Prior to their buyout by Red Hat, Cygnus was a profitable company selling expertise around GCC (you know, Brett, that GPL'd Gnu Compiler Collection under that dreaded GPL).
NOWHERE DOES THE GPL STATE YOU CAN'T MAKE MONEY!!!! FSF Survived for years selling tapes of GPL'd software. GPL is anti-proprietary, not anti-commercial (learn the difference).
BTW: IDC survey numbers: Linux had 25% of the shipped server market in 1999. Up from 16% the year before. GPL sure is hurting Linux.
I guess you've decided/. is the new forum for your FUD campaign against GPL. Why do you hate it so much?
Slight corrections:
1. You've already paid to upgrade.
2. You have no choice to upgrade.
No company is going to upgrade you for free, they just bury the price in the subscription fee. However, they will upgrade you when they want, not when you want (gee, all your files aren't readable by your friends anymore? tell them to upgrade to the latest & greatest XXX for only $yyy!)
Logic error. The majority of programmers don't work in the software industry. They get paid salary for in-house software development. Guess what? Under Open Source, they still get paid for in-house software development. And, lots of other companies pay people to do one-time software development, that goes back into the pool. Why? Because they need someone to fix a problem.
You just won't see people paying for proprietary software. Those companies are threatened. Programmers are not.
Contrary to your belief, copyright is not a natural right. The entire basis in the US for copyright is Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution, which states:
"The Congress shall have Power...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Note the first words - Congress shall have the Power to. Congress can cancel copyright tommorrow (bar some international treaties), and it would be legal. "Intellectual Property" is NOT property.
BTW: You may also be interested in reading the letters of Thomas Jefferso on intellectual Property (http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/je fl220.ht), especially how he points out that ideas are not like objects, in that:
1. If I give you an idea, now we both have it, neither the less.
2. Once given, it cannot be taken back.
1)Linux users are very web-aware. We all get our info from the web, informed places like Slashdot for example.
Hm, must explain all the Linux books and magazines on my bookshelf. I got them all from the web.
2)Magazines depend on adverts, and are commercial. This is in direct contradiction to the aims and virtues of the open source way. Magazines will always have suspect editorial policies, because they are not independant.
Well, I work for an Open Source company, so I hope people will pay for the right things around Open Source. Open Source is not anti-commercial, it's anti-proprietary. Learn the difference.
And all sources of info have bias, it just depends on how honest they are about it.
3)Linux users dislike buying Linux related material on principle. Magazines have strict copyright policies regarding articles, and Linux users don't like this.
See 1) above. I fully support copyright enforcement. I'm also aware of what copyright is about, and it's not meant to be a lever to make money, it's meant to get ideas and writings out into the public.
Reverse the current situation (PTO collects money on granting patents). It costs you to apply for a patent, you get a refund if they grant it. So, the fewer they grant, the more they make (incentive to not grant).
NFS in no way compares to the text database capabilities of domino/notes. Remember that you can set security and workflow triggers on each field of a form - not something you can do with NFS. And domino is for more than just not-very-dynamic data. (and no, SQL doesn't work either - different needs).
Also, I'm not confusing Domino with Domino apps. The workflow/text database/etc are built into Domino and enable the apps to be built on top of them.
I looked through the pointers you provided. It looks like Notes has moved very far from it's beginnings - I felt that the mail / calendaring was the clunkiest part of Notes, the text database / workflow the most powerfull (and I can't even find mention of the workflow part in the pointers provided - by workflow I mean the ability of an app to route stuff / alert a user based on a changed field in a text database - for example the HR department filling in a new employee form triggering routing an email to the computer security folks that causes them to pull up a new user form, that gets routed to the new employee's boss for approval, then triggering the creation of their computer account, which also triggers the IT infrastructure guys to ensure the jack at the new guys desk is turned on... I am looking for the open source equivilent of this).
Notes/Domino isn't really a groupware app. It's a pre-internet mail/news app. You can use it that way (as most early Notes users did), but the same can be said for any discussion program.
No, Domino is a workflow / text database / collaboration tool with mail & scheduling grafted on. The last job I was at had tons of Notes apps being used for workflow. Collaboration not only included providing the documents, but providing (at the field level) security for who could see / modify/ delete each piece of data. The worst part of it is the mail / calendaring. It also had replication (to the field level) between servers.
