Executive Summary: CNet, you're a hypocrite. Just for the record, please spell out the double-standard you wish us to apply to your advertisers vs whoever you're dumping on today.
like this actually helps to fix an already-broken calendar. There are many alternatives but legislators like to pull these stupid stunts to avoid actual real decisions.
Actually the only problems I'm having is losing packages due to the GL library package rename and conflict. Why couldn't they contact the blender, audacity, vlc or csound maintainers for instance? Yes I know it's sid, that's not an excuse for bad communication. This, more than anything is going to get Debian a bad reputation.
...that Newton ended up running the Royal Mint? Neal Stephenson's amusing hypothesis, that Newton only ran the Mint in order to keep tabs on alchemical gold (see the Baroque Cycle books), is a lot more fun than the drudgery of reports like these which were a staple of the job, if you can call manipulating the gold price as alchemy.
To correct the rather skewed summary by the poster, all ESR is saying is that FOSS is big enough not to need the kind of protection the GPL offers. I disagree, mainly because I don't see companies which get big suddenly go easy on the market either, like say Microsoft.
But the nature and tone of the questions here are very interesting: it's hard to decide whether the interviewer genuinely does not understand the issues behind GPL, implications of the patent system, or the logic behind open implementation of standards, or is making an indirect point of his own.
There are worrying signs that many people are relying on woolly "common-sense" interpretations of these issues and the distinctions are escaping even their lawyers. It's a FUD FUD FUD FUD world!
I don't think you're actually getting what the parent's point is. Fortifications are great to have if you can be sure the enemy really wants what you're supposedly guarding.
Or if you really think they have no other way of getting around them. Intel is touting Trusted computing, trying to sell the idea that hardware will itself prevent piracy. Of course, anyone who believes them is delusional.
And, for the record, I sometimes fear the OSS/(and linux) community hurts their cause by their sometimes overly militant won't pay for anything mantra.
It's more true to say that the FOSS community attracts that everything for free element, at least initially until they realize that the other side to that kind of free is giving what they get back. True FOSS isn't a what's in it for me community. We don't expect commercial shops to just give away their software either, but neither are we going to wait around until someone does. What we might appear to lose in the short-term is inevitable in the longer term.
To comment on your Italian example, they go further than that. In rural Italy, it's not uncommon to have the local Communist/Socialist/Unionist posters on the church wall. They do go to church, it's true, but on the understanding that the men can smoke. The religious calendar is adhered to, not least because there are fireworks.
In other words, the Italians are sensible people who prefer to enjoy their life rather than muck about with all that argument you Americans seem to prefer.
oh and the "normalization" of copyright laws under FTAs isn't going to count? Australians are going to get a shock after July this year, you can bet on it.
Parent was incorrect in the first part, public corporations ARE already involved in social policy; they have a vested interest in fact because it impacts their number one priority: profits. If you cannot organize large numbers of people to the greatest efficiency your profit suffers, any HR person learnt that on day one. That is true social engineering despite your self-serving explanations.
This is not to say that smaller-scale NFP corps. are the same, your hysterical equivalence notwithstanding. Your righty blather that somehow public corporations are socially unique structures dependent on the people running them is as simplistic as your claims that they do not value profit above all else. It is the cornerstone of their charter, they do not exist for any other reason.
Put simply, if the corporate "tool" wasn't overwhelmingly in favour of the social "elites", it would have not been so widely deployed by same. At least the Victorians were honest about using their corporate power to control society, this society lies to itself so successfully it believes its own press. Psychopathic indeed.
The question then becomes, what IS a realistic standardization strategy? Is it essentially unattainable? The lesson from the Microsoft and Apple worlds seems to be: ignore standards, create your own logical structure and only standardize to the lowest common denominator of interoperability. The LSB is arguably irrelevant because it builds on an irrelevant past, the irrelevance of POSIX itself.
