As for L. Peter Deutsch being prominant in the open-source community, his main product is Alladin Ghostscript, which is not open-source, as no money can exchange hands for it. GNU Ghostscript is merely a 1-2 year old version of Alladin Ghostscript released under the GPL. While I appreciate Ghostscript, I don't count him as a prominant member of the open souce community.
templates in c++ are nothing more than a hack to allow you to do what java was designed from the start to do.
Templates in C++ are primarily a way to provide container classes. It's true that Java can do container classes without templates, but it doesn't do them in a type-safe way, and it's not quite as efficent as true templates are.
No operator overloading??
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Java for EGCS
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i dont recall anyone even mentioning C
I did. I was pointing out operator overloading is in regular use and is not confusing in that use, so claiming it's always too confusing to be worth it is wrong.
a = a + b; with a.add(b);
You misunderstood. a = a + b; means a = a.add(b); Oh, I guess mathematical notion is less likely to be misunderstood, eh?
try something a little more difficult where a and b are nontrivial data structures and
a += b; is certainly not as clear as a.append(b); (for lists, arrays, etc...) a.insert(b); (for trees, maps, etc...)
Anything can be nonclear when abused. Operator notion is not appropriate here.
As for projects, two points:
I never have plans for leaving college. Working on research projects as a professor is my plan.
Most projects in Java are probably Web Applets or similarly small stuff that is programmed by one person.
only when a and b are numbers. when dealing with objects of a higher level of complexity then it can become very ambiguous.
Not of a higher level, of a type where operator notion is unclear. a+b is clearly defined for vectors, matrices, all types of numbers, strings, ect. It's appropriate and clearer to use them here, so they should be available.
Personally I'm of the opinion that features with a valid use shouldn't be removed because of invalid uses. Depend on people knowing when to use them.
This is too good to be true.
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On the other hand TowerJ suports dynamically loaded classes. Does the Cygnus compiler? Not yet. It is planned.
No operator overloading??
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Java for EGCS
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· Score: 2
well it certainly does look innocent enough dosent it? but it's not. operator over loading only leads to confusion and misuse.
Interesting. I've never seen a C programmer confused over operator overloading. Would you argue that C should replace a + b with addi(a,b), addl(a,b), and addd(a,b)?
That may seem strawman, but it's the point. When dealing with mathematical structures on which + is defined (complex, hypercomplex, vectors, etc.) it's clearer to use the mathematical symbol.
it may seem like an inocent easy shortcut when you are the only person working on a small program
It is. It expresses the problem in terms I can understand, and makes it simpler for me to program it.
but what about when you are one of 8 ppl working on a large project?
I don't care. I have plans to avoid those things forever. Many people writing in Java are writing one person programs, and they should be catered to as much as the large projects. Anyway, in a large project you need naming standards and others, so just add no overloading on to the list.
operator overloading is just to ambiguous to rely on.
1. It's much clearer to say a + b (where a & b are complex numbers) than it is to say a.add(b). 2. As someone else pointed out, virtual functions and overloading can make it pretty hard to figure out what a function's from anyway. Translate a + b to a.operator+(b) and look it up like you normally would.
_They_ (the FSF) updated _their_ definition of free software. I don't know if it was RMS making the decision unilaterily, or after a great deal of discussion about the GNU people. The document is unsigned.
As for worrying a benevolent dictator, you're entirely right. But RMS isn't and can't be that dictator, because he won't make the compromises nesseccary to lead the community. ESR has and appears much closed to "benevolent dictatordom". For some of the dangers of this, cf. the recent debian-devel archives for a thread called "email threat".
I think they are just clarifing things they didn't feel needed clarified before. I've read other documents before the APSL thing where mentioned the ability to modify the program and keep it to themselves as an important feature.
I don't think it's hypocritical. If you make changes, it's still your right not to share with the world - perhaps because it has personal details, because you're embaressed of your coding, or maybe because it would be too much work IYO. RMS has usually been discussing if you give it out - but you don't have to give it out.
20 years ago Clinton would have been chewed up and spit out
Possibly right after Nixon got kicked out. Any time before then? The question never would have come up. JFK and Harding had their affairs hid under the table, by the press. Any suggestion to sue a sitting president would have been met with outrage, by both sides. If Nixon had done what Clinton did, he never would have had to lie about it.
A few facts about the QWERTY/Dvorak debate
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The Myth of QWERTY
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Dvorak had a financial incentive to "prove" his keyboard was better. The Navy tests were not controlled and were most likely cooked. The journal article goes into great detail to get the original studies and critique them.
