I've had an SiS 530 (or was it an SiS 5598? Not quite sure) going under Xfree 3.3.5 - but only in 24 bit, and then only either in 640x480 or in 1024x768. I don't know if this information helps at all. 3.3.5 certainly claims to support the SiS 530.
Actually, I think Linux zealots are quite mild by Internet standards. Take a look at sci.anthropology.paleo and watch the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis zealots in action to see what I mean.
VB IS object oriented, at least as much as C++ is, go read up about it if you're still arguin against VB 3
How do I do something like templates in VB? E.g. so I can make a generic polynomial class, and then for each instance of that class I can specify whether the coefficients are integers or floating point numbers or complex numbers or gmp arbitrary precision numbers - and then still write stuff like "f*g" to multiply two polynomials.
if a GPL application won't let me write a Qt front end, I'd say it's the GPL that stifling my free speech.
Actually, if you have an application QPL'd by anyone other than Troll Tech, then you can't combine it with QT. This is because you'd have to give the application developer the right to create non-free derivatives of the combined app, which you can't do.
The GPL may be incompatible with the QPL, but at least it's compatible with *itself*.
Even if those of us that support the open source model don't use it. The more RAD development tools we have, the better the community will be.
I'm not convinced that closed-source programming environments will *neccessarily* help free software. Free software is not that free if you have to buy a certain compiler to compile the source code. If lots of developers who would previously have used gcc switch to Borland then we could end up with a whole load of "free" software which won't compile on a free compiler. One of the current strengths of the community is that anyone on the Internet can potentially become a developer for any piece of free software. If lots of stuff won't compile on a free compiler, then it means millions of potential developers become second-class citizens who can't work on a whole host of exciting projects.
Hence, the advocates of an operating system that claims to be all about choice, have in fact, restricted the choice of others.
The operating system doesn't "claim" to be about anything, it's a program.
Some people may believe that "Linux is about having as many software options as possible, regardless of the licensing".
But this is just one opinion. Other people believe that non-DFSG-free licenses are bad because they are socially divisive and infringe on people's right to share information. If they think it is bad for Delphi to be sold under a non-free license, then that's not hypocritical, it's just their view. They never claimed that "we should allow as much `choice' as possible, regardless of how damaging we think the licensing is".
Don't apologize for using VB. I hate to break it to all the folks here but there is a REASON businesses use VB: It's often the proper tool for the job.
I agree with you about this. I also think it is stupid to bash people because they write in VB.
What I really hate about VB is being forced to use it when it *isn't* the right tool for the job. And also, being forced to use programs written in VB which should never have been written in VB. For string handling, PERL is much better. For large projects with complex data structures, C++ is often better. For projects which are hard to write in any language, any language with a decent debugger is better. It is annoying when your boss makes you write 10 screens of unmaintainable junk with no error-checking, when you could have written a readable 10 line perl script to do the same job better. This isn't a flaw in the language itself, but it is marketed and used for environments which it's not suitable for.
Such people, though, would qualify as "free software advocates," not "Linux advocates."
Well, it's a matter of word usage, but I'd call anyone who advocated Linux a Linux advocate. If you have to want *all* software to run on Linux to be a Linux advocate then a lot of prominent community members are not Linux advocates.
You should probably test your theory out by starting a company, hiring 50 developers and giving away the product for free. That should work out well.
Actually, I wasn't claiming that shunning non-free software was a practical viewpoint, just that some people hold such beliefs and that doesn't make them hypocrites (which is what Danny Thorpe said).
(But in fact there are successful companies who do produce only free software, so it is possible even in today's legal climate. One good way to make money is by selling support for your product).
Until you realise that OSS/FS is just a new way to develop software and a new way to model a business, you are going to end up dissapointed over and over again.
I believe this is the same kind of thinking which was behind Danny Thorpe's claim. To many people, OSS is just a design methodology - ESR and Linus to name two examples. But there are other people - say RMS, Bruce Perens and Alan Cox - who think it is more important than just a design methodology and that there are freedom issues involved too. You or I may disagree with either view, but you can't call either view hypocritical, which is what Danny Thorpe did.
