Perhaps the worst "heresy" one can post on Slashdot is the notion that the GPL is not holy writ
But you do post that, constantly. When people disagree with you you act as though you have been shunned for speaking the horrible truth. You are the only person I have ever heard refer to the GPL as "holy" or "sacred," apart from Stallman's "St. Ignucius" joke. (Note, joke.)
And yet you are not banned from/., in fact you are permitted to say and write this anywhere you please. In order for it to be heresy, don't you have to get into some kind of trouble for saying it? You have even been modded up for writing what you did. Some heretic you turned out to be.
You are confusing cause and effect, motivation and implementation.
The main motivation in writing the GPL is to allow copyright holders to keep their software open and free for as long as the copyright lasts. Stallman has made it clear that he hopes one effect of a lot of people doing this will be the end of proprietary software, and a different business model around software. It seems that a lot of people agree with this idea. Of course, you always say that the people who agree have been duped, so I won't try to convince you otherwise.
Most modern BSD-style licenses only require you to retain the copyright and the warranty disclaimer. This includes adding your own terms. For example, Netapp's ONTAP OS is based on BSD, and the copyright is acknowledged, along with a bunch of restrictions: you may not redistribute ONTAP, and on and on.
As far as the GPL is concerned, both requirements (retain the copyright and the warranty disclaimer) are also part of the GPL, so you are in no way "shredding" the original license when you redistribute the code under the GPL; you are just adding terms to the original license (which, again, if you read your BSD style license, you are permitted to do).
There was a recent situation when a Linux contributor stripped off the copyright notices on BSD code and put it into the kernel distribution. Once this was pointed out, the copyright notices were added back in, the release was in compliance with the original license and redistributed under the GPL.
Blind, stupid fanaticism doesn't do anything to help Apple -- it just means that people ignore Mac fans.
"Max" does in fact make unsubstantiated statements about the quality of the software based on a single discovery, not to mention that he does not say that he notified Apple about the problem. Way to help improve a bad situation!
Apple isn't "on top" of much of anything that I can think of.
But they are on top; they make the best desktop OS out there, far better than anything Microsoft, Linux, or the BSD's have put out as a general workstation. Every media outlet is raving about the functional simplicity of the software. In a recent PC Magazine poll (and this in a rag with an editorial policy of dumping on Apple all the time) Apple's support and product quality tied or beat Dell, Gateway and IBM in every category. I think that the "on top, tempting target" remark is meant more in the way of saying that some people like to insult that which is perceived to be the best.
I wish editors would reject stories that are just blatently biased, or at least reserve the right to re-summarize story submissions.
And I wish the editors would send me a million dollars. Were you injured in some way by reading the story? Has your doctor warned you to avoid all excitement? Why not reserve your right to stop reading slashdot? That would be a lot easier than assigning someone to make sure that everything published is fit for your consumption.
Even OpenBSD has local root exploits, and they have been fixing them for years. A local exploit could be used to load a root program that listens on the network, so you fix it.
I've seen lots of security advisories make fun of or insult the product and company in question. Big deal, a programmer skilled enough to find a buffer overflow makes fun of Steve Jobs' product. Mr. Jobs can afford a gold thread hanky to wipe his tears, but more likely it just rolls off their backs; people have been making fun of Apple for decades.
In general, it is hard to program an OS, and once it is out there, easier to poke holes in it. That is why security is difficult. Fix the problem, review your code for similar problems, fix those, move on.
I which case, SCO will say that it's not about direct copying, but "derivative works." At which point the old Novell, SCO, AT&T and IBM contracts get scrutinized, I guess.
If dismissal is rare, what is a more common sanction against a plaintiff in this case? Would the court fine the plaintiff, or dismiss certain parts of the case stemming from the unprovided information?
In this case, the lack of discovery seems to directly interfere with the defendant's ability to, well, defend, so I have been wondering how the case could be allowed to proceed without discovery.
Well, there may be a constructive way to make this work.
Let's presume that it is a piece of cake to modify this code to work with FreeBSD. Having not seen the code, I have no idea. You can do that, since you contribute so much code to the FreeBSD project;-). * (see end of message)
Next, get it included into the ports tree.
Modify the installer. When you install FreeBSD, the kernel and hardware drivers are probably all distrubuted under the BSD-style license. The installer asks:
"Do you want to install support for DOS NDIS wireless drivers from the ports tree?"
Whe you answer 'Y', the installer ftp's and builds the code to run on your system, or copies it from CD. Now, if you were to distribute this system AFTER you've embedded the NDIS code in the kernel, you have a GPL issue. But doing it this way, you can redistrubute the system.
