Well, since I work at Mission Critical Linux, I've heard of it. We're a professional services company specializing in installation and support of Linux in the enterprise environment. We have released to the open source community some great clustering software (Kimberlite). However, we don't do a distribution, we work with all of them. His thinking that somehow we do is just one more indication of his cluelessness.
No, actually, if you're using VIF (Virtual Image Facility), you don't need the regular S/390 CPU (which is the same as the Linux one, except for the licensing). You can get into the game for easily less than $250K. Admittedly, it's a small mainframe, but it's into the game. And, running VIF, you can give each of your developers a separate Linux box on the box.
Yesterday, I took down my Linux server at work, and replaced it with a Windows 2000 server. Yes, I'll probably get flamed for this, but I had a specific reason, Samba. Eight months ago, I set up a Red Hat Linux server to act as a file server for my Windows users. It was rock-solid stable, the machine would never crash, but transfers at 100 Megabits would eat up 70% of the CPU time on a PIII-500 with 192MB of RAM. This would render the GUI unusable, and the Samba status window I had running in X would die as well.
Might I suggest CoriolisOpen Press' SAMBA Black Book? One of the best books I've found for SAMBA. Something was definitely mistuned on you server, as no way should SAMBA be using that much resources. In particular, chck out pages 439 - 442 (Configuring Samba for Optimal Performance)
Also, try the resources available from samba (www.samba.org), including subscribing to the mailing lists.
In terms of your problems with the Linux LUG, I can suggest the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group as an excellent one for answering questions. Feel free to subscribe to their mailing list (directions on their home page), we do serve the "Greater" New Hampshire. jeff
Slight clarification - the key in the design is the N in NUMA (NON, as in Non-Uniform Memory Access). A processor accesses memory on it's own board quickly, slower to access memory elsewhere. The question is how much slower "slower" is. This also means you really want processes to stay on their processor, and to have good locality of memory, because otherwise you take latency hits.
Check out Chapter 7 of Greg Pfister's "In Search of Clusters" (ISBN 0-13-899709-8)
Don't know about current, but this link in LJ shows that as of the date of the article, NT creates a thread in 0.9ms, while Linux takes 1.0ms to create a process. However, this table shows the effect of some changes to the scheduling - under light load conditions (small run queues), Linux switches processes (much more secure & protected) faster than NT switches threads. Read the main article. The changes happened in the 2.0.x series, so hopefully it got even better during 2.2, never mind 2.4.
> Any licence that does not involve payment can be revoked
Care to quote law on that? IANAL, but in my one term of contract law, it was made very clear that "consideration" (the legal term) does NOT need to involve money. Example: I offer to take you to hawaii if you don't drink for a year. No money changes hands, yet, it's a valid contract. Why? Because you gain the benefit of hawaii, and I gain the benefit of you not drinking (don't ask what that is, the law doesn't care, it simply acknowledges it). BTW: That was not an offer, only an example.
One thing about GPL: It extends rights, not reduces. As it says, you don't have to agree, but nothing else gives you the right. So: 1. Offer & acceptance (GPL author offered, you indicated acceptance by using the terms of GPL) 2. Consideration (you get to use GPL'd code, original author gets consideration of you GPL'ing your code) 3. Legal purpose 4. Competetent to enter into agreement (assuming both non-minors, mentally competent, etc)
Bingo - contract. If there's no revocation clause, there's no revocation possible. It wasn't in the original contract. That's also the reason that revocation clauses are not found to be DFSG compliant (Debian Free Software Guidelines).
FSF recommnends signing copyright to FSF to enable them to take action in court, as only the copyright holder has standing.
Sigh, at the risk of sounding redundant (I posted this elsewhere in this thread), in the US, the relevent quote is: US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: (Header to Article 1: Congress shall have the 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;"
Property is not property. IP is only recognized in order to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." That's it. Unlike real property. Don't like it and live in the US? change the constitution.
Also, read the federalist papers & Thomas Jefferson, who makes the clear case that, unlike real property, where if I take a piece of land or a car from you, I have it & you don't, with intellectual property, I take an idea from you, I have it & you have it. In addition, ideas are only worthwhile in that, as more people have the same idea, the network effect spreads the usefulness of it.
Us Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: (Header to Article 1: Congress shall have the 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;"
Please note that key word there. Limited. For a limited time. After that it's public domain (unfortunately, congress decides "limited"). It's also specific. The government (congress) can grant the limited right (they don't have to). No one else. Only the US Government.
So, you didn't refute his original statement: You cannot have enforced licensing without a government (again, unless you want Microsoft to be able to throw people in jail for license violations, in which case you're quite literally insane, and we can abandon the argument)
How do you propose enforcing this government granted, limited (not absolute) right without the government?
