusly assume I'm a blind fanboy adherent of the Cult Of Apple and I won't bogusly assume you're one of those people who thinks buying an Android phone is somehow Striking A Blow Against The Empire.
I've followed Jobs & Co for nearly 35 years and I've seen how he operates. Apple only lets others play in their game when they have no other choice. Jobs compulsion to control everything is legendary. If they have to, they'll let others play, as long as they play by Apple's rules. The minute they feel they can survive without third party developers, believe me, they'll cut them out. However, never before has the opportunity presented itself where Apple could do without third party developers. This began to change with the iPhone and the App store.
And what exactly is it about a store to sell third-party applications that's an indication that Apple can do without third-party developers? If they didn't want third-party developers, they, err, umm, wouldn't have published an SDK and created an app store. Or do you mean that so many third-party apps have been developed that Apple has figured out that they don't need them?
Apple has already reached critical mass and they don't really need any more fart apps in the store. Apple's reasoning (and I believe they are correct)
...and you also believe that is, in fact, their reasoning...
is that most people (outside the tech world) will buy the iPhone because of the brand and whether there are 300,000 apps in the app store or just a few thousand "good" apps won't matter. They will still maintain their market share. Once the "app envy" fad passes and Apple decides which apps are worth keeping in the store (for marketing, financial or other reasons) they can simply buy out, set up royalty agreements with, or make any number of other arrangements with the "good" apps and they can then easily shut the doors to outside vendors.
...because, of course, once you have those "good" apps, there will never ever ever ever ever ever ever be any need for a new application ever again, other than the ones you think of. If Apple starts thinking that all the smart people work for them, they're fucked.
They've already made it abundantly clear that the iOS devices are intended to be seen as "appliances" that they really don't want outsiders tampering with.
"Tampering" in what sense? No, you can't write a kext or a program that requires, say, root privileges, but you can add new applications, and develop hardware that attaches to the dock connector. (The word "appliance" is overused, BTW; if it accepts third-party applications, it might not be a self-hosting device that can be used to develop applications for the device, but it's more than a sealed-box "appliance".)
The last figures I saw, the desktop/laptop segment only accounted for around 15% of Apple's revenue.
And what figures were those? According to this chart for the calendar Q4 2010 hardware revenue, it's a little over 25% of the hardware revenue; if that's 15% of total revenue, hardware would be about 60% of total revenue. The Q4 2010 iTunes Store revenue was "over $1 billion", but the Q4 2010 total revenue was $20 billion, so either there's another significant non-hardware revenue category, there's a significant hardware revenue category other than Mac, iPhones, iPods, and iPads, Apple made a lot of money from servers, or the iTunes Store revenue was a lot over $1 billion, if the desktop/laptop segment (non-server Macs) were only around 15% of revenue in Q4 2010.
Just wait and see something, at some point. I'm sure you'll justifiably pat yourself on the back if OS X does go "App Store only"; you can be sure others will justifiably laugh at you if it doesn't.
If they are able to maintain their dominant position yet be able to maintain absolute control over what software is available for their devices, why wouldn't they do it. In my mind, the only reason they wouldn't do this is if the third party developers refused to play their game and forced them to be more open before they get to that point.
And what makes you think they could maintain a dominant position for smartphones and tablets (they don't have a dominant position for desktops or notebooks) if they disallow third-party applications?
So whatever party is in the minority in the House of Representatives is, in some sense that doesn't involve the qualification "in the House of Representatives", a "minority party"? Given that, why would her being "a minor member of a minority party" make this less worthy of note? Would it be more worthy of note if it'd been a Republican? Had it happened several months ago, would it have been more worthy of note had it been a Democrat than if it'd been a Republican?
(I'm not arguing one way or the other about whether it's worthy of note in Slashdot or not. I'm just wondering what's magical, in this context, about being a member of a "majority party", in the sense of which party currently happens to be in the majority in the House of Representatives.)
The proper title should be "Nokia developer pulls VLC from AppStore".
