[the story] reads like the body of a SPAM message - divorced of context and nearly indecipherable syntax.
That happens when you quote small claims court.
Let me simplify it. The author sued a small time spammer in small claims court. Audio, transcripts and original documents are provided for your contemplation, amusement and horror. The judge was clueless and the author worries that the judge may move up to where they can screw up more important cases. An interesting opinion about federal spam cases is also provided. The author is rightly frustrated and bitter.
I've been working IT for a long time, and I've NEVER liked a new operating system. New == Problems.... [by upgrading] You're adding a fricking ton to your workload, and for no good reason.
The issue is no longer if M$ can make Vista "good enough" it's if Windoze has ever adequate. Despite the usual grand promises and six or seven years of development, Vista looks like more of the same. Significant migration will kill the network effect and M$'s inferior software will die with it.
Apologists advise you to cling to Windoze at any cost but that's obviously crazy and short sighted. They FUD other systems but no other system is a buggy or painful as what they have for you. Other, bigger companies with better product have come and gone. M$ is sinking and those who cling to it without alternative skill sets will go down with them.
Now watch the usual M$ PR drones call me names and mod this comment out of sight. That's fine, because this comment is obvious by now.
This is really nothing new, Windows 9x, 2k, and XP were all turds when they were first released. Driver maturity, application refinements, hardware improvements, and service packs all make the experience more tolerable.
No, this kind of performance is specific to M$. Apple and Sun manage upgrades without too many tears. Free software does even better. Debian upgrades from Potato to Woody to Sarge and then to Etch in the same time frame were flawless as long as you did not gum up the works with non free software. Of all the distributions, M$ is the worst.
I'm sick of the status quo and expected a much better OS when Vista was first released.
Dump Windows. The sooner you do it, the more time and money you will save.
If it took 9 months of driver development and OS improvements - then it shouldn't have been released 9 months early.
Don't forget the five or six years it took them to get that far. The waste is intentional.
No, it does not have the LEDs. I used a desk lamp which worked pretty well, and you can change the angle of illumination to create shadows and emphasise features.
If you want to get fancy, illuminate your shadows with a different color light source. LEDs and lamps work well together like that.
This newer scope is cheaper and can be used with an ordinary TV or bt878 capture card.
Then again, you would be surprised by the quality of image you can get with a few simple lenses and an ordinary digital camera. Binocular lenses make for nice macro lenses. The front lens gets you closer to the subject and eyepiece lenses make good macro lenses. Good quality surplus microscopes are also available for $100 or so.
If you spend a little more (typically $100-$150 on Ebay) you can get a good-quality student-grade microscope with a widefield eyepiece. And nowadays, many come with 640x480 webcams, or at least webcam attachment points.
You can also buy a good camera and slap it onto the eyepiece with cardboard and duct tape. A $200 Canon provides surprisingly good results. If you can see it, cameras can capture it.
While vastly better than the $40 device, it's also ten times as expensive. They toy also takes much less set up time unless you try hooking it up to a bt878 based capture with composite inputs. Modprobe bt878 and use xawtv and you are set.
I've used many operating systems and other commercial software products, and most of them worked just fine.
Sure, but non free is always that way and never better. The sinking of Vista shows that there's some acceptable pain threshold. The problem with non free software is that it will always tend to be just below that threshold. A software owner that makes something that does just what the user wants will never have another sale. A software owner that makes software better than the user demands will have spent too much money. Apple, Sun and others have done better when forced to compete. M$, with it's monopoly position, has driven the pain threshold sky high. Industry is finally rejecting M$, so we will see more reasonable software in the future but non free software will always go where M$ took it. If society chooses another master instead of freedom, that other dominant owner will be in a position to pull the same stupid stunts M$ has. Ultimately in the non free world, users are not customers they are a product delivered to advertisers and vendors.
There are real problems and it's a development model problem. Cooperation can't be counted on outside of free software, so everyone has to reinvent every wheel and applications bloat away. M$ has compounded this fundamental problem with digital restrictions and security theater instead of addressing real security and user needs. Vista is a disaster.
Everyone who reviews Vista comes away angry. Vistit the Vista Failure Log and see for yourself. Editors who hyped Vista have publically admitted their mistake. It's no better than XP and is in many ways worse.
Non free development does not work. The faster you move away, the more money, time and effort you save.