The FSF has made it clear that this is OK with the GPL.
* I know that you are afraid to look at GPL-licensed code for fear that the FSF will thereafter own the Glass' family knowldege unto the seventh son of the seventh son, but speak to a lawyer before posting about how dangerous the risk is.
To put it another way, they are not filtering FreeBSD results because it's not a popular subject and because FreeBSD is not a threat to their plans in the server market. Or, if it is, they're too shortsighted to see that (as they were with Linux). Something tells me there is another anti-GPL speech in you wanting to get out. (Well, not another one, just the same one you've been using for years.)
But seriously, there was something on Groklaw about this, where MSN puts paid links first, and they also posted an examination of the possible methdos they use to sort stuff according to their interests and the subject's overall popularity as measured by MSN. The raw search results are there, but you have to do some fiddling to see them. The article I am thinking of is here
That's the only thing that had Bugtraq up in arms: the lack of assurance that earlier versions would see a patch.
I agree completely. I have criticized Apple not for their actions, but for their failure to explain anything. They don't communicate with their customers; they don't respond to anyone in their own apple.com forums (either to address or disprove claims made there), and they don't publish OS support schedules. As a result, the Apple market is rumour-based, which for corporate adoption is a very bad thing.
Their paying customers are left to slug it out on the Internet, and Apple appears afraid to commit themselves.
In a previous/. forum, I wrote up that it is this problem that prevents my company from adopting OS X (and Macs), and was basically told to trust Apple, or upgrade to Panther. Mind you, I was told this by Apple users as equally clueless as myself, since nobody knows what Apple's plans are until the company chooses to communicate.
In hopes of exerting some small influence, I sent a note to Apple about this, explaining:
- I work for a financial management company. We need to control our upgrade/security patch schedule. - we use Windows and Solaris because they support their old OS releases, and tell us how long that support will last. - we can choose when to apply service packs or security patches based on our software vendors, our in-house developers' needs, and our corporate policies. For example, to keep our core business moving, we try to avoid changes near the end of the month, and we specifically ban all changes during the last month of the fiscal year. Because of this policy, we have a rock-solid computing environment. Unplanned downtime totals less than a few hours per year.
I explained that if Apple would adopt support policies geared toward companies, this would help those of us considering Macs and OS X in the workplace. Many in my company have called their Macs with OS X "the best computer ever," but those machines are all at home. We know that we cannot bring them into work until Apple tells us how far we can count on support. It's the same that we ask of all our vendors.
I am not asking Apple to promise everything, no vendor can do that. I just wish that they would at least say "we cannot offer such service at this time," or, "we are evaluating business support plans for our products and will let you know within 6 months." Any information would be very useful.
Just because the GPL claims that it's the only thing that gives you right to code does not mean that it's true.
This claim in the General Public License is based on US and international copyright laws. The GPL is simply the only software license that explains something about copyright.
Not true. The code does seem to be derivative of SCO's.
Which code are you talking about? Did you sign the NDA and see it? The examples shown publicly so far have been proven to be freely released under a BSD style license or original work. Please elaborate.
You did not underestand what I was saying originally. All of us like Jaguar and Panther and use them at home, but we cannot use them at work, because the lack of vendor info on security patches and OS support roadmap contradict our own security policy.
Normally I don't answer this kind of thing, but you posted the second stupid reply to my concern. Here is how the big kids do things:
When choosing a corporate platform, we don't just consider the QuickTime Java patch, we talk about hypothetical situations. This is done by asking "What would we do if..." In this case, we could not buy from a vendor that only fixes the current release and will not publish a road-map detailing availability policy for future security patches. Microsoft typically publishes security patches for free for about 5 years, until the OS is end-of-life'd.
Now, Jaguar is currently using older versions of the following:
OpenSSH Apache OpenSSL Samba The Kernel
Security concerns will be found and have been found that affect both Panther and Jaguar, because they are using duplicate code in much of their software.
And by the way, if you read the article you would see that. It clearly states that @stake found vulnerabilities in Jaguar that Apple said they do not intend to patch:
David Goldsmith, director of research for @stake... confirmed that Apple said it wasn't going to patch the flaws in earlier versions of the software.
"In my initial conversations with them, they said they weren't going to fix 10.2...
Typically, companies that charge for software provide security updates for the software for a certain period of time. Microsoft provides support for its products for about five years and releases service packs every year that include all the enhancements to the software. Microsoft doesn't charge for the service packs.
You could also try reading Apple Security Updates to see what the concern is about. In the FCS Panther release, Apple fixed many vulnerabilities that still exist in 10.2.8.
