I have an old '286-compatible laptop with a CPU made by Harris that is fully static. Instead of going into a wait loop when there is nothing to do, it halts the clock with a special instruction and continues, without any loss of CPU state, when it gets an interrupt.
Would this not work better than slowing down the clock?
Man, you are one serious pessimist! Mozilla started out wrong but even if you don't like their current browser design, note that the gecko rendering engine is showing up as a gnome widget in simpler browsers.
StarOffice needs a lot of rewrite, I agree. Their own widget set needs to be replaced with gnome. Their tools need to be made into bonobo components. Missing pieces need to be replaced. But that's stuff that we do well. Reading and writing the files, rendering them correctly, and actually editing the files, that's what we need the StarOffice code for.
It's said that the October 13 release of StarOffice 6 will be broken into components. There will also be missing functionality as some other people's proprietary stuff is being cut out. I have used 5.2, and aside from the fact that it currently crashes once in a while and I don't have the source yet to fix it, it has opened and rendered correctly every Office file I've had reason to throw at it. This doesn't mean it's feature-complete, but it covers the ones used in files people send me:-)
I think most people underestimate how big this is. It means that most office workers will be able to do their days work with free software. Sure, there are going to be problems with it, but that is why we are going to have the source.
There are a lot of little boxes that run Linux and BSD now. Alhough Cobalt was a pioneer, it's now far from unique. Thus, Solaris on the Cobalt might be a differentiator in that market and work positively for Sun. I don't know for sure.
Look, folks, they would not be Open-Sourcing a $70M+ product (StarOffice) if they didn't want the community buy-in. Sun is an old-style company trying to find its way into this new world. We want something from them - we want Java to be Open Source. Jumping down their throats is probably the wrong way to get that:-) . Thus, rather than foam at the mouth about Solaris on the Cobalt, let's just wait and see what plays out here.
MS now owns considerable stock, albeit non-voting, in a company that vends Debian commercially. For some reason I find that amusing.
Bruce
I upgraded to ext3 yesterday
on
XFS Beta
·
· Score: 2
I upgraded my laptop to ext3 yesterday. The tools in Debian's "unstable" are ready for it, I didn't check the "potato" distribution. The nice thing about it was that the ext2-to-ext3 upgrade happens in place, and you can back out and mount as ext2 again if you wish. You just install a file in the filesystem as the journal and (this is the one messy part) tell "mount" its inode number. The inode number thing is a consequence of the ext2-to-ext3 upgrade, and should not really be necessary for new ext3 filesystems.
The laptop now goes through a stop-without-proper-umount and reboot without having to check the filesystems again. I had to change the flags that "lilo" tells the kernel, and had to add flags in/etc/fstab, and had to boot with special flags ("rw") once to create the journal on the root filesystem.
It makes sense to release music for free until you have a following of sufficient size that they are willing to pay for music at a rate that would feed you. Then, you get to decide whether to sign to a record label or use the Street Performer Protocol. Charging for your music before you have much of an audience is self-defeating, you won't get an audience that way. The only people who do get audiences that way have convinced a record company to invest in them first.
To calculate the pay-back period for a device like this, you'd take into account the cost of the device and the cost of fuel and maintainance and calculate how long it would be until you break-even with what you'd pay for electricity. That's the economic pay-back. Early adopters will probably not reach it because the initial price for the devices will be high. Fuel cells are efficiently enough that later adopters have a good chance of doing so.
Then there's an ecological pay-back. How long does it take the device to return the energy used to manufacture it, and at what cost. This may not be as much of a factor for fuel cells, but it is really crucial when considering solar cells: many of them never pay back in energy the energy it cost to manufacture the system, if you count the aluminum frames for the cells, the mounting and tracking hardware, and the batteries and electrical equipment. Solar cells still make sense if you're off the grid or want to be prepared for an extended outage. I have a rather large panel that charges a battery to run my ham station in an emergency. But we need a breakthrough in efficiency.
Hm. This is a pretty complicated issue and you're a little confused about it already.
Distribution of Linux drivers without source is a separate issue due to an exception that Linus makes to the GPL for that case. See the license that comes with the kernel.
Distribution of drivers without source that are linked into a GPL operating system would indeed be a violation of the current GPL version 2, for any OS that doesn't have the same sort of exception to the GPL as the one Linus wrote for Linux.
The question is: when you link a Linux driver into an operating system, is the result a derived work of both components? If so, the GPL can restrict that linking under copyright law. If not, you'd have to fall back on contract law, which the GPL currently does not do.