The same thing would happen to anyone. The problem is not what they did, it's a paranoid interpretation of what they did that's the problem. A guerilla beautification squad installing boxes of flowers would have been arrested and vilified too.
I can understand caution but not mean spirited incompetence. It should have been apparent from the devices size and placement that they were not a real threat. I can understand caution and further tests to make sure because we should not assume terrorists are competent. What I can't understand is bile like yours and vilification of the artists. They were not terrorists and should not be treated that way. "Terror suspect" is just another phrase for "you have no rights" and that is a larger issue than toys on subways. Paranoid people like you will mistake any new object as a "fake bomb" and you will treat the person who put it there, or some scape goat, as a mass murderer. The world you wish for will oppressive and dull but just as dangerous.
it sounds like you're taking the position that the federal government should have the authority to regulate how networks work. I think that's awful, and endangers just about everyone.
There is nothing new about government regulation of networks. Intentionally blocking competitors on networks is already against the law and has it's roots in common carriage laws that are a hundred years old.
Overall, I'm with you and think it would be great if networks were free. Everything will be cheaper and easier when there are no more broadcast monopolies and other anti-competitive regulations that restrict use of the airwaves or public servitude. Telcoms, broadcast and media companies would be bankrupt in less than a year and all of us would be that much richer. The current cable and wireless monopolies are not natural, they are protected by corruption.
Even in that world, the public nature of networks would require neutrality laws. Networks are public places that only have value when people use them. Without the public, they are worthless. Blocking competitors is worse than bad business, it's immoral and insults the public. The public should protect itself from that kind of criminal behavior the same way it protects itself from other acts of racketeering and vandalism.
If Android had just used the GPL (which prohibits forking), then this problem would have avoided.
The GPL solves the problem by giving you freedom not by taking it away. Forking is not a problem when code is free as you can tell by looking at the hundreds of "forks" in the Debian repository, or if you look at the thousands of distributions that all get along famously. Java has problems because it was not free and two or three companies were able to control it's destiny. Real community developed and owned software does not have this problem because everyone is free to ignore, remove or otherwise fix problems that an antisocial person might add.
For example, if Emacs had used the GPL, instead of the Apache licence, the XEmacs fork would never have occurred.
The XEmacs fork was permitted under the GPL and would not have been a problem if the XEmacs people had been careful about licensing. The problem came when they were unable to verify that all of their code was free. This allowed anti-social contributors to deny distribution of the whole until all of the code was replaced with GPL'd versions.
if Gnome and KDE would both switch to using the GPL licence, then the projects would just magically merge into one, and we wouldn't have the duplication of effort and lack of standards that you currently see on the Linux desktop.
Gnome and KDE are GPL'd, work very well with each other and are good as separate projects. I run Gnome and KDE applications under other window managers without problem. The "Linux Desktop" is far more unified than non free equivalents from M$ and others where you can't be sure the clipboard is going to work across applications or the network. GNOME and KDE have different approaches to the same problems, so the user gets to chose what works best for them. Users can also chose from a dozen other good window managers and frameworks. This is a wonderful thing because one size does not fit all. Once again, this is because the software is free and the community can make things work.
Remember, these are typical Walmart customers here.
That is important, they are not like Slasdot readers. Unlike business users or college students, M$ has done no favors for these people and they have zero loyalty.
How many of them are going to return these things when that AOL CD they have doesn't work automagically?
I don't know. The EEE has an AOL button, no CD is required. I know it's hard to believe but AOL would be happy to spam users of other OS.
How many of these people are expected to have DSL or Cable instead of dial-up?
None. Why should they?
How many are going to be returned because they don't have MS Office pre-installed on them?
None. Open Office is more than enough for the average school paper. Very few people actually NEED M$ Office for work and even they hate it. The rest of the world considers M$'s ever changing, secret file formats an expensive ass pain. They are right.
Anyone who actually needs M$ Office will have their boss pay for it or pirate the junk. If M$ makes the second option impossible, the first option will have to happen or the boss will learn to use free software. M$ is not going to be able to get everyone to pony up $400 every couple of years for a text editor and that's where they system breaks down. Sooner or later, all of those smart business users and college graduates will figure out that they don't need M$ either.
you're obviously using the term "microtard" to refer to the person you replied to because he holds an opinion different to yours on this issue
I'll call anyone a MicroTard if they think M$ security issues are the user's fault. Half a minute's reflection should convince anyone that this is not so. People like you can blame the user all day, but that won't make it so.