Bottom line - if the groupware folks want to imitate anything, imitate the best parts of domino, grafting on the ability to do RFC standard e-mail & calendaring. Don't bother with Exchange, it can't hold a candle to Domino.
Marketing dollars for Linux: Great - more people will know about what Linux is & does, and think it's worth taking a chance on, since "IBM" is backing it (ever hear "no one ever got fired for buying IBM?").
Non-Free Application Development: Great - more apps on Linux, with the the "IBM" logo on it. Less opportunity for someone to FUD "There's no apps for Linux."
Free Software: Great - it makes things run better, which makes Linux a better competitor.
Bottom line - $1 Billion into Linux, any area, helps.
For a start the GPL hasn't been tested in a court of law so far, and so its viability as a protective mechanism is uncertain. So far the only reason it's worked is that no company wants to stick their necks out and be the first. If current trends continue though, it may become worth doing, and corporations can afford to hire good lawyers.
Of course, one reason it hasn't been tested is that it's not the standard EULA. The standard EULA says, in effect "copyright gives you certain rights. We're taking some away." GPL says "copyright gives you certain rights. If you follow the GPL, you get some additional rights." Key to these additional rights is the right to redistribute the code. First company to challenge the GPL will find out that, since nothing else gives them the right to distribute the copyrighted code, they can't distribute it at all (normal copyright rules).
Oops. "Sorry boss, I know you wanted it to become proprietary, but now we can't sell it at all."
> Microsoft isn't a monopoly because it hasn't been proved in court and I doubt it will.
Except for that little Finding of Fact in Judge Penfield Jackson's courtroom, wherein he found them a monopoly. Oops, so much for that argument.
And before you argue about it going through appeal, in general Findings of Fact aren't overturned, unless the judge shows so much bad judgement that even a moron would laugh it out of court, which Judge Penfield Jackson did NOT do. I've read all the results he handed down. IANAL, but he used both the law and previous court decisions to back up his findings.
(and yes, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but what the hey, it's such a wide open target)
You may have it on good authority, but it's wrong (at least in the US). The US Supreme Court ruled that publishers could not prevent resell of books back in the early 1900's.
First, go to the OpenHealth website, where they're working on some of this stuff.
Second, if you're in the US, get acquainted with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and associated regulations. This means you need to design interfaces to open standards, and, more importantly, design the security first, everything else second (as in massive fines for messing up security so non-authorized people get access to records).
> by the way, in a union you would not be allowed to learn/practice a new skill if it threatend one of your "brothers" job
Not in any union I know. Most have very extensive training programs. In fact, most use an apprenticeship method to train new workers, and I know that many of them require continued training while working to keep current.
Depends on the union contract & state law. If it's a closed shop, you either join the union or you leave the company. In an open shop, you don't have to join. If you're not a member, you don't have to strike. Of course, don't expect the union members (who are negotiating for all workers, not just the union members, in a right to work state) to be too sympathetic.
> This is the same sort of argument that drives me nuts when police and firefighters bitch about how dangerous their work is. If you don't like the job or the pay or the hours, quit.
OK, so when there are no cops, firefighters or EMTs in your community, an arsonist burns your house down, with you in it, and you need medical attention, you'll be fine, don't worry!
Yes, that's sarcastic, but police & firefighting work (especially in some areas of some cities in the US) IS DANGEROUS. Someone has to do that work. Hopefully motivated people who want to do that kind of work. Is it too much to ask that they be rewarded for literally putting their life on the line every day?
BTW: I also support pay increases for teachers. They're the ones educating our next generation of leaders (and followers, and others), I'd much prefer they could concentrate on that, rather than on how they're going to feed their family, or can they buy a new car because the old one died.
I've also worked in a Union. There are good and bad about unions, apparently you've seen the bad. The good is when you get fired because the boss doesn't like the way you dress, or decides to outsource the entire operation to India because it's cheaper for them, or that you're going to have to work 80 hours a week for no more pay.
Those in the tech world have gotten used to being a scarce commodity, and being able to demand what they want. But don't think businesses treat you wonderfully because of enlightened self interest. They treat you that way because it helps them make a buck. If they could cut costs by treating you lousy, and get away with it, they would.
> If it's GPL, you need the explicit approval of the copyright holder, and NOT the approval of all contributors.
