Just the news of the foundation buying the sources to make them GPL would hit major news sites around the globe. Maybe it will start a bidding process where companies get involved. We could buy and GPL enough stuff so as to get a jump start on the missing pieces of OSS.
Maybe it could be a modest revenue model for very small efficient firms: provide a really needed piece of code and held it hostage for a ramson: Freedom (GPL) has a price.
Only usefull stuff will be GPLd this way and surelly will get developed thereafter. But I wouldn't like all OSS developement to be based on this "oportunity" market. What if we had to pay ransoms for gcc, ghostscript, etc. Ok, some are already GPLd, but if the main developers (and copyright owners) don't GPL the improvements, we'll be out of luck in little time.
We'd have the freerider and the "i got too greedy" problems combined.:) If there was a way to prevent freeriding we'd be in OSS heaven right now (freerider example: you make a lot of money by using OSSand never contribute anything back - not code, no money, no nothing).
Maybe he's out of job and uses the Internet to try to find a job. Maybe he lives with his parents. Maybe he lives in a low income country (in terms of dolars. For example, in Argentina $10 would be like $40 in terms of purchasing power now).
What do you care? If 10.000 people donated $10, blender would be GPL by now. Have you donated your $10?:)
Really, $10 helps if a _lot_ of people a cheap enough to at least donate that small amount.
Nop, you need the subdirs. I think the "problem" has no solution. Windows is organized arround APPLICATIONS. Unix is organized arround TOOLS (little specific programs). Now we have a mix of tools and applications (application beign openffice, xine, etc.).
Linux will always have this duality. If you know Unix, you will learn to chain the tools and do productive things, as well as learn the applications you need. Joe Average doesn't need this and will NOT learn them. He only cares about the applications: separate programs that are standalone where you only need to learn to use the app.
Joe uses the PC for certain fixed problems solved with apps and sacrifices some flexibility in favour of user-friendlyness.
Power users will learn the difficult way of doing things. They will be able to do complex stuff the standalone application can't (chaining tools, scripting, batchs).
The inherent complexity of the file system could only be solved by mappings. If you are Joe Average, you could be presented a different file structure. But all the tools will still have to be somewhere regardless you seen them or not.
A needed step would be database of where when what and beign able to present a list of every file an application installed. Something like an explicit package management: say a/progs meta filesystem. Like/proc this/progs could map all files installed by a package.
Example:/prog/apps/openoffice/ would list all files instaleed by openoffice regardless of if they where mixed with other files (say you used/usr/local as prefix and not/opt/openoffice).
I'd love (and probably many others will) to use rm -rf/progs/apps/openoffice to uninstall a program! Dependencies could be mapped to that dir also!
Using a registry could be a problem, unless filesystem maped.
For Linux to become more appealing to the masses, it doesn't need a lot of polish -- it's "good enough" right now. What's needed is for Microsoft needs to get tougher on licensing, which they won't do UNTIL they are SURE they have locked out the threats (by extending the Internet, apparently)
Perfect wording, trully insightfull. Piracy is MS numer one ally until they can lock you into they stuff. It works because people only care when it's TOO LATE for them to avoid. And even then, some still think it's fair.
You are correct! And what I mean is that the crucial difference are the codecs not the containers.
If the container is not open it causes problems for everyone that doesn't have access to the propietary format. It really becomes a problem (.avi,.asf, maybe.mov).
Regarding Apple, I'd be glad is mpeg4 is the default encoding option and the.mov file format is open. If not, then it will only cause non mac users headaches.
Apparently they don't like you to inset modules compiled for another differet kernel. The reson is not they like to make things harder, but that they think modversions is a mess and not the right solution (and it may cause more problems than it solves).
I'd love to have some way to use generic modules but not sacrifice the stability of the system (as in insmod -f -error all arround-..."it works". And when the system freezes you don't know what it was (and when you bugreport, you translate the problem to the developers)).
Evalhalla made an honest and insightfull reply. Your post has probably been maked "Stupid +1" if there was an option. Because of the lack of the option, they marked it a troll so that it doesn't expand automatically.