> In windows world, when a user finally figures out that alt-F4 closes a window they KNOW that no matter what box they sit down at alt-F4 will still close a window.
And any X box I sit down at here at work works identical for me. Why? Because my defaults are in my home directory, so any X I start looks at them, configures X to my preferences, then I use it like my home desktop (which it is). If you boot up X with your prefs, you get your prefs. Like alt-F4? Set it to that, and it's that everywhere. Like Alt-Q? Set it to that, and it's that everywhere.
Actually, if you structure it right, you have an incentive to make it as good as possible. Imagine that you do yearly support contracts (vs per incident). Now, the fewer times people call, the more of that money you make. So, your incentive is to make it really good so people don't call, then sell the support contracts. Of course, you have to price the yearly support contracts such that they will buy them on the chance that they need it, but that's implementation detail.
> Why would you link to that? According to the very first table, Linux (aggr.) has 147 vulnerabilities over the four years listed, while NT has 146. Granted, that doesn't say much for Microsoft, but Linux is not a secure OS (most distros are as bad as Microsoft in enabling useless, potentially vulnerable services in the default install). Linux can be MADE to be secure, but then so can NT, so there's really no point to be made there.
Scan down a ways, you'll notice that for 2000, the top two are Windows 2000 and Windows NT. for 1999, the top 12 are all Windows (NT, 98, 95, IE, etc). Of particular note is that Windows doesn't show up at all in the 97 & 98 lists. Somehow I don't think it suddenly broke. I suspect it wasn't being reported on bugtraq. Just because it isn't reported doesn't mean it's not vulnerable.
First, check Eric Raymond's the Magic Cauldron, pointers given by others.
Second, you state:
We're also doing development in a CMM-3+ environment, so there is no need for someone to buy support unless we purposely start adding "features" (i.e. bugs) or make it so complex no one can use it without calling us on the phone. That's just not an acceptable option since our product needs to operate in a five-9's environment, where if it doesn't work right it's never even allowed in the building.
Having worked in these environments, they want a support contract. I don't care what CMM level you work at, if something goes wrong, they want to call someone, NOW (especially if you literally mean 99.999% uptime, which is 5 minutes of downtime a year). More importantly, they want the assurance that they CAN call someone NOW.
Also, how much customizing is needed to get your product working in an environment? Unless it is a drop-in widget, they're going to want your expertise in configuring it to work in their environment.
Sure, they could do it themselves, but why pay their employees to learn the system, when they can hire your expertise whe needed?
You also state:
We realize that if we do keep the source closed, but open the API or docs, someone will clone it because they don't want to pay for our work. Even with the typical no-quality clone, this makes the product life too short and the market too small to justify the large development costs.
So, you will be facing open source at some point - better start now thinking about how you will make money when this does happen - it's not an if, it's a when. If you can make money then, why not now?
BTW: for a look at a company that has open-sourced a HA solution, visit Mission Critical Linux who are giving away (GPL) their Kimberlite clustering solution, but also selling services and support around high-availability linux environments (as well as other mission-crtical linux environments).
Somewhere, the key has to be in the open. Read: http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-9911.html #DVDEncryptionBroken
for Bruce Schneier's comments on DVD & why it was guaranteed to fail eventually. Also why it's not a technical, but a legal problem (preventing or prosecuting illegal copying of copyrighted materials), which is already solved (it's called taking the violator to court).
> Do they even teach programming anymore or just skip to marketing classes? I know which one is more important nowadays.
Try: http://student.mit.edu/catalog/m6a.html
to find out what they're teaching these days.
To those concerned about research at MIT: (computer wise): (Computer Architecture Group) http://www.cag.lcs.mit.edu/ (MIT Media Lab Research) http://www.media.mit.edu/Research/ (overall listing of labs) http://web.mit.edu/research.html
As I said in another reply, thank you for playing the game. What you describe is flat out illegal - you cannot be given treatment without your consent (and before anyone says so, yes, in an emergency, where you are unconscuous, or otherwise unable to make a decision, they can provide EMERGENCY, life-preserving treatment). Misuse of medical information is subject to massive fines. As I've actually worked, in this field, I actually have a clue as to how it works. By the way, the law is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
Thank you for playing the game. The law is extremely strict in terms of medical info. I used to work in that field - the penalty for misuse of medical information is $250K / incident. This includes release of information for whom the patient (i.e. you) has not authorized release (that's why every insurance signup has a statement for you to sign authorizing them to get your medical info). Your sharing for drug research - this is always non-identifiable data (i.e. it cant' be traced back to a particular individual).