My point is that the Linux space is vast and very "free" in many senses of the word. There is room in the GPL to get paid, so why take the ambiguous point that "non-free" software is immoral. First tell me what you mean by "free"...
Ok, maybe I could have phrased it better. I'm saying that some people only advocate software that is "free" in the Debian Free Software Guidelines sense, and hence would not advocate Delphi (unless it is open-sourced). They may be right, they may be wrong. But my point was that their view is not hypocritical, and I think that Danny Thorpe is not fairly describing such people.
Linux is about choice. Any Linux advocate who says Delphi is not welcome in the Linux space is a hypocrite.
That's not true. Some people who advocate Linux do so because it is free software, and would only advocate free software, and consider non-free software to be coercive and immoral. Danny Thorpe clearly disagrees with this view (as do most Linux users, probably) but that doesn't mean that its proponents are hypocrites.
The opensource clone is just people coding in their spare time. It will never be as stable or robust as the commercial product.
This didn't apply to unix and GNU/Linux, did it? Something like plex86 should be simpler than GNU/Linux. Its job is much more specific - working round a few inadequacies in the x86 architecture, rather than writing a whole operating system and applications from the ground up.
"GB" is the abbreviation for "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" according to ISO3166. That sounds like an oversight on their part to me, especially since "UK" is unassigned. But that's what the standard says.
Yes. However, if Kerberos had been patented, and then use of the patent was granted under some copyleft license, then Microsoft couldn't have done this. Of course, that might not have helped either; maybe they'd just have opted for something entirely different.
Do you believe that IE having a very high market share will mean that MS can pollute the HTML standard to their heart's content? Do you think this will make it hard for other people to write web browsers? Do you think that would damage competition, and hence innovation in the web browser market?
If the answer to all the above questions is "yes", do you think that scenario is your "ideal setup"?
If the answer to any of them is "no", then I'd be interested to hear your reasoning.
(this is not intended as a flame, though maybe as part of an impassioned debate)
They've squashed a couple of showstopping speed bugs in M14. It's the first time I've seen mozilla running at a speed comparable to IE.
It offers far better support for HTML4 and CSS than any other browser available
That depends if you count mozilla as "available". It is more standards-compliant than IE.
If you need to use freedom-eroding software because it is technically better than Netscape, then please go ahead. But don't give people a false impression about mozilla by making misleading claims like this.
I especially like clicking an MSIE button and seeing a blank window pop up in less than a second. That's all I ask for.
This is achieved by preloading IE on startup, as testified by Prof Felton in the DOJ trial.
So if you like it, you could get exactly the same effect by preloading netscape/mozilla. If you also use a window manager which hides shrunk windows, then the effect is identical.
I would imagine that stable versions will run on solaris, irix and *bsd just as well as on linux. However, you must expect that development versions will be documented best for the most active development platforms. This means Windows > Linux > Mac > Other Unices.
The way some people talk [...] Linux products are almost unbelieveable in their stability.
I agree this isn't true. However I think you could make the following claims:
Mature free software tends to be more stable than closed-source software of equivalent functionality.
Once a version of a piece of free software is stable, subsequent versions are usually stable. This is not true of closed-source software
Linux (and GNU libc and other core parts of the OS) is very stable. This means there is a chance that applications running on top may be stable. This is not true of any popular closed-source OS. It is true of some unix systems which are derived from software developed openly.
There must be a huge number of students to whom a copy of Mathematica would be worth something less than the student price. Since the marginal costs for software are zero, it works out as a huge net waste to the economy that they can't get hold of it. Also, its existence makes it less profitable to develop a lower-powered, lower cost alternative which they might buy, because no "power users" would bother with it.
Of course, if they hadn't charged a license fee, Wolfram might never have created mathematica, and their might only be the "lower power, lower cost" alternative. This would also be a huge net waste to the economy.
My point is that neither system, as it stands, is economically efficient in this case. Just because Mathematica benefits some people, it doesn't mean they create net benefit for the community as a whole. On the other hand, they don't neccessarily create net loss for the community as a whole, in the way that a proprietory application does if its existence is all that stops an equivalent-powered free version from being developed.