Rémi alone is to blame for this mess.
If so, then the proper title should be "Rémi Denis-Courmont gets Apple to pull VLC from AppStore". There's no proof that he acted as he did because he works at Nokia.
Rémi Denis-Courmont is a Nokia employee and it is possible that someone and Nokia put him up to this.
And it's also possible that nobody at Nokia did. Any claim in either direction is just speculation. (It'd be fun to watch the "lynch Apple!" and "lynch Nokia!" mobs go at it in a thread, though....)
You seem to forget that when the hardware was first created, the company had no intention of offering, or even allowing, a "software store". The hardware most certainly would exist without a software store.
The iPhone definitely existed before the App Store did. Whether that's because Apple originally had no intention of offering a software store, or because Apple didn't want to mention the App Store and SDK before they were ready, is speculation (regardless of which way you speculate).
If they are able to maintain their dominant position yet be able to maintain absolute control over what software is available for their devices, why wouldn't they do it. In my mind, the only reason they wouldn't do this is if the third party developers refused to play their game and forced them to be more open before they get to that point.
And what makes you think they could maintain a dominant position for smartphones and tablets (they don't have a dominant position for desktops or notebooks) if they disallow third-party applications?
In any case, I'm sure there is nothing I can say to convince you otherwise
Well, you'll probably have to work pretty hard to convince any rational person that "[Apple] they are working toward devices that cannot be programmed at all by outside developers (this is, obviously, completely different from claiming that they want some level of control over the applications on the iOS platform; no rational person would deny that claim, as the iOS App Store rules impose such a level of control).
so I've probably just waste more time on this topic.
Yeah, saying "Seems to me they are working toward devices that cannot be programmed at all by outside developers" was rather a waste of time, given the clear evidence against that.
You can stay in Apple-land (aka Oceania) as long as you wish. Me, I'm taking a different road and we'll see in a few years who was right.
Yup, in a few years I predict that either 1) development tools will still be available, either free or cheaply, for iOS and Mac OS X or 2) Apple won't have a dominant position in smartphones or tablets. (They have, as indicated, no dominant position to lose in desktops or laptops; if third-party software development is stopped for Mac OS X, they probably won't have much of a market position at all in those markets.)
My point was that once Apple locks down their OS so that the only way to install software is through their app store, they could easily stop providing development tools and iOS/OSX users would no longer be able to do development.
Yeah, because God knows they never boast about the number of third-party applications available for iOS or Mac OS X, so they clearly hate having third-party developers and are eagerly looking forward to the day when they all go away and the set of applications available for their computers is much smaller.
So that's why they developed, llvm, clang, and lldb from scratch because gcc and gdb were saving them so much money.
To be fair, Apple didn't develop LLVM from scratch; it started as a research project at the University of Illinois. Apple did hire Chris Lattner, and is doing development work on it.
The last I checked Windows (and any program I care to run) will work fine on an AMD processor.
Because the instruction sets of the Intel processors in current personal computers and the AMD processors in current personal computers are (almost) identical. (There are some differences, most of which are, I think, extensions implemented by AMD and not Intel or by Intel and not AMD. Most compilers can probably avoid using those extensions.)
So how is that being "tied to Intel"?
OK, so replace that with "tied to the x86 instruction set". The ARM instruction set is quite different from the x86 instruction set.
but I thought modern OSes blocked the software from running directly on the hardware, so then it could run on a wide range of setups.
It depends on what you mean by "on the hardware". Modern OSes generally don't allow user-mode code to directly access the control registers of peripheral devices, bus controllers, etc., and run them in a mode where memory addresses are virtual addresses translated to physical addresses by the memory management unit. This isolates applications from the details of how physical memory is laid out, what I/O buses you have, what controllers you have for those buses, etc..
Most of them do, however, run user-mode code that is supplied in the form of machine-language code, so they don't isolate applications from the instruction set of the processor on which they're running.