Like I said, I love my Macs, but they're home behind a firewall where internal security and unauthorised users are not such a big concern. I cannot bring them into the corporate world until we get some assurances that the OS will receive security patches for longer than one year.
I upgraded my machine at home 10.2.8->10.3. Unfortunately, one piece of software would not work (Silverfast SE, my scanner software. It would not detect the scanner even though the System Profiler showed that it was at SCSI address 2).
It was easy to downgrade to 10.2, then run software update to get back to the 10.2.8 system. Then I realized that there were security updates for 10.3 that were unavailable to me. My choice is security updates, or using my scanner. For now, I have chosen to stick with 10.2.8.
This is OK at home, as I only have on computer behind a firewall, but the dillema is unacceptable at my job.
At work, our CIO, my manager, and several staff use Macs, and we wish we could bring them into the company; our CIO said that the 15" PB is the best computer he has ever used. But, we are still running Windows 2000, and only stopped using NT4 a few months ago, but MS made security patches available up to the end. We continue to download and install security patches for 2000 server and workstation.
I think it is unreasonable to tell a company to upgrade all machines on the vendors' schedule; companies need to control their own upgrade cycle if their environment is to be stable. I work for a financial management company, and we have consistently near-zero downtime, in part because we control our software upgrades. We have a company policy of making no changes the last week of the month when accounts need to be settled, and no changes for one month at the end of the fiscal year so we can close our books. However, critical security fixes are required, after reasonable testing on our QA systems.
If Apple gives us the choice of 1) no security patches after one year max, or b) one critical app stops working on the new version, it means no OS X at work.
Worse, Apple has no clearly stated policy on upgrades, support, patch releases, and end-of-life schedules, and nobody you can get on the phone tells the same story. They are a very secretive company, which does not help when selling to the corporate market. I have read that Apple recently started setting up a corporate sales force, so hopefully this message will get back home and get into the right ears.
And, we don't like Windows, but MS at least tries to get get security fixes out and does state when we can expect support for old releases to stop, so we can make a schedule for ourselves.
That's why all GPLed works have to go to Public Domain.
Since you did not post anonymously, I will not dismiss this as drivel right out. Please explain your reasoning behind this statement.
You're saying that in one fell swoop, we wrest copyright from thousands of rightful owners and put this material in the public domain. Why? And how does my post lead you to this conclusion?
"Looks like SCO has become just a bit worried about their liabilities for distributing the Linux kernel. Starting November 1 you will have to be a registered SCO customer to be able to access their FTP site."
Doesn't matter; it is OK under the GPL to make code available only to those people who received binaries from you. You must, however, grant the same rights to those recipients so that they can further modify or distribute what they got from you.
In other words, if the GPL is enforceable, this move by SCO does not mitigate their responsibility to honor the terms of the license which they accepted by distributing the software.
If the GPL is enforceable, SCO has lost their rights by attempting to add further restrictions (in the form of their "SCO IP License"). If the GPL is not enforceable, then the whole software industry is in for a shake-up, because a license is the only way that software copyright holders extend any rights to you beyond what copyright allows.
I would not worry about the RAM usage. Here are some other memory statistics from my Windows 2000 machine:
Outlook 28,864 K Mozilla Firebird 29,168 K mcshield.exe 16,324 K (virus scanner) iTunes 20,288 K word.exe 9,232 K
(Word has no file open at this time; this is after starting the app on its own.)
Using more RAM is how a lot of apps run faster; many apps trade storage size for speed. Now, one could argue that a mail/calendar client using more RAM than a QuickTime multimedia application is silly, but when you've got a gig, what the heck are you worried about?
And don't worry, Bill Gates (at the Etre conference, I believe) just said that 64-bit computing does not excite him because "nobody will need more than 4GB RAM." He may reverse himself when Longhorn finally ships.
The installer recommends that you install SP4; I'm at SP3 with some hot fixes.
The app is completely identical to the OS X version. I have a first generation 5GB iPod and my Windows machine has no firewire, so I cannot test to see if the Mac iPod will work with this.
AAC sounds a lot better than MP3; I could not believe it was 128 bit when I did the comparison on my home stereo. When Apple started supporting this with QT6 and iTunes4 on the Mac, I re-ripped most of my CDs.
The iPod supports AAC, and I can hear the difference on the headphones.
I'm not sure if other players can play AAC, but then Creative said nobody would want that format...
This is the same tired crap you've been talking about for years, with no proof, no examples, and no sense.
Yes, I found 3 commercial compilers, but I should mention that I did it without even trying; I only mentioned the 3 that I read about for positive reviews from customers. There are still dozens out there. Your research does not even approach the level of "not trying;" you simply spout an opinion as fact without even checking to see if it is true.