Well, if any of the contributers has made significant contributions (defined by the courts, but I believe 10 lines is considered about the level), they ARE the copyright holder (of that piece). Thus, Linus does not hold copyright to all the kernel, Alan Cox, Adrea Arcangali (sp?), Ted T'so, et al also hold copyright.
I read an interview with Linus once where he said something like "if Microsoft wanted to buy Linux for $10 billion, I'd be happy to sell them a Red Hat disk, then go back to coding, situation unchanged." He was commenting on the fact that there are so many copyright holders in the kernel that to take it proprietary would be impossible (plus the fact that existing GPl'd code like 2.4 remains GPL'd).
Kimberlite is the underlying technology, working today, designed from the ground up for HA on Linux (including some extremely robust data integrity capabilities). Convolo builds on it, adding full NFS support (state failover, host & netgroup failover, etc), and comes with 90 days support.
They also sell support contracts for Linux and Convolo (platinum, "we need a kernel fix now" type contracts, not just "buy a bundle of calls" type).
Nope, it's not property. You can't steal it (you can violate copyright restrictions).
See:
US Constitution, particularly Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 (the sole justification in the US for all "IP" - and it doesn't name them or call them property).
Thomas Jefferson's Letters, paying particular attention to his comments on copyright and ideas.
IP Myths, posted previously, and
The Copyright FAQ, also previously posted.
Of course the same lawmakers that made the law could try to change the constitution, but AFAIK that is a lot more difficult.
Yep, a lot harder in the US. Ordinary laws need a simple majority of quorum in the House & Senate, plus signature of the President (or 2/3's vote to override veto in both House/Senate). Constitutional amendments need 2/3's of both House & Senate, plus ratification by 75% of states.
(OK, there is an alternative, 2/3's of the states could call for a constitutional convention, but it would still require the ratification by 75% of the states).
Slashdot Mirror
Two word: Cygnus Solutions.
/. is the new forum for your FUD campaign against GPL. Why do you hate it so much?
Prior to their buyout by Red Hat, Cygnus was a profitable company selling expertise around GCC (you know, Brett, that GPL'd Gnu Compiler Collection under that dreaded GPL).
NOWHERE DOES THE GPL STATE YOU CAN'T MAKE MONEY!!!! FSF Survived for years selling tapes of GPL'd software. GPL is anti-proprietary, not anti-commercial (learn the difference).
BTW: IDC survey numbers: Linux had 25% of the shipped server market in 1999. Up from 16% the year before. GPL sure is hurting Linux.
I guess you've decided
Slight corrections:
1. You've already paid to upgrade.
2. You have no choice to upgrade.
No company is going to upgrade you for free, they just bury the price in the subscription fee. However, they will upgrade you when they want, not when you want (gee, all your files aren't readable by your friends anymore? tell them to upgrade to the latest & greatest XXX for only $yyy!)
>
Logic error. The majority of programmers don't work in the software industry. They get paid salary for in-house software development. Guess what? Under Open Source, they still get paid for in-house software development. And, lots of other companies pay people to do one-time software development, that goes back into the pool. Why? Because they need someone to fix a problem.
You just won't see people paying for proprietary software. Those companies are threatened. Programmers are not.
Contrary to your belief, copyright is not a natural right. The entire basis in the US for copyright is Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution, which states:
e fl220.ht), especially how he points out that ideas are not like objects, in that:
"The Congress shall have Power...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Note the first words - Congress shall have the Power to. Congress can cancel copyright tommorrow (bar some international treaties), and it would be legal. "Intellectual Property" is NOT property.
BTW: You may also be interested in reading the letters of Thomas Jefferso on intellectual Property (http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/j
1. If I give you an idea, now we both have it, neither the less.
2. Once given, it cannot be taken back.
1)Linux users are very web-aware. We all get our info from the web, informed places like Slashdot for example.
Hm, must explain all the Linux books and magazines on my bookshelf. I got them all from the web.
2)Magazines depend on adverts, and are commercial. This is in direct contradiction to the aims and virtues of the open source way. Magazines will always have suspect editorial policies, because they are not independant.
Well, I work for an Open Source company, so I hope people will pay for the right things around Open Source. Open Source is not anti-commercial, it's anti-proprietary. Learn the difference.
And all sources of info have bias, it just depends on how honest they are about it.