There are exceptions, such as the system software on IBM's AS/400^WiSeries^WSystem i^Wi5 or whatever it's being called these days. The "machine language" generated by the compiler is translated into executable machine language by low-level system software, which is why they could switch the executable machine language from the old "IMPI" CISC instruction set to a PowerPC variant without breaking binary compatibility for most programs. (I think that, as a disk-space-saving measure, you could delete the "machine language" part of a program, leaving behind only the translated version; if you did that, you'd have a problem running on an AS/400 with a different native instruction set.) This would also work for most if not all applications distributed as, for example, Java bytecode or.NET CLR bytecode.
Some OSes may provide software that can translate machine code for one processor into machine code for another, such as the FX!32 translator in Windows NT on Alpha, translating x86 machine code to Alpha machine code, or the Rosetta translator in Mac OS X, translating PowerPC machine code to x86 machine code.
When you read the details on what is proposed by the Venezuelan government, it doesn't sound that unreasonable.
It doesn't sound unreasonable to prohibit the dissemination of messages through radio, TV, and electronic media that "can represent media manipulation designed to promote uneasiness in the community or disturb public order."? (See the third paragraph of the El Universal article.) That's a rather broad statement; one could argue that something saying "public policy XXX could hurt the economy" is "[promoting] uneasiness in the community" about that policy.
How much of the "userland" experience has anything at all to do with GNU? Other than the GPL, are there any GNU utilities that are used in the day-to-day operation of this system?
Really, on a command-line GNU utilities are common; but in the GUI, most GNU utilities go completely unused. Especially with a custom GUI like this.
Perhaps, in this context, "user" in "userland" means "running in user mode rather than kernel mode", rather than "directly run by the end user". Think GNU libc, not GNU grep.
No, they licensed UNIX from AT&T to make Xenix - AT&T still owned the rights. (Newer versions of System V licensed some code back from Microsoft - there's some code with Microsoft copyrights on it.)
Faggots like you don't understand that open sauce is a health hazard to the economy.
Well, don't just leave the sauce jar open; close it when you're done with it, and it won't go bad so fast - less health hazard. You might want to consider refrigerating the sauce while you're at it.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, here's an FSF blog post about the conflict between the GPL - GPLv2, in particular - and the App Store's licensing terms. As it says:
That's the problem in a nutshell: Apple's Terms of Service impose restrictive limits on use and distribution for any software distributed through the App Store, and the GPL doesn't allow that. This specific case involves other issues, but this is the one that's most unique and deserves explanation.
All I ask is that the device I pay for allow me to use it as I please instead of requiring the company's permission for each little chunk of code that executes. Give me just that and I'll be happy to buy.
So buy one of these.
That must be the most retarded and uninformed statement I've read all night. And I've been browsing /. all night.
I have the App Store on my MacBook right now. I can download stuff from the App Store, or I can choose to ignore it altogether.
You are aware that this was VLC for iOS, which is an OS where, absent a jailbreak, you can only run applications from the App Store (well, modulo being a developer or an enterprise distributing internal applications or using whatever that "you can distribute 100 copies to others" thing is), not VLC for Mac OS X, which is an OS where you can run applications from elsewhere (which was true before there was an App Store for Mac OS X), right?
But people's well founded fear is that this trend does not stop at iDevice.
How well-founded it is is a matter of opinion. Just because person A is convinced, by person A's argument, that it's well-founded, that doesn't mean person B will be convinced - or that it will turn out to be well-founded.
If it spreads to Macs, expect Windows 9 to do the same thing.
Because <cliche>Microsoft have always copied Apple</cliche>? (I can just hear Uncle Fester's mother saying "if Steve Jobs jumped off a bridge, would you do that, too?")
Linux Users will have to build beige boxes, and depending on how many congress critters are purchased, may find themselves on the wrong side of the law.
Which law might that be? (But, hey, saying that certainly helps some Linux fans think of themselves as Daring Rebels Against The Empire rather than just people who have chosen to run a different OS on their machines.)
As such, any GPL'd app should be perfectly fine on the app store so long as it is free, and providing that it follows the requirements for offers of source.