The intent is not to restrict distributing GPLed user-mode programs that run on other operating systems. However, one need not allow every sort of creation of derivative work, for example copying Linux device drivers into proprietary operating systems.
1. Sun must distribute driver source for GPL drivers. I don't know if they have ever failed to do this but they must do it.
2. Donald feels that the driver porting kit has no non-infringing use. I disagree, stating the GPL exception that I've reproduced above. Donald thinks that applies only to user-mode software. I think that is the intent, but that's not how the GPL is written.
However, as a
special exception, the source code distributed need not include
anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
itself accompanies the executable.
That means they must distribute the driver source, but not the Solaris source.
Not well. The only case was Nintendo vs. Goloob games. Goloob made some device that gave you special powers, invulnerability, etc. in Nintendo games. Nintendo asserted that Goloob's device created a derived work. The opinion in this case was not conclusive.
Let me ask this: If I have a program that makes a call to, e.g. execlp("someprogram", {"someprogram", "filename"}); Does that make my program a derivative of someprogram?
No. And that is a problem where the GPL is concerned because with CORBA you can server-ize any program and use that to circumvent the GPL. It is argued that this might not stand because you could show a court that server-izing was a device explicitly used to circumvent the copyright.
Regarding whether or not MS holds a copyright on every program that links agains MS libraries, they do something even worse. They don't license those libraries and their own executables for use on an operating system that is not a Microsoft product.
My goal is to keep free software free. If it turns out that all of the free software I write is used as a subroutine library for any proprietary software that cares to pick it up, what incentive would I have to write free software?
It doesn't matter that they want to allow reasonable home copying, because to allow it they have to put some sort of copy-restriction device in both the TV and VCR. This is most likely a copy-counting device that would allow first-generation copies but not second-generation ones.
To do this, they must restrict the devices as they do DVD players, and DMCA will apply. That means no Open Source software for TV recording or reception.
They can avoid distributing solaris source because the GPL explicitly provides this exception:
However, as a
special exception, the source code distributed need not include
anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
itself accompanies the executable.
Well, the exception to the GPL was meant for a day when there was no free OS, so that free software could be built and run, specificaly on SunOS which was the dominant platform of the time. That isn't the case any longer, and in previous discussion with RMS he said that he would not have written that exception had there been a free OS at the time. The whole point of the GPL is to keep software free, not let someone link free software with proprietary stuff.
The intent of the exception was so that people could run Emacs on SunOS before there was a free OS. Now, we have free OS and the exception applies to OS code too, things that provide services to the proprietary operating system rather than just using the operating system's services. IMO that's not what was intended, and when I contacted Richard he said he'd get it fixed in GPL 3. I took that as agreement that it wasn't what he intended.
There is an exception in the GPL for the headers and libraries and other proprietary things that come with your compiler and OS. It was intended so that it would be legal to run Emacs on Sun way back before there was a free OS. IMO it applies to the entire compiler and OS and components that are normally distributed with it.
At most, Sun would have to GPL the driver porting kit. However, they need not distribute the source to their operating system under the GPL.
I am attaching this to a top-level posting so that people will see it.
Here is the relevant part of the GPL:
However, as a
special exception, the source code distributed need not include
anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
itself accompanies the executable.
In my opinion, and I'm not an attorney, this means that you must distribute the driver source, but not the source to Solaris.
I don't particularly like the adoration, either. It makes people that much more disappointed when I'm wrong (which happens pretty often) and the god is proven to have feet of clay. Then they generally go from adoration to the opposite, which is just as sick.
However, as a
special exception, the source code distributed need not include
anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
itself accompanies the executable.
The GPL tries to limit linking based on the assertion that linking creates a derivitave work, and you can limit derivitave works within a copyright permission.
Another avenue, which the GPL doesn't try to use, is contract law. You can require an exchange of rights in a contract that would cover linking.
Why a double-standard? It's the way it's used. The GPL restrictions work to keep software free. Most people's restrictions work to do the exact opposite.
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Bruce
Would this not work better than slowing down the clock?
Thanks
Bruce
StarOffice needs a lot of rewrite, I agree. Their own widget set needs to be replaced with gnome. Their tools need to be made into bonobo components. Missing pieces need to be replaced. But that's stuff that we do well. Reading and writing the files, rendering them correctly, and actually editing the files, that's what we need the StarOffice code for.
