If I bought some music online and the company I bought it from wanted to PGP the MP3 before sending it I would be more than happy. After all, they may well not trust my ISPs employees for example - that's up to them.
If however they wanted to encrypt it in some other format which I needed some kind of 'key' file or such or some special player to listen to it, that's entirely different. It's not much good for me with my MP3 player and they would be restricting MY use of what I have bought.
The former is very much like the privacy you mention that is advocated by many slashdotters not the latter. Once I decrypt a message from a friend, I then have the plain text of the mesage to do whatever I want with. If people sent me messages that it was impossible to extract the plain text from, I would tell them to bollocks.
How on earth will it stop you copying anyway? I don't see how it can work and it isn't explained on the story. A file is a file. You copy it to your hard drive and then onto a new disk. How can they prevent that? Someone please tell me what I am missing..
I wish CPU manufacturers could concentrate on trying to make existing models cheaper to make and therefore cheaper for us to buy instead of spending too much time making them faster. If they did this and the prices fell significantly it wouldn't be long before 2 or 4 processors in even a desktop machine became commonplace, giving us all faster machines and driving the per-cpu price down still further.
Honestly, I don't actually know much about why this might be or might not be possible or even desirable. I welcome any comments or reasons why I am wrong. It just seems like a good (albeit uninformed) idea to me.
> No hard drive, My A500 had a hard drive. In fact I had a SCSI hard drive first (a huge 52Mb!) before most of my PC owning friends had heard of SCSI.
> no networking The had TCP/IP stacks. Not included as standard though. AmiTCP was a popular one which was based on the BSD stack and was stable and fast. These days, most people using Amigas use Miami. It's a modern TCP/IP stack most features anyone would want such as IP-NAT, automatic SOCKS (a la tsocks)
> , no security Okay, you got me!
> no decent applications I think some of the apps were/are good. The only remaining use I have for my amiga (my A4000) is on my LAN as a web client, using my Linux box as a proxy. I would say that no single browser available for the Amiga beats netscape on linux, but the variety available (three fairly good browsers: Voyager, IBrowse and AWeb) are pretty good, fast (thats not the browsers though - thats the Amiga's snappy GUI) and usually more stable than netscape so I often find myself using my amiga for a fair amount of web access.
I find it unfortunate that I find myself feeling like I have to make an excuse for still using my Amiga occasionally. It's a sorry state of affairs when others resort to spreading mis-information about things they don't understand or don't appreciate. Why can't we stick to up-to-date facts and let people make up their own minds instead?
> they would have to use some secure methode such as ssh.
This is a very good thing IMO. For too long the general attitude has been "Don't use encryption unless you have to" when it should be "always use encryption unless you have a reason not to" This has led to several bad things: - Those sensible enough to use encryption by default (such as PGP for mail) for their communications are treated like they have "something to hide" by some. - Because only a minority use encryption technologies instead of their more widespread unencrypted counterparts, governments find themselves able to legally force this to continue with draconian anti-encyrption bills. (RIP bill in the UK soon to be passed? - see http://stand.org.uk)
The sooner the masses are educated about the advantages of using encryption more in ssh, for file xfer, for mail, and everything else the better. Where better to start the ball rolling than in universities.
I would guess we can expect lots of improvements, both in MySQL and PostgreSQL. There is now real competition in the GNU GPL RBBMS marketplace. AFAIK, until now PostgreSQL was the obvious GPL winner. How (or if) this motivates the members of either RDBMS will be interesting. I think we can expect this to improve both in the long term.
I absolutely agree! Nobody is talking about banning anything. What this looks like to me is a product aimed primarily at universities and other fairly large networks to prioritise bandwidth usage. Being able to do that is a very useful and powerful tool, and yes like other powerful tools (including the internet for example) it is open to abuse. That doesn't mean its bad. It's already common practice on many routers in some establishments.
I think you need to be careful. Perhaps what you mean is the "same people who justify music piracy"?. Then I would unquestionably agree with you. Although they might be a small minority, those who use Napster legally are significant and can be offended when they are tarred with the same brush as criminals who ignore licences when it pleases them.
Good point. All I'm trying to say really (any perhaps I could do better with my own words rather than just pasting blocks of the GNU GPL) is that its unlikely that all of the GPL will be struck down. Some parts ma be questioned, but I believe (and hope) that the spirit will be preserved. Despite what I just said, I'm going to quote another smaller part which might help with what I'm trying to say.
