Autoupdate is a bad example. How about the way that some of the BSD systems allow you to with one command grab the latest cvs source and rebuild much of the system. Same idea, different implementation. As for GUIs. Of course they've been around since the PARC days of inovation. Smalltalk, ethernet, and the concept of OO Programming also came from PARC around the same time. We wrestle with how to deal with that stuff to this day, as well we should.
Because Office is actually a quite nice app (just because MS writes crappy OSes doesn't mean that every app they make sucks), and is the standard for many companies. It doesn't have to be office however. WordPerfect does and OK job giving some of the same functionality and giving some level of compatability, and koffice should be even better when it leaves beta later this year.
First of all that attitude seems to permiate the Debian distribution from my standpoint.
Second, making things difficult doesn't make them better. The computer sprung forth originally from the desire to make doing math easier. Furthermore, just because I can write out every config file, doesn't mean I always want to. It gets quite monotonous after a while.
Third, what the hell kind of attitude is that? The point of a distribution is to make things easier. If you want to weed out the idiots give people a tar bar containing a kernel, init, a compiler, libc, and either lilo or a boot floppy, and let them build their own system. Damn near all people with a clue could do this. It would suck, and take way too much time, but it could certainly be done.
What I find ironic is that this same logic could be used to say that Redhat has chosen to use the GNU untilities and thus one can call the system Redhat linux, something which Stallman dispises. So I guess I run Nomad linux, although my system no longer really looks like Nomad, and differs in perhaps half of its packages, so I guess I run Scola linux, since more or less, I've adopted a mixed bag of utilities. Has a certain ring to it.
Some of what you desire already exists. The KDE has a feature to apply KDE styles to non-KDE apps in its control panel. This slightly modifies the appearance for qt and gtk apps to make them more consistent with your KDE color schemes, and qt look and feel, and massively changes the appearance of Xt and AW apps to make them not look like they suck. As for being able to drop in gmc for kfm, and such this is a bit harder. Kfm offers a set of features accessable from a library and IPC to let the kde app developer interact with kfm. I don't think GNOME does anything like this. However, having GNOME and gmc implent this functionality would be quite possible if they mimiced the interface of this API.
With a BSD license no one else can "own" your code. They can simply add their own additions to your code and "own" those additions as long as they credit you for your code whenever they use your code.
1. When you release a patch to a QPL piece of software, you must release in patch form, GPL you can release either a patch or a who new ball-o-source. Distribution of binaries are identical.
2. If you want to link a commercial app against a QPLed library you own TT some money. If you want to do the same with the GPL, you're out of luck. That's why the LGPL exists.
3. With the QPL if you make a patch you need to send it to TT. In the GPL, GNU has to download it from your ftp archive.
Other than that, there are no differences. I prefer the QPL in some ways to the GPL. It seems a reasonable way for TT to make moeny, and help free software. I think if TT fails future libraries of its type will be released in with commercial licenses like Motif, which would suck a lot (hopefull I can expunge all Motif from my system by the time I graduate and thus don't have that whole university license thing going on). If people want to make a QT clone, that's fine. I for one won't be running to use it. It seems rather silly, but if some GPL Nazis refuse to expirience the bliss of QT without it, I guess it is necessary silliness.
Call me nutty, but I always define an OS by its kernel, and what it has in and around kernel space, not what is in user space. Calling linux GNU/Linux is certifiably wrong on several fronts. First of all, applications are not part of the OS in the strictest sense (the sense I work in). It was B.S. when MS said IE was "an integral part of the OS" and it is equally B.S. when RMS says emacs or gcc or whatever is an integral part of linux. Second, even if you accept applications as part of an OS (which I will not), if I replace some apps in Solaris or AIX for example with their OSS equivilents, does it then become GNU/Solaris or GNU/AIX? I think not. Third, it is possible to run a linux box with a lot, a little, or essentially no GNU software (although the last is a bit hard, but minimizing it isn't). Finally, it is a simple case of RMS claiming what is not his. I will call GNU/Emacs by that name or GCC the GNU C Compiler because it came from the GNU project. The GNU project tried to make an OS. It was and is called the Hurd. It generally failed. Now Stallman, seeing the Hurd fall on its face, and seeing another group (which he discouraged, trying instead to recruit them to the Hurd) have a great deal of success is trying to take the credit from that which is not his.