I assume that you won't object people referring to you with terms like "flosstard" or "lintard"
"FreeTard" would be more appropriate if free software were not the fastest software available for most machines, or if free software advocates had something other than reason to force people to use free software or about a thousand other differences between free software and non free software were not true. But Dedazo, I don't care what you call me because you are an idiot.
Do you honestly think everyone switching to a different OS would solve the problem?
Apple and Sun don't seem to have these problems. Go on and tell me that Apple users are somehow more aware of security and the workings than Windoze users are. Tell me that there are not enough Mac users to matter, even though you just told me they were richer and better educated or something stupid like that. It's not the user's fault and you Microtards know it.
GNU/Linux is better because so many more architectures are supported, each distribution is compiled with different options and each loads a different way. Apple and M$ are trying to duplicate this artificially by randomizing their memory loading. Nothing is worse than the i386 monoculture M$ enforces.
I'll believe that when the spectrum is free and anyone can lay lines in the public servitude. Until then, ISPs all enjoy government monopolies and have public obligations. Because public networks gain their value from public participation, it might be argued that no public network can ever be privately owned. The value of any public network, like any other press, is always maximized by public freedom. If you think of public networks as the modern press, there's are constitutional imperatives for those networks to be free. Of course it's hard to expect an administration that's busy tearing up the fourth amendment to have any respect for the first.
The general populous need to be more aware that plain email is more like a postcard than a message in a sealed envelope though.
"Reasonable expectation of privacy" arguments mask the true cost of tyranny and the public should object to all forms of domestic spying. The right emails do not just fall from the sky onto FBI agent desks so that criminals can be prosecuted. It costs money to read and sort email. It's outrageous to waste tax money on things like that because criminals know how to hide and the machinery will be abused for political purposes. One way to protect the public from that kind of waste and abuse is to demand government obtain search warrents for email snooping. This is what the fourth amendment is all about.
They can spy on Democrats, their own people and anyone's and that's why this is more important than firefly diatribes. Without privacy in communications anyone who would bother to stand up for your rights can be identified and punished. Targeting can start in school, before the victim understands the issues or can defend themselves. Anyone who would encourage or aid the dissenter can also be punished. What the current administration is asking for is a tool more complete than Orwell was able to imagine in a paper world.
Imagine, for example, that Martin Luther King Jr. had been identified when he was a Morehouse College, instead of 1961. Do you think he would have been able to withstand such early and sustained attention as he suffered later? As late as the 1980's some asshole decided to prove that King did not deserve his PhD. If a smear campaign had been launched while King was at Morehouse, he would never have made it in to Boston or Crozer. Would it have been possible to recognize a pattern or would society have simply been robbed of a charismatic champion?
It's cases like King's that created the outrage that outlawed domestic spying. We should remember those foul deeds and start the pendulum swinging back towards privacy. What we find today may be worse than what we know about King because technology has made things so much easier to identify, smear and harass.
a) I understand that installing "non-free software" is a problematic customization for you.
b) There are such things as "Binary Binary Large Objects" - or what does "Binary BLOB" stand for you?
Non free software, like X drivers and flash players can cause problems on upgrade. Occasionally a library will change but the non free software won't be aware of it. Solutions to this kind of problem is usually to reinstall everything with a fresh copy of your distribution. This can be quicker and easier than a regular dist-upgrade but you then have to remember and reinstall all the other packages you like.
Binary blobs and associated problems are well explained here.
Non-free software will always depend on free software? Explain DOS, Mac OS Classic, OS/2, Netware, etc. (Actually Netware probably does depend on some free software.)
Without GCC, X, and a host of other free tools, there would be no OSX. There's not much software that does not have free software roots and all software has free software alternatives that are just as old and often more reliable. Even MSDOS can be traced back to QDOS and CP/M and the concepts used by both were common and shared with Unix, which started it's life free and was followed quickly by BSD and GNU/Linux. Ideas, are not things that can be owned and they grow best in freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
[the story] reads like the body of a SPAM message - divorced of context and nearly indecipherable syntax.
That happens when you quote small claims court.
Let me simplify it. The author sued a small time spammer in small claims court. Audio, transcripts and original documents are provided for your contemplation, amusement and horror. The judge was clueless and the author worries that the judge may move up to where they can screw up more important cases. An interesting opinion about federal spam cases is also provided. The author is rightly frustrated and bitter.
