I edit manuscripts -- text files up to a meg in size -- and I need Word's "Track Changes." OpenOffice has the feature, but with a big file, it can take ten or twenty minutes just to switch between showing and hiding the changes I've made.
OpenOffice is another "almost-there." It handles Word's.doc files just fine, but it just isn't nimble enough to be used as a replacement manuscript-editor.
That and I need Windoze because Linux has no driver for my scanner, yet.
I use Linux for everything else; I switched in 1998, but I can't go all the way, yet.
For me, the most disturbing thing about the question of Red Hat's proprietary move is the shift in focus that it forces on me and the community, and the shift in focus that, I think, is taking place within Red Hat.
Until now, the focus of Red Hat, at least as we, out here, perceived it, was outward, like the focus of every other Open Source developer. Lists were open, licenses were open, policies were (more or less) open and, above all, minds and attitudes were open for viewing by all of us.
But not anymore. Red Hat now has "property" of which it can think as "mine" or "ours." Property which does not belong to all of us in the community, but belongs solely to its owner, Red Hat Software.
For "us" and for "them," the meaning of "us" has changed.
I realise that it's never really been true that GPLed software "belonged" to everybody, in the proprietary sense, but there has always been a sense of participation in it; a sense that, because GPL gave us all licence to use it, and because Red Hat was playing the game in the same way that the fourteen-year-old who writes a GUI for configuring something also plays it, the company was still participating in the community on the same level of innocence as the child.
I think that's not so, anymore. Private property creates an atmosphere of secrecy -- what, exactly, are these patents, and which of the many bits of software I'm using are now subject to secret decisions at Red Hat?
I don't know. Not because Red Hat won't tell me -- if I ask, they probably will -- but because it's in the nature of a private thing to remain private and become more so.
Once there is proprietariness, it seems to me, it's difficult to go back. Once there is something powerful about which it is appropriate to make secret policy decisions, then secrecy in policy decisions becomes a part of policy, itself -- and secretiveness is highly addictive.
GPL protects the public right to use. Patents protect the private right to own, and to control.
It seems to me that that's an important difference, and a crucial one, to the OSS community. It's quite true that Joe Blow still owns, and always has owned, the copyright to the software that he wrote and that I use every day. But that was not the focus of GPL. The point of GPL was to put a limit on Joe Blow, so that he could no longer decide to hide away the source code for the software he had released. The point of patents is to put a limit on us.
And, whether the patent is enforced or not, and whether or not its proprietor make a promise not to enforce it, the right to enforce it is implicit in its existence.
And, suddenly, I'm having to look at Red Hat in a different way. Suddenly it's no longer a company formed to protect the rights of the many, but a company part of whose stated policy is to hold some rights to itself, and away from the community.
No matter what it says.
It isn't that I don't trust Red Hat -- I do. (At least as long as Alan stays there.) It's that that's a different kind of trust.
Suddenly I'm no longer trusting a bunch of geeks who are a lot like the rest of us to hold off the Borg at the bridge. Instead, I'm trusting a corporation to keep its promise to refrain from bashing in the heads of the villagers.
Red Hat is a different animal, today, and I'm going to have to think hard about that.
Yes, college != university. It sounds as if these are students from what I think are called "community colleges" in the US. Here, it's a stage between High School and University.
It's all Microsoft's fault. Well, not really, maybe, but it is related to the decline of DOS.
I started Linux in 1998, after becoming disillusioned with Win95 because MS had hidden DOS and seemed to be headed toward dumping it -- or, at least, pretending it wasn't there. But I had started computers with the C-64 followed by DOS.
And that makes all the difference in the world, for a new user. I had no idea what an ls was, or how to see the inside of a file, but I did know what a command-line looked like -- and that using it would get me much closer to using the 'real' computer inside than a GUI could ever do.
And just that put me a few thousand light-years ahead of the newbies of today.
Some of them may have seen a command interface, but they sure as hell don't know what it's for -- don't know that it can be a normal way of dealing with a computer. Even those who have been trained at universities in computers aren't as accustomed to text commands as was anyone who began with 64K and a black screen with a prompt.
I don't have an answer for this, because it seems to me that a) as long as we have the text console, here's going to be an increasing distance between the user who starts with Win and the user who starts with *nix, and b) we simply can't give up the text-console -- no matter how many users we lose because of that. It's just too valuable.
But we are going to lose them. Teachers of Linux are doomed to be farther and farther away from their pupils simply because those pupils have no idea at all what any of us are typing away at. For them, the computer is a window.
If they see a command interface, they assume the computer's broken.
The starting-point has changed, probably forever. So the end-point has to be different.
FWIW, I don't find most Linux gurus too complicated or arrogant at all -- for me. But my starting point, like theirs, was a place and time that the begininng Win user now considers the Stone Age.
You might want to take a look at Binary Cloud, and maybe talk to Alex Black, the project's originator. It's in its r2 stage, now, but Alex built most of the r1 version himself.
From the homepage: "binarycloud is an opensource, enterprise class web application platform."
Mac
Americans (and friends) might like to take a look at Aislin's Wednesday morning cartoon for the Montreal Gazette. He does poignant, gallery-class work, when things get serious.
Slashdot Mirror
I edit manuscripts -- text files up to a meg in size -- and I need Word's "Track Changes." OpenOffice has the feature, but with a big file, it can take ten or twenty minutes just to switch between showing and hiding the changes I've made.
OpenOffice is another "almost-there." It handles Word's .doc files just fine, but it just isn't nimble enough to be used as a replacement manuscript-editor.
That and I need Windoze because Linux has no driver for my scanner, yet.I use Linux for everything else; I switched in 1998, but I can't go all the way, yet.
Mac
That's all very interesting, but did you hear that PayPal has paid back the money that was stolen from AbiWord?
