is it completely normal to see code being submitted for possible inclusion with "Copyright (C) 2002, 2003 Dell Inc." attached? How does the licensing work?
If you submit a patch to Linux (or any GPL'd app), then you're still the the copyright-holder of this particular code snippet. But you have to license this snippet under the GPL, so that can be included into the kernel. Clear?
Re:Before the trolls come out.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 1
What does trolltech say about this?... It does *not* say anything about intra-company distributions, but it's quite clear to me that you are not allowed to create a closed-source application that depends on the QT GPL edition.
Trolltech released Qt under the GPL. No interpretation of the GPL on their part does add anything new to this fact. As you say yourself, Trolltech has a financial interest to make you believe that you have to pay for their product under as many circumstances as possible. But in reality the only things that count are copyright law and the additional rights that are granted to you by the GPL license. I already knew the link you posted, and I think it is a bit misleading.
The GPL-FAQ from the FSF is very clear about intra-company distribution:
I don't think that this clarification has to be part of the license, because these are consequences that follow from the application of copyright law (which is different in different countries). Maybe it could be part of the preamble, but then again, you can't put every remote implication into this document.
Thankfully I don't care about/. moderation. My initial post was more flamebait than trollish, but the distinction is minor so I don't really care all that much about it.
Your post didn't deserve a downmod, but a reply.
Re:Before the trolls come out.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 1
I reviewed it twice and didn't come up with any distinction for intercompany copying, but if you can point me to the section I'll gladly agree with you.
As I said before, I'm pretty sure that this isn't part of the license, but a question of copyright law and working contracts in general.
But copying is copying is copying
Semi-serious: does your disk controller need a license to copy copyrighted binaries into memory? Does your keyboard need a license if you type in your new novel?
As it stands now I'm just another person who was modded to -1 troll for pointing out the truth...
The moderation of your initial post was unfair. Slashdot's moderation system doesn't work well, that's for sure.
But whether your opinion is the truth isn't clear yet. I for one disagree with you, but we both don't have enough facts at hand to decide this question definitely. If you don't come up with new information, I will end the discussion at this point - unresolved.
Re:Before the trolls come out.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 1
I'd agree with you if you could point to where the GPL makes the distiction between copying inside an organization and copying outside of the organization.
The GPL doesn't make such a distinction. It uses the term "distribution" according to copyright law. I'm no lawyer, so I can't prove my opinion to you.
But if I copy/distribute a binary to a co-worker (as would be my job as an in-house coder)-- in my understanding of the GPL that co-worker can demand access to the source code.
I think this all boils down to the question whether the employee licenses the binary from the company or not. I think this is not the case. In my understanding the company owns the program and the hardware it is running on, and the employee isn't a licensee of the code, but just a part of the legal entity "company". Maybe I'm wrong - I don't know.
Re:Before the trolls come out.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 1
I think that a company owns the copyright for any code written by an employee on company time (at least this is my situation, and I think it is the normal case). So I don't think that your scenario counts as "distribution". The company owns the code and its employees are a part of this entity.
Re:Before the trolls come out.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 1
It's a hard enough step to convince corps to adopt Linux on the desktop, asking them to GPL everything they create in-house for that desktop is stupid.
AFAIK you don't have to GPL a derivative of a GPL'd program if you don't intend to distribute it. If there's no licensee for your additions, why should you need a license? (If you think that this is not true, then GPL your derivative and simply don't distribute it to anyone!)
So IMHO this argument is pretty irrelevant for in-house programs and company-infrastructure.
I don't need to achieve "world domination" in order to get good software. No matter what Microsoft does with it's copy of FreeBSD, my copy is still intact, along with the copies of those who develop it. It would change nothing in my life.
If a hardware manufacturer would give back his changes to you, that would change your life (a little bit).
Take another example. "Alice in Wonderland" is in the public domain. It is not copylefted. So along comes Microsoft and exploits it. They change the wording, the plot, dumb down the puns, etc. Then they release it under a proprietary license, charging a fee to read it (not merely a fee to purchase the paper it's printed on). Further, let's assume that their version of AiW becomes more popular than the original. Does this change anything? No, not really. It's sad that so many people are choosing to read the bastardized version rather than the original, but the original is still there and unchanged. There are no restrictions in place anywhere that prevent people from accessing it. Anyone who wants to can go get it and read it. It's still in the public domain.