I've been working IT for a long time, and I've NEVER liked a new operating system. New == Problems. ... [by upgrading] You're adding a fricking ton to your workload, and for no good reason.
The issue is no longer if M$ can make Vista "good enough" it's if Windoze has ever adequate. Despite the usual grand promises and six or seven years of development, Vista looks like more of the same. Significant migration will kill the network effect and M$'s inferior software will die with it.
Apologists advise you to cling to Windoze at any cost but that's obviously crazy and short sighted. They FUD other systems but no other system is a buggy or painful as what they have for you. Other, bigger companies with better product have come and gone. M$ is sinking and those who cling to it without alternative skill sets will go down with them.
Now watch the usual M$ PR drones call me names and mod this comment out of sight. That's fine, because this comment is obvious by now.
This is really nothing new, Windows 9x, 2k, and XP were all turds when they were first released. Driver maturity, application refinements, hardware improvements, and service packs all make the experience more tolerable.
No, this kind of performance is specific to M$. Apple and Sun manage upgrades without too many tears. Free software does even better. Debian upgrades from Potato to Woody to Sarge and then to Etch in the same time frame were flawless as long as you did not gum up the works with non free software. Of all the distributions, M$ is the worst.
I'm sick of the status quo and expected a much better OS when Vista was first released.
Dump Windows. The sooner you do it, the more time and money you will save.
If it took 9 months of driver development and OS improvements - then it shouldn't have been released 9 months early.
Don't forget the five or six years it took them to get that far. The waste is intentional.
No, it does not have the LEDs. I used a desk lamp which worked pretty well, and you can change the angle of illumination to create shadows and emphasise features.
If you want to get fancy, illuminate your shadows with a different color light source. LEDs and lamps work well together like that.
It is not a joke. It is a preview. Not even a beta. Whining on the HDD requirements at that stage seems a bit stupid, really.
I could say as much about Vista. Your point?
I kinda expected more [than a webcam] if the optics were designed specifically for a microscope.
Did your webcam have built in ring illumination? Do you have your old computer? Does it work with your current version of Windows?
my old Intel digital scope, which has been gathering dust for about 5 years now.
Wow, Windoze only with all sorts of issues. Check out the QX3 support page. Of course, you can's use it with Vista. Too bad, because it's a nifty scope.
This newer scope is cheaper and can be used with an ordinary TV or bt878 capture card.
Then again, you would be surprised by the quality of image you can get with a few simple lenses and an ordinary digital camera. Binocular lenses make for nice macro lenses. The front lens gets you closer to the subject and eyepiece lenses make good macro lenses. Good quality surplus microscopes are also available for $100 or so.
If you spend a little more (typically $100-$150 on Ebay) you can get a good-quality student-grade microscope with a widefield eyepiece. And nowadays, many come with 640x480 webcams, or at least webcam attachment points.
You can also buy a good camera and slap it onto the eyepiece with cardboard and duct tape. A $200 Canon provides surprisingly good results. If you can see it, cameras can capture it.
While vastly better than the $40 device, it's also ten times as expensive. They toy also takes much less set up time unless you try hooking it up to a bt878 based capture with composite inputs. Modprobe bt878 and use xawtv and you are set.
I've used many operating systems and other commercial software products, and most of them worked just fine.
Sure, but non free is always that way and never better. The sinking of Vista shows that there's some acceptable pain threshold. The problem with non free software is that it will always tend to be just below that threshold. A software owner that makes something that does just what the user wants will never have another sale. A software owner that makes software better than the user demands will have spent too much money. Apple, Sun and others have done better when forced to compete. M$, with it's monopoly position, has driven the pain threshold sky high. Industry is finally rejecting M$, so we will see more reasonable software in the future but non free software will always go where M$ took it. If society chooses another master instead of freedom, that other dominant owner will be in a position to pull the same stupid stunts M$ has. Ultimately in the non free world, users are not customers they are a product delivered to advertisers and vendors.
There are real problems and it's a development model problem. Cooperation can't be counted on outside of free software, so everyone has to reinvent every wheel and applications bloat away. M$ has compounded this fundamental problem with digital restrictions and security theater instead of addressing real security and user needs. Vista is a disaster.
Everyone who reviews Vista comes away angry. Vistit the Vista Failure Log and see for yourself. Editors who hyped Vista have publically admitted their mistake. It's no better than XP and is in many ways worse.