Next version number will be 2.7/2.8 with 99,9% probability. Who cares?!
Will not be ready/tested. You can always patch your kernel to add support for it. It just won't come default as they can't bundle everything, specially the non stable developements (reiser4 has not even been released yet).
# Full compliance with IPv6
I am not an expect, but surelly the "full compliance" means a lot of unused parts that are non-critical and non-important and can be implemented later. For example, no C++ compiler implements all the C++ specs. Does this mean C++ is unsopported?
# Serial ATA support
What's this for?
# Overhaul PCMCIA support
I agree, it sucks a bit. I'd like it to be more userfriendly. I sometimes don't know what is used for what (what do you have to check to get ATA CompactFlash cards to mount?). Probably just my fault here! (the PCMCIA network card works great though, and Slackware 8 default kernel autodetected it).
... Quicktime, you'll find that it is one of the key technologies that lead to the development of modern computer multimedia.
I couldn't comment on that. What really changed everything (in my case) was mpeg layer3 audio and mpeg2 video.
If they owe anything to quicktime, bless them. That doesn't change the fact that QT was/is a problem, as the.avi files. All my kudos go to whoever did, promoted and developed and pushed mpeg standards (and jpgs).
I think this post should be at +10 Insightfull. And by the way, it also obsoletes most of the other posts here. If China mandated the adoption of Linux, well, that may put linux user at an advantage and in some years, there'll be more Linuxes arround the world than Windows boxes.
I 'd love to see some "Man, your word processor is really crappy. Can't it read OpenOffice 3 files? (Openoffice 3.0 implementing some kind of GPLed decoder which can only have a single implementation:-)"
Re:Why is this an unusual occurrence? (however...)
on
Forbes on Linux
·
· Score: 2
* " The QuickTime file format has been used as the basis of the MPEG-4 standard
Only File Format ideas where taken from QT, as far as the document you link to tells (and the File Format section is about 1% of the total file). Is that so crucial as to say it's "Quicktime Based"? Well nope.
Apple used to push in favor of Sorenson, because: (1) it was the best codec, and (2) it was exclusive to QuickTime.
Apparently, they still want it to be exclusive. If not, they wouldn't be suing soreson, right? Also, I must point out that QT was not the best codec (for my taste at least). So 1) is arguable and 2) is false.
Now, I like Apple a lot. But Quicktime is not one of the things in "thanks" list (which is quite long). I like to give credit where it is, and.mov files a real problem and have always been for me.
Palladium is yet another example of Microsoft's flawed software strategy.
Well, if they can repeat the flawed software strategy again as they did before, reming me to shoot myself in the head for not buying having bought MS shares today.
... then go ahead and use that non-DRM, non-Palladium piece of Open Source code. But you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the (MS dictated) law"
Sothing like it would do just fine, and it's what I'd like the FSF and whoever to prevent from happening. If they force us to secure our systems in the way they like, we'll lose our freedom as well as our privacy to who knows what. Maybe we may even lose our right to execute whatever program we like.
Re:Why is this an unusual occurrence? (however...)
on
Forbes on Linux
·
· Score: 2
Another question is also important in some cases:
"Are Open Source developments profitable for developers?"
Some developements are profitable, some are just done for the pleasure. The real problem comes when you need to depend on an Open Source package supported by a comercial firm (expects a profit), and that firm is not making a profit.
I could name some examples (but you could imagine what could happen if your favorite app developer closes or drops the towel).
You are still better than with closed source. But many companies use Microsoft stuff because they can be SURE they won't close (at least not this century!).
Can we have some info on this? How is the MPEG4 Quicktime based...
Oddly enough, Apple's Quicktime 6, also supports some very fine standards
Woah, hold no a second. QT does not support any standard. It is just ABLE to play (not sure if encode) files based on open standards. That's for the very reason that the formats are open, not because Apple is nice. They promote the LOCKED soreson as the encoding format, so as to bother everyone else that doesn't have a Mac. They don't even allow QT to play on Linux, BSD and many other OSs. They I fact try to prevent everyone else from viewing movies created on Mac machines.