Finally, one should remember that historically the linux community and the FSF has had a love-hate relationship. The FSF wrote some apps that linux people love, and linux took many GNU apps to the forefront. However, the two sides have feuded over everything from names, to philophies, to licenses, to libraries, and on down the line. IMHO, recently RMS has done more harm than good for Free Software. I thank him for his contributions, but I really wish he would stop trying to control OSS, kill or disable projects that disagree with him (witness QT/KDE and the withdrawl of glibc-2.1 after they commented correctly on how much gcc-2.7 and 2.8 sucked), and claim things that are not his. Stallman has become an obstacle in many ways.
Unlikely...but if it happens it's a good thing.
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MS Office for Linux
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· Score: 1
I don't see MS porting Office to linux in the near future. Linux has already arrived on the server and is challenging commercial UNIX, and demolishing NT on the server. The next stop is the desktop. Linux will start to arrive on some desktop systems within a year or two. This will be aided by things like the KDE, and some of the office suites. MS Office, which is one of the few MS products I like (their server and OS products suck, but their consumer application stuff tends to be OK), would seal linux's place on the desktop. This is very contrary to the interests of MS. Therefore, it makes sense for them to withhold Office until linux gets the critical mass as a desktop system to make the benefits of a port outway the costs to windows.
I think Office for Linux is an inevitability, and is something I sort of look forward to. However, it is a long way off in the distance.
The question then becomes with KOffice using much of the same design and integration aspects as MS Office, but upon a stronger foundation (Corba and Qt as opposed to COM and Win32) will MS Office become irrelevent on the linux platform before it is released.
Repost, so I'll repost
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RMS vs. ESR
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· Score: 1
I would not be horribly suprised if egcs merged back into gcc in the future, assuming gcc gets some developers who actually want to develop a compiler, rather than just sitting on one.
Xemacs and GNU?Emacs will probably never merge. Xemeacs development has just progressed too far, and xemacs developers, past and present have too much of a dislike of Stallman and his brood. Witness why-cooperation-with-rms-is-impossible.au of JWZ's web page (which is of course Stallman's rediculaous "join us now and share the software" song. I don't see a lot more possitive attitude amongst more recent xeamcs developers towards Stallaman.
The reason I think Raymod makes a better spokesman for OSS, is that he is far less arogant, obnoxious and fanatic than Stallman. Stallman tends to drive people away from himself.
Repost, so I'll repost
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RMS vs. ESR
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· Score: 1
The person didn't comment upon the fact that GCC was free, he said he liked it.
Furthermore, just because something compiles on gcc doesn't mean it will compile elsewhere. This is especially true with c++, where gcc does not comply with accepted ISO standards on the language. As for the C world, ever try compiling the linux kernel with and compiler other than gcc-2.7 (including gcc 2.8 and egcs), and then say starting X. No, well it's because you can't without modifying the source. Linux-2.0 had bug for bug compatability with gcc-2.7. Linux-2.2 corrected this flaw.
First of all, umm..no. I'm just a starving undergraduate like many others. If they'd like to pay me, I could use the cash.
Second of all where's the fear, uncertainty or doubt in what I said. Free software has been in existence since the first software was wirtten. It was a tried and proven method in academia back when Stallman was in diapers. It has proven the test of time, and shown itself, again and again to be a strong development model. Hell, Stallman started the FSF when he was working at MIT. It's just the way everyone was done at the universities, and at many is still the way much is done. Just because I state factually that RMS didn't invent free software doens't make me a FUD-spreader.
Free software was the standard in academia for most of the history of the computer. When computer scientists did research they released the source for free distribution. There was little money in the software business and distributing the software was just what was done in the academic world. It's no different than when someone in mathematics discovers a new theorum, they publish it.