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
Article 5:
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of it's equal Suffrage in the Senate.
No national referendum. However, it doesn't specify how the convention would be done, or the conventions in the states.
Which just goes to show that Bob Cringely is not a lawyer, and does not read the law. Please look at the Sherman & Clayton acts on that site, and find the word consumer in those two acts. You won't. Why? Because those two acts protect competition. Hm. Did DoJ prove harm to competition via monopoly power?
> its important to recognize "what" happened on a larger scale: they brought the computing power of a spreadsheet to the masses.
That's funny, I thought that was Visicalc on the Apple II?
> they found a way to bridge the gap between the uninformed computer user and some impressive computing
Gee, I thought that was Apple (or really Xerox, from whom Apple got the technology).
Yep, microsoft "innovation" - copy & steal from elsewhere. I heard some of their guys talk recently about their latest "research innovation" - IPv6 - coming soon to an OS near you! (ignore the IPv6 Experimental in Linux 2.2.)
BTW: Internet: Built on Unix. Innovative? Make your own decision, but what has changed the world of computing recently?
Unfortunately, the KDE folks in that page didn't address the debian issue - it's not that QT 2.0 isn't DFSG, or that KDE isn't DFSG, it's that KDE is GPL & QT is not GPL-compatible. thus the licensing conflict. KDE folks keep going on about how great KDE is, how they've GPL'd the work, how QT is now free, why they chose that license, etc. They don't seem to address the problem of the license conflict. It's not that either side is wrong, it's that they are both right in incompatible ways. Debian continues to suggest a simple solution (KDE be GPL with a QT exclusion, he who writes the code chooses the license, so they can do this). However, the KDE folks don't seem to even recognize the problem.
This also highlights a fact with all the MPL, EPL, IPL, RPL, GPL, BSD, LGPL, and many more - each time you include software, you have to have your lawyer check on the compatibility of the licenses. All the more need to have a few basic license (my votes for GPL, LGPL, BSD (new, without the advertising), X (which is similar to the new BSD). Decide what you will allow third parties to do with your code & choose accordingly: GPL - 3rd parties must open up their code if they include mine. LGPL - They can write proprietary apps, but they have to open up mods to my code, & make my code available. BSD & X - Do what you want, even make proprietary products.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, since I work at Mission Critical Linux, I've heard of it. We're a professional services company specializing in installation and support of Linux in the enterprise environment. We have released to the open source community some great clustering software (Kimberlite). However, we don't do a distribution, we work with all of them. His thinking that somehow we do is just one more indication of his cluelessness.
jeff
No, actually, if you're using VIF (Virtual Image Facility), you don't need the regular S/390 CPU (which is the same as the Linux one, except for the licensing). You can get into the game for easily less than $250K. Admittedly, it's a small mainframe, but it's into the game. And, running VIF, you can give each of your developers a separate Linux box on the box.
Might I suggest CoriolisOpen Press' SAMBA Black Book? One of the best books I've found for SAMBA. Something was definitely mistuned on you server, as no way should SAMBA be using that much resources. In particular, chck out pages 439 - 442 (Configuring Samba for Optimal Performance)
Also, try the resources available from samba (www.samba.org), including subscribing to the mailing lists.
In terms of your problems with the Linux LUG, I can suggest the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group as an excellent one for answering questions. Feel free to subscribe to their mailing list (directions on their home page), we do serve the "Greater" New Hampshire.
jeff
Slight clarification - the key in the design is the N in NUMA (NON, as in Non-Uniform Memory Access). A processor accesses memory on it's own board quickly, slower to access memory elsewhere. The question is how much slower "slower" is. This also means you really want processes to stay on their processor, and to have good locality of memory, because otherwise you take latency hits.
Check out Chapter 7 of Greg Pfister's "In Search of Clusters" (ISBN 0-13-899709-8)
Don't know about current, but this link in LJ shows that as of the date of the article, NT creates a thread in 0.9ms, while Linux takes 1.0ms to create a process. However, this table shows the effect of some changes to the scheduling - under light load conditions (small run queues), Linux switches processes (much more secure & protected) faster than NT switches threads. Read the main article. The changes happened in the 2.0.x series, so hopefully it got even better during 2.2, never mind 2.4.
> Any licence that does not involve payment can be revoked
Care to quote law on that? IANAL, but in my one term of contract law, it was made very clear that "consideration" (the legal term) does NOT need to involve money. Example: I offer to take you to hawaii if you don't drink for a year. No money changes hands, yet, it's a valid contract. Why? Because you gain the benefit of hawaii, and I gain the benefit of you not drinking (don't ask what that is, the law doesn't care, it simply acknowledges it). BTW: That was not an offer, only an example.