Non free development does not work. The faster you move away, the more money, time and effort you save.
I'm not going to shed a tear for an advertiser.
The same thing would happen to anyone. The problem is not what they did, it's a paranoid interpretation of what they did that's the problem. A guerilla beautification squad installing boxes of flowers would have been arrested and vilified too.
I can understand caution but not mean spirited incompetence. It should have been apparent from the devices size and placement that they were not a real threat. I can understand caution and further tests to make sure because we should not assume terrorists are competent. What I can't understand is bile like yours and vilification of the artists. They were not terrorists and should not be treated that way. "Terror suspect" is just another phrase for "you have no rights" and that is a larger issue than toys on subways. Paranoid people like you will mistake any new object as a "fake bomb" and you will treat the person who put it there, or some scape goat, as a mass murderer. The world you wish for will oppressive and dull but just as dangerous.
it sounds like you're taking the position that the federal government should have the authority to regulate how networks work. I think that's awful, and endangers just about everyone.
There is nothing new about government regulation of networks. Intentionally blocking competitors on networks is already against the law and has it's roots in common carriage laws that are a hundred years old.
Overall, I'm with you and think it would be great if networks were free. Everything will be cheaper and easier when there are no more broadcast monopolies and other anti-competitive regulations that restrict use of the airwaves or public servitude. Telcoms, broadcast and media companies would be bankrupt in less than a year and all of us would be that much richer. The current cable and wireless monopolies are not natural, they are protected by corruption.
Even in that world, the public nature of networks would require neutrality laws. Networks are public places that only have value when people use them. Without the public, they are worthless. Blocking competitors is worse than bad business, it's immoral and insults the public. The public should protect itself from that kind of criminal behavior the same way it protects itself from other acts of racketeering and vandalism.
People who don't know Vuse should be familiar with the members of "Save the Internet" which launched a similar pettition two weeks ago. No one but ATT wants anything but a neutral network.
If Android had just used the GPL (which prohibits forking), then this problem would have avoided.
The GPL solves the problem by giving you freedom not by taking it away. Forking is not a problem when code is free as you can tell by looking at the hundreds of "forks" in the Debian repository, or if you look at the thousands of distributions that all get along famously. Java has problems because it was not free and two or three companies were able to control it's destiny. Real community developed and owned software does not have this problem because everyone is free to ignore, remove or otherwise fix problems that an antisocial person might add.
For example, if Emacs had used the GPL, instead of the Apache licence, the XEmacs fork would never have occurred.
The XEmacs fork was permitted under the GPL and would not have been a problem if the XEmacs people had been careful about licensing. The problem came when they were unable to verify that all of their code was free. This allowed anti-social contributors to deny distribution of the whole until all of the code was replaced with GPL'd versions.
if Gnome and KDE would both switch to using the GPL licence, then the projects would just magically merge into one, and we wouldn't have the duplication of effort and lack of standards that you currently see on the Linux desktop.
Gnome and KDE are GPL'd, work very well with each other and are good as separate projects. I run Gnome and KDE applications under other window managers without problem. The "Linux Desktop" is far more unified than non free equivalents from M$ and others where you can't be sure the clipboard is going to work across applications or the network. GNOME and KDE have different approaches to the same problems, so the user gets to chose what works best for them. Users can also chose from a dozen other good window managers and frameworks. This is a wonderful thing because one size does not fit all. Once again, this is because the software is free and the community can make things work.
Remember, these are typical Walmart customers here.
That is important, they are not like Slasdot readers. Unlike business users or college students, M$ has done no favors for these people and they have zero loyalty.
How many of them are going to return these things when that AOL CD they have doesn't work automagically?
I don't know. The EEE has an AOL button, no CD is required. I know it's hard to believe but AOL would be happy to spam users of other OS.
How many of these people are expected to have DSL or Cable instead of dial-up?
None. Why should they?
How many are going to be returned because they don't have MS Office pre-installed on them?
None. Open Office is more than enough for the average school paper. Very few people actually NEED M$ Office for work and even they hate it. The rest of the world considers M$'s ever changing, secret file formats an expensive ass pain. They are right.
Anyone who actually needs M$ Office will have their boss pay for it or pirate the junk. If M$ makes the second option impossible, the first option will have to happen or the boss will learn to use free software. M$ is not going to be able to get everyone to pony up $400 every couple of years for a text editor and that's where they system breaks down. Sooner or later, all of those smart business users and college graduates will figure out that they don't need M$ either.