Free software predated the FSF by perhaps 2 or 3 decades. It just wasn't called that. It was called research. RMS was not the founder of free software, he was just someone who refused to change from the old ways when commerce found its way into an academic pursuit. Not that this is a bad thing, but he certainly did not invent the concept.
Repost, so I'll repost
on
RMS vs. ESR
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· Score: 1
GCC is a horrible compiler. It's development is slow, it lacks optimizations for the pentium chip, let alone the ppro, p2, or k6. To paraphrase Strustrep, it's c++ compiler isn't really a c++ compiler. It was only when pragmatists at cygnus started the egcs project that free software had a decent modern compiler with patches for the optimizations I mentioned before, and a competant c++ implementation.
Although I also like emacs, I prefer the xemacs implementation and the jed pseudo-emacs implementation. Xemacs is far more featureful and complete than GNU/Emacs, jed is far smaller. Stallman does deserve credit for the initial development of emacs though.
However, remember tha ESR has done more than just fetchmail. Your emacs would not compile without ncurses, which ESR is very much responsible for.
So they fork. So what. If it is an open source product who cares who's leading the charge? If it is a commercial product as would be allowed by the BSD-style license of wine, in the short term the commercail product might draw more people to linux, and in the long term the open source product will win out do to the superiority of the development model.
Yes, but what if a company or a group acting under a BSD-style license wanted to make an emulator for some MS API in the future (Win64?), and wanted to grab say half the source from wine and do the rest themselves. Well, with a LGPL license they wouldn't, and thus the unix world would loose a valuable piece of software.
How exactly does one become a linux-wannabe? I thought the point of running linux was to run an open source, fast, reliable OS you can modify, not to be cool. Personally I am currently running KDE, because I think it's a neat project (and would like to develop some apps for it if I get the time), but I've also used fvwm, mwm, twm, olwm, olvwm, afterstep, qvwm, windowmaker, ect. However, I'll admit the original guy was a wanker, but that shouldn't reflect upon all KDE users. In general, many KDE users do tend to be newer to unix than a lot of people, but that isn't a bad thing. As long as the support structure is in place where more expirienced unix people offer assistence, KDE could very well be unixes best chance to bring people to a desktop unix system, and to bring a desktop unix system to people (not necessarily the same thing).
Umm...there are times that you need a 8 or 16 processor machine. This does not mean linux sucks, or that linux isn't right for a whole lot of people. It just means there are some markets where something like Solaris.
Nowhere in the article did the author say NT could do any of the things we're talking about. It can't. However, many commercial unices can do it very well.
Sure you can upgrade the kernel without recompiling? How about the libc though? I'm finally finishing up recompiling things that used slang, stdc++, ncurses, or wrote to utmp for glibc. I still can't run certain builds of X, because I haven't gotten to dealing with the libc change there yet.
40% of Windows applications do NOT RUN under W2k
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Microsoft-Compaq-BeOS
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· Score: 1
Name one that doesn't.
The fact that W2k is ass doesn't mean that it's not compatible with the last version of ass.
Windows 2000 will need apps to be rebuilt or even
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Microsoft-Compaq-BeOS
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· Score: 1
Having actually used NT5.0 (now W2k) betas, I can say that no Win32 apps need be rebuilt or rewritten. They run under w2k. Now the fact that the betas were unstable as hell is another matter.
>Server vendors to date have announced support >mainly for Red Hat Linux, which became one of >the most widely used versions of Linux last year >after Red Hat Software received ample funding >from Intel Corp.
Not that it's a big deal, but why does PC Week seem to assume a causal relationship between Intel's money and Redhat's popularity amongst distributions. Redhat has been the most popular linux distribution for several years now, since right around when 4.0 came out (I'm guestimating time, but still). Intel's money, though I'm happy they Redhat got it, has little if anything to do with Redhat's popularity when compared to other distribs. *sigh* factual errors, I guess we learn to live with them.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with Windows is that its easy to use and has a GUI. I thought that was its strength.