And you're as bad as Ann Coulter when you say that Stallman's intent is to destroy jobs. His intent, if you read what he actually wrote, is to remove the operating system from the realm of competition. He does say that this may reduce or eliminate high paying positions in this market, but that his main goal is to be free to modify the software one uses. Note that he only ever says "may;" he does not (unlike you) pretend to understand all possible economic implications of his work.
You latch onto his use of the word "banned" in one of his hypothetical examples of how the economy could change, and repeat that over and over again, except you twist it to say that this is what Stallman says "should" happen.
The worst mistake you make is to equate Stallman's supposed intentions (as you see them, and yes, as Levy wrote about them, unconvincingly) with the real effect of his work on the world. You look at what you think are the goals of the GNU project, and you decide that by virtue of being a successful project, those goals are being met. But, you never quite go the distance of proving that markets are being destroyed and jobs being lost because the Linux kernel is under the GPL.
Your second worst is to try and use laws of physics to explain economics. By using the Second Law of Thermodynamics, you seem to be stating that:
a. there is a fixed amount of money in the world. b. there is a fixed amount of work that can be done. c. economics are governed by natural, immutable laws.
Of course, if any of this were true, Nixon could not have taken the US off of the gold standard and the Russian ruble could not have joined the currency market in the early 90s. If you cannot answer economic arguments with other economic arguments, using physics as a metaphor only illustrates your ignorance about laws (theories of nature that have not yet been disproven) and inventions (like currency and the notion of work other than hunting and gathering).
I say that I owe my career, in part, to the existence of software under the GPL. You say it won't last because the intention of the GPL is to destroy the market for my work. You never prove it, you just say it and hope that we'll all believe you.
If you want to debate the GPL, you need at least to do some research to see if the effects you predict are being seen anywhere. There are still dozens of compilers. There are many office suites. There are many operating systems. You say that the markets are going to shrink because of the GPL, but again, you cannot prove this.
Your responses are always "it is true" without, again, showing a concrete example of how the availability of a GPL program drove a company out of business.
The final Brett Glass Whopper that I will try to debunk is the lie that the GPL "may not be enforceable." If the GPL is invalid, so is every other software license in existence, including the BSD-style licenses.
Look at the GPL in its simplest design terms:
I am the copyright holder on this piece of software. Copyright does not forbid you from using it, but you are not permitted to make copies or distribute it without my permission.
Using the GPL, I extend to you the following rights and conditions. You can modify and distribute as long as you distribute your source code changes. If your changes are not distributed, you don't have to release your source code. If you violate these terms I, as the copyright holder, revoke your rights under this license.
How is this different from any other license in ex
Yes, just like the Linux kernel project has gone nowhere under the GPL. If that project went any further nowhere, it would bend space and time.
Mr Glass, you make claims and present absolutely no evidence to support them; you're as bad as Ann Coulter. You should write a carefully researched essay about the effects of the GPL, citing actual, real life examples of the harm you say it causes, and then people might believe you.
Even Microsoft bashers present evidence of the harm that the company tactics have caused, while you, for many years, have just repeated over and over again "the GPL is harmful," and ended your statements there. Here is how you do it, using my true story as an example:
The company I work for uses and modifies GPL software at every level of our operations. I know, because I am one of their systems architects. From compilers to schedulers to encryption to the Linux kernel, GPL software and our modifications are in every nook and cranny of the business. It could be argued that by using free software for our business we are harming software developers, but that is easily proven false. We emlpoy 40 full time developers to write our applications in house to manage our core business (financial management). Our revenues in fiscal 2003 were 500 million USD, and every employee qualified for a bonus because of the company's performance. With bonuses, our software developers earn 6 figures.
Instead of sending money to software companies who are firing US developers in favor of foreign labor, we're paying salaries and bonuses right here in the US. I am not a rabid nationalist, but I like the fact that I and my coworkers, many of whom are are literally my neighbors, work for a company that provides a good living and health insurance to local people. This puts money into the local economy and tax base. We have tailored our environment to our liking and our way fo doing business. Our portfolio managers are happy, we're happy, and we all make a great living. Hooray for the GPL, which allows us to control our own computers in the way we see fit!
Now, Brett, try arguing the other side. I'd actually be interested to hear how you really think that the GPL has harmed us all. And before you trot out your tired old compiler argument, there are excellent compilers and assemblers on the market. Here are a few which earn high praise from customers for their performance, compatibility, and ease of use:
STMicroelectronics Fortran and C for x86 http://www.excelsior-usa.com/xdsx86.html htt p://www.intel.com/software/products/compilers/i ndex.htm?iid=ipp_home+software_compiler&
I found these by entering "high performance compilers for x86" in google. So the market is not, as you seem to think, dead.