For the GPLv3, those requirements appear to require that you can get the source from the App Store:
6. Conveying Non-Source Forms.
You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, in one of these ways:
...
d) Convey the object code by offering access from a designated place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no further charge. You need not require recipients to copy the Corresponding Source along with the object code. If the place to copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party) that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.
(the other clauses refer to offering the object code "in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium)" or "using peer-to-peer transmission"). The GPLv3 might also require that you provide "Installation Information" so that you can install versions of the app built from source, which might mean that you'd have to let the user sign the app to make it installable, depending on how you read the bit about "[retaining] the ability to install modified object code on the User Product":
“Installation Information” for a User Product means any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made.
If you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied by the Installation Information. But this requirement does not apply if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code on the User Product (for example, the work has been installed in ROM).
The GPLv2 doesn't appear to address those code-signing issues (which might be one of the reasons why the GPLv3 was created).
Look, don't mind me. Follow the leader. No skin off my back.
Here's a deal: you don't bogusly assume I'm a blind fanboy adherent of the Cult Of Apple and I won't bogusly assume you're one of those people who thinks buying an Android phone is somehow Striking A Blow Against The Empire.
I've followed Jobs & Co for nearly 35 years and I've seen how he operates. Apple only lets others play in their game when they have no other choice. Jobs compulsion to control everything is legendary. If they have to, they'll let others play, as long as they play by Apple's rules. The minute they feel they can survive without third party developers, believe me, they'll cut them out. However, never before has the opportunity presented itself where Apple could do without third party developers. This began to change with the iPhone and the App store.
And what exactly is it about a store to sell third-party applications that's an indication that Apple can do without third-party developers? If they didn't want third-party developers, they, err, umm, wouldn't have published an SDK and created an app store. Or do you mean that so many third-party apps have been developed that Apple has figured out that they don't need them?
Apple has already reached critical mass and they don't really need any more fart apps in the store. Apple's reasoning (and I believe they are correct)
...and you also believe that is, in fact, their reasoning...
is that most people (outside the tech world) will buy the iPhone because of the brand and whether there are 300,000 apps in the app store or just a few thousand "good" apps won't matter. They will still maintain their market share. Once the "app envy" fad passes and Apple decides which apps are worth keeping in the store (for marketing, financial or other reasons) they can simply buy out, set up royalty agreements with, or make any number of other arrangements with the "good" apps and they can then easily shut the doors to outside vendors.
...because, of course, once you have those "good" apps, there will never ever ever ever ever ever ever be any need for a new application ever again, other than the ones you think of. If Apple starts thinking that all the smart people work for them, they're fucked.
They've already made it abundantly clear that the iOS devices are intended to be seen as "appliances" that they really don't want outsiders tampering with.
"Tampering" in what sense? No, you can't write a kext or a program that requires, say, root privileges, but you can add new applications, and develop hardware that attaches to the dock connector. (The word "appliance" is overused, BTW; if it accepts third-party applications, it might not be a self-hosting device that can be used to develop applications for the device, but it's more than a sealed-box "appliance".)
The last figures I saw, the desktop/laptop segment only accounted for around 15% of Apple's revenue.
And what figures were those? According to this chart for the calendar Q4 2010 hardware revenue, it's a little over 25% of the hardware revenue; if that's 15% of total revenue, hardware would be about 60% of total revenue. The Q4 2010 iTunes Store revenue was "over $1 billion", but the Q4 2010 total revenue was $20 billion, so either there's another significant non-hardware revenue category, there's a significant hardware revenue category other than Mac, iPhones, iPods, and iPads, Apple made a lot of money from servers, or the iTunes Store revenue was a lot over $1 billion, if the desktop/laptop segment (non-server Macs) were only around 15% of revenue in Q4 2010.
By a wide margin, the iP
Just wait and see.
Just wait and see something, at some point. I'm sure you'll justifiably pat yourself on the back if OS X does go "App Store only"; you can be sure others will justifiably laugh at you if it doesn't.