I find it pretty rude to slander someone by saying their work is fraudulant without good proof. You're going to have to go farther than poor scientific procedures, financial intrest, and misreported numebers to prove it.
FACT: Every national typing contest since 1931 has been won by a typist with a Dvorak keyboard. Typing contests are NOT random samples, but rather self-selected samples (generally of those with an incentive to prove that their method is best).
No, but these typing contest were not method debates, they were speed contests. The typists were not out to prove their method, they were out to prove their speed. If every Indy 500 was won by the same model of car, I might take it be indication about the quality of the car, despite the fact it's not a random sample.
I wrote an 80286 emulator myself--and it was in 32-bit assembler. Bochs is in C!
I'm sorry, but I don't understand this statement. It seems to me that part of the point of a chip emulator is to be able to run those programs on any number of architectures - m68k, Alpha, Spark, Arm. C helps that goal. Assembly doesn't.
This statement shows that you consider yourself on top. It's obvious that RMS and Bruce are the people to talk to, as they are the one's with the knowledge and opinion of software licensing, and they are the people who "lead" the community. But you feel free to dismiss them.
As for polling Slashdot, that's what Netscape & Troll Tech did, by having the wisdom to post draft licenses that were posted and discussed on Slashdot.
Eric's open message was when Apple released it's product with a statement that it was certificed open source by ESR.
As for sending mail, there's several problems. It's acknoledging opensource.org is the final arbitrator. It's not. The community is. Your claim that they were sent to "spank" you, is questionable. Even if it was, complain about the style and purpose, not about the form.
If you have a problem with a person or group, and you want to solve it, and they don't have a history of ignoring you, you go to them first.
Bruce et al, and RMS didn't do that. Makes me wonder which of the three predicates fails.
-russ
Two things. First, ESR should have gone to them before he started a media hoopla over it. Once it was out, they felt they needed to tell the world that the APSL wasn't free. Second, ESR does have a history of ignoring them. That's why Bruce Perens quit the OSI.
One of the things ESR complained about was that Perens and RMS openly discussed the problems with APSL. Isn't that part of what the community is about, that most problems can be discussed openly, that we usually don't work behind closed doors?
Also, if ESR wanted the problems to be quiet, he should have discussed it with Perens, RMS and others before coming out with a press release. If you send things openly on the net, they will get discussed openly.
In your example, all you need is . . . maintain your own refrence counts internally, or some such.
But reference counting is a form of garbage collection. So in this case, you suggest writing your own garbage collection instead of having the language provide it.
Actually, it's not. It forces the entire code base to be relased if I'm reading it correctly. The MPL allowed parts to be propriatery if they were put in a different file.
If you removed all the utilities from the dos directory in MS-DOS, especially if you ran a new shell (Bash?), you would no longer be running MS-DOS. You would be running a hybrid system. GNU/MSDOS doesn't make sense, because non-free MS-DOS can't be part of GNU system. GNU/Linux makes sense only because Linux is free, so it can be part of a GNU system.
Not that I'm advocating calling it GNU/Linux, but I'm not advocating not calling it GNU/Linux either. I do think Linux will win out as the right name.
"The pack of Slashdot flamers?" - i.e. anyone who didn't like ESR? A lot of the flack ESR got was well-deserved - the APSL clearly wasn't open source, for example. I'm not really all that unhappy about him retiring - all the other FS/OS leaders are known for brilliant work on FS/OS projects - RMS/(GCC, EMACS, GNU), Linus/Linux, Larry Wall/Perl, ect. ESR's biggest project was Fetchmail, and he really isn't know for that.
Actually, there is a central point of control over glibc2.1. The core of GNOME is controlled by people (including that guy who gets interviewed a lot.) The rest of GNOME is coordinated by gnome.org. Similar stuff applies to KDE. XFree86 is controlled by the XFree group. While they could, most distributers don't differ much from the upstream sources on any of those.
Truth is an absolute defense against accusations of libel and slander (i.e. defamation) under Canadian civil law, and I'm 95% sure we get that from British common law. I know that in the 1700's, truth was not a defense to libel under British common law. A Boston printer was tried for (true) libel under British common law in the 1760's. As the judge pointed out, truth is not a defense for libel.
(The lawyer thanked the judge and pointed out to the jury that they should acquit if it's true, which they did, setting up the principles of jury nullification and truth as a defense to libel under American law.)
I might add that there are other licenses which even RMS accepted as Free Software which do require you to submit your changes back. I've heard this before in the argument, I still don't believe it, and won't until someone can name the licenses. Which licenses are you talking about?