I'm not as despairing as Rob Pike; I believe we will have OS innovation when we are forced into it. When someone makes the right installation system component, it will spread across distros (we're not quite there yet); apt-get has provided an critical anchor for new distros in itself. All systems have similar problems, noone has solved them _to everyone's satisfaction_ yet. We've seen KDE and GNOME provide some standardization of interface; these are the mechanisms that drive OS evolution, not some didactic set of rules based on uneasy and all-too short-lived alliances.
A core set of ideas seems to be the only true foundation of an OS, everything from there is an organic process that either succeeds or is succeeded by a competitor. Getting that core set is the problem, beyond that is almost entirely a social process.
It's a funny thing about context. Some people see it, some people don't. What you've chosen to ignore is that in one paragraph he disses San Franscisco's proposed infrastructure based on ongoing costs, and in another paragraph admits the reason they want MCI is to grab THEIR infrastructure. Nothing about the costs of THAT, though no doubt Verizon will be passing that on.
The man is a hypocrite, and you are indeed a stupid plebe for wasting your time on a site you apparently hate so much.
Don't knock it till you've tried it, baby....mmmm kangaroos have such pretty eyes...:)
As a long-standing penguinista, I believe any postive government involvement with OSS has to be a useful learning experience, so those of you without experience in the difficulties of procurement should hop off and let us waddle our way into their furry hearts!
...how wonderful Yahoo thinks it is? I'm not inclined to think they're "wonderful". I don't care about their image.
It isn't "wonderful" that yahoogroups, in changing their layout, have now made it difficult and frustrating to search message archives. Not exactly Internet 2.0 company style, is it. If they want "wonderful", give me "useful".
...and what a bad move. Anyone with half a brain would have looked for independent funding, separate from both sides to put their methodology beyond doubt. Instead they sold their concept to Microsoft, unbelievable naivette.
But the proof of the pudding should be in the eating: apply their methodology. Does it pan out for other Linux distributions/XP upgrades? If the methodology stands, it will be a great service to the debate.
It's just a damn shame the politics of the situation mean that probably won't happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Executive Summary: CNet, you're a hypocrite. Just for the record, please spell out the double-standard you wish us to apply to your advertisers vs whoever you're dumping on today.
dude, i hacked several hotels in neuromancer already!
like this actually helps to fix an already-broken calendar. There are many alternatives but legislators like to pull these stupid stunts to avoid actual real decisions.
So now Australia is a copycat police state...how pathetic
Well there's another OSS project that has to change its name...
Drive-away $14,990! With Air!
Actually the only problems I'm having is losing packages due to the GL library package rename and conflict. Why couldn't they contact the blender, audacity, vlc or csound maintainers for instance? Yes I know it's sid, that's not an excuse for bad communication. This, more than anything is going to get Debian a bad reputation.
To correct the rather skewed summary by the poster, all ESR is saying is that FOSS is big enough not to need the kind of protection the GPL offers. I disagree, mainly because I don't see companies which get big suddenly go easy on the market either, like say Microsoft.
But the nature and tone of the questions here are very interesting: it's hard to decide whether the interviewer genuinely does not understand the issues behind GPL, implications of the patent system, or the logic behind open implementation of standards, or is making an indirect point of his own.
There are worrying signs that many people are relying on woolly "common-sense" interpretations of these issues and the distinctions are escaping even their lawyers. It's a FUD FUD FUD FUD world!
I don't think you're actually getting what the parent's point is. Fortifications are great to have if you can be sure the enemy really wants what you're supposedly guarding.
Or if you really think they have no other way of getting around them. Intel is touting Trusted computing, trying to sell the idea that hardware will itself prevent piracy. Of course, anyone who believes them is delusional.
I think James Turner says it best, nice turn of phrase :)
1. Cringley reads Slashdot for industry inside-information. It's the end of an era.
2. Microsoft is finally playing someone else's game. The surprise is that it's Apple, like always. Colour me astonished.
3. Google accelerator. So noone is bothered by privacy concerns about an Internet-sized cache? Never saw that coming.
It's more true to say that the FOSS community attracts that everything for free element, at least initially until they realize that the other side to that kind of free is giving what they get back. True FOSS isn't a what's in it for me community. We don't expect commercial shops to just give away their software either, but neither are we going to wait around until someone does. What we might appear to lose in the short-term is inevitable in the longer term.