I am very sorry, but it looks more like your are the one trolling.
Well, I do remember 3Dfx having the best working drivers, support. They even had a newsgroup where they directly aswered some questions.
I also remember them supporting Linux and having a decent product. Also, the 32 bit "image quality" thing you mentioned in your last post is, sorry to tell you, marketing hype. Why? Because at the time, mostly nobody used 32 bits in real life (ie: gaming): performace was too low, and i really mean slow (TNT card).
3Dfx did a lot of mistaques, but they lost to crappy RIVA cards mostly not to a GForce or anything decent. TNT was the first thing to rival 3Dfx hardware, and it had more to do with 2D + 3D integration than anything else.
But I also remember one more thing: buying an NV1 Edge 3D which I still own. What happened? Well, the Nvidia folks NEVER supported it. No games (except the bundled ones), no Direct3D drivers, no Win98 drivers. Not even DirectDraw drivers (except a buggy 2.0 version).
NVidia is something that I will be avoiding. They didn't support a poduct they sold and they HAD resources. 3Dfx made big mistaques, but they NEVER left a product unsupported while in bussiness. They had flowed products, but support was always there trying to fix all hardware.
Or that the ones making the decisions are corrupt. How's this news? The news is Microsoft exposing their cheap strategy to keep the monopoly lubricated.
How about the $5 lemonade will give people diarrea whenever they try another brand? How about the $5 lemonade beign digestive when combined with everyone's favourite "superpotatoes" at $0.5, but producing vomits when combined with any other beberage?
IMHO, this a better analogy to what's been happening in the last 10 years in the software field.
Very true and very sad. It works that way, specially in industries like software (the more you sell, the lower the average cost of production. At infinity, average cost is near total zero).
Marx has been saying this for about a century now (well, more than a century): big fishes will eat the small fishes, and grew bigger (loop).
The only way arround is legislation. And our problem comes when legislation can be bought. Can I be bought? If you think not, we are safe. Else, be ready for massive monopoly rape (as in "want cancer cure? how much do you've got???". Think creatively, if monopolies rule, you don't have options)!
Wow, yes they have a plan. But you make it sound like they NEED to recover from the $500 million loss. Actually, it costs them NOTHING. So if Peru is not going to use MS stuff (and MS will not see the money) why not better keep them using Windows? They'll think of something along the way (just buying time is good enough, maybe it's all they need, say 5 to 10 more years)
MS has ALWAYS done this: "if you don't want to pay, pirate for crist sake (but don't use other stuff). If I can make you pay, well, you are just out of luck".
That has been said before. It would work...for a while. Because after developers find out the truth (and they WILL), you'll start to see millions of thouthands of NEW hordes of developers saying: I will make Linux great and they'll have to buy me out!
It'd be much cheaper to try to poison-pill linux. That is, to buy some kernel hackers to do bad things with linux (put hard to maintain code, include design flaws, etc.). This would be hard to, because many people will notice in advance and inmediate (or maybe a little delay) actions taken.
So they COULD do it, but it could turn bad for them. But we'd miss Linus so much....
Maybe - if Microsoft software delivers you more "good" for that money. It usually isn't the case UNLESS you work for Microsoft (ie: you advice your customer how good.net will do for them, how much the new Office version will improve productivity, etc.).
I can witnessed that.net and most Microsoft profits mean a lot of profit for the companies "providing the services to them". Ie: consultant advice companies depending on what will make them profit more (kind of a permanent Y2K)
But you are lucky anyway because others (subversion, etc) have already addressed the issue.
The only problem is losing the nice frontends like tourtoise CVS (can remember the exact name) . To bad my Windows pals will NOT want to learn a command line interface:(
It would be nice to have a generic system, where you can just add plugins to manage other data (like Abiword docs, or GNumeric files). That would make a revolution (would be nice to see that patented an Micrsofto locked out:-).