What one book or example would you recommend to someone who wanted to learn LAMP?
you're obviously using the term "microtard" to refer to the person you replied to because he holds an opinion different to yours on this issue
I'll call anyone a MicroTard if they think M$ security issues are the user's fault. Half a minute's reflection should convince anyone that this is not so. People like you can blame the user all day, but that won't make it so.
I assume that you won't object people referring to you with terms like "flosstard" or "lintard"
"FreeTard" would be more appropriate if free software were not the fastest software available for most machines, or if free software advocates had something other than reason to force people to use free software or about a thousand other differences between free software and non free software were not true. But Dedazo, I don't care what you call me because you are an idiot.
Yes, MicroTards. I'd like to take credit for that, but it's too obvious.
Do you honestly think everyone switching to a different OS would solve the problem?
Apple and Sun don't seem to have these problems. Go on and tell me that Apple users are somehow more aware of security and the workings than Windoze users are. Tell me that there are not enough Mac users to matter, even though you just told me they were richer and better educated or something stupid like that. It's not the user's fault and you Microtards know it.
GNU/Linux is better because so many more architectures are supported, each distribution is compiled with different options and each loads a different way. Apple and M$ are trying to duplicate this artificially by randomizing their memory loading. Nothing is worse than the i386 monoculture M$ enforces.
ISPs are not government entities
I'll believe that when the spectrum is free and anyone can lay lines in the public servitude. Until then, ISPs all enjoy government monopolies and have public obligations. Because public networks gain their value from public participation, it might be argued that no public network can ever be privately owned. The value of any public network, like any other press, is always maximized by public freedom. If you think of public networks as the modern press, there's are constitutional imperatives for those networks to be free. Of course it's hard to expect an administration that's busy tearing up the fourth amendment to have any respect for the first.
The general populous need to be more aware that plain email is more like a postcard than a message in a sealed envelope though.
"Reasonable expectation of privacy" arguments mask the true cost of tyranny and the public should object to all forms of domestic spying. The right emails do not just fall from the sky onto FBI agent desks so that criminals can be prosecuted. It costs money to read and sort email. It's outrageous to waste tax money on things like that because criminals know how to hide and the machinery will be abused for political purposes. One way to protect the public from that kind of waste and abuse is to demand government obtain search warrents for email snooping. This is what the fourth amendment is all about.
They can spy on Democrats, their own people and anyone's and that's why this is more important than firefly diatribes. Without privacy in communications anyone who would bother to stand up for your rights can be identified and punished. Targeting can start in school, before the victim understands the issues or can defend themselves. Anyone who would encourage or aid the dissenter can also be punished. What the current administration is asking for is a tool more complete than Orwell was able to imagine in a paper world.
Imagine, for example, that Martin Luther King Jr. had been identified when he was a Morehouse College, instead of 1961. Do you think he would have been able to withstand such early and sustained attention as he suffered later? As late as the 1980's some asshole decided to prove that King did not deserve his PhD. If a smear campaign had been launched while King was at Morehouse, he would never have made it in to Boston or Crozer. Would it have been possible to recognize a pattern or would society have simply been robbed of a charismatic champion?
It's cases like King's that created the outrage that outlawed domestic spying. We should remember those foul deeds and start the pendulum swinging back towards privacy. What we find today may be worse than what we know about King because technology has made things so much easier to identify, smear and harass.
Non free software, like X drivers and flash players can cause problems on upgrade. Occasionally a library will change but the non free software won't be aware of it. Solutions to this kind of problem is usually to reinstall everything with a fresh copy of your distribution. This can be quicker and easier than a regular dist-upgrade but you then have to remember and reinstall all the other packages you like.
Binary blobs and associated problems are well explained here.
Non-free software will always depend on free software? Explain DOS, Mac OS Classic, OS/2, Netware, etc. (Actually Netware probably does depend on some free software.)
Without GCC, X, and a host of other free tools, there would be no OSX. There's not much software that does not have free software roots and all software has free software alternatives that are just as old and often more reliable. Even MSDOS can be traced back to QDOS and CP/M and the concepts used by both were common and shared with Unix, which started it's life free and was followed quickly by BSD and GNU/Linux. Ideas, are not things that can be owned and they grow best in freedom.