If they are able to maintain their dominant position yet be able to maintain absolute control over what software is available for their devices, why wouldn't they do it. In my mind, the only reason they wouldn't do this is if the third party developers refused to play their game and forced them to be more open before they get to that point.
And what makes you think they could maintain a dominant position for smartphones and tablets (they don't have a dominant position for desktops or notebooks) if they disallow third-party applications?
And, even if you go by plurality rather than majority, maybe Apple doesn't have a dominant position in smartphones to maintain.
> Um, since the Democrats hold two out of three of the elective branches of the US government, I don't see how you can call them "a minority party."
For the same reason Nancy Pelosi is called Minority leader of the United States House of Representatives
So whatever party is in the minority in the House of Representatives is, in some sense that doesn't involve the qualification "in the House of Representatives", a "minority party"? Given that, why would her being "a minor member of a minority party" make this less worthy of note? Would it be more worthy of note if it'd been a Republican? Had it happened several months ago, would it have been more worthy of note had it been a Democrat than if it'd been a Republican?
(I'm not arguing one way or the other about whether it's worthy of note in Slashdot or not. I'm just wondering what's magical, in this context, about being a member of a "majority party", in the sense of which party currently happens to be in the majority in the House of Representatives.)
If a Microsoft employee went out of his way to take an app out of App Store, wouldn't you question the motive of that person?
Not if the only information I had was that the person in question happened to work for Microsoft.
The proper title should be "Nokia developer pulls VLC from AppStore".
Rémi alone is to blame for this mess.
If so, then the proper title should be "Rémi Denis-Courmont gets Apple to pull VLC from AppStore". There's no proof that he acted as he did because he works at Nokia.
Rémi Denis-Courmont is a Nokia employee and it is possible that someone and Nokia put him up to this.
And it's also possible that nobody at Nokia did. Any claim in either direction is just speculation. (It'd be fun to watch the "lynch Apple!" and "lynch Nokia!" mobs go at it in a thread, though....)
You seem to forget that when the hardware was first created, the company had no intention of offering, or even allowing, a "software store". The hardware most certainly would exist without a software store.
The iPhone definitely existed before the App Store did. Whether that's because Apple originally had no intention of offering a software store, or because Apple didn't want to mention the App Store and SDK before they were ready, is speculation (regardless of which way you speculate).
If they are able to maintain their dominant position yet be able to maintain absolute control over what software is available for their devices, why wouldn't they do it. In my mind, the only reason they wouldn't do this is if the third party developers refused to play their game and forced them to be more open before they get to that point.
And what makes you think they could maintain a dominant position for smartphones and tablets (they don't have a dominant position for desktops or notebooks) if they disallow third-party applications?
In any case, I'm sure there is nothing I can say to convince you otherwise
Well, you'll probably have to work pretty hard to convince any rational person that "[Apple] they are working toward devices that cannot be programmed at all by outside developers (this is, obviously, completely different from claiming that they want some level of control over the applications on the iOS platform; no rational person would deny that claim, as the iOS App Store rules impose such a level of control).
so I've probably just waste more time on this topic.
Yeah, saying "Seems to me they are working toward devices that cannot be programmed at all by outside developers" was rather a waste of time, given the clear evidence against that.
You can stay in Apple-land (aka Oceania) as long as you wish. Me, I'm taking a different road and we'll see in a few years who was right.
Yup, in a few years I predict that either 1) development tools will still be available, either free or cheaply, for iOS and Mac OS X or 2) Apple won't have a dominant position in smartphones or tablets. (They have, as indicated, no dominant position to lose in desktops or laptops; if third-party software development is stopped for Mac OS X, they probably won't have much of a market position at all in those markets.)
My point was that once Apple locks down their OS so that the only way to install software is through their app store, they could easily stop providing development tools and iOS/OSX users would no longer be able to do development.
Yeah, because God knows they never boast about the number of third-party applications available for iOS or Mac OS X, so they clearly hate having third-party developers and are eagerly looking forward to the day when they all go away and the set of applications available for their computers is much smaller.
