I am in business with a number of people who quit working for Microsoft. I must assume that they quit for some reason, and that they don't carry some enduring Microsoft religion with them to their new jobs. If I were to find that this is really some attempt to have Bill Gates pull my puppet strings, of course I would quit. But this seems rather unlikely.
The main problem with package management is managing dependencies upon other packages. The installation system you write about is elegant, but you don't describe how (or if) it fixes that problem. Most naive-user packaging systems fix the problem by including the kitchen sink (all applicable DLLs) in their own package to reduce dependencies. Debian's package system works fine for their users because there is one huge repository with management of the proper cross-dependencies within that repository, rather than many repositories with little coordination. Once you add repositories, they go out of phase and the problems pop up.
Well, maybe that was best for that particular person, but I get your point.
Hey, you reading this. You are going to die. Subtract the number 68 from your age. That's a good guess at how much time you have left, but no guarantees. What are you doing with your life between now and then? And if you have to die in the next minute, are you going to be satisfied with the way you've used your time? If not, start changing now.
This PDF was probably created by the publisher. I'm pretty sure there aren't Linux desktops there. Of the 15 books, there have been various ways of producing them.
We also make the document "source" available - be it Docbook or.doc files. Docbook is preferred. But the PDF we use doesn't make use of any proprietary features. It should render fine with Free Software. The main reason for using it is that we send PostScript to the printer, and there's a command-line tool to make PDF of that.
Publishing a piece like this is like stealing the stage at an industry keynote and singing the "I'm a loser" song until the security guards arrive.
What is most glaring about it is the way he seems to think he's smarter than everyone on both sides, while at the same time he's so clearly not done his homework. What was he thinking?
There are two pieces and I think you're getting them confused: a memory allocation function in an SGI driver that originated in ancient Unix, and the Berkeley Packet Filter which originated at Lawrence Berkeley Labs. Although it works with Unix, I think it's not really part of the Berkeley System Distribution, which came from the University proper rather than LBL.
My suggestion is that he find a transatlantic cruise with a swimming pool, and forget about Mum. But on last year's Geek Cruise, the water under the ship was rough enough that the swimming pool kind of looked like a blender and the water spent a lot of time in the vicinity of the ceiling. Linus' wife was especially green.
I have discussed the FDL extensively with Eben. I can not represent his feelings, due to the position he's in. Remember that Richard's the boss of FSF, and unfortunately, sometimes the staff can't get Richard to move.
putting the document in a secure storage system in no way "obstructs" people from reading or copying from other sources.
But as you pointed out yourself:
You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute.
As I read it, the word you makes other sources irrelevant to the question. It's the copies that you make which must be readable.
It might take litigation to settle it. Good legal practice includes making sure your agreements are clear enough that you don't have to litigate their meaning.
The Free Documentation License. I'm not as familiar with that one as with the GPL and LGPL. What, specifically is wrong with it?
There is an anti-DRM provision that is so non-specific that placing a copy of a GNU FDL document in a system with login security could be a violation. It says something like "you may not use technical means to keep people from reading this document". Period. I disapprove of DRM as much as RMS, this is a matter of the license construction being a problem rather than the license goal.
The second one is a problem with the license goal, though. It's the "invariant sections" feature. You can designate that a section of a GFDL document can't be modified. A prohibition on modification obviously disqualifies the license as either Open Source or Free Software, most people can see that easily enough. The provision is there so that RMS can attach political statements or his version of history to documentation and have them stick. And thus he's not willing to talk about changing this. That has driven a pretty big wall between RMS and Debian, for example, since Debian will remove content not deemed as free from their system.
My guess is that OSDL's attorney or Tridge's own attorney told him to keep quiet. This is one reason I felt this was time to stand up to Linus. Tridge wasn't able to fight back.
It almost seems like you've come full circle from the days of joining with Raymond and O'Reilly in your distaste for Stallman's extremism.
Well, I never had distaste for Stallman's philosophy. I felt that Open Source would be a gentle introduction for business people, who would be guided to understanding Stallman once they'd seen the pragmatic benefits. I have always, from the first moment it happened, been distressed that Eric positioned the organization to deprecate RMS rather than cooperate with him.
But I must say that I've become somewhat alienated from RMS personally, not from the Free Software philosophy, over the GNU FDL. It's a bad license, and I don't feel it fits with Free Software at all.
I still haven't heard you say that perhaps trying to coexist with Microsoft's "shared source" initiative and the delightful Mister Matusow wasn't such a great call.
I have debated Matusow, but I have never tried to be inclusive of "shared source". Indeed, if it's not compliant with the Open Source definition, I'm not interested in helping promote it. And thus I am not sure what you're talking about.