I think I understand your point very well. This is what I meant with "island". Consider this: it's not a big difference if you read the 1865 version of Alice or the 1965 version. But software is constantly evolving. Your piece of public domain software will be worthless 10 years in the future - if that's all you got, then you got nothing, but the maintainer of the popular proprietary branch got everything - mostly from you.
These arguments aren't new, and I don't think that we will discover anything new if we go on. In my opinion we don't have to "resolve" this conflict. Though I count myself to the GPL and the Linux camp, I also use BSD and am glad that there is this other implementation of UNIX with its different license. I wouldn't want BSD to change. I want these two distinct communities to stay and to grow, because I don't like single points of failure.
It cannot be enslaved, because it's *software*! No matter how much your fold, mangle or mutilate your copy of it, my copy remains unscathed. It cannot be stolen, shackled or hidden away.
Your copy, yes. But you're not alone in the world. You need a community to help you (seems like many BSD folks think they are an island). If the majority starts to use a closed branch of your code, then you lose something beyond the code - relevance in the real world. The shiny new device driver you just wrote may have no device to support, because the hardware manufacturer thinks that it is better for the new revision of his device to go with a closed branch of your project, because it was developed by a more effective PR department than yours.
If this doesn't make sense to you, consider this analogy: "But the US Constitution wasn't released under the GPL! There's nothing to stop Microsoft from making it proprietary then charging us a fee to exercise our speech, press and religion!"
I hope that you recognize that this analogy doesn't make any sense. A proprietary derivative of a law has no significance for anybody.
Europeans seem to be very jealous and bitter of America's successes.
A single european is hardly representative, but I wish the best luck to every peaceful space exploration project regardless of the country. Every setback (Space Shuttles, Hubble) made me feel sad, because I never saw these projects as exclusively American, but as humankind's first steps into space. Is this hard to believe for you?
The amount of propoganda that comes out of Europe reminds me of Nazi Germany in many ways.
This impression may have to do with the propaganda you receive yourself. Just a thought, I could be wrong.
Yes, Intel's new 6bit processor (aka Hexium XR) will be ridiculous, but very successful. The 512k stage pipeline and the 6 bit architecture lets it run at frequencies above 35,000 THz. Faster than light speed - ridiculous speed! This high rpm wonder wins the race in the first gear - who needs a second one! Please pay attention to the specified safety margins and stay out of the way of the leaking X-rays.
Sigh. All the time you try to drag away the discussion from the technological and philosophical matters and attempt to ridicule people for what you assume they are (emphasis on attempt - you aren't very sublte in this respect). I have better things to do than that.
he needs to make pages which will display properly on the browser the majority of people will be using
I OTOH make pages that everyone can use, including IE. Maybe I don't made this point clear.
If I cant access my banking information over the internet, I dont give a damn if the page is standards compliant or not,
If I can't use my bank account with my standards compliant browser, I give a damn if the page renders perfectly in some browser that other people use. Can you afford the risk to lose 10% of your customers? Maybe would be cheaper, maybe not.
You may want to bear in mind the experiences of your target audience the next time you design something;
IE users are my target audience, as well as mozilla or konqueror users. You like to exclude the latter two.
it will probably help you be successful.
I don't want to further this discussion with personal insults. I work at a major bank, too (well, a major bank in a minor country). From the 10 developers in my team, two were laid off and one changed from our internet department to a intranet-only department, three months ago. Two of these three guys were IE-only zealots, while the rest of us is fairly neutral or tending towards web standards. So I don't think that a IE only focus would help me to be successful. Maybe that wasn't what you meant. If not, then we're really discussing semantics (apart from our different world-views, which we can't overcome, but maybe tolerate).
If he cant get something to display correctly without essentially writing everything over again for each browser, how standards compliant is that?
That's exactly the point of web standards: write it once and then it should run everywhere. Mostly except IE.
Thats why your stuff doesnt work on IE, because you are too focused on what you read rather than on what actaully happens. Nice world view, I hope it works out really well for ya.
This is what I wrote in my earlier post: "first I read the standards, then I check which parts of it are supported by all the browsers that I have to support." Yeah, I have to check what is supported and what not. Then I try to create a page that is both standards compliant and renders well in all browsers that are relevant for us (that is mainly IE, IE on Mac - which is completely different!, Mozilla and Netscape 6+).
You admit your stuff doesnt work right on IE, and my friends does.
I never said that. IE is hard to support, but in the end, I have to get my pages right on IE, too.
I guess people who seek to define themselves through their choice of browsers may have problems, but they are a small minority
I don't define myself through my browser. The opposite is true: while I think that mozilla is a pretty good browser, I really don't care about the actual implementation and would change any time a better browser came along. I simply don't want this choice to be taken away from me, because I think this would hamper the technological evolution of the web.