This is from a purely economic point of view, disregarding the moral question of whether non-free software is evil, or whether not giving people control over their IP is evil.
If Mathematica loses its dominant position and stops being developed, then your next computer may be a platform on which mathematica doesn't run. Anyone who's ever owned a microcomputer which isn't PC/Mac compatible probably has a shelf full of software that once was popular but now won't run on their current computer. If it were open-source, this would be less likely since anyone could do the porting.
it's probably not very realistic to expect open source programmers to learn exactly what a Hermite polynomial is
Since many are scientific academics I imagine lots of them know. However, it would be possible to have a basic OS-dependent engine, and most functions talking to this engine rather than the OS; that way, you could port freematica without understanding Hermite polynomials.
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I've had an SiS 530 (or was it an SiS 5598? Not quite sure) going under Xfree 3.3.5 - but only in 24 bit, and then only either in 640x480 or in 1024x768. I don't know if this information helps at all. 3.3.5 certainly claims to support the SiS 530.
E.g., try http://3432562195/.
Actually, I think Linux zealots are quite mild by Internet standards. Take a look at sci.anthropology.paleo and watch the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis zealots in action to see what I mean.
How do I do something like templates in VB? E.g. so I can make a generic polynomial class, and then for each instance of that class I can specify whether the coefficients are integers or floating point numbers or complex numbers or gmp arbitrary precision numbers - and then still write stuff like "f*g" to multiply two polynomials.
Actually, if you have an application QPL'd by anyone other than Troll Tech, then you can't combine it with QT. This is because you'd have to give the application developer the right to create non-free derivatives of the combined app, which you can't do.
The GPL may be incompatible with the QPL, but at least it's compatible with *itself*.
I'm not convinced that closed-source programming environments will *neccessarily* help free software. Free software is not that free if you have to buy a certain compiler to compile the source code. If lots of developers who would previously have used gcc switch to Borland then we could end up with a whole load of "free" software which won't compile on a free compiler. One of the current strengths of the community is that anyone on the Internet can potentially become a developer for any piece of free software. If lots of stuff won't compile on a free compiler, then it means millions of potential developers become second-class citizens who can't work on a whole host of exciting projects.
The operating system doesn't "claim" to be about anything, it's a program.
Some people may believe that "Linux is about having as many software options as possible, regardless of the licensing".
But this is just one opinion. Other people believe that non-DFSG-free licenses are bad because they are socially divisive and infringe on people's right to share information.
If they think it is bad for Delphi to be sold under a non-free license, then that's not hypocritical, it's just their view. They never claimed that "we should allow as much `choice' as possible, regardless of how damaging we think the licensing is".
I agree with you about this. I also think it is stupid to bash people because they write in VB.
What I really hate about VB is being forced to use it when it *isn't* the right tool for the job. And also, being forced to use programs written in VB which should never have been written in VB. For string handling, PERL is much better. For large projects with complex data structures, C++ is often better. For projects which are hard to write in any language, any language with a decent debugger is better. It is annoying when your boss makes you write 10 screens of unmaintainable junk with no error-checking, when you could have written a readable 10 line perl script to do the same job better. This isn't a flaw in the language itself, but it is marketed and used for environments which it's not suitable for.
Well, it's a matter of word usage, but I'd call anyone who advocated Linux a Linux advocate. If you have to want *all* software to run on Linux to be a Linux advocate then a lot of prominent community members are not Linux advocates.
Actually, I wasn't claiming that shunning non-free software was a practical viewpoint, just that some people hold such beliefs and that doesn't make them hypocrites (which is what Danny Thorpe said).
(But in fact there are successful companies who do produce only free software, so it is possible even in today's legal climate. One good way to make money is by selling support for your product).
I believe this is the same kind of thinking which was behind Danny Thorpe's claim. To many people, OSS is just a design methodology - ESR and Linus to name two examples. But there are other people - say RMS, Bruce Perens and Alan Cox - who think it is more important than just a design methodology and that there are freedom issues involved too. You or I may disagree with either view, but you can't call either view hypocritical, which is what Danny Thorpe did.