"If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances."
If seems to me that if some part(s) of the GNU GPL is contradicted on court, that will NOT mean that everyone if suddenly free to do what they like with GPL code. (see the small part of the GNU GPL at the end of my post)
If however the GPL is somehow rejected in whole (I don't see how though) then it might be an entirely different story.
"If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
All that you say just suggests that AOL don't provide a very good value service. That's not a reason to sue them. The best thing you can do if you don't like it is to change ISP and tell AOL why you changed. If enough people care about this issue, they will do the same and AOL will be forced to act. In the end, all they are doing is offering a service (which includes pop up ads) and they are offering it at a price. You get to choose whether the service as a whole is better or worse value than competing services. This really is a minor issue which can and will be easily solved by the free market as long as people do something constructive about it (such as changing ISP if they are not happy) rather than trying to restrict the freedoms ISPs Just because YOU don't like what they offer doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to offer it.
The idea of an additional tax above any existing sales tax for buying a product, just because you used the internet is a ridiculous one. I suppose the idea it that the internet based companies have an "unfair" advantage over traditional companies due to lower costs etc. but thats not a good reason.
The internet is simply an alternative means of communication in this context. Imagine if an extra tax had been invented when phones of even fax machines were introduced, in order to protect high street stores from these new fangled mail order companies.
In any case, the main advantage IMO that internet companies have is tha ability for the customer to browse an up to date list of all the stock in detail from their own home. If a new tax is introduced, all that will happen is ppl will use the web pages to select the items they want, and then phone to place the order. Tax avoided and nothing the govt can do about it. All they have achieved then is extra time wastage and administration for everyone involved.
"The brain processes both analog and digital signals."
"... the brain makes an either-or decision about whether or not it is a car"
At first, I thought "How are these ideas so different from eg. a scanner reading some text (analog) which is then OCR'd by software which decides whether it sees a letter A for example (either-or digital decision)
But of course the important difference here is that the brain processes analog and digital together. All existing electronics (before this new research) processes anolog and digital completely seperately with just an interface between the two. The scanner is the interface in my example.
Can anyone think of better existing examples with both analog and digital components but where the anaog-digital connection is more intimate?
> Today, I can do the same things (and much, much more) with Linux, Windows, Mac, Be, etc > let her spirit join the pantheon of the great (?) machines of the past: the Sinclars, Apple ][s and the TRS-80s... the TI-99s
I had a Sinclair right up until very late 80s (can't remember excatly when) when I realised the Amiga would allow me to do things that we're simply impossible with my Spectrum +3. That was why I changed.
More recently (Late 98 in fact) I finally gave in and bought a beefier machine to run linux on. This time though, it was not because there was anything impossible for the amiga that I could do with Linux. In fact I still struggle to find tasks that I can do with linux that my amiga can't. (and I mean real world doing things here, not OS internals like memory protection) I still use my Amiga today (it's basically a web terminal running voyager or ibrowse using my linux box as a www proxy across ethernet)
The reason I changed to Linux from Amiga though was nothing to do with the limitations of my A4000, but my disappointment at the company. I didn't think they we're doing the right things, and I didn't want them to be in control. In fact, I didn't want any company to be in control, so I chose linux. I believe many Amigans did the same for the same reasons. The Amiga community was once very similar in spirit to the current linux community (actually maybe recent is better than current - it's changed a bit lately) I still like the AmigaOS (I never cared about the hardware that much after the initial wow-factor) and I'll tell you what, if AmigaOS was ported to a more modern architecture and open sourced, I'd be installing it like a shot. Right alongside my linux partition.
I don't have a hard time grasping it. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.
If you are new to "free" licenses and you release they code as GPL, but later decide BSD suits you better, you can release it as BSD and all it well.
If however you release it as BSD first, but then realize that company X has been using your code in their product without releasing the source (as they would be perfectly entitled to do) but you then realise that you don't like that you are stuck. Yes, you can re-release it as GPL, but thats hardly going to stop company X now they have the source under the BSD license, is it?
All I am saying is that for newcomers, I would recommend the GPL if they are unsure about the differneces as it gives them more control. Once they are up to speed on the licenses they can switch - No harm done. If they give away that control by using BSD (as I would encourage them to do - as long as they understand it) they can't get it back.