That's not a good style. But I think I started it by calling you a nasty troll. I read our posting out of context and found it very annoying. I still think it is, but I agree that you aren't a troll.
Also, I dont accept the fact that your experience creating websites is negative for IE.
My experience is one of the few things you cannot take away from me.
My friend is a professional web designer for a major bank, and has been for at least five years. He has done pages for his bank, banks they own, and other companies who outsource work to his department. He has also NEVER had a problem with IE. He *does*, however, complain about problems with other browsers.
So your friend develops for IE and then his pages have troubles with browsers that are more standards compliant. It's difficult to work with these people, because they always blame the browser whithout knowing the standards at all. I use a different approach: first I read the standards, then I check which parts of it are supported by all the browsers that I have to support. So the core of the problem is that the two types of developers simply have different values and world views. Naturally, I think that mine is better.
So maybe the problem isnt IE, maybe its just you arent very good.
The fact that a browser complies with a standard (or not) has nothing to do with whether I'm good or not. E.g. it is a fact that IE does not support well established standards like CSS1 well (wrong box model and other annoyancies), while mozilla does a very good job in this area.
There are the two opposing groups of people: one says that we need standards plus diversity of implementation, the other says that a monopoly implementation without written standards is the way to go.
Maybe it's useless to discuss the two standpoints. Then just choose and go into battle (by developing webpages, of course).
the original RAID paper called them inexpensive disks, not independent.
I don't appreciate your name-calling, but you're factual right about this.
It still applies that this interpretation is no longer meaningful (and wasn't since quite a time now). Today we use expensive fast SCSI disks to build RAIDs for heavy multiuser access or we use inexpensive IDE disks to build RAIDs with high sustained transfer rates and capacities, serving few users. So the disks are not always inexpensive according to today's standards. OTOH, when the paper was written, a single big, fast, expensive disk was replaced with a RAID of comparably cheap disks. So it was a meaningful distinction back then...
*cough* inexpensive mountains... You and your newfangled revisionist acronyms.
Who's a revisionist here? When I first read about RAIDs, everybody called the disks "independent" - because that's definitely what they are. And that didn't change for many years. Then some young whippersnappers with crappy IDE disks started referring to them as "inexpensive". I can hardly imagine why someone would call a RAID of U320 or FC disks "inexpensive"...
Avoid these inexpensive mountains. They often turn out to be vulcanos or have other flaws like hairline cracks or cave trolls. I tell you, I've seen big RAIMs of interconnected ebay bargains blow up all at once...
I rely on tibetic quality work, though I heard that swiss alps aren't bad neither.
Last xmas I told my grandma that I didn't like her crocheted pullovers I get from her every year. She thought about it very thouroghly and decided that this year I was in need of a new laptop bag. Granny is the best!
Re:10 differences off the top of my head...
on
Chock Full o' NetBSD!
·
· Score: 5, Informative
1. You can not play games on it.
There are games that are explicitly called BSDgames. Wanna play a game of hangman?
3. It lacks a GUI of any note.
Why do you think that XFree86 does not run on netbsd? Hint: it does.
6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform.
That's just stupid. Hint: it does. And it runs on your kitchen sink, too.
It's not the number of choices as such that's the issue, but that the REASONING behind the choices is not evaluated.
I agree that it makes no difference if there are 2 or 20 answers I have to choose from. But I think it is a different thing if I have to give my own answer (solving the problem without hints, i.e. possible answers to choose from).
Multiple choice type of educations given by for-profit-companies with tests corrected by computer programs does not foster or encourage problem solving skills.
I agree to that, too. But as far as I understand it, the program recognizes "solution works" and "solution doesn't work". It doesn't test if the answer matches a set of possible answers. So in my opinion, this isn't a multiple choice test.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess this means I have to remember to always think in Russian!
No, in Soviet Russia Big Browser thinks for YOU.
is it completely normal to see code being submitted for possible inclusion with "Copyright (C) 2002, 2003 Dell Inc." attached? How does the licensing work?
If you submit a patch to Linux (or any GPL'd app), then you're still the the copyright-holder of this particular code snippet. But you have to license this snippet under the GPL, so that can be included into the kernel. Clear?
What does trolltech say about this? ... It does *not* say anything about intra-company distributions, but it's quite clear to me that you are not allowed to create a closed-source application that depends on the QT GPL edition.