You're right, I wasn't. If this does indeed happen, and the license is DFSG-free, then I would agree that Danny Thorpe's comment is quite right.
That's not true. Some people who advocate Linux do so because it is free software, and would only advocate free software, and consider non-free software to be coercive and immoral. Danny Thorpe clearly disagrees with this view (as do most Linux users, probably) but that doesn't mean that its proponents are hypocrites.
This didn't apply to unix and GNU/Linux, did it?
Something like plex86 should be simpler than GNU/Linux. Its job is much more specific - working round a few inadequacies in the x86 architecture, rather than writing a whole operating system and applications from the ground up.
"GB" is the abbreviation for "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" according to ISO3166. That sounds like an oversight on their part to me, especially since "UK" is unassigned. But that's what the standard says.
.us already exists. Try www.tac.nyc.ny.us for example. I believe that it's always xx.us where xx is the two-letter state abbreviation.
.gb to be in conformance with ISO 3166.
Also, the UK should really use
Yes. However, if Kerberos had been patented, and then use of the patent was granted under some copyleft license, then Microsoft couldn't have done this.
Of course, that might not have helped either; maybe they'd just have opted for something entirely different.
Do you believe that IE having a very high market share will mean that MS can pollute the HTML standard to their heart's content? Do you think this will make it hard for other people to write web browsers? Do you think that would damage competition, and hence innovation in the web browser market?
If the answer to all the above questions is "yes", do you think that scenario is your "ideal setup"?
If the answer to any of them is "no", then I'd be interested to hear your reasoning.
(this is not intended as a flame, though maybe as part of an impassioned debate)
That depends if you count mozilla as "available". It is more standards-compliant than IE.
If you need to use freedom-eroding software because it is technically better than Netscape, then please go ahead. But don't give people a false impression about mozilla by making misleading claims like this.
This is achieved by preloading IE on startup, as testified by Prof Felton in the DOJ trial.
So if you like it, you could get exactly the same effect by preloading netscape/mozilla. If you also use a window manager which hides shrunk windows, then the effect is identical.
Is it possible to get add-on hardware specifically for gzipping?
I imagine that'd be quite handy for high-load servers.
Does mozilla M14 on Windows handle dynamic gunzipping?
I would imagine that stable versions will run on solaris, irix and *bsd just as well as on linux. However, you must expect that development versions will be documented best for the most active development platforms. This means Windows > Linux > Mac > Other Unices.
I agree this isn't true. However I think you could make the following claims:
There must be a huge number of students to whom a copy of Mathematica would be worth something less than the student price. Since the marginal costs for software are zero, it works out as a huge net waste to the economy that they can't get hold of it. Also, its existence makes it less profitable to develop a lower-powered, lower cost alternative which they might buy, because no "power users" would bother with it.
Of course, if they hadn't charged a license fee, Wolfram might never have created mathematica, and their might only be the "lower power, lower cost" alternative. This would also be a huge net waste to the economy.
My point is that neither system, as it stands, is economically efficient in this case. Just because Mathematica benefits some people, it doesn't mean they create net benefit for the community as a whole. On the other hand, they don't neccessarily create net loss for the community as a whole, in the way that a proprietory application does if its existence is all that stops an equivalent-powered free version from being developed.
This is from a purely economic point of view, disregarding the moral question of whether non-free software is evil, or whether not giving people control over their IP is evil.
If Mathematica loses its dominant position and stops being developed, then your next computer may be a platform on which mathematica doesn't run. Anyone who's ever owned a microcomputer which isn't PC/Mac compatible probably has a shelf full of software that once was popular but now won't run on their current computer. If it were open-source, this would be less likely since anyone could do the porting.
Since many are scientific academics I imagine lots of them know. However, it would be possible to have a basic OS-dependent engine, and most functions talking to this engine rather than the OS; that way, you could port freematica without understanding Hermite polynomials.