One thing about GPL: It extends rights, not reduces. As it says, you don't have to agree, but nothing else gives you the right. So:
1. Offer & acceptance (GPL author offered, you indicated acceptance by using the terms of GPL)
2. Consideration (you get to use GPL'd code, original author gets consideration of you GPL'ing your code)
3. Legal purpose
4. Competetent to enter into agreement (assuming both non-minors, mentally competent, etc)
Bingo - contract. If there's no revocation clause, there's no revocation possible. It wasn't in the original contract. That's also the reason that revocation clauses are not found to be DFSG compliant (Debian Free Software Guidelines).
FSF recommnends signing copyright to FSF to enable them to take action in court, as only the copyright holder has standing.
Nope. They can non-GPL their next version, but the GPL'd version is always GPL'd.
Sigh, at the risk of sounding redundant (I posted this elsewhere in this thread), in the US, the relevent quote is:
US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8:
(Header to Article 1: Congress shall have the 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;"
Property is not property. IP is only recognized in order to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." That's it. Unlike real property. Don't like it and live in the US? change the constitution.
Also, read the federalist papers & Thomas Jefferson, who makes the clear case that, unlike real property, where if I take a piece of land or a car from you, I have it & you don't, with intellectual property, I take an idea from you, I have it & you have it. In addition, ideas are only worthwhile in that, as more people have the same idea, the network effect spreads the usefulness of it.
Us Constitution, Article 1, Section 8:
(Header to Article 1: Congress shall have the 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;"
Please note that key word there. Limited. For a limited time. After that it's public domain (unfortunately, congress decides "limited"). It's also specific. The government (congress) can grant the limited right (they don't have to). No one else. Only the US Government.
So, you didn't refute his original statement:
You cannot have enforced licensing without a government (again, unless you want Microsoft to be able to throw people in jail for license violations, in which case you're quite literally insane, and we can abandon the argument)
How do you propose enforcing this government granted, limited (not absolute) right without the government?
> In windows world, when a user finally figures out that alt-F4 closes a window they KNOW that no matter what box they sit down at alt-F4 will still close a window.
And any X box I sit down at here at work works identical for me. Why? Because my defaults are in my home directory, so any X I start looks at them, configures X to my preferences, then I use it like my home desktop (which it is). If you boot up X with your prefs, you get your prefs. Like alt-F4? Set it to that, and it's that everywhere. Like Alt-Q? Set it to that, and it's that everywhere.
Isn't network transparency wonderful?
As opposed to the plutonium naturally forming?
Actually, if you structure it right, you have an incentive to make it as good as possible. Imagine that you do yearly support contracts (vs per incident). Now, the fewer times people call, the more of that money you make. So, your incentive is to make it really good so people don't call, then sell the support contracts. Of course, you have to price the yearly support contracts such that they will buy them on the chance that they need it, but that's implementation detail.
> Why would you link to that? According to the very first table, Linux (aggr.) has 147 vulnerabilities over the four years listed, while NT has 146. Granted, that doesn't say much for Microsoft, but Linux is not a secure OS (most distros are as bad as Microsoft in enabling useless, potentially vulnerable services in the default install). Linux can be MADE to be secure, but then so can NT, so there's really no point to be made there.
Scan down a ways, you'll notice that for 2000, the top two are Windows 2000 and Windows NT. for 1999, the top 12 are all Windows (NT, 98, 95, IE, etc). Of particular note is that Windows doesn't show up at all in the 97 & 98 lists. Somehow I don't think it suddenly broke. I suspect it wasn't being reported on bugtraq. Just because it isn't reported doesn't mean it's not vulnerable.
On your second paragraph, I agree.
First, check Eric Raymond's the Magic Cauldron, pointers given by others.
Second, you state:
We're also doing development in a CMM-3+ environment, so there is no need for someone to buy support unless we purposely start adding "features" (i.e. bugs) or make it so complex no one can use it without calling us on the phone. That's just not an acceptable option since our product needs to operate in a five-9's environment, where if it doesn't work right it's never even allowed in the building.
Having worked in these environments, they want a support contract. I don't care what CMM level you work at, if something goes wrong, they want to call someone, NOW (especially if you literally mean 99.999% uptime, which is 5 minutes of downtime a year). More importantly, they want the assurance that they CAN call someone NOW.
Also, how much customizing is needed to get your product working in an environment? Unless it is a drop-in widget, they're going to want your expertise in configuring it to work in their environment.