/. moderation. My initial post was more flamebait than trollish, but the distinction is minor so I don't really care all that much about it.
Trolltech released Qt under the GPL. No interpretation of the GPL on their part does add anything new to this fact. As you say yourself, Trolltech has a financial interest to make you believe that you have to pay for their product under as many circumstances as possible. But in reality the only things that count are copyright law and the additional rights that are granted to you by the GPL license. I already knew the link you posted, and I think it is a bit misleading.
The GPL-FAQ from the FSF is very clear about intra-company distribution:
Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?
I don't think that this clarification has to be part of the license, because these are consequences that follow from the application of copyright law (which is different in different countries). Maybe it could be part of the preamble, but then again, you can't put every remote implication into this document.
Thankfully I don't care about
Your post didn't deserve a downmod, but a reply.
I reviewed it twice and didn't come up with any distinction for intercompany copying, but if you can point me to the section I'll gladly agree with you.
As I said before, I'm pretty sure that this isn't part of the license, but a question of copyright law and working contracts in general.
But copying is copying is copying
Semi-serious: does your disk controller need a license to copy copyrighted binaries into memory? Does your keyboard need a license if you type in your new novel?
As it stands now I'm just another person who was modded to -1 troll for pointing out the truth...
The moderation of your initial post was unfair. Slashdot's moderation system doesn't work well, that's for sure.
But whether your opinion is the truth isn't clear yet. I for one disagree with you, but we both don't have enough facts at hand to decide this question definitely. If you don't come up with new information, I will end the discussion at this point - unresolved.
I'd agree with you if you could point to where the GPL makes the distiction between copying inside an organization and copying outside of the organization.
The GPL doesn't make such a distinction. It uses the term "distribution" according to copyright law. I'm no lawyer, so I can't prove my opinion to you.
But if I copy/distribute a binary to a co-worker (as would be my job as an in-house coder)-- in my understanding of the GPL that co-worker can demand access to the source code.
I think this all boils down to the question whether the employee licenses the binary from the company or not. I think this is not the case. In my understanding the company owns the program and the hardware it is running on, and the employee isn't a licensee of the code, but just a part of the legal entity "company". Maybe I'm wrong - I don't know.
I think that a company owns the copyright for any code written by an employee on company time (at least this is my situation, and I think it is the normal case). So I don't think that your scenario counts as "distribution". The company owns the code and its employees are a part of this entity.
It's a hard enough step to convince corps to adopt Linux on the desktop, asking them to GPL everything they create in-house for that desktop is stupid.
AFAIK you don't have to GPL a derivative of a GPL'd program if you don't intend to distribute it. If there's no licensee for your additions, why should you need a license? (If you think that this is not true, then GPL your derivative and simply don't distribute it to anyone!)
So IMHO this argument is pretty irrelevant for in-house programs and company-infrastructure.
So in a couple of years I'll get to spend half my day solving puzzles?
...
You won't. Your computer will have to. Example from RFC-4821:
R: 220 BBN-UNIX.ARPA Puzzling Mail Transfer Service Ready
S: HELO USC-ISIF.ARPA
R: 250 BBN-UNIX.ARPA
S: MAIL FROM:<Smith@USC-ISIF.ARPA>
R: 503 Polite people solve a puzzle first
S: ASKME
R: 366 Why did the chicken cross the road?
S: ANSWER To deliver the mail!
R: 250 OK
S: MAIL FROM:<Smith@USC-ISIF.ARPA>
R: 250 OK
I don't need to achieve "world domination" in order to get good software. No matter what Microsoft does with it's copy of FreeBSD, my copy is still intact, along with the copies of those who develop it. It would change nothing in my life.
If a hardware manufacturer would give back his changes to you, that would change your life (a little bit).
Take another example. "Alice in Wonderland" is in the public domain. It is not copylefted. So along comes Microsoft and exploits it. They change the wording, the plot, dumb down the puns, etc. Then they release it under a proprietary license, charging a fee to read it (not merely a fee to purchase the paper it's printed on). Further, let's assume that their version of AiW becomes more popular than the original. Does this change anything? No, not really. It's sad that so many people are choosing to read the bastardized version rather than the original, but the original is still there and unchanged. There are no restrictions in place anywhere that prevent people from accessing it. Anyone who wants to can go get it and read it. It's still in the public domain.
I think I understand your point very well. This is what I meant with "island". Consider this: it's not a big difference if you read the 1865 version of Alice or the 1965 version. But software is constantly evolving. Your piece of public domain software will be worthless 10 years in the future - if that's all you got, then you got nothing, but the maintainer of the popular proprietary branch got everything - mostly from you.