Slashdot Mirror
As for L. Peter Deutsch being prominant in the open-source community, his main product is Alladin Ghostscript, which is not open-source, as no money can exchange hands for it. GNU Ghostscript is merely a 1-2 year old version of Alladin Ghostscript released under the GPL. While I appreciate Ghostscript, I don't count him as a prominant member of the open souce community.
Templates in C++ are primarily a way to provide container classes. It's true that Java can do container classes without templates, but it doesn't do them in a type-safe way, and it's not quite as efficent as true templates are.
I did. I was pointing out operator overloading is in regular use and is not confusing in that use, so claiming it's always too confusing to be worth it is wrong.
a = a + b; with a.add(b);
You misunderstood. a = a + b; means a = a.add(b);
Oh, I guess mathematical notion is less likely to be misunderstood, eh?
try something a little more difficult where a and b are nontrivial
data structures and
a += b;
is certainly not as clear as
a.append(b); (for lists, arrays, etc...)
a.insert(b); (for trees, maps, etc...)
Anything can be nonclear when abused. Operator notion is not appropriate here.
As for projects, two points:
I never have plans for leaving college. Working on research projects as a professor is my plan.
Most projects in Java are probably Web Applets or similarly small stuff that is programmed by one person.
only when a and b are numbers. when dealing with objects of a higher level of complexity then it can become very ambiguous.
Not of a higher level, of a type where operator notion is unclear. a+b is clearly defined for vectors, matrices, all types of numbers, strings, ect. It's appropriate and clearer to use them here, so they should be available.
Personally I'm of the opinion that features with a valid use shouldn't be removed because of invalid uses. Depend on people knowing when to use them.
On the other hand TowerJ suports dynamically loaded classes. Does the Cygnus compiler?
Not yet. It is planned.
Interesting. I've never seen a C programmer confused over operator overloading. Would you argue that C should replace a + b with addi(a,b), addl(a,b), and addd(a,b)?
That may seem strawman, but it's the point. When dealing with mathematical structures on which + is defined (complex, hypercomplex, vectors, etc.) it's clearer to use the mathematical symbol.
it may seem like an inocent easy shortcut when you are the only person working on a small program
It is. It expresses the problem in terms I can understand, and makes it simpler for me to program it.
but what about when you are one of 8 ppl working on a large project?
I don't care. I have plans to avoid those things forever. Many people writing in Java are writing one person programs, and they should be catered to as much as the large projects. Anyway, in a large project you need naming standards and others, so just add no overloading on to the list.
operator overloading is just to ambiguous to rely on.
1. It's much clearer to say a + b (where a & b are complex numbers) than it is to say a.add(b).
2. As someone else pointed out, virtual functions and overloading can make it pretty hard to figure out what a function's from anyway. Translate a + b to a.operator+(b) and look it up like you normally would.
_They_ (the FSF) updated _their_ definition of free software. I don't know if it was RMS making the decision unilaterily, or after a great deal of discussion about the GNU people. The document is unsigned.
As for worrying a benevolent dictator, you're entirely right. But RMS isn't and can't be that dictator, because he won't make the compromises nesseccary to lead the community. ESR has and appears much closed to "benevolent dictatordom". For some of the dangers of this, cf. the recent debian-devel archives for a thread called "email threat".
I think they are just clarifing things they didn't feel needed clarified before. I've read other documents before the APSL thing where mentioned the ability to modify the program and keep it to themselves as an important feature.
I don't think it's hypocritical. If you make changes, it's still your right not to share with the world - perhaps because it has personal details, because you're embaressed of your coding, or maybe because it would be too much work IYO. RMS has usually been discussing if you give it out - but you don't have to give it out.
20 years ago Clinton would have been chewed up and spit out
Possibly right after Nixon got kicked out. Any time before then? The question never would have come up. JFK and Harding had their affairs hid under the table, by the press. Any suggestion to sue a sitting president would have been met with outrage, by both sides. If Nixon had done what Clinton did, he never would have had to lie about it.
I find it pretty rude to slander someone by saying their work is fraudulant without good proof. You're going to have to go farther than poor scientific procedures, financial intrest, and misreported numebers to prove it.
FACT: Every national typing contest since 1931 has been won by a typist with a Dvorak keyboard.
Typing contests are NOT random samples, but rather self-selected samples (generally of those with an incentive to prove that their method is best).