This reputation is historical, but I should point out that I have not walked off of a project in anger in 5 or 6 years. Sometimes you get to learn from experience. Also, being a parent has made a big difference. Once that happened, Free Software was no longer the most important thing in my life and I could look at it with more perspective.
Perens can say whatever he wants in private mail, but if he wants to take the mantle of a PR Guy for the open source movement, he should attempt to behave like a civilized person for common decency's sake.
I try to call them as I see them. But in this case that also fits the goal of PR for the Open Source movement. Linus said something so incredibly bad for us, that could hurt us the next time that we have to reverse-engineer something for purposes of compatibility, that PR for the Open Source community is saying as loudly as possible that Linus is not representing us on this issue, that he's lost his cool for once.
Larry, on the other hand, does his own bad PR. One need only comment upon it.
Linus didn't blast OpenOffice, but doing so would have been consistent with what he's been saying about Bitmover, and this story hoists Linus by his own petard. Tridge did not attempt to reverse-engineer the internals of the Bitmover program. He reverse-engineered its over-wire protocol in order to produce a program that would interoperate with it over the net. This was a perfectly moral and reasonable act and parallels what Tridge did to make Samba compatible with Windows file and printer sharing.
Exhibiting a form of emotional instability compared to victims of mercury poisoning. This was commented upon when mercury was part of the process of raising felt, and thus hatters really were mad, or at least ran the risk. The Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland was modeled on such victims.
If the language of the patent is vague, attack it with 35 USC 112 and have the patent either invalidated or returned to the office for re-examination. If that attack fails, apparently the patent is not vague.
With all due respect, if there is prior art, put it in front of a judge
It's easy for you to say that I should go to court, but the fact is that if I have to go to court, I have already lost. I would have to settle. I can't afford the legal fees to get to the first day of verbal argument. Nor can any other Open Source developer. You should take into account the fact that the courts are a rich man's game before calling FUD on me.
Regarding basics of computer science, there's a recent one from Microsoft on performing a different action if you press a button twice rather than once that should not have been awarded and IMO the filer purjured himself regarding prior art.
Thanks for admitting that you would prefer to only grant non-obvious patents. The fact is that your job should be very different. You should be given a lot more time to consider a patent and go to the library. You should have a real triviality test - bringing a problem before a jury of developers to solve within a time limit - rather than the joke of one that you have now. And the people who send you patents should have real jail penalties for the way that they purjure themselves.
Computer programs as such means that you can't patent a computer program, you can only patent using a computer program to do something. Other language for this is that the program must have a technical effect. So, programs that employ a particular algorithm but don't do anything will be protected. This does not seem to be a very useful protection.
I don't believe that it is possible for any significant work of software to be non-infringing on granted patents. Unfortunately, you can't prove that your program is "clean" by searching patents. Modern patents are written to be as vague as possible in order to allow enforcement of the patent on the widest possible range of software - including things the purported inventor didn't think of when filing the patent. So, you can't necessarily find a patent that applies to what you are working on, even if the patent holder would be disposed to prosecute you under that patent. You can't determine that you are not infringing a particular patent due to its vagueness, without bringing a suit against the patent holder to determine the issue. And worse, there are so many granted patents on basics of computer science. These things weren't inventions, there is prior art, but given that it costs up to US$5 Million to defend yourself (Economic Survey, American Intellectual Property Law Association), you will not be able to prove your innocence.
In other words, unless your company is so big that you can use your huge patent portfolio against all equal-sized or smaller companies, you're hosed. This is a game that only multinationals can win - and that's why IBM and HP lobby for Software patenting in Europe despite their affiliation with Open Source. It's more important to them to be able to dominate the entire computer software industry than it is to work with us.
If your revision control database gets corrupted due to a bug, you need to wait for someone to fix it.
We're talking about distributed change management in this case, it's not one database. The thread that matters to most people is the one Linus manages, and he pulls out a tarball every time he merges changes into that one. And I assume it will be mirrored and backed up. Now, I only know about Arch, but Arch doesn't even use a database as you would think of one. It's a tree of files, plain files, served by FTP or HTTP, and if you corrupt a revision you corrupt that one only.
I can't believe that things are going to be nearly so bad as you think. I suggest you watch the kernel list once Linus comes back.
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Dear AC,
I am in business with a number of people who quit working for Microsoft. I must assume that they quit for some reason, and that they don't carry some enduring Microsoft religion with them to their new jobs. If I were to find that this is really some attempt to have Bill Gates pull my puppet strings, of course I would quit. But this seems rather unlikely.