These arguments aren't new, and I don't think that we will discover anything new if we go on. In my opinion we don't have to "resolve" this conflict. Though I count myself to the GPL and the Linux camp, I also use BSD and am glad that there is this other implementation of UNIX with its different license. I wouldn't want BSD to change. I want these two distinct communities to stay and to grow, because I don't like single points of failure.
It cannot be enslaved, because it's *software*! No matter how much your fold, mangle or mutilate your copy of it, my copy remains unscathed. It cannot be stolen, shackled or hidden away.
Your copy, yes. But you're not alone in the world. You need a community to help you (seems like many BSD folks think they are an island). If the majority starts to use a closed branch of your code, then you lose something beyond the code - relevance in the real world. The shiny new device driver you just wrote may have no device to support, because the hardware manufacturer thinks that it is better for the new revision of his device to go with a closed branch of your project, because it was developed by a more effective PR department than yours.
If this doesn't make sense to you, consider this analogy: "But the US Constitution wasn't released under the GPL! There's nothing to stop Microsoft from making it proprietary then charging us a fee to exercise our speech, press and religion!"
I hope that you recognize that this analogy doesn't make any sense. A proprietary derivative of a law has no significance for anybody.
Europeans seem to be very jealous and bitter of America's successes.
A single european is hardly representative, but I wish the best luck to every peaceful space exploration project regardless of the country. Every setback (Space Shuttles, Hubble) made me feel sad, because I never saw these projects as exclusively American, but as humankind's first steps into space. Is this hard to believe for you?
The amount of propoganda that comes out of Europe reminds me of Nazi Germany in many ways.
This impression may have to do with the propaganda you receive yourself.
Just a thought, I could be wrong.
If I were up to infringe a time warp patent, I would create prior art in the past.
Yes, Intel's new 6bit processor (aka Hexium XR) will be ridiculous, but very successful. The 512k stage pipeline and the 6 bit architecture lets it run at frequencies above 35,000 THz. Faster than light speed - ridiculous speed! This high rpm wonder wins the race in the first gear - who needs a second one! Please pay attention to the specified safety margins and stay out of the way of the leaking X-rays.
Sigh. All the time you try to drag away the discussion from the technological and philosophical matters and attempt to ridicule people for what you assume they are (emphasis on attempt - you aren't very sublte in this respect). I have better things to do than that.
since he works in the real world
I work in the real world, too.
he needs to make pages which will display properly on the browser the majority of people will be using
I OTOH make pages that everyone can use, including IE. Maybe I don't made this point clear.
If I cant access my banking information over the internet, I dont give a damn if the page is standards compliant or not,
If I can't use my bank account with my standards compliant browser, I give a damn if the page renders perfectly in some browser that other people use. Can you afford the risk to lose 10% of your customers? Maybe would be cheaper, maybe not.
You may want to bear in mind the experiences of your target audience the next time you design something;
IE users are my target audience, as well as mozilla or konqueror users. You like to exclude the latter two.
it will probably help you be successful.
I don't want to further this discussion with personal insults. I work at a major bank, too (well, a major bank in a minor country). From the 10 developers in my team, two were laid off and one changed from our internet department to a intranet-only department, three months ago. Two of these three guys were IE-only zealots, while the rest of us is fairly neutral or tending towards web standards. So I don't think that a IE only focus would help me to be successful. Maybe that wasn't what you meant. If not, then we're really discussing semantics (apart from our different world-views, which we can't overcome, but maybe tolerate).
If he cant get something to display correctly without essentially writing everything over again for each browser, how standards compliant is that?
That's exactly the point of web standards: write it once and then it should run everywhere. Mostly except IE.
Thats why your stuff doesnt work on IE, because you are too focused on what you read rather than on what actaully happens. Nice world view, I hope it works out really well for ya.
This is what I wrote in my earlier post: "first I read the standards, then I check which parts of it are supported by all the browsers that I have to support." Yeah, I have to check what is supported and what not. Then I try to create a page that is both standards compliant and renders well in all browsers that are relevant for us (that is mainly IE, IE on Mac - which is completely different!, Mozilla and Netscape 6+).
You admit your stuff doesnt work right on IE, and my friends does.
I never said that. IE is hard to support, but in the end, I have to get my pages right on IE, too.