Slashdot Mirror
Just the news of the foundation buying the sources to make them GPL would hit major news sites around the globe. Maybe it will start a bidding process where companies get involved. We could buy and GPL enough stuff so as to get a jump start on the missing pieces of OSS.
:) If there was a way to prevent freeriding we'd be in OSS heaven right now (freerider example: you make a lot of money by using OSSand never contribute anything back - not code, no money, no nothing).
...
Maybe it could be a modest revenue model for very small efficient firms: provide a really needed piece of code and held it hostage for a ramson: Freedom (GPL) has a price.
Only usefull stuff will be GPLd this way and surelly will get developed thereafter. But I wouldn't like all OSS developement to be based on this "oportunity" market. What if we had to pay ransoms for gcc, ghostscript, etc. Ok, some are already GPLd, but if the main developers (and copyright owners) don't GPL the improvements, we'll be out of luck in little time.
We'd have the freerider and the "i got too greedy" problems combined.
Just some thought (as usual)
Maybe he's out of job and uses the Internet to try to find a job. Maybe he lives with his parents. Maybe he lives in a low income country (in terms of dolars. For example, in Argentina $10 would be like $40 in terms of purchasing power now).
:)
What do you care? If 10.000 people donated $10, blender would be GPL by now. Have you donated your $10?
Really, $10 helps if a _lot_ of people a cheap enough to at least donate that small amount.
Are you talking about Lindows? That's what they are doing with the Click-n-Run installer...
"Directories? What? I just click-n-run stuff!"
Nop, you need the subdirs. I think the "problem" has no solution. Windows is organized arround APPLICATIONS. Unix is organized arround TOOLS (little specific programs). Now we have a mix of tools and applications (application beign openffice, xine, etc.).
/progs meta filesystem. Like /proc this /progs could map all files installed by a package.
/prog/apps/openoffice/ would list all files instaleed by openoffice regardless of if they where mixed with other files (say you used /usr/local as prefix and not /opt/openoffice).
/progs/apps/openoffice to uninstall a program! Dependencies could be mapped to that dir also!
Linux will always have this duality. If you know Unix, you will learn to chain the tools and do productive things, as well as learn the applications you need. Joe Average doesn't need this and will NOT learn them. He only cares about the applications: separate programs that are standalone where you only need to learn to use the app.
Joe uses the PC for certain fixed problems solved with apps and sacrifices some flexibility in favour of user-friendlyness.
Power users will learn the difficult way of doing things. They will be able to do complex stuff the standalone application can't (chaining tools, scripting, batchs).
The inherent complexity of the file system could only be solved by mappings. If you are Joe Average, you could be presented a different file structure. But all the tools will still have to be somewhere regardless you seen them or not.
A needed step would be database of where when what and beign able to present a list of every file an application installed. Something like an explicit package management: say a
Example:
I'd love (and probably many others will) to use rm -rf
Using a registry could be a problem, unless filesystem maped.
For Linux to become more appealing to the masses, it doesn't need a lot of polish -- it's "good enough" right now. What's needed is for Microsoft needs to get tougher on licensing, which they won't do UNTIL they are SURE they have locked out the threats (by extending the Internet, apparently)
Perfect wording, trully insightfull. Piracy is MS numer one ally until they can lock you into they stuff. It works because people only care when it's TOO LATE for them to avoid. And even then, some still think it's fair.
You are correct! And what I mean is that the crucial difference are the codecs not the containers.
.asf, maybe .mov).
.mov file format is open. If not, then it will only cause non mac users headaches.
If the container is not open it causes problems for everyone that doesn't have access to the propietary format. It really becomes a problem (.avi,
Regarding Apple, I'd be glad is mpeg4 is the default encoding option and the
Apparently they don't like you to inset modules compiled for another differet kernel. The reson is not they like to make things harder, but that they think modversions is a mess and not the right solution (and it may cause more problems than it solves).
I'd love to have some way to use generic modules but not sacrifice the stability of the system (as in insmod -f -error all arround-..."it works". And when the system freezes you don't know what it was (and when you bugreport, you translate the problem to the developers)).