To comment on your Italian example, they go further than that. In rural Italy, it's not uncommon to have the local Communist/Socialist/Unionist posters on the church wall. They do go to church, it's true, but on the understanding that the men can smoke. The religious calendar is adhered to, not least because there are fireworks.
In other words, the Italians are sensible people who prefer to enjoy their life rather than muck about with all that argument you Americans seem to prefer.
This has to be the saddest attempt at whipping up tourist enthusiasm...apart from Ben Fold's song...
oh and the "normalization" of copyright laws under FTAs isn't going to count? Australians are going to get a shock after July this year, you can bet on it.
Parent was incorrect in the first part, public corporations ARE already involved in social policy; they have a vested interest in fact because it impacts their number one priority: profits. If you cannot organize large numbers of people to the greatest efficiency your profit suffers, any HR person learnt that on day one. That is true social engineering despite your self-serving explanations.
This is not to say that smaller-scale NFP corps. are the same, your hysterical equivalence notwithstanding. Your righty blather that somehow public corporations are socially unique structures dependent on the people running them is as simplistic as your claims that they do not value profit above all else. It is the cornerstone of their charter, they do not exist for any other reason.
Put simply, if the corporate "tool" wasn't overwhelmingly in favour of the social "elites", it would have not been so widely deployed by same. At least the Victorians were honest about using their corporate power to control society, this society lies to itself so successfully it believes its own press. Psychopathic indeed.
It should have been called 'dickhead' then, much more appropriate and has an Australian air to it.
The question then becomes, what IS a realistic standardization strategy? Is it essentially unattainable? The lesson from the Microsoft and Apple worlds seems to be: ignore standards, create your own logical structure and only standardize to the lowest common denominator of interoperability. The LSB is arguably irrelevant because it builds on an irrelevant past, the irrelevance of POSIX itself.
I'm not as despairing as Rob Pike; I believe we will have OS innovation when we are forced into it. When someone makes the right installation system component, it will spread across distros (we're not quite there yet); apt-get has provided an critical anchor for new distros in itself. All systems have similar problems, noone has solved them _to everyone's satisfaction_ yet. We've seen KDE and GNOME provide some standardization of interface; these are the mechanisms that drive OS evolution, not some didactic set of rules based on uneasy and all-too short-lived alliances.
A core set of ideas seems to be the only true foundation of an OS, everything from there is an organic process that either succeeds or is succeeded by a competitor. Getting that core set is the problem, beyond that is almost entirely a social process.
It's a funny thing about context. Some people see it, some people don't. What you've chosen to ignore is that in one paragraph he disses San Franscisco's proposed infrastructure based on ongoing costs, and in another paragraph admits the reason they want MCI is to grab THEIR infrastructure. Nothing about the costs of THAT, though no doubt Verizon will be passing that on.
The man is a hypocrite, and you are indeed a stupid plebe for wasting your time on a site you apparently hate so much.
There's one Canadian artist who should be materially harmed. Better yet, send him to a real third world country.
Don't knock it till you've tried it, baby....mmmm kangaroos have such pretty eyes...:)
As a long-standing penguinista, I believe any postive government involvement with OSS has to be a useful learning experience, so those of you without experience in the difficulties of procurement should hop off and let us waddle our way into their furry hearts!
...I look forward to ignoring US regulation.
...how wonderful Yahoo thinks it is? I'm not inclined to think they're "wonderful". I don't care about their image.
It isn't "wonderful" that yahoogroups, in changing their layout, have now made it difficult and frustrating to search message archives. Not exactly Internet 2.0 company style, is it. If they want "wonderful", give me "useful".
...and what a bad move. Anyone with half a brain would have looked for independent funding, separate from both sides to put their methodology beyond doubt. Instead they sold their concept to Microsoft, unbelievable naivette.
But the proof of the pudding should be in the eating: apply their methodology. Does it pan out for other Linux distributions/XP upgrades? If the methodology stands, it will be a great service to the debate.
It's just a damn shame the politics of the situation mean that probably won't happen.