No, but these typing contest were not method debates, they were speed contests. The typists were not out to prove their method, they were out to prove their speed. If every Indy 500 was won by the same model of car, I might take it be indication about the quality of the car, despite the fact it's not a random sample.
I wrote an 80286 emulator myself--and it was in 32-bit assembler. Bochs is in C!
I'm sorry, but I don't understand this statement. It seems to me that part of the point of a chip emulator is to be able to run those programs on any number of architectures - m68k, Alpha, Spark, Arm. C helps that goal. Assembly doesn't.
Okay, what's the problem with g77? It is a native compiler from (fairly standard) Fortran 77 to native code. It's not a converter to C.
This statement shows that you consider yourself on top. It's obvious that RMS and Bruce are the people to talk to, as they are the one's with the knowledge and opinion of software licensing, and they are the people who "lead" the community. But you feel free to dismiss them.
As for polling Slashdot, that's what Netscape & Troll Tech did, by having the wisdom to post draft licenses that were posted and discussed on Slashdot.
As for sending mail, there's several problems. It's acknoledging opensource.org is the final arbitrator. It's not. The community is. Your claim that they were sent to "spank" you, is questionable. Even if it was, complain about the style and purpose, not about the form.
Yes. "You're absoultely correct" messages aren't terribly useful. You usually respond to something to show why they're wrong, or at least incomplete.
If you're trying to change people's minds, you don't point out their errors to the world at large.
I don't think Perens and RMS really care what ESR thinks. They care what Apple calls thier license and how the community feels about the license.
Geeks do it all the time. Geeks are bad at human relations. Right?
Non sequiter. Geeks also communicate by email. Does that make email bad?
Bruce et al, and RMS didn't do that. Makes me wonder which of the three predicates fails.
-russ
Two things. First, ESR should have gone to them before he started a media hoopla over it. Once it was out, they felt they needed to tell the world that the APSL wasn't free. Second, ESR does have a history of ignoring them. That's why Bruce Perens quit the OSI.
One of the things ESR complained about was that Perens and RMS openly discussed the problems with APSL. Isn't that part of what the community is about, that most problems can be discussed openly, that we usually don't work behind closed doors?
Also, if ESR wanted the problems to be quiet, he should have discussed it with Perens, RMS and others before coming out with a press release. If you send things openly on the net, they will get discussed openly.
But reference counting is a form of garbage collection. So in this case, you suggest writing your own garbage collection instead of having the language provide it.
Actually, it's not. It forces the entire code base to be relased if I'm reading it correctly. The MPL allowed parts to be propriatery if they were put in a different file.
From a brief lookover, the MWPL looks fully open-source. It's actually very GPL like.
You're sure? If John Doe and XYZ are meant as any coder and code, you're surely wrong. That's more or less what I mean when I license code under GPL.
If you removed all the utilities from the dos directory in MS-DOS, especially if you ran a new shell (Bash?), you would no longer be running MS-DOS. You would be running a hybrid system. GNU/MSDOS doesn't make sense, because non-free MS-DOS can't be part of GNU system. GNU/Linux makes sense only because Linux is free, so it can be part of a GNU system.
Not that I'm advocating calling it GNU/Linux, but I'm not advocating not calling it GNU/Linux either. I do think Linux will win out as the right name.
"The pack of Slashdot flamers?" - i.e. anyone who didn't like ESR? A lot of the flack ESR got was well-deserved - the APSL clearly wasn't open source, for example. I'm not really all that unhappy about him retiring - all the other FS/OS leaders are known for brilliant work on FS/OS projects - RMS/(GCC, EMACS, GNU), Linus/Linux, Larry Wall/Perl, ect. ESR's biggest project was Fetchmail, and he really isn't know for that.
Actually, there is a central point of control over glibc2.1. The core of GNOME is controlled by people (including that guy who gets interviewed a lot.) The rest of GNOME is coordinated by gnome.org. Similar stuff applies to KDE. XFree86 is controlled by the XFree group. While they could, most distributers don't differ much from the upstream sources on any of those.
I know that in the 1700's, truth was not a defense to libel under British common law. A Boston printer was tried for (true) libel under British common law in the 1760's. As the judge pointed out, truth is not a defense for libel.
(The lawyer thanked the judge and pointed out to the jury that they should acquit if it's true, which they did, setting up the principles of jury nullification and truth as a defense to libel under American law.)
I might add that there are other licenses which even RMS accepted as Free Software which do require you to submit your changes back. I've heard this before in the argument, I still don't believe it, and won't until someone can name the licenses. Which licenses are you talking about?