Evalhalla made an honest and insightfull reply. Your post has probably been maked "Stupid +1" if there was an option. Because of the lack of the option, they marked it a troll so that it doesn't expand automatically.
Next version number will be 2.7/2.8 with 99,9% probability. Who cares?!
# Reiserfs v4
Will not be ready/tested. You can always patch your kernel to add support for it. It just won't come default as they can't bundle everything, specially the non stable developements (reiser4 has not even been released yet).
# Full compliance with IPv6
I am not an expect, but surelly the "full compliance" means a lot of unused parts that are non-critical and non-important and can be implemented later. For example, no C++ compiler implements all the C++ specs. Does this mean C++ is unsopported?
# Serial ATA support
What's this for?
# Overhaul PCMCIA support
I agree, it sucks a bit. I'd like it to be more userfriendly. I sometimes don't know what is used for what (what do you have to check to get ATA CompactFlash cards to mount?). Probably just my fault here! (the PCMCIA network card works great though, and Slackware 8 default kernel autodetected it).
... Quicktime, you'll find that it is one of the key technologies that lead to the development of modern computer multimedia.
.avi files. All my kudos go to whoever did, promoted and developed and pushed mpeg standards (and jpgs).
I couldn't comment on that. What really changed everything (in my case) was mpeg layer3 audio and mpeg2 video.
If they owe anything to quicktime, bless them. That doesn't change the fact that QT was/is a problem, as the
I think this post should be at +10 Insightfull. And by the way, it also obsoletes most of the other posts here. If China mandated the adoption of Linux, well, that may put linux user at an advantage and in some years, there'll be more Linuxes arround the world than Windows boxes.
:-)"
I 'd love to see some "Man, your word processor is really crappy. Can't it read OpenOffice 3 files? (Openoffice 3.0 implementing some kind of GPLed decoder which can only have a single implementation
That's so true!
* " The QuickTime file format has been used as the basis of the MPEG-4 standard
.mov files a real problem and have always been for me.
Only File Format ideas where taken from QT, as far as the document you link to tells (and the File Format section is about 1% of the total file). Is that so crucial as to say it's "Quicktime Based"? Well nope.
Apple used to push in favor of Sorenson, because: (1) it was the best codec, and (2) it was exclusive to QuickTime.
Apparently, they still want it to be exclusive. If not, they wouldn't be suing soreson, right? Also, I must point out that QT was not the best codec (for my taste at least). So 1) is arguable and 2) is false.
Now, I like Apple a lot. But Quicktime is not one of the things in "thanks" list (which is quite long). I like to give credit where it is, and
Palladium is yet another example of Microsoft's flawed software strategy.
Well, if they can repeat the flawed software strategy again as they did before, reming me to shoot myself in the head for not buying having bought MS shares today.
... then go ahead and use that non-DRM, non-Palladium piece of Open Source code. But you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the (MS dictated) law"
Sothing like it would do just fine, and it's what I'd like the FSF and whoever to prevent from happening. If they force us to secure our systems in the way they like, we'll lose our freedom as well as our privacy to who knows what. Maybe we may even lose our right to execute whatever program we like.
Another question is also important in some cases:
"Are Open Source developments profitable for developers?"
Some developements are profitable, some are just done for the pleasure. The real problem comes when you need to depend on an Open Source package supported by a comercial firm (expects a profit), and that firm is not making a profit.
I could name some examples (but you could imagine what could happen if your favorite app developer closes or drops the towel).
You are still better than with closed source. But many companies use Microsoft stuff because they can be SURE they won't close (at least not this century!).
QuickTime is the basis for MPEG4's file format.
...
Can we have some info on this? How is the MPEG4 Quicktime based
Oddly enough, Apple's Quicktime 6, also supports some very fine standards
Woah, hold no a second. QT does not support any standard. It is just ABLE to play (not sure if encode) files based on open standards. That's for the very reason that the formats are open, not because Apple is nice. They promote the LOCKED soreson as the encoding format, so as to bother everyone else that doesn't have a Mac. They don't even allow QT to play on Linux, BSD and many other OSs. They I fact try to prevent everyone else from viewing movies created on Mac machines.