So that's why they developed, llvm, clang, and lldb from scratch because gcc and gdb were saving them so much money.
To be fair, Apple didn't develop LLVM from scratch; it started as a research project at the University of Illinois. Apple did hire Chris Lattner, and is doing development work on it.
I have been sending emails sence 1984, pre-DNS with email servers identified by IP.
What, they didn't let you have a HOSTS file?
The last I checked Windows (and any program I care to run) will work fine on an AMD processor.
Because the instruction sets of the Intel processors in current personal computers and the AMD processors in current personal computers are (almost) identical. (There are some differences, most of which are, I think, extensions implemented by AMD and not Intel or by Intel and not AMD. Most compilers can probably avoid using those extensions.)
So how is that being "tied to Intel"?
OK, so replace that with "tied to the x86 instruction set". The ARM instruction set is quite different from the x86 instruction set.
but I thought modern OSes blocked the software from running directly on the hardware, so then it could run on a wide range of setups.
It depends on what you mean by "on the hardware". Modern OSes generally don't allow user-mode code to directly access the control registers of peripheral devices, bus controllers, etc., and run them in a mode where memory addresses are virtual addresses translated to physical addresses by the memory management unit. This isolates applications from the details of how physical memory is laid out, what I/O buses you have, what controllers you have for those buses, etc..
Most of them do, however, run user-mode code that is supplied in the form of machine-language code, so they don't isolate applications from the instruction set of the processor on which they're running.
There are exceptions, such as the system software on IBM's AS/400^WiSeries^WSystem i^Wi5 or whatever it's being called these days. The "machine language" generated by the compiler is translated into executable machine language by low-level system software, which is why they could switch the executable machine language from the old "IMPI" CISC instruction set to a PowerPC variant without breaking binary compatibility for most programs. (I think that, as a disk-space-saving measure, you could delete the "machine language" part of a program, leaving behind only the translated version; if you did that, you'd have a problem running on an AS/400 with a different native instruction set.) This would also work for most if not all applications distributed as, for example, Java bytecode or .NET CLR bytecode.
Some OSes may provide software that can translate machine code for one processor into machine code for another, such as the FX!32 translator in Windows NT on Alpha, translating x86 machine code to Alpha machine code, or the Rosetta translator in Mac OS X, translating PowerPC machine code to x86 machine code.
Subject says it all :)
Including saying how net neutrality is similar? Or do you mean that the lack of net neutrality is similar?
When you read the details on what is proposed by the Venezuelan government, it doesn't sound that unreasonable.
It doesn't sound unreasonable to prohibit the dissemination of messages through radio, TV, and electronic media that "can represent media manipulation designed to promote uneasiness in the community or disturb public order."? (See the third paragraph of the El Universal article.) That's a rather broad statement; one could argue that something saying "public policy XXX could hurt the economy" is "[promoting] uneasiness in the community" about that policy.
How much of the "userland" experience has anything at all to do with GNU? Other than the GPL, are there any GNU utilities that are used in the day-to-day operation of this system?
Really, on a command-line GNU utilities are common; but in the GUI, most GNU utilities go completely unused. Especially with a custom GUI like this.
Perhaps, in this context, "user" in "userland" means "running in user mode rather than kernel mode", rather than "directly run by the end user". Think GNU libc, not GNU grep.
No, they licensed UNIX from AT&T to make Xenix - AT&T still owned the rights. (Newer versions of System V licensed some code back from Microsoft - there's some code with Microsoft copyrights on it.)
Faggots like you don't understand that open sauce is a health hazard to the economy.
Well, don't just leave the sauce jar open; close it when you're done with it, and it won't go bad so fast - less health hazard. You might want to consider refrigerating the sauce while you're at it.
...and the frothing fanboys (wait until this gets posted on TUAW or DaringFireball)
DaringFireball doesn't strike me as too bad in the fanboy department; RoughlyDrafted seems to froth more.