> The only way around this (that I can see) would be to convince the author of the GPL'ed...
Or _be_ the author;-)
> I would prefer to see more people releasing their code under the BSD license.
Me too. Although for newcomers to "free" licenses, I would reccomend the GPL at first if they are unsure, since if you later decide i'ts not right for you, you can re-release as BSD. You cannot however do it the other way around.
I agree that licenses are a pain, and you're right that probably very few people care including many of the authors. What is unfortunate about this though is that the confusion might prevent some people from distrubuting the stuff. For example printed magazines (such as Linux Format in the UK) might like to distibute a "super-duper-doom" cd on their cover but be scared away by complicated license conflicts. This might not be a brilliant example (doom's not that big to download anyway) but my point is, that regardless of whether the users care about conflicts, businesses like the one who produce Linux Format have to be careful where licences are concerned. If this (of similar licence confusion) prevents the distribution of software in this way, it might be the users who lose out.
> It's that it takes what is today a supercomputer to encode DVD video and audio
If you do it in software, yes. It would be far more sensible (not least because it would me cheaper) to use mpeg2 hardware compression though IMO. However, that isn't really the point I was (admittedly sarcasticly) trying to make.
My point is that that wouldn't be enough to allow it to be replayed on a standard player anyway. It must be CSS encoded, and that is what is under control of a few greedy corporations as I have already said.
It doesn't matter if the mpeg compression is infinitely fast and cost free. If it wouldn't be replayable on a standard DVD player, few people would be interested.
I wonder why we haven't also heard about video camcorders with build in DVD-RAM to record video in realtime to a DVD disc which you could replay on a standard DVD player and easily make high quality copies to send your friends and relatives?
Oh yeah, It's because the DVD recording format and in fact almost the entire industry is under the tightly held control of a few elite greedy corporations who aren't interested in what the consumers want. That's right isn't it, I forgot.
I know what you mean. There are many subjects I grow tired of hearing about, although for me the napster saga is not one of them.
You're in luck though, theres a nice and convenient solution available. It's called not clicking on the link. Also, some people might judge how popular a given topic on slashdot is by how much discussion it generates. To those people you are just making it look like a "hot topic" A better way to show your disinterest might by not commenting.
> they should expect to succeed or fail on the basis of pure luck...
How about succeeding on a basis of technical merit or usefulness rather than a "proper marketing strategy"?
The people who (IMO) this announcement is aimed at probably couldn't care less about marketing strategies. They are interested in good products.
Additionally, you seem to have assumes a great deal about what people see as a successful project - not everyone thinks that success==commercial_success. If I write some software and nobody uses it because it has a "fucked marketing strategy" it hasn't neccesarily failed as long as myself and others involved in the project had fun writing it. For me and many many others, that is what open source development is about.
> does itself no favours by boasting about these promising but half-finished applications
I wouldn't describe it as boasting. More like informing interestied parties of a projects existence or progress. If they hadn't posted this info, how would I or others know a new release was available to test/debug/contribute to?
I can't speak for the Berlin developers, but I think you will find many development projects who will tell you that they are not thinking so much about the image of their project when they post this kind of information. They are thinking more of their devepopers/testers and potential users. They are releasing early and releasing often to encourage as much testing/fixing/contribution as possible. It's a system that works.
If it was they wouldn't have been able to do some of the cool things they are doing.
What I hope though is that some stuff can still be ported to it quite easily. For example. I don't know too much about it, but since the GTK+ ppl make the (IMHO) brilliant decision of writing GTK+ for GDK and GLIB rather than making it depend on X, they may now be in a position of writing an alternate gdk library over the berlin APIs and suddenly gnome works on Berlin!
Okay, I have made it sound simpler than it is (not least because I don't really know how complicated it is) but hopefully it's possible.
wow. just imagine that. a CHOICE of windowing systems to run a choice of desktops on might be a reality in the near future.
Slashdot Mirror
If I bought some music online and the company I bought it from wanted to PGP the MP3 before sending it I would be more than happy. After all, they may well not trust my ISPs employees for example - that's up to them.
If however they wanted to encrypt it in some other format which I needed some kind of 'key' file or such or some special player to listen to it, that's entirely different. It's not much good for me with my MP3 player and they would be restricting MY use of what I have bought.