Bruce
I think most people underestimate how big this is. It means that most office workers will be able to do their days work with free software. Sure, there are going to be problems with it, but that is why we are going to have the source.
Bruce
Look, folks, they would not be Open-Sourcing a $70M+ product (StarOffice) if they didn't want the community buy-in. Sun is an old-style company trying to find its way into this new world. We want something from them - we want Java to be Open Source. Jumping down their throats is probably the wrong way to get that :-) . Thus, rather than foam at the mouth about Solaris on the Cobalt, let's just wait and see what plays out here.
Bruce
Bruce
The laptop now goes through a stop-without-proper-umount and reboot without having to check the filesystems again. I had to change the flags that "lilo" tells the kernel, and had to add flags in /etc/fstab, and had to boot with special flags ("rw") once to create the journal on the root filesystem.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Then there's an ecological pay-back. How long does it take the device to return the energy used to manufacture it, and at what cost. This may not be as much of a factor for fuel cells, but it is really crucial when considering solar cells: many of them never pay back in energy the energy it cost to manufacture the system, if you count the aluminum frames for the cells, the mounting and tracking hardware, and the batteries and electrical equipment. Solar cells still make sense if you're off the grid or want to be prepared for an extended outage. I have a rather large panel that charges a battery to run my ham station in an emergency. But we need a breakthrough in efficiency.
Bruce
Distribution of Linux drivers without source is a separate issue due to an exception that Linus makes to the GPL for that case. See the license that comes with the kernel.
Distribution of drivers without source that are linked into a GPL operating system would indeed be a violation of the current GPL version 2, for any OS that doesn't have the same sort of exception to the GPL as the one Linus wrote for Linux.
The question is: when you link a Linux driver into an operating system, is the result a derived work of both components? If so, the GPL can restrict that linking under copyright law. If not, you'd have to fall back on contract law, which the GPL currently does not do.
The intent is not to restrict distributing GPLed user-mode programs that run on other operating systems. However, one need not allow every sort of creation of derivative work, for example copying Linux device drivers into proprietary operating systems.
Bruce
2. Donald feels that the driver porting kit has no non-infringing use. I disagree, stating the GPL exception that I've reproduced above. Donald thinks that applies only to user-mode software. I think that is the intent, but that's not how the GPL is written.
I hope that makes it clearer.
Bruce
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
That means they must distribute the driver source, but not the Solaris source.
Bruce
Not well. The only case was Nintendo vs. Goloob games. Goloob made some device that gave you special powers, invulnerability, etc. in Nintendo games. Nintendo asserted that Goloob's device created a derived work. The opinion in this case was not conclusive.
Let me ask this: If I have a program that makes a call to, e.g. execlp("someprogram", {"someprogram", "filename"}); Does that make my program a derivative of someprogram?
No. And that is a problem where the GPL is concerned because with CORBA you can server-ize any program and use that to circumvent the GPL. It is argued that this might not stand because you could show a court that server-izing was a device explicitly used to circumvent the copyright.
Regarding whether or not MS holds a copyright on every program that links agains MS libraries, they do something even worse. They don't license those libraries and their own executables for use on an operating system that is not a Microsoft product.
My goal is to keep free software free. If it turns out that all of the free software I write is used as a subroutine library for any proprietary software that cares to pick it up, what incentive would I have to write free software?
Thanks
Bruce
To do this, they must restrict the devices as they do DVD players, and DMCA will apply. That means no Open Source software for TV recording or reception.
Bruce
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
The intent of the exception was so that people could run Emacs on SunOS before there was a free OS. Now, we have free OS and the exception applies to OS code too, things that provide services to the proprietary operating system rather than just using the operating system's services. IMO that's not what was intended, and when I contacted Richard he said he'd get it fixed in GPL 3. I took that as agreement that it wasn't what he intended.
Thanks
Bruce
At most, Sun would have to GPL the driver porting kit. However, they need not distribute the source to their operating system under the GPL.
Bruce
Here is the relevant part of the GPL:
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
In my opinion, and I'm not an attorney, this means that you must distribute the driver source, but not the source to Solaris.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
I did talk with RMS. He said he'd fix it in GPL 3. That's all he said. Today, he had Eben Moglen, who is a lawyer, write me.
Bruce
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
Another avenue, which the GPL doesn't try to use, is contract law. You can require an exchange of rights in a contract that would cover linking.
Why a double-standard? It's the way it's used. The GPL restrictions work to keep software free. Most people's restrictions work to do the exact opposite.
Thanks
Bruce