I am very sorry, but it looks more like your are the one trolling.
Well, I do remember 3Dfx having the best working drivers, support. They even had a newsgroup where they directly aswered some questions.
I also remember them supporting Linux and having a decent product. Also, the 32 bit "image quality" thing you mentioned in your last post is, sorry to tell you, marketing hype. Why? Because at the time, mostly nobody used 32 bits in real life (ie: gaming): performace was too low, and i really mean slow (TNT card).
3Dfx did a lot of mistaques, but they lost to crappy RIVA cards mostly not to a GForce or anything decent. TNT was the first thing to rival 3Dfx hardware, and it had more to do with 2D + 3D integration than anything else.
But I also remember one more thing: buying an NV1 Edge 3D which I still own. What happened? Well, the Nvidia folks NEVER supported it. No games (except the bundled ones), no Direct3D drivers, no Win98 drivers. Not even DirectDraw drivers (except a buggy 2.0 version).
NVidia is something that I will be avoiding. They didn't support a poduct they sold and they HAD resources. 3Dfx made big mistaques, but they NEVER left a product unsupported while in bussiness. They had flowed products, but support was always there trying to fix all hardware.
Or that the ones making the decisions are corrupt. How's this news? The news is Microsoft exposing their cheap strategy to keep the monopoly lubricated.
How about the $5 lemonade will give people diarrea whenever they try another brand? How about the $5 lemonade beign digestive when combined with everyone's favourite "superpotatoes" at $0.5, but producing vomits when combined with any other beberage?
IMHO, this a better analogy to what's been happening in the last 10 years in the software field.
Very true and very sad. It works that way, specially in industries like software (the more you sell, the lower the average cost of production. At infinity, average cost is near total zero).
Marx has been saying this for about a century now (well, more than a century): big fishes will eat the small fishes, and grew bigger (loop).
The only way arround is legislation. And our problem comes when legislation can be bought. Can I be bought? If you think not, we are safe. Else, be ready for massive monopoly rape (as in "want cancer cure? how much do you've got???". Think creatively, if monopolies rule, you don't have options)!
Wow, yes they have a plan. But you make it sound like they NEED to recover from the $500 million loss. Actually, it costs them NOTHING. So if Peru is not going to use MS stuff (and MS will not see the money) why not better keep them using Windows? They'll think of something along the way (just buying time is good enough, maybe it's all they need, say 5 to 10 more years)
MS has ALWAYS done this: "if you don't want to pay, pirate for crist sake (but don't use other stuff). If I can make you pay, well, you are just out of luck".
That has been said before. It would work...for a while. Because after developers find out the truth (and they WILL), you'll start to see millions of thouthands of NEW hordes of developers saying: I will make Linux great and they'll have to buy me out!
It'd be much cheaper to try to poison-pill linux. That is, to buy some kernel hackers to do bad things with linux (put hard to maintain code, include design flaws, etc.). This would be hard to, because many people will notice in advance and inmediate (or maybe a little delay) actions taken.
So they COULD do it, but it could turn bad for them. But we'd miss Linus so much....
Maybe - if Microsoft software delivers you more "good" for that money. It usually isn't the case UNLESS you work for Microsoft (ie: you advice your customer how good .net will do for them, how much the new Office version will improve productivity, etc.).
.net and most Microsoft profits mean a lot of profit for the companies "providing the services to them". Ie: consultant advice companies depending on what will make them profit more (kind of a permanent Y2K)
I can witnessed that
Bad manners don't get you anywhere.
:(
:-).
But you are lucky anyway because others (subversion, etc) have already addressed the issue.
The only problem is losing the nice frontends like tourtoise CVS (can remember the exact name) . To bad my Windows pals will NOT want to learn a command line interface
It would be nice to have a generic system, where you can just add plugins to manage other data (like Abiword docs, or GNumeric files). That would make a revolution (would be nice to see that patented an Micrsofto locked out