As you always say, the BSD-style licenses allow for and encourage code use in every possible way.
As for your example, the syslogd man page on my Linux system gives credit to the original authors as well as those who made modifications. So, you've got no right to complain in this case, since you are always encouraging the BSD-style licenses.
Slashdot Mirror
And yet you are not banned from /., in fact you are permitted to say and write this anywhere you please. In order for it to be heresy, don't you have to get into some kind of trouble for saying it? You have even been modded up for writing what you did. Some heretic you turned out to be.
You are confusing cause and effect, motivation and implementation.
The main motivation in writing the GPL is to allow copyright holders to keep their software open and free for as long as the copyright lasts. Stallman has made it clear that he hopes one effect of a lot of people doing this will be the end of proprietary software, and a different business model around software. It seems that a lot of people agree with this idea. Of course, you always say that the people who agree have been duped, so I won't try to convince you otherwise.
Most modern BSD-style licenses only require you to retain the copyright and the warranty disclaimer. This includes adding your own terms. For example, Netapp's ONTAP OS is based on BSD, and the copyright is acknowledged, along with a bunch of restrictions: you may not redistribute ONTAP, and on and on.
As far as the GPL is concerned, both requirements (retain the copyright and the warranty disclaimer) are also part of the GPL, so you are in no way "shredding" the original license when you redistribute the code under the GPL; you are just adding terms to the original license (which, again, if you read your BSD style license, you are permitted to do).
There was a recent situation when a Linux contributor stripped off the copyright notices on BSD code and put it into the kernel distribution. Once this was pointed out, the copyright notices were added back in, the release was in compliance with the original license and redistributed under the GPL.
Blind, stupid fanaticism doesn't do anything to help Apple -- it just means that people ignore Mac fans.
"Max" does in fact make unsubstantiated statements about the quality of the software based on a single discovery, not to mention that he does not say that he notified Apple about the problem. Way to help improve a bad situation!
Apple isn't "on top" of much of anything that I can think of.
But they are on top; they make the best desktop OS out there, far better than anything Microsoft, Linux, or the BSD's have put out as a general workstation. Every media outlet is raving about the functional simplicity of the software. In a recent PC Magazine poll (and this in a rag with an editorial policy of dumping on Apple all the time) Apple's support and product quality tied or beat Dell, Gateway and IBM in every category. I think that the "on top, tempting target" remark is meant more in the way of saying that some people like to insult that which is perceived to be the best.
I wish editors would reject stories that are just blatently biased, or at least reserve the right to re-summarize story submissions.
And I wish the editors would send me a million dollars. Were you injured in some way by reading the story? Has your doctor warned you to avoid all excitement? Why not reserve your right to stop reading slashdot? That would be a lot easier than assigning someone to make sure that everything published is fit for your consumption.
Even OpenBSD has local root exploits, and they have been fixing them for years. A local exploit could be used to load a root program that listens on the network, so you fix it.
I've seen lots of security advisories make fun of or insult the product and company in question. Big deal, a programmer skilled enough to find a buffer overflow makes fun of Steve Jobs' product. Mr. Jobs can afford a gold thread hanky to wipe his tears, but more likely it just rolls off their backs; people have been making fun of Apple for decades.
In general, it is hard to program an OS, and once it is out there, easier to poke holes in it. That is why security is difficult. Fix the problem, review your code for similar problems, fix those, move on.
I which case, SCO will say that it's not about direct copying, but "derivative works." At which point the old Novell, SCO, AT&T and IBM contracts get scrutinized, I guess.
If dismissal is rare, what is a more common sanction against a plaintiff in this case? Would the court fine the plaintiff, or dismiss certain parts of the case stemming from the unprovided information?
In this case, the lack of discovery seems to directly interfere with the defendant's ability to, well, defend, so I have been wondering how the case could be allowed to proceed without discovery.
Well, there may be a constructive way to make this work.
;-). * (see end of message)
Let's presume that it is a piece of cake to modify this code to work with FreeBSD. Having not seen the code, I have no idea. You can do that, since you contribute so much code to the FreeBSD project
Next, get it included into the ports tree.
Modify the installer. When you install FreeBSD, the kernel and hardware drivers are probably all distrubuted under the BSD-style license. The installer asks:
"Do you want to install support for DOS NDIS wireless drivers from the ports tree?"
Whe you answer 'Y', the installer ftp's and builds the code to run on your system, or copies it from CD. Now, if you were to distribute this system AFTER you've embedded the NDIS code in the kernel, you have a GPL issue. But doing it this way, you can redistrubute the system.