It's weakness IMHO, is that its buggy, crash-prone, and less powerful. The GUI doesn't suck the code doesn't.
It's all in the code, not in making the linux user 31337(tm).
Autoupdate is a bad example. How about the way that some of the BSD systems allow you to with one command grab the latest cvs source and rebuild much of the system. Same idea, different implementation. As for GUIs. Of course they've been around since the PARC days of inovation. Smalltalk, ethernet, and the concept of OO Programming also came from PARC around the same time. We wrestle with how to deal with that stuff to this day, as well we should.
Because Office is actually a quite nice app (just because MS writes crappy OSes doesn't mean that every app they make sucks), and is the standard for many companies. It doesn't have to be office however. WordPerfect does and OK job giving some of the same functionality and giving some level of compatability, and koffice should be even better when it leaves beta later this year.
First of all that attitude seems to permiate the Debian distribution from my standpoint.
Second, making things difficult doesn't make them better. The computer sprung forth originally from the desire to make doing math easier. Furthermore, just because I can write out every config file, doesn't mean I always want to. It gets quite monotonous after a while.
Third, what the hell kind of attitude is that? The point of a distribution is to make things easier. If you want to weed out the idiots give people a tar bar containing a kernel, init, a compiler, libc, and either lilo or a boot floppy, and let them build their own system. Damn near all people with a clue could do this. It would suck, and take way too much time, but it could certainly be done.
What I find ironic is that this same logic could be used to say that Redhat has chosen to use the GNU untilities and thus one can call the system Redhat linux, something which Stallman dispises. So I guess I run Nomad linux, although my system no longer really looks like Nomad, and differs in perhaps half of its packages, so I guess I run Scola linux, since more or less, I've adopted a mixed bag of utilities. Has a certain ring to it.
Some of what you desire already exists. The KDE has a feature to apply KDE styles to non-KDE apps in its control panel. This slightly modifies the appearance for qt and gtk apps to make them more consistent with your KDE color schemes, and qt look and feel, and massively changes the appearance of Xt and AW apps to make them not look like they suck. As for being able to drop in gmc for kfm, and such this is a bit harder. Kfm offers a set of features accessable from a library and IPC to let the kde app developer interact with kfm. I don't think GNOME does anything like this. However, having GNOME and gmc implent this functionality would be quite possible if they mimiced the interface of this API.
With a BSD license no one else can "own" your code. They can simply add their own additions to your code and "own" those additions as long as they credit you for your code whenever they use your code.
Differences:
1. When you release a patch to a QPL piece of software, you must release in patch form, GPL you can release either a patch or a who new ball-o-source. Distribution of binaries are identical.
2. If you want to link a commercial app against a QPLed library you own TT some money. If you want to do the same with the GPL, you're out of luck. That's why the LGPL exists.
3. With the QPL if you make a patch you need to send it to TT. In the GPL, GNU has to download it from your ftp archive.
Other than that, there are no differences. I prefer the QPL in some ways to the GPL. It seems a reasonable way for TT to make moeny, and help free software. I think if TT fails future libraries of its type will be released in with commercial licenses like Motif, which would suck a lot (hopefull I can expunge all Motif from my system by the time I graduate and thus don't have that whole university license thing going on). If people want to make a QT clone, that's fine. I for one won't be running to use it. It seems rather silly, but if some GPL Nazis refuse to expirience the bliss of QT without it, I guess it is necessary silliness.
