Um, they're against the government choosing, at the outset, that it must use . What's wrong with the government setting policies on its software purchases?
No, if you don't put a copyright notice on something, it's automatically coprighted with all rights reserved. And it's been that way for, what, 27 years?
These laws only say the gov. has to prefer OS, not the have to use it. So, in order to have a point you need to come up with a reason why the government should use a commercial product over the Free/Open Source alternative (and no, ``saving money'' is not a good reason---the government ain't there to make a profit!)
You're forgetting---every one of those features they mentioned is an M$ buzzword, and they're relying on that M$ buzz to drown out the facts in voters' and legislators' ears.
And we all know that anti-capitalism is..communism.
Except that, these days, when corporations say ``capitalism'', they usually mean ``corporate socialism'' (or ``corporate fascism'', they're the same thing). So, anti-capitalism coming from BG actually means ``free markets''.
You mean the difference between / and \? I understand why Windows users don't understand that, which is why I tried very hard not to flame, just instruct:)
Perhaps I should have said ``if you think in some other was, gotos are probably not so evil''?
I actually think he did a great job of explaining why gotos hurt a certain way of thinking about programming. Since that way of thinking about programming is, by definition, more mathematical than other ways, his letter (not article) had a necessarily high mathematical content. It's sort of like an economist arguing that a particular economic feature (the Fed rolling the dice to change interest rates, say) makes mathematical economic prediction harder. Of course the economist is going to talk in mathematical terms. And, of course, if you don't care about mathematical economic prediction, you don't care about the economist's point.
And, I seem to have an even harder time than RMS convincing people who disagree with me, so perhaps I should shut up.
Well, flaming each other about them is part of the fun of free software:)
But I think we'd best leave the users out of that. (In fact, we, as a community, probably need some strict rules about deaing with outsiders---all our hacker jokes and insults and puns and flamewars need to be left at the/. threshold. Outside, we either act like we mean buisiness or we act like we mean failure.)
Again: if you think the way Dijkstra does (and its a training thing, not like the visual/verbal thing), gotos are evil. If you think in other ways, gotos are probably not so evil. Dijkstra just happened to believe that thinking in a different fashion than him was evil.
You realize BSD and GNU are (mostly) compatible (and GNU software isn't supposed to use GNU extensions anyway)? So the only ``for BSD'' or ``for GNU/Linux'' about it is the build.
Don't have a link, but most visitors to/. use IE. However, I'm sure many more posters use something else. Remember, only a few insignificant visitors actually post on/.:)
(Btw., / is a forward slash. \ is a backward slash. FYI.)
A professor that teaches eecs20 predicted that in the future (this was in a paper): Link to Paper [berkeley.edu] Software would be taught akin to Literature, where students would be studying the 'greats' (he cites Kernighan, Knuth, Linus Torvalds) and there would be things such as 'slang' etc, in the syntax, SO why do you think that we really have scarce knowledge of the greats now?
Copyright law and the cult of proprietary software.
IIRC, Dijkstra's argument was about the amount and complexity of state needed to mentally model the behavior of the program. Whether you care depends on whether you follow the formal methods school of (insert latin name here) or the gdb school of . Formal methodists should avoid goto; gdbists should do what gets the job done (not that formal methods can't get the job done:)
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If you haven't noticed, the reason the only private schools are religious or exclusive is because nobody else can afford them.
Which sort of backs up the OP's point.
Um, they're against the government choosing, at the outset, that it must use . What's wrong with the government setting policies on its software purchases?
R&D is an expensive process that people like RMS tend to forget, since he works for an institution.
You mean the FSF?
No, if you don't put a copyright notice on something, it's automatically coprighted with all rights reserved. And it's been that way for, what, 27 years?
These laws only say the gov. has to prefer OS, not the have to use it. So, in order to have a point you need to come up with a reason why the government should use a commercial product over the Free/Open Source alternative (and no, ``saving money'' is not a good reason---the government ain't there to make a profit!)
Because part of ``working'' in a public service context is being free software.
You're forgetting---every one of those features they mentioned is an M$ buzzword, and they're relying on that M$ buzz to drown out the facts in voters' and legislators' ears.
And we all know that anti-capitalism is..communism.
Except that, these days, when corporations say ``capitalism'', they usually mean ``corporate socialism'' (or ``corporate fascism'', they're the same thing). So, anti-capitalism coming from BG actually means ``free markets''.
By your reasoning, you can't make a choice without restricting choice.
So I guess everybody had better stop making choices. We have to preserve freedom of choice, you know!
let the buyer excercise his or her rights,
Um, in this case the buyer is the government, and M$/Intel are trying to stop it exercising its right to refuse their software.
If the government buys specialized software, why can't it also request the source code?
You mean the difference between / and \? I understand why Windows users don't understand that, which is why I tried very hard not to flame, just instruct :)
Perhaps I should have said ``if you think in some other was, gotos are probably not so evil''?
I actually think he did a great job of explaining why gotos hurt a certain way of thinking about programming. Since that way of thinking about programming is, by definition, more mathematical than other ways, his letter (not article) had a necessarily high mathematical content. It's sort of like an economist arguing that a particular economic feature (the Fed rolling the dice to change interest rates, say) makes mathematical economic prediction harder. Of course the economist is going to talk in mathematical terms. And, of course, if you don't care about mathematical economic prediction, you don't care about the economist's point.
And, I seem to have an even harder time than RMS convincing people who disagree with me, so perhaps I should shut up.
Btw., on the hunting GNU thing: I'm sure RMS would say giving screen time to GNUs is better than giving it to penguins :)
Well, flaming each other about them is part of the fun of free software :)
/. threshold. Outside, we either act like we mean buisiness or we act like we mean failure.)
But I think we'd best leave the users out of that. (In fact, we, as a community, probably need some strict rules about deaing with outsiders---all our hacker jokes and insults and puns and flamewars need to be left at the
Thanks for that violent agreement.
Again: if you think the way Dijkstra does (and its a training thing, not like the visual/verbal thing), gotos are evil. If you think in other ways, gotos are probably not so evil. Dijkstra just happened to believe that thinking in a different fashion than him was evil.
You realize BSD and GNU are (mostly) compatible (and GNU software isn't supposed to use GNU extensions anyway)? So the only ``for BSD'' or ``for GNU/Linux'' about it is the build.
Don't have a link, but most visitors to /. use IE. However, I'm sure many more posters use something else. Remember, only a few insignificant visitors actually post on /. :)
(Btw., / is a forward slash. \ is a backward slash. FYI.)
I'm 1.5: Dijkstra was a genius; if only more theoreticians had worked from his base---then it'd be practical :)
Copyright law and the cult of proprietary software.
Sorry; that should say ``formal methods school of '' and ``gdb school of ''.
IIRC, Dijkstra's argument was about the amount and complexity of state needed to mentally model the behavior of the program. Whether you care depends on whether you follow the formal methods school of (insert latin name here) or the gdb school of . Formal methodists should avoid goto; gdbists should do what gets the job done (not that formal methods can't get the job done :)
That constitutes modifying the copyright, which is still a violation of copyright law---even for Free/Open Source Software.
Depends on what he wants 'em for...
Frodo was the protagonist in books 1-4. Sam was the protagonist in 5 & 6.