The FSF has made it clear that this is OK with the GPL.
* I know that you are afraid to look at GPL-licensed code for fear that the FSF will thereafter own the Glass' family knowldege unto the seventh son of the seventh son, but speak to a lawyer before posting about how dangerous the risk is.
To put it another way, they are not filtering FreeBSD results because it's not a popular subject and because FreeBSD is not a threat to their plans in the server market. Or, if it is, they're too shortsighted to see that (as they were with Linux). Something tells me there is another anti-GPL speech in you wanting to get out. (Well, not another one, just the same one you've been using for years.)
But seriously, there was something on Groklaw about this, where MSN puts paid links first, and they also posted an examination of the possible methdos they use to sort stuff according to their interests and the subject's overall popularity as measured by MSN. The raw search results are there, but you have to do some fiddling to see them. The article I am thinking of is here
I agree completely. I have criticized Apple not for their actions, but for their failure to explain anything. They don't communicate with their customers; they don't respond to anyone in their own apple.com forums (either to address or disprove claims made there), and they don't publish OS support schedules. As a result, the Apple market is rumour-based, which for corporate adoption is a very bad thing.
Their paying customers are left to slug it out on the Internet, and Apple appears afraid to commit themselves.
In a previous
In hopes of exerting some small influence, I sent a note to Apple about this, explaining:
- I work for a financial management company. We need to control our upgrade/security patch schedule.
- we use Windows and Solaris because they support their old OS releases, and tell us how long that support will last.
- we can choose when to apply service packs or security patches based on our software vendors, our in-house developers' needs, and our corporate policies. For example, to keep our core business moving, we try to avoid changes near the end of the month, and we specifically ban all changes during the last month of the fiscal year. Because of this policy, we have a rock-solid computing environment. Unplanned downtime totals less than a few hours per year.
I explained that if Apple would adopt support policies geared toward companies, this would help those of us considering Macs and OS X in the workplace. Many in my company have called their Macs with OS X "the best computer ever," but those machines are all at home. We know that we cannot bring them into work until Apple tells us how far we can count on support. It's the same that we ask of all our vendors.
I am not asking Apple to promise everything, no vendor can do that. I just wish that they would at least say "we cannot offer such service at this time," or, "we are evaluating business support plans for our products and will let you know within 6 months." Any information would be very useful.
Just because the GPL claims that it's the only thing that gives you right to code does not mean that it's true.
This claim in the General Public License is based on US and international copyright laws. The GPL is simply the only software license that explains something about copyright.
Not true. The code does seem to be derivative of SCO's.
Which code are you talking about? Did you sign the NDA and see it? The examples shown publicly so far have been proven to be freely released under a BSD style license or original work. Please elaborate.
You did not underestand what I was saying originally. All of us like Jaguar and Panther and use them at home, but we cannot use them at work, because the lack of vendor info on security patches and OS support roadmap contradict our own security policy.
Please see my reply here to the second fool. (You are the first.)
When choosing a corporate platform, we don't just consider the QuickTime Java patch, we talk about hypothetical situations. This is done by asking "What would we do if..." In this case, we could not buy from a vendor that only fixes the current release and will not publish a road-map detailing availability policy for future security patches. Microsoft typically publishes security patches for free for about 5 years, until the OS is end-of-life'd.
Now, Jaguar is currently using older versions of the following:
OpenSSH
Apache
OpenSSL
Samba
The Kernel
Security concerns will be found and have been found that affect both Panther and Jaguar, because they are using duplicate code in much of their software.
And by the way, if you read the article you would see that. It clearly states that @stake found vulnerabilities in Jaguar that Apple said they do not intend to patch:
You could also try reading Apple Security Updates to see what the concern is about. In the FCS Panther release, Apple fixed many vulnerabilities that still exist in 10.2.8.
Like I said, I love my Macs, but they're home behind a firewall where internal security and unauthorised users are not such a big concern. I cannot bring them into the corporate world until we get some assurances that the OS will receive security patches for longer than one year.
and I think so because of this:
I upgraded my machine at home 10.2.8->10.3. Unfortunately, one piece of software would not work (Silverfast SE, my scanner software. It would not detect the scanner even though the System Profiler showed that it was at SCSI address 2).
It was easy to downgrade to 10.2, then run software update to get back to the 10.2.8 system. Then I realized that there were security updates for 10.3 that were unavailable to me. My choice is security updates, or using my scanner. For now, I have chosen to stick with 10.2.8.
This is OK at home, as I only have on computer behind a firewall, but the dillema is unacceptable at my job.