Bruce
The main problem with package management is managing dependencies upon other packages. The installation system you write about is elegant, but you don't describe how (or if) it fixes that problem. Most naive-user packaging systems fix the problem by including the kitchen sink (all applicable DLLs) in their own package to reduce dependencies. Debian's package system works fine for their users because there is one huge repository with management of the proper cross-dependencies within that repository, rather than many repositories with little coordination. Once you add repositories, they go out of phase and the problems pop up.
Bruce
Hey, you reading this. You are going to die. Subtract the number 68 from your age. That's a good guess at how much time you have left, but no guarantees. What are you doing with your life between now and then? And if you have to die in the next minute, are you going to be satisfied with the way you've used your time? If not, start changing now.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
What is most glaring about it is the way he seems to think he's smarter than everyone on both sides, while at the same time he's so clearly not done his homework. What was he thinking?
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
But as you pointed out yourself:
You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute.
As I read it, the word you makes other sources irrelevant to the question. It's the copies that you make which must be readable.
It might take litigation to settle it. Good legal practice includes making sure your agreements are clear enough that you don't have to litigate their meaning.
Bruce
There is an anti-DRM provision that is so non-specific that placing a copy of a GNU FDL document in a system with login security could be a violation. It says something like "you may not use technical means to keep people from reading this document". Period. I disapprove of DRM as much as RMS, this is a matter of the license construction being a problem rather than the license goal.
The second one is a problem with the license goal, though. It's the "invariant sections" feature. You can designate that a section of a GFDL document can't be modified. A prohibition on modification obviously disqualifies the license as either Open Source or Free Software, most people can see that easily enough. The provision is there so that RMS can attach political statements or his version of history to documentation and have them stick. And thus he's not willing to talk about changing this. That has driven a pretty big wall between RMS and Debian, for example, since Debian will remove content not deemed as free from their system.
Bruce
Bruce
Well, I never had distaste for Stallman's philosophy. I felt that Open Source would be a gentle introduction for business people, who would be guided to understanding Stallman once they'd seen the pragmatic benefits. I have always, from the first moment it happened, been distressed that Eric positioned the organization to deprecate RMS rather than cooperate with him.
But I must say that I've become somewhat alienated from RMS personally, not from the Free Software philosophy, over the GNU FDL. It's a bad license, and I don't feel it fits with Free Software at all.
I still haven't heard you say that perhaps trying to coexist with Microsoft's "shared source" initiative and the delightful Mister Matusow wasn't such a great call.
I have debated Matusow, but I have never tried to be inclusive of "shared source". Indeed, if it's not compliant with the Open Source definition, I'm not interested in helping promote it. And thus I am not sure what you're talking about.
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
I try to call them as I see them. But in this case that also fits the goal of PR for the Open Source movement. Linus said something so incredibly bad for us, that could hurt us the next time that we have to reverse-engineer something for purposes of compatibility, that PR for the Open Source community is saying as loudly as possible that Linus is not representing us on this issue, that he's lost his cool for once.
Larry, on the other hand, does his own bad PR. One need only comment upon it.
Bruce
Parody is an appropriate tool for social commentary.
Bruce
Bruce
With all due respect, if there is prior art, put it in front of a judge
It's easy for you to say that I should go to court, but the fact is that if I have to go to court, I have already lost. I would have to settle. I can't afford the legal fees to get to the first day of verbal argument. Nor can any other Open Source developer. You should take into account the fact that the courts are a rich man's game before calling FUD on me.
Regarding basics of computer science, there's a recent one from Microsoft on performing a different action if you press a button twice rather than once that should not have been awarded and IMO the filer purjured himself regarding prior art.
Thanks for admitting that you would prefer to only grant non-obvious patents. The fact is that your job should be very different. You should be given a lot more time to consider a patent and go to the library. You should have a real triviality test - bringing a problem before a jury of developers to solve within a time limit - rather than the joke of one that you have now. And the people who send you patents should have real jail penalties for the way that they purjure themselves.
Bruce
Bruce
In other words, unless your company is so big that you can use your huge patent portfolio against all equal-sized or smaller companies, you're hosed. This is a game that only multinationals can win - and that's why IBM and HP lobby for Software patenting in Europe despite their affiliation with Open Source. It's more important to them to be able to dominate the entire computer software industry than it is to work with us.
Bruce
We're talking about distributed change management in this case, it's not one database. The thread that matters to most people is the one Linus manages, and he pulls out a tarball every time he merges changes into that one. And I assume it will be mirrored and backed up. Now, I only know about Arch, but Arch doesn't even use a database as you would think of one. It's a tree of files, plain files, served by FTP or HTTP, and if you corrupt a revision you corrupt that one only.
I can't believe that things are going to be nearly so bad as you think. I suggest you watch the kernel list once Linus comes back.
Bruce