Sure, they could do it themselves, but why pay their employees to learn the system, when they can hire your expertise whe needed?
You also state:
We realize that if we do keep the source closed, but open the API or docs, someone will clone it because they don't want to pay for our work. Even with the typical no-quality clone, this makes the product life too short and the market too small to justify the large development costs.
So, you will be facing open source at some point - better start now thinking about how you will make money when this does happen - it's not an if, it's a when. If you can make money then, why not now?
BTW: for a look at a company that has open-sourced a HA solution, visit Mission Critical Linux who are giving away (GPL) their Kimberlite clustering solution, but also selling services and support around high-availability linux environments (as well as other mission-crtical linux environments).
Somewhere, the key has to be in the open. Read:l #DVDEncryptionBroken
http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-9911.htm
for Bruce Schneier's comments on DVD & why it was guaranteed to fail eventually. Also why it's not a technical, but a legal problem (preventing or prosecuting illegal copying of copyrighted materials), which is already solved (it's called taking the violator to court).
> Do they even teach programming anymore or just skip to marketing classes? I know which one is more important nowadays.
Try: http://student.mit.edu/catalog/m6a.html
to find out what they're teaching these days.
To those concerned about research at MIT:
(computer wise):
(Computer Architecture Group)
http://www.cag.lcs.mit.edu/
(MIT Media Lab Research)
http://www.media.mit.edu/Research/
(overall listing of labs)
http://web.mit.edu/research.html
As I said in another reply, thank you for playing the game. What you describe is flat out illegal - you cannot be given treatment without your consent (and before anyone says so, yes, in an emergency, where you are unconscuous, or otherwise unable to make a decision, they can provide EMERGENCY, life-preserving treatment). Misuse of medical information is subject to massive fines. As I've actually worked, in this field, I actually have a clue as to how it works. By the way, the law is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
Thank you for playing the game. The law is extremely strict in terms of medical info. I used to work in that field - the penalty for misuse of medical information is $250K / incident. This includes release of information for whom the patient (i.e. you) has not authorized release (that's why every insurance signup has a statement for you to sign authorizing them to get your medical info). Your sharing for drug research - this is always non-identifiable data (i.e. it cant' be traced back to a particular individual).
Article 1, Section 1:
Article 5:
No national referendum. However, it doesn't specify how the convention would be done, or the conventions in the states.Linux-privs
SGI's B1 code
So, the benefits of Open Source combined with the trusted security of specifications
Which just goes to show that Bob Cringely is not a lawyer, and does not read the law. Please look at the Sherman & Clayton acts on that site, and find the word consumer in those two acts. You won't. Why? Because those two acts protect competition. Hm. Did DoJ prove harm to competition via monopoly power?
> its important to recognize "what" happened on a larger scale: they brought the computing power of a spreadsheet to the masses.
That's funny, I thought that was Visicalc on the Apple II?
> they found a way to bridge the gap between the uninformed computer user and some impressive computing
Gee, I thought that was Apple (or really Xerox, from whom Apple got the technology).
Yep, microsoft "innovation" - copy & steal from elsewhere. I heard some of their guys talk recently about their latest "research innovation" - IPv6 - coming soon to an OS near you! (ignore the IPv6 Experimental in Linux 2.2.)
BTW: Internet: Built on Unix. Innovative? Make your own decision, but what has changed the world of computing recently?
Unfortunately, the KDE folks in that page didn't address the debian issue - it's not that QT 2.0 isn't DFSG, or that KDE isn't DFSG, it's that KDE is GPL & QT is not GPL-compatible. thus the licensing conflict. KDE folks keep going on about how great KDE is, how they've GPL'd the work, how QT is now free, why they chose that license, etc. They don't seem to address the problem of the license conflict. It's not that either side is wrong, it's that they are both right in incompatible ways. Debian continues to suggest a simple solution (KDE be GPL with a QT exclusion, he who writes the code chooses the license, so they can do this). However, the KDE folks don't seem to even recognize the problem.
This also highlights a fact with all the MPL, EPL, IPL, RPL, GPL, BSD, LGPL, and many more - each time you include software, you have to have your lawyer check on the compatibility of the licenses. All the more need to have a few basic license (my votes for GPL, LGPL, BSD (new, without the advertising), X (which is similar to the new BSD). Decide what you will allow third parties to do with your code & choose accordingly:
GPL - 3rd parties must open up their code if they include mine.
LGPL - They can write proprietary apps, but they have to open up mods to my code, & make my code available.
BSD & X - Do what you want, even make proprietary products.
And this helps my alphalinux how? Or those with a Sparc/Linux. Is it available SMP & UP, which version of the kernel?