Call me nutty, but I always define an OS by its kernel, and what it has in and around kernel space, not what is in user space. Calling linux GNU/Linux is certifiably wrong on several fronts. First of all, applications are not part of the OS in the strictest sense (the sense I work in). It was B.S. when MS said IE was "an integral part of the OS" and it is equally B.S. when RMS says emacs or gcc or whatever is an integral part of linux. Second, even if you accept applications as part of an OS (which I will not), if I replace some apps in Solaris or AIX for example with their OSS equivilents, does it then become GNU/Solaris or GNU/AIX? I think not. Third, it is possible to run a linux box with a lot, a little, or essentially no GNU software (although the last is a bit hard, but minimizing it isn't). Finally, it is a simple case of RMS claiming what is not his. I will call GNU/Emacs by that name or GCC the GNU C Compiler because it came from the GNU project. The GNU project tried to make an OS. It was and is called the Hurd. It generally failed. Now Stallman, seeing the Hurd fall on its face, and seeing another group (which he discouraged, trying instead to recruit them to the Hurd) have a great deal of success is trying to take the credit from that which is not his.
Finally, one should remember that historically the linux community and the FSF has had a love-hate relationship. The FSF wrote some apps that linux people love, and linux took many GNU apps to the forefront. However, the two sides have feuded over everything from names, to philophies, to licenses, to libraries, and on down the line. IMHO, recently RMS has done more harm than good for Free Software. I thank him for his contributions, but I really wish he would stop trying to control OSS, kill or disable projects that disagree with him (witness QT/KDE and the withdrawl of glibc-2.1 after they commented correctly on how much gcc-2.7 and 2.8 sucked), and claim things that are not his. Stallman has become an obstacle in many ways.
I don't see MS porting Office to linux in the near future. Linux has already arrived on the server and is challenging commercial UNIX, and demolishing NT on the server. The next stop is the desktop. Linux will start to arrive on some desktop systems within a year or two. This will be aided by things like the KDE, and some of the office suites. MS Office, which is one of the few MS products I like (their server and OS products suck, but their consumer application stuff tends to be OK), would seal linux's place on the desktop. This is very contrary to the interests of MS. Therefore, it makes sense for them to withhold Office until linux gets the critical mass as a desktop system to make the benefits of a port outway the costs to windows.
I think Office for Linux is an inevitability, and is something I sort of look forward to. However, it is a long way off in the distance.
The question then becomes with KOffice using much of the same design and integration aspects as MS Office, but upon a stronger foundation (Corba and Qt as opposed to COM and Win32) will MS Office become irrelevent on the linux platform before it is released.
I would not be horribly suprised if egcs merged back into gcc in the future, assuming gcc gets some developers who actually want to develop a compiler, rather than just sitting on one.
Xemacs and GNU?Emacs will probably never merge. Xemeacs development has just progressed too far, and xemacs developers, past and present have too much of a dislike of Stallman and his brood. Witness why-cooperation-with-rms-is-impossible.au of JWZ's web page (which is of course Stallman's rediculaous "join us now and share the software" song. I don't see a lot more possitive attitude amongst more recent xeamcs developers towards Stallaman.
The reason I think Raymod makes a better spokesman for OSS, is that he is far less arogant, obnoxious and fanatic than Stallman. Stallman tends to drive people away from himself.
The person didn't comment upon the fact that GCC was free, he said he liked it.
Furthermore, just because something compiles on gcc doesn't mean it will compile elsewhere. This is especially true with c++, where gcc does not comply with accepted ISO standards on the language. As for the C world, ever try compiling the linux kernel with and compiler other than gcc-2.7 (including gcc 2.8 and egcs), and then say starting X. No, well it's because you can't without modifying the source. Linux-2.0 had bug for bug compatability with gcc-2.7. Linux-2.2 corrected this flaw.
First of all, umm..no. I'm just a starving undergraduate like many others. If they'd like to pay me, I could use the cash.
Second of all where's the fear, uncertainty or doubt in what I said. Free software has been in existence since the first software was wirtten. It was a tried and proven method in academia back when Stallman was in diapers. It has proven the test of time, and shown itself, again and again to be a strong development model. Hell, Stallman started the FSF when he was working at MIT. It's just the way everyone was done at the universities, and at many is still the way much is done. Just because I state factually that RMS didn't invent free software doens't make me a FUD-spreader.