At work, our CIO, my manager, and several staff use Macs, and we wish we could bring them into the company; our CIO said that the 15" PB is the best computer he has ever used. But, we are still running Windows 2000, and only stopped using NT4 a few months ago, but MS made security patches available up to the end. We continue to download and install security patches for 2000 server and workstation.
I think it is unreasonable to tell a company to upgrade all machines on the vendors' schedule; companies need to control their own upgrade cycle if their environment is to be stable. I work for a financial management company, and we have consistently near-zero downtime, in part because we control our software upgrades. We have a company policy of making no changes the last week of the month when accounts need to be settled, and no changes for one month at the end of the fiscal year so we can close our books. However, critical security fixes are required, after reasonable testing on our QA systems.
If Apple gives us the choice of 1) no security patches after one year max, or b) one critical app stops working on the new version, it means no OS X at work.
Worse, Apple has no clearly stated policy on upgrades, support, patch releases, and end-of-life schedules, and nobody you can get on the phone tells the same story. They are a very secretive company, which does not help when selling to the corporate market. I have read that Apple recently started setting up a corporate sales force, so hopefully this message will get back home and get into the right ears.
And, we don't like Windows, but MS at least tries to get get security fixes out and does state when we can expect support for old releases to stop, so we can make a schedule for ourselves.
That's why all GPLed works have to go to Public Domain.
Since you did not post anonymously, I will not dismiss this as drivel right out. Please explain your reasoning behind this statement.
You're saying that in one fell swoop, we wrest copyright from thousands of rightful owners and put this material in the public domain. Why? And how does my post lead you to this conclusion?
"Looks like SCO has become just a bit worried about their liabilities for distributing the Linux kernel. Starting November 1 you will have to be a registered SCO customer to be able to access their FTP site."
Doesn't matter; it is OK under the GPL to make code available only to those people who received binaries from you. You must, however, grant the same rights to those recipients so that they can further modify or distribute what they got from you.
In other words, if the GPL is enforceable, this move by SCO does not mitigate their responsibility to honor the terms of the license which they accepted by distributing the software.
If the GPL is enforceable, SCO has lost their rights by attempting to add further restrictions (in the form of their "SCO IP License"). If the GPL is not enforceable, then the whole software industry is in for a shake-up, because a license is the only way that software copyright holders extend any rights to you beyond what copyright allows.
I would not worry about the RAM usage. Here are some other memory statistics from my Windows 2000 machine:
Outlook 28,864 K
Mozilla Firebird 29,168 K
mcshield.exe 16,324 K
(virus scanner)
iTunes 20,288 K
word.exe 9,232 K
(Word has no file open at this time; this is after starting the app on its own.)
Using more RAM is how a lot of apps run faster; many apps trade storage size for speed. Now, one could argue that a mail/calendar client using more RAM than a QuickTime multimedia application is silly, but when you've got a gig, what the heck are you worried about?
And don't worry, Bill Gates (at the Etre conference, I believe) just said that 64-bit computing does not excite him because "nobody will need more than 4GB RAM." He may reverse himself when Longhorn finally ships.
The installer recommends that you install SP4; I'm at SP3 with some hot fixes.
The app is completely identical to the OS X version. I have a first generation 5GB iPod and my Windows machine has no firewire, so I cannot test to see if the Mac iPod will work with this.
...you don't seem to get it. Read the docs. The only thing it won't allow you to do is play your tunes without electricity.
It's not a web browser; it is uncompressing audio content on the fly with Quicktime and streaming to and from other computers.
And besides, aren't those just the minimum Windows requirements?
AAC sounds a lot better than MP3; I could not believe it was 128 bit when I did the comparison on my home stereo. When Apple started supporting this with QT6 and iTunes4 on the Mac, I re-ripped most of my CDs.
The iPod supports AAC, and I can hear the difference on the headphones.
I'm not sure if other players can play AAC, but then Creative said nobody would want that format...
This is the same tired crap you've been talking about for years, with no proof, no examples, and no sense.
Yes, I found 3 commercial compilers, but I should mention that I did it without even trying; I only mentioned the 3 that I read about for positive reviews from customers. There are still dozens out there. Your research does not even approach the level of "not trying;" you simply spout an opinion as fact without even checking to see if it is true.
And you're as bad as Ann Coulter when you say that Stallman's intent is to destroy jobs. His intent, if you read what he actually wrote, is to remove the operating system from the realm of competition. He does say that this may reduce or eliminate high paying positions in this market, but that his main goal is to be free to modify the software one uses. Note that he only ever says "may;" he does not (unlike you) pretend to understand all possible economic implications of his work.