The former is very much like the privacy you mention that is advocated by many slashdotters not the latter. Once I decrypt a message from a friend, I then have the plain text of the mesage to do whatever I want with. If people sent me messages that it was impossible to extract the plain text from, I would tell them to bollocks.
How on earth will it stop you copying anyway?
I don't see how it can work and it isn't explained on the story.
A file is a file. You copy it to your hard drive and then onto a new disk. How can they prevent that?
Someone please tell me what I am missing..
> .... point me to an non FUD benchmark site ....
IMHO there is probably no such thing as a non-FUD benchmark site.
Trust nobody elses benchmarks. Run your own tests and make up your own mind which is best for your purposes.
I wish CPU manufacturers could concentrate on trying to make existing models cheaper to make and therefore cheaper for us to buy instead of spending too much time making them faster.
If they did this and the prices fell significantly it wouldn't be long before 2 or 4 processors in even a desktop machine became commonplace, giving us all faster machines and driving the per-cpu price down still further.
Honestly, I don't actually know much about why this might be or might not be possible or even desirable. I welcome any comments or reasons why I am wrong. It just seems like a good (albeit uninformed) idea to me.
> No hard drive,
My A500 had a hard drive. In fact I had a SCSI hard drive first (a huge 52Mb!) before most of my PC owning friends had heard of SCSI.
> no networking
The had TCP/IP stacks. Not included as standard though. AmiTCP was a popular one which was based on the BSD stack and was stable and fast. These days, most people using Amigas use Miami. It's a modern TCP/IP stack most features anyone would want such as IP-NAT, automatic SOCKS (a la tsocks)
> , no security
Okay, you got me!
> no decent applications
I think some of the apps were/are good. The only remaining use I have for my amiga (my A4000) is on my LAN as a web client, using my Linux box as a proxy. I would say that no single browser available for the Amiga beats netscape on linux, but the variety available (three fairly good browsers: Voyager, IBrowse and AWeb) are pretty good, fast (thats not the browsers though - thats the Amiga's snappy GUI) and usually more stable than netscape so I often find myself using my amiga for a fair amount of web access.
I find it unfortunate that I find myself feeling like I have to make an excuse for still using my Amiga occasionally. It's a sorry state of affairs when others resort to spreading mis-information about things they don't understand or don't appreciate. Why can't we stick to up-to-date facts and let people make up their own minds instead?
> they would have to use some secure methode such as ssh.
This is a very good thing IMO. For too long the general attitude has been "Don't use encryption unless you have to" when it should be "always use encryption unless you have a reason not to"
This has led to several bad things:
- Those sensible enough to use encryption by default (such as PGP for mail) for their communications are treated like they have "something to hide" by some.
- Because only a minority use encryption technologies instead of their more widespread unencrypted counterparts, governments find themselves able to legally force this to continue with draconian anti-encyrption bills. (RIP bill in the UK soon to be passed? - see http://stand.org.uk)
The sooner the masses are educated about the advantages of using encryption more in ssh, for file xfer, for mail, and everything else the better. Where better to start the ball rolling than in universities.
I would guess we can expect lots of improvements, both in MySQL and PostgreSQL.
There is now real competition in the GNU GPL RBBMS marketplace.
AFAIK, until now PostgreSQL was the obvious GPL winner.
How (or if) this motivates the members of either RDBMS will be interesting. I think we can expect this to improve both in the long term.
I absolutely agree!
Nobody is talking about banning anything. What this looks like to me is a product aimed primarily at universities and other fairly large networks to prioritise bandwidth usage.
Being able to do that is a very useful and powerful tool, and yes like other powerful tools (including the internet for example) it is open to abuse. That doesn't mean its bad.
It's already common practice on many routers in some establishments.
> ... same people who try to justify Napster ....
I think you need to be careful. Perhaps what you mean is the "same people who justify music piracy"?. Then I would unquestionably agree with you.
Although they might be a small minority, those who use Napster legally are significant and can be offended when they are tarred with the same brush as criminals who ignore licences when it pleases them.
Good point. All I'm trying to say really (any perhaps I could do better with my own words rather than just pasting blocks of the GNU GPL) is that its unlikely that all of the GPL will be struck down. Some parts ma be questioned, but I believe (and hope) that the spirit will be preserved. Despite what I just said, I'm going to quote another smaller part which might help with what I'm trying to say.