Free software was the standard in academia for most of the history of the computer. When computer scientists did research they released the source for free distribution. There was little money in the software business and distributing the software was just what was done in the academic world. It's no different than when someone in mathematics discovers a new theorum, they publish it.
Free software predated the FSF by perhaps 2 or 3 decades. It just wasn't called that. It was called research. RMS was not the founder of free software, he was just someone who refused to change from the old ways when commerce found its way into an academic pursuit. Not that this is a bad thing, but he certainly did not invent the concept.
GCC is a horrible compiler. It's development is slow, it lacks optimizations for the pentium chip, let alone the ppro, p2, or k6. To paraphrase Strustrep, it's c++ compiler isn't really a c++ compiler. It was only when pragmatists at cygnus started the egcs project that free software had a decent modern compiler with patches for the optimizations I mentioned before, and a competant c++ implementation.
Although I also like emacs, I prefer the xemacs implementation and the jed pseudo-emacs implementation. Xemacs is far more featureful and complete than GNU/Emacs, jed is far smaller. Stallman does deserve credit for the initial development of emacs though.
However, remember tha ESR has done more than just fetchmail. Your emacs would not compile without ncurses, which ESR is very much responsible for.
So they fork. So what. If it is an open source product who cares who's leading the charge? If it is a commercial product as would be allowed by the BSD-style license of wine, in the short term the commercail product might draw more people to linux, and in the long term the open source product will win out do to the superiority of the development model.
Yes, but what if a company or a group acting under a BSD-style license wanted to make an emulator for some MS API in the future (Win64?), and wanted to grab say half the source from wine and do the rest themselves. Well, with a LGPL license they wouldn't, and thus the unix world would loose a valuable piece of software.
MS extending products meant to migrate people away from MS OSes? That would be great in my opinion, but it ain't going to happen.
How exactly does one become a linux-wannabe? I thought the point of running linux was to run an open source, fast, reliable OS you can modify, not to be cool. Personally I am currently running KDE, because I think it's a neat project (and would like to develop some apps for it if I get the time), but I've also used fvwm, mwm, twm, olwm, olvwm, afterstep, qvwm, windowmaker, ect. However, I'll admit the original guy was a wanker, but that shouldn't reflect upon all KDE users. In general, many KDE users do tend to be newer to unix than a lot of people, but that isn't a bad thing. As long as the support structure is in place where more expirienced unix people offer assistence, KDE could very well be unixes best chance to bring people to a desktop unix system, and to bring a desktop unix system to people (not necessarily the same thing).
The author wasn't say that MS could steal GPLed software. He was saying that MS could steal the Open Source development model.
Umm...there are times that you need a 8 or 16 processor machine. This does not mean linux sucks, or that linux isn't right for a whole lot of people. It just means there are some markets where something like Solaris.
Nowhere in the article did the author say NT could do any of the things we're talking about. It can't. However, many commercial unices can do it very well.
It was an extremely well written article.
Sure you can upgrade the kernel without recompiling? How about the libc though? I'm finally finishing up recompiling things that used slang, stdc++, ncurses, or wrote to utmp for glibc. I still can't run certain builds of X, because I haven't gotten to dealing with the libc change there yet.
Name one that doesn't.
The fact that W2k is ass doesn't mean that it's not compatible with the last version of ass.
Having actually used NT5.0 (now W2k) betas, I can say that no Win32 apps need be rebuilt or rewritten. They run under w2k. Now the fact that the betas were unstable as hell is another matter.
>Server vendors to date have announced support
>mainly for Red Hat Linux, which became one of
>the most widely used versions of Linux last year
>after Red Hat Software received ample funding
>from Intel Corp.
Not that it's a big deal, but why does PC Week seem to assume a causal relationship between Intel's money and Redhat's popularity amongst distributions. Redhat has been the most popular linux distribution for several years now, since right around when 4.0 came out (I'm guestimating time, but still). Intel's money, though I'm happy they Redhat got it, has little if anything to do with Redhat's popularity when compared to other distribs. *sigh* factual errors, I guess we learn to live with them.