True! I read it on
That's all very interesting, but did you hear that PayPal has paid back the money that was stolen from AbiWord?
True! I read it on
Mac
Here's Broadjump. I found it through Hotjobs' listings for Canada, but it's just www.broadjump.com.
MacI'm really beginning to wonder why, when we have two well-known OSS RDBMSs, we only see fans appearing when the lesser of them is attacked.
Aren't there any fanatics out there for the big brother that is a challenge to the big commercial databases?
Mac
For me, the most disturbing thing about the question of Red Hat's proprietary move is the shift in focus that it forces on me and the community, and the shift in focus that, I think, is taking place within Red Hat.
Until now, the focus of Red Hat, at least as we, out here, perceived it, was outward, like the focus of every other Open Source developer. Lists were open, licenses were open, policies were (more or less) open and, above all, minds and attitudes were open for viewing by all of us.
But not anymore. Red Hat now has "property" of which it can think as "mine" or "ours." Property which does not belong to all of us in the community, but belongs solely to its owner, Red Hat Software.
For "us" and for "them," the meaning of "us" has changed.
I realise that it's never really been true that GPLed software "belonged" to everybody, in the proprietary sense, but there has always been a sense of participation in it; a sense that, because GPL gave us all licence to use it, and because Red Hat was playing the game in the same way that the fourteen-year-old who writes a GUI for configuring something also plays it, the company was still participating in the community on the same level of innocence as the child.
I think that's not so, anymore. Private property creates an atmosphere of secrecy -- what, exactly, are these patents, and which of the many bits of software I'm using are now subject to secret decisions at Red Hat?
I don't know. Not because Red Hat won't tell me -- if I ask, they probably will -- but because it's in the nature of a private thing to remain private and become more so.
Once there is proprietariness, it seems to me, it's difficult to go back. Once there is something powerful about which it is appropriate to make secret policy decisions, then secrecy in policy decisions becomes a part of policy, itself -- and secretiveness is highly addictive.
GPL protects the public right to use. Patents protect the private right to own, and to control.
It seems to me that that's an important difference, and a crucial one, to the OSS community. It's quite true that Joe Blow still owns, and always has owned, the copyright to the software that he wrote and that I use every day. But that was not the focus of GPL. The point of GPL was to put a limit on Joe Blow, so that he could no longer decide to hide away the source code for the software he had released. The point of patents is to put a limit on us.
And, whether the patent is enforced or not, and whether or not its proprietor make a promise not to enforce it, the right to enforce it is implicit in its existence .
And, suddenly, I'm having to look at Red Hat in a different way. Suddenly it's no longer a company formed to protect the rights of the many, but a company part of whose stated policy is to hold some rights to itself, and away from the community.
No matter what it says.
It isn't that I don't trust Red Hat -- I do. (At least as long as Alan stays there.) It's that that's a different kind of trust.Suddenly I'm no longer trusting a bunch of geeks who are a lot like the rest of us to hold off the Borg at the bridge. Instead, I'm trusting a corporation to keep its promise to refrain from bashing in the heads of the villagers.
Red Hat is a different animal, today, and I'm going to have to think hard about that.
Mac
Congratulations, both! Now, Kathleen, will you please teach the man how to spell "than?"
I like the BBC's final comment:
'See "internet links" for the text of BT's patent.
There is no charge for doing so."
They didn't have to add "yet."'
If it's moderated down, it becomes a thumbnail comment, and has therefore been legally modified (see Thumbnail story).
I don't think anybody got it. Sad, that -- but it was funny.
Come to think of it, robots would have got it.
...as opposed to low-tech MRI, in which I hold a magnet to my head and Gladys runs around me very fast, snapping Polaroids.
Yes, college != university. It sounds as if these are students from what I think are called "community colleges" in the US. Here, it's a stage between High School and University.
It's all Microsoft's fault. Well, not really, maybe, but it is related to the decline of DOS.
I started Linux in 1998, after becoming disillusioned with Win95 because MS had hidden DOS and seemed to be headed toward dumping it -- or, at least, pretending it wasn't there. But I had started computers with the C-64 followed by DOS.
And that makes all the difference in the world, for a new user. I had no idea what an ls was, or how to see the inside of a file, but I did know what a command-line looked like -- and that using it would get me much closer to using the 'real' computer inside than a GUI could ever do.
And just that put me a few thousand light-years ahead of the newbies of today.
Some of them may have seen a command interface, but they sure as hell don't know what it's for -- don't know that it can be a normal way of dealing with a computer. Even those who have been trained at universities in computers aren't as accustomed to text commands as was anyone who began with 64K and a black screen with a prompt.
I don't have an answer for this, because it seems to me that a) as long as we have the text console, here's going to be an increasing distance between the user who starts with Win and the user who starts with *nix, and b) we simply can't give up the text-console -- no matter how many users we lose because of that. It's just too valuable.
But we are going to lose them. Teachers of Linux are doomed to be farther and farther away from their pupils simply because those pupils have no idea at all what any of us are typing away at. For them, the computer is a window.
If they see a command interface, they assume the computer's broken.
The starting-point has changed, probably forever. So the end-point has to be different.
FWIW, I don't find most Linux gurus too complicated or arrogant at all -- for me. But my starting point, like theirs, was a place and time that the begininng Win user now considers the Stone Age.
MacWelcome to the Open Source Travel Agency...
You might want to take a look at Binary Cloud, and maybe talk to Alex Black, the project's originator. It's in its r2 stage, now, but Alex built most of the r1 version himself. From the homepage: "binarycloud is an opensource, enterprise class web application platform." Mac
Americans (and friends) might like to take a look at Aislin's Wednesday morning cartoon for the Montreal Gazette. He does poignant, gallery-class work, when things get serious.