"If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances."
I think it depends what "not upheld" means.
If seems to me that if some part(s) of the GNU GPL is contradicted on court, that will NOT mean that everyone if suddenly free to do what they like with GPL code. (see the small part of the GNU GPL at the end of my post)
If however the GPL is somehow rejected in whole (I don't see how though) then it might be an entirely different story.
"If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
All that you say just suggests that AOL don't provide a very good value service. That's not a reason to sue them.
The best thing you can do if you don't like it is to change ISP and tell AOL why you changed. If enough people care about this issue, they will do the same and AOL will be forced to act.
In the end, all they are doing is offering a service (which includes pop up ads) and they are offering it at a price. You get to choose whether the service as a whole is better or worse value than competing services.
This really is a minor issue which can and will be easily solved by the free market as long as people do something constructive about it (such as changing ISP if they are not happy) rather than trying to restrict the freedoms ISPs Just because YOU don't like what they offer doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to offer it.
The idea of an additional tax above any existing sales tax for buying a product, just because you used the internet is a ridiculous one. I suppose the idea it that the internet based companies have an "unfair" advantage over traditional companies due to lower costs etc. but thats not a good reason.
The internet is simply an alternative means of communication in this context. Imagine if an extra tax had been invented when phones of even fax machines were introduced, in order to protect high street stores from these new fangled mail order companies.
In any case, the main advantage IMO that internet companies have is tha ability for the customer to browse an up to date list of all the stock in detail from their own home. If a new tax is introduced, all that will happen is ppl will use the web pages to select the items they want, and then phone to place the order. Tax avoided and nothing the govt can do about it. All they have achieved then is extra time wastage and administration for everyone involved.
"The brain processes both analog and digital signals."
"... the brain makes an either-or decision about whether or not it is a car"
At first, I thought "How are these ideas so different from eg. a scanner reading some text (analog) which is then OCR'd by software which decides whether it sees a letter A for example (either-or digital decision)
But of course the important difference here is that the brain processes analog and digital together. All existing electronics (before this new research) processes anolog and digital completely seperately with just an interface between the two. The scanner is the interface in my example.
Can anyone think of better existing examples with both analog and digital components but where the anaog-digital connection is more intimate?
> Today, I can do the same things (and much, much more) with Linux, Windows, Mac, Be, etc
> let her spirit join the pantheon of the great (?) machines of the past: the Sinclars, Apple ][s and the TRS-80s... the TI-99s
I had a Sinclair right up until very late 80s (can't remember excatly when) when I realised the Amiga would allow me to do things that we're simply impossible with my Spectrum +3. That was why I changed.
More recently (Late 98 in fact) I finally gave in and bought a beefier machine to run linux on. This time though, it was not because there was anything impossible for the amiga that I could do with Linux. In fact I still struggle to find tasks that I can do with linux that my amiga can't. (and I mean real world doing things here, not OS internals like memory protection) I still use my Amiga today (it's basically a web terminal running voyager or ibrowse using my linux box as a www proxy across ethernet)
The reason I changed to Linux from Amiga though was nothing to do with the limitations of my A4000, but my disappointment at the company. I didn't think they we're doing the right things, and I didn't want them to be in control. In fact, I didn't want any company to be in control, so I chose linux. I believe many Amigans did the same for the same reasons. The Amiga community was once very similar in spirit to the current linux community (actually maybe recent is better than current - it's changed a bit lately)
I still like the AmigaOS (I never cared about the hardware that much after the initial wow-factor) and I'll tell you what, if AmigaOS was ported to a more modern architecture and open sourced, I'd be installing it like a shot. Right alongside my linux partition.
I don't have a hard time grasping it. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.
If you are new to "free" licenses and you release they code as GPL, but later decide BSD suits you better, you can release it as BSD and all it well.
If however you release it as BSD first, but then realize that company X has been using your code in their product without releasing the source (as they would be perfectly entitled to do) but you then realise that you don't like that you are stuck. Yes, you can re-release it as GPL, but thats hardly going to stop company X now they have the source under the BSD license, is it?
All I am saying is that for newcomers, I would recommend the GPL if they are unsure about the differneces as it gives them more control. Once they are up to speed on the licenses they can switch - No harm done. If they give away that control by using BSD (as I would encourage them to do - as long as they understand it) they can't get it back.