3)Linux users dislike buying Linux related material on principle. Magazines have strict copyright policies regarding articles, and Linux users don't like this.
See 1) above. I fully support copyright enforcement. I'm also aware of what copyright is about, and it's not meant to be a lever to make money, it's meant to get ideas and writings out into the public.
Reverse the current situation (PTO collects money on granting patents). It costs you to apply for a patent, you get a refund if they grant it. So, the fewer they grant, the more they make (incentive to not grant).
Sorry, you did say NSF. I've gotten so used to Linux, I guess, that I read that as NFS. And you are right about what you say about them.
My apology, sorry.
NFS in no way compares to the text database capabilities of domino/notes. Remember that you can set security and workflow triggers on each field of a form - not something you can do with NFS. And domino is for more than just not-very-dynamic data. (and no, SQL doesn't work either - different needs).
/text database/etc are built into Domino and enable the apps to be built on top of them.
... I am looking for the open source equivilent of this).
Also, I'm not confusing Domino with Domino apps. The workflow
I looked through the pointers you provided. It looks like Notes has moved very far from it's beginnings - I felt that the mail / calendaring was the clunkiest part of Notes, the text database / workflow the most powerfull (and I can't even find mention of the workflow part in the pointers provided - by workflow I mean the ability of an app to route stuff / alert a user based on a changed field in a text database - for example the HR department filling in a new employee form triggering routing an email to the computer security folks that causes them to pull up a new user form, that gets routed to the new employee's boss for approval, then triggering the creation of their computer account, which also triggers the IT infrastructure guys to ensure the jack at the new guys desk is turned on
No, Domino is a workflow / text database / collaboration tool with mail & scheduling grafted on. The last job I was at had tons of Notes apps being used for workflow. Collaboration not only included providing the documents, but providing (at the field level) security for who could see / modify/ delete each piece of data. The worst part of it is the mail / calendaring. It also had replication (to the field level) between servers.
Bottom line - if the groupware folks want to imitate anything, imitate the best parts of domino, grafting on the ability to do RFC standard e-mail & calendaring. Don't bother with Exchange, it can't hold a candle to Domino.
Marketing dollars for Linux: Great - more people will know about what Linux is & does, and think it's worth taking a chance on, since "IBM" is backing it (ever hear "no one ever got fired for buying IBM?").
Non-Free Application Development: Great - more apps on Linux, with the the "IBM" logo on it. Less opportunity for someone to FUD "There's no apps for Linux."
Free Software: Great - it makes things run better, which makes Linux a better competitor.
Bottom line - $1 Billion into Linux, any area, helps.
Of course, one reason it hasn't been tested is that it's not the standard EULA. The standard EULA says, in effect "copyright gives you certain rights. We're taking some away." GPL says "copyright gives you certain rights. If you follow the GPL, you get some additional rights." Key to these additional rights is the right to redistribute the code. First company to challenge the GPL will find out that, since nothing else gives them the right to distribute the copyrighted code, they can't distribute it at all (normal copyright rules).
Oops. "Sorry boss, I know you wanted it to become proprietary, but now we can't sell it at all."
8-0
> Microsoft isn't a monopoly because it hasn't been proved in court and I doubt it will.
Except for that little Finding of Fact in Judge Penfield Jackson's courtroom, wherein he found them a monopoly. Oops, so much for that argument.
And before you argue about it going through appeal, in general Findings of Fact aren't overturned, unless the judge shows so much bad judgement that even a moron would laugh it out of court, which Judge Penfield Jackson did NOT do. I've read all the results he handed down. IANAL, but he used both the law and previous court decisions to back up his findings.
(and yes, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but what the hey, it's such a wide open target)
You may have it on good authority, but it's wrong (at least in the US). The US Supreme Court ruled that publishers could not prevent resell of books back in the early 1900's.
First, go to the OpenHealth website, where they're working on some of this stuff.
Second, if you're in the US, get acquainted with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and associated regulations. This means you need to design interfaces to open standards, and, more importantly, design the security first, everything else second (as in massive fines for messing up security so non-authorized people get access to records).
As has been commented, your unskilled labor includes:
Electricians
Plumbers
Pilots
Teachers
Nurses
EMTs
Airplane Mechanics
etc, etc.
Really unskilled there, anyone can just be a nurse, just walk into a hospital and sign up!