You latch onto his use of the word "banned" in one of his hypothetical examples of how the economy could change, and repeat that over and over again, except you twist it to say that this is what Stallman says "should" happen.
The worst mistake you make is to equate Stallman's supposed intentions (as you see them, and yes, as Levy wrote about them, unconvincingly) with the real effect of his work on the world. You look at what you think are the goals of the GNU project, and you decide that by virtue of being a successful project, those goals are being met. But, you never quite go the distance of proving that markets are being destroyed and jobs being lost because the Linux kernel is under the GPL.
Your second worst is to try and use laws of physics to explain economics. By using the Second Law of Thermodynamics, you seem to be stating that:
a. there is a fixed amount of money in the world.
b. there is a fixed amount of work that can be done.
c. economics are governed by natural, immutable laws.
Of course, if any of this were true, Nixon could not have taken the US off of the gold standard and the Russian ruble could not have joined the currency market in the early 90s. If you cannot answer economic arguments with other economic arguments, using physics as a metaphor only illustrates your ignorance about laws (theories of nature that have not yet been disproven) and inventions (like currency and the notion of work other than hunting and gathering).
I say that I owe my career, in part, to the existence of software under the GPL. You say it won't last because the intention of the GPL is to destroy the market for my work. You never prove it, you just say it and hope that we'll all believe you.
If you want to debate the GPL, you need at least to do some research to see if the effects you predict are being seen anywhere. There are still dozens of compilers. There are many office suites. There are many operating systems. You say that the markets are going to shrink because of the GPL, but again, you cannot prove this.
Your responses are always "it is true" without, again, showing a concrete example of how the availability of a GPL program drove a company out of business.
The final Brett Glass Whopper that I will try to debunk is the lie that the GPL "may not be enforceable." If the GPL is invalid, so is every other software license in existence, including the BSD-style licenses.
Look at the GPL in its simplest design terms:
I am the copyright holder on this piece of software. Copyright does not forbid you from using it, but you are not permitted to make copies or distribute it without my permission.
Using the GPL, I extend to you the following rights and conditions. You can modify and distribute as long as you distribute your source code changes. If your changes are not distributed, you don't have to release your source code. If you violate these terms I, as the copyright holder, revoke your rights under this license.
How is this different from any other license in ex
Yes, just like the Linux kernel project has gone nowhere under the GPL. If that project went any further nowhere, it would bend space and time.
t p://www.intel.com/software/products/compilers/i ndex.htm?iid=ipp_home+software_compiler&
Mr Glass, you make claims and present absolutely no evidence to support them; you're as bad as Ann Coulter. You should write a carefully researched essay about the effects of the GPL, citing actual, real life examples of the harm you say it causes, and then people might believe you.
Even Microsoft bashers present evidence of the harm that the company tactics have caused, while you, for many years, have just repeated over and over again "the GPL is harmful," and ended your statements there. Here is how you do it, using my true story as an example:
The company I work for uses and modifies GPL software at every level of our operations. I know, because I am one of their systems architects. From compilers to schedulers to encryption to the Linux kernel, GPL software and our modifications are in every nook and cranny of the business. It could be argued that by using free software for our business we are harming software developers, but that is easily proven false. We emlpoy 40 full time developers to write our applications in house to manage our core business (financial management). Our revenues in fiscal 2003 were 500 million USD, and every employee qualified for a bonus because of the company's performance. With bonuses, our software developers earn 6 figures.
Instead of sending money to software companies who are firing US developers in favor of foreign labor, we're paying salaries and bonuses right here in the US. I am not a rabid nationalist, but I like the fact that I and my coworkers, many of whom are are literally my neighbors, work for a company that provides a good living and health insurance to local people. This puts money into the local economy and tax base. We have tailored our environment to our liking and our way fo doing business. Our portfolio managers are happy, we're happy, and we all make a great living. Hooray for the GPL, which allows us to control our own computers in the way we see fit!
Now, Brett, try arguing the other side. I'd actually be interested to hear how you really think that the GPL has harmed us all. And before you trot out your tired old compiler argument, there are excellent compilers and assemblers on the market. Here are a few which earn high praise from customers for their performance, compatibility, and ease of use:
STMicroelectronics Fortran and C for x86
http://www.excelsior-usa.com/xdsx86.html
ht
I found these by entering "high performance compilers for x86" in google. So the market is not, as you seem to think, dead.
As you always say, the BSD-style licenses allow for and encourage code use in every possible way.
As for your example, the syslogd man page on my Linux system gives credit to the original authors as well as those who made modifications. So, you've got no right to complain in this case, since you are always encouraging the BSD-style licenses.