Much as I hate people who post definitions of words in /. comments, here goes.
obsolete (bs-lt, bs-lt)
adj.
1) No longer in use: an obsolete word. See Synonyms at old.
No. x86 is not obsolete.
2) Outmoded in design, style, or construction: an obsolete locomotive.
Yes, x86 is obsolete.
> The only way around this (that I can see) would be to convince the author of the GPL'ed ...
;-)
Or _be_ the author
> I would prefer to see more people releasing their code under the BSD license.
Me too. Although for newcomers to "free" licenses, I would reccomend the GPL at first if they are unsure, since if you later decide i'ts not right for you, you can re-release as BSD. You cannot however do it the other way around.
I agree that licenses are a pain, and you're right that probably very few people care including many of the authors. What is unfortunate about this though is that the confusion might prevent some people from distrubuting the stuff. For example printed magazines (such as Linux Format in the UK) might like to distibute a "super-duper-doom" cd on their cover but be scared away by complicated license conflicts.
This might not be a brilliant example (doom's not that big to download anyway) but my point is, that regardless of whether the users care about conflicts, businesses like the one who produce Linux Format have to be careful where licences are concerned. If this (of similar licence confusion) prevents the distribution of software in this way, it might be the users who lose out.
> It's that it takes what is today a supercomputer to encode DVD video and audio
If you do it in software, yes. It would be far more sensible (not least because it would me cheaper) to use mpeg2 hardware compression though IMO. However, that isn't really the point I was (admittedly sarcasticly) trying to make.
My point is that that wouldn't be enough to allow it to be replayed on a standard player anyway. It must be CSS encoded, and that is what is under control of a few greedy corporations as I have already said.
It doesn't matter if the mpeg compression is infinitely fast and cost free. If it wouldn't be replayable on a standard DVD player, few people would be interested.
I wonder why we haven't also heard about video camcorders with build in DVD-RAM to record video in realtime to a DVD disc which you could replay on a standard DVD player and easily make high quality copies to send your friends and relatives?
Oh yeah, It's because the DVD recording format and in fact almost the entire industry is under the tightly held control of a few elite greedy corporations who aren't interested in what the consumers want. That's right isn't it, I forgot.
I know what you mean. There are many subjects I grow tired of hearing about, although for me the napster saga is not one of them.
You're in luck though, theres a nice and convenient solution available. It's called not clicking on the link. Also, some people might judge how popular a given topic on slashdot is by how much discussion it generates. To those people you are just making it look like a "hot topic" A better way to show your disinterest might by not commenting.
[sorry for being offtopic everyone]
> they should expect to succeed or fail on the basis of pure luck ...
How about succeeding on a basis of technical merit or usefulness rather than a "proper marketing strategy"?
The people who (IMO) this announcement is aimed at probably couldn't care less about marketing strategies. They are interested in good products.
Additionally, you seem to have assumes a great deal about what people see as a successful project - not everyone thinks that success==commercial_success. If I write some software and nobody uses it because it has a "fucked marketing strategy" it hasn't neccesarily failed as long as myself and others involved in the project had fun writing it. For me and many many others, that is what open source development is about.
> does itself no favours by boasting about these promising but half-finished applications
I wouldn't describe it as boasting. More like informing interestied parties of a projects existence or progress. If they hadn't posted this info, how would I or others know a new release was available to test/debug/contribute to?
I can't speak for the Berlin developers, but I think you will find many development projects who will tell you that they are not thinking so much about the image of their project when they post this kind of information. They are thinking more of their devepopers/testers and potential users. They are releasing early and releasing often to encourage as much testing/fixing/contribution as possible. It's a system that works.
Berlin is not API compatible with X.
If it was they wouldn't have been able to do some of the cool things they are doing.
What I hope though is that some stuff can still be ported to it quite easily. For example. I don't know too much about it, but since the GTK+ ppl make the (IMHO) brilliant decision of writing GTK+ for GDK and GLIB rather than making it depend on X, they may now be in a position of writing an alternate gdk library over the berlin APIs and suddenly gnome works on Berlin!
Okay, I have made it sound simpler than it is (not least because I don't really know how complicated it is) but hopefully it's possible.
wow. just imagine that. a CHOICE of windowing systems to run a choice of desktops on might be a reality in the near future.
I like choices.