> by the way, in a union you would not be allowed to learn/practice a new skill if it threatend one of your "brothers" job
Not in any union I know. Most have very extensive training programs. In fact, most use an apprenticeship method to train new workers, and I know that many of them require continued training while working to keep current.
Depends on the union contract & state law. If it's a closed shop, you either join the union or you leave the company. In an open shop, you don't have to join. If you're not a member, you don't have to strike. Of course, don't expect the union members (who are negotiating for all workers, not just the union members, in a right to work state) to be too sympathetic.
> a bunch of us didn't sign it.
> And they changed it.
What do you call a group of people at a company who act in unison to have bargaining power with management? Oh yea, a union.
You just demonstrated what unions are most useful for - they provide the organized way of ensuring workers requirements are recognized & met.
(and yes, Unions can abuse the power, just like anything - there's good & bad. The key is to keep the good & fix the bad)
> This is the same sort of argument that drives me nuts when police and firefighters bitch about how dangerous their work is. If you don't like the job or the pay or the hours, quit.
OK, so when there are no cops, firefighters or EMTs in your community, an arsonist burns your house down, with you in it, and you need medical attention, you'll be fine, don't worry!
Yes, that's sarcastic, but police & firefighting work (especially in some areas of some cities in the US) IS DANGEROUS. Someone has to do that work. Hopefully motivated people who want to do that kind of work. Is it too much to ask that they be rewarded for literally putting their life on the line every day?
BTW: I also support pay increases for teachers. They're the ones educating our next generation of leaders (and followers, and others), I'd much prefer they could concentrate on that, rather than on how they're going to feed their family, or can they buy a new car because the old one died.
I've also worked in a Union. There are good and bad about unions, apparently you've seen the bad. The good is when you get fired because the boss doesn't like the way you dress, or decides to outsource the entire operation to India because it's cheaper for them, or that you're going to have to work 80 hours a week for no more pay.
Those in the tech world have gotten used to being a scarce commodity, and being able to demand what they want. But don't think businesses treat you wonderfully because of enlightened self interest. They treat you that way because it helps them make a buck. If they could cut costs by treating you lousy, and get away with it, they would.
> If it's GPL, you need the explicit approval of the copyright holder, and NOT the approval of all contributors.
Well, if any of the contributers has made significant contributions (defined by the courts, but I believe 10 lines is considered about the level), they ARE the copyright holder (of that piece). Thus, Linus does not hold copyright to all the kernel, Alan Cox, Adrea Arcangali (sp?), Ted T'so, et al also hold copyright.
I read an interview with Linus once where he said something like "if Microsoft wanted to buy Linux for $10 billion, I'd be happy to sell them a Red Hat disk, then go back to coding, situation unchanged." He was commenting on the fact that there are so many copyright holders in the kernel that to take it proprietary would be impossible (plus the fact that existing GPl'd code like 2.4 remains GPL'd).
A few options:
Open Source: Kimberlite from Mission Critical Linux, Inc
With Support & FULL NFS (not fully Open Source: Convolo.
Kimberlite is the underlying technology, working today, designed from the ground up for HA on Linux (including some extremely robust data integrity capabilities). Convolo builds on it, adding full NFS support (state failover, host & netgroup failover, etc), and comes with 90 days support.
They also sell support contracts for Linux and Convolo (platinum, "we need a kernel fix now" type contracts, not just "buy a bundle of calls" type).
Nope, it's not property. You can't steal it (you can violate copyright restrictions).
See:
US Constitution, particularly Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 (the sole justification in the US for all "IP" - and it doesn't name them or call them property).
Thomas Jefferson's Letters, paying particular attention to his comments on copyright and ideas.
IP Myths, posted previously, and
The Copyright FAQ, also previously posted.
Yep, a lot harder in the US. Ordinary laws need a simple majority of quorum in the House & Senate, plus signature of the President (or 2/3's vote to override veto in both House/Senate). Constitutional amendments need 2/3's of both House & Senate, plus ratification by 75% of states.
(OK, there is an alternative, 2/3's of the states could call for a constitutional convention, but it would still require the ratification by 75% of the states).
All spelled out in the US Constitution, Article Five.
> they'll just switch and try again.
No, they'll just go to some other site that doesn't insist you use IE, and you've just lost a customer.
I suggest checking out Jakob Neilson's useit.com site for some tips on building web sites.