I guess people who seek to define themselves through their choice of browsers may have problems, but they are a small minority
I don't define myself through my browser. The opposite is true: while I think that mozilla is a pretty good browser, I really don't care about the actual implementation and would change any time a better browser came along. I simply don't want this choice to be taken away from me, because I think this would hamper the technological evolution of the web.
Screw you, moron. I wasnt trolling
That's not a good style. But I think I started it by calling you a nasty troll. I read our posting out of context and found it very annoying. I still think it is, but I agree that you aren't a troll.
Also, I dont accept the fact that your experience creating websites is negative for IE.
My experience is one of the few things you cannot take away from me.
My friend is a professional web designer for a major bank, and has been for at least five years. He has done pages for his bank, banks they own, and other companies who outsource work to his department. He has also NEVER had a problem with IE. He *does*, however, complain about problems with other browsers.
So your friend develops for IE and then his pages have troubles with browsers that are more standards compliant. It's difficult to work with these people, because they always blame the browser whithout knowing the standards at all. I use a different approach: first I read the standards, then I check which parts of it are supported by all the browsers that I have to support. So the core of the problem is that the two types of developers simply have different values and world views. Naturally, I think that mine is better.
So maybe the problem isnt IE, maybe its just you arent very good.
The fact that a browser complies with a standard (or not) has nothing to do with whether I'm good or not. E.g. it is a fact that IE does not support well established standards like CSS1 well (wrong box model and other annoyancies), while mozilla does a very good job in this area.
There are the two opposing groups of people: one says that we need standards plus diversity of implementation, the other says that a monopoly implementation without written standards is the way to go.
Maybe it's useless to discuss the two standpoints. Then just choose and go into battle (by developing webpages, of course).
Im using IE, and it renders all the pages just fine.
Not my experience as creator of standards compliant websites.
You nasty little troll.
the original RAID paper called them inexpensive disks, not independent.
I don't appreciate your name-calling, but you're factual right about this.
It still applies that this interpretation is no longer meaningful (and wasn't since quite a time now). Today we use expensive fast SCSI disks to build RAIDs for heavy multiuser access or we use inexpensive IDE disks to build RAIDs with high sustained transfer rates and capacities, serving few users. So the disks are not always inexpensive according to today's standards. OTOH, when the paper was written, a single big, fast, expensive disk was replaced with a RAID of comparably cheap disks. So it was a meaningful distinction back then...
*cough* inexpensive mountains... You and your newfangled revisionist acronyms.
Who's a revisionist here? When I first read about RAIDs, everybody called the disks "independent" - because that's definitely what they are. And that didn't change for many years. Then some young whippersnappers with crappy IDE disks started referring to them as "inexpensive". I can hardly imagine why someone would call a RAID of U320 or FC disks "inexpensive"...
Avoid these inexpensive mountains. They often turn out to be vulcanos or have other flaws like hairline cracks or cave trolls. I tell you, I've seen big RAIMs of interconnected ebay bargains blow up all at once...
I rely on tibetic quality work, though I heard that swiss alps aren't bad neither.
what if the mountain collapses?
The wise man doesn't rely on a single point of failure.
He uses a Redundant Array of Independent Mountains.
Last xmas I told my grandma that I didn't like her crocheted pullovers I get from her every year. She thought about it very thouroghly and decided that this year I was in need of a new laptop bag. Granny is the best!
1. You can not play games on it.
There are games that are explicitly called BSDgames. Wanna play a game of hangman?
3. It lacks a GUI of any note.
Why do you think that XFree86 does not run on netbsd? Hint: it does.
6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform.
That's just stupid. Hint: it does. And it runs on your kitchen sink, too.
7. You have to compile everything and know C.
No. Hint: there are binary packages. Lots of it.
9. It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux.
Bullshit. Netbsd has a Linux emulation layer.
10. It is dying.
The troll: It is lying.
It's not the number of choices as such that's the issue, but that the REASONING behind the choices is not evaluated.
I agree that it makes no difference if there are 2 or 20 answers I have to choose from. But I think it is a different thing if I have to give my own answer (solving the problem without hints, i.e. possible answers to choose from).
Multiple choice type of educations given by for-profit-companies with tests corrected by computer programs does not foster or encourage problem solving skills.
I agree to that, too. But as far as I understand it, the program recognizes "solution works" and "solution doesn't work". It doesn't test if the answer matches a set of possible answers. So in my opinion, this isn't a multiple choice test.
Since you are evaluated automatically by the servers, in what way is this fundamentally different from a written multiple choice test?
In a multiple choice test you have 2 to 10 possibilites to choose from. In a real world setting your choices are practically unlimited.