GTK+ and wxWindows both allow commercial use. Your application can be closed source. The only restirction is if you make a change to the GTK+/wxWindows source code, you will have to release those changes, however, your _OWN_ code need not be open. Here is a summary.
But before you get too enthusiastic, remember that they're treating Linux strictly as a server OS.
Does that really matter for _now_? Look at how MS got into the server business? They had a desktop product and used that to get into the server market. Linux can do the same thing, only in reverse. Get a strong hold on the server market and then leverage its way into the desktop market. A large server market for Linux means more money going into Linux development which will inderectly help Linux on the desktop.
What? That is sooo far from the truth. IBM's core business is based on services. In fact they are a bigger company (by revenue) then MS. In the end, IBM's global services will help you with whatever tasks you want. They will help you with MS solutions, Linux solutions and Unix solutions. IBM is in a great position, because no matter what, they can deliver their services on any platform. I think IBM is pushing Linux because they don't want to have to bend over for MS. I think most of the big companies are starting to get tired of bending over for MS with maybe the exception of Dell. To be able to truly leverage the MS Windows platform, you need to make some "partnership" with MS to be able to get undocumented features, API's, document formats and protocols. And MS drops those "partnerships" at the drop of a hat. And not only that, if MS thinks your core business is a big money maker, that "partnership" is over and they will "embrace and extend" your business out of the market with their own competing product. Look at all the Anti-virus and personal firewall companies now. With MS putting their own AV and personal firewall out, over the next 2-5 years, those companies will need to look for some other way to make cash since the home market will no longer need their software. So much for all those "partnerships". With Linux, all these large companies start on a level playing field and can add on top of that their "special sauce" and services to differentiate their business and we would have some great competition which means great products and technology advancing at a much faster pace.
Here is a good break down of MS's restrictive EULA. As you can read, it does not. There is ONE exception and that is for a laptop and MS Office. If you have two computers at home, you cannot put the same copy on both computers without violating your MS EULA, unless one computer is a desktop and the other is a laptop and ONLY the same person can use it. So that means you cannot put it on your desktop and use the same copy for your wifes laptop without violating the MS EULA.
And I agree 100% with that line of thought. However, you are breaking MS's EULA and they can certainly take you to court over it and cost you tons of cash in legal fees. I doubt they would do this for your average Joe user, though corporate users need to watch out.
That is because that is not where they make all their cash from MS Office. When they do that for the corporate and home user, then maybe I would think they might be changing their tune.
Believe me, I do not like this "PIRATE Act" either, but it is a piece of legislation and needs to be addressed that way. Write a letter to your senators / presidential candidate.
For this to be effective, remember to include a personal check for no less then $10,000 USD!
Who cares to guess how many people were killed by Verizon last night?
42?
Just kidding. I actaully hope that no one person lost their life last night because they could not get help in time. That would be a pretty bad situation to be in : (
If this thing passes, then there is no doubt that we now live in a nation based on corportism. How can any sensible member of congress let something so harsh pass unless they are being influenced by pure greed of all those bribe^h^h^h campaign contributions? Think about it, you can go out and get sloppy drunk, get in a car and kill someone with that car and get less jail time then some dumb kid who shares a song he likes? Sens. Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy are the ones that need to sit in jail for a long, long time for not performing their duty to the US citizens by only serving corporations. What I don't understand is that a corporation is not considered a person and cannot vote, however they are allow to give bribe^h^h^h campaign contributions!
It's as if the OO team never use their own graphing tools. (yeah, I know, stop bitching and pitch in and help...)
Actually, that is what you _should_ do. That doesn't mean you have to program anything. Feedback can be more important then someone handing you code. For example, I write programs for a fortune 500 company. None of the application I write have any features that I personally need since they are for the corporate workers. The only way I know if something is good or sucks is if I get feedback. The programs evolve based on that feedback. Tell the OOo guys how slow Calc is at certain tasks or about the long descriptive labels, feedback from users like you is what will make OOo better.
OOo can export any of its documents to PDF, MS Office can not do that by itself. OOo can also export its presentations to Macromedia Flash(tm) which makes it very easy to put it out to a web page somewhere to share. You just click the Flash presentation to go to the next slide. Again, MS Office cannot do that. Those two features are very useful to me. Plus the format for OOo is open so I will always be able to read my documents with out paying the MS Tax. Not to mention that I can keep all my important docs as PDF by exporting them from OOo and not have to worry about some proprietary format going away after the support period has expired.
Well if that is truly what happened, then yes, I would respect that. However, how do you know that this was not part of the whole plan? Do the deal with SCO, and if they get too much backlash, just make a public statement about how you might have done it differently the next time? The point is, is that the damage has already been done. EV1 gave credibility to SCO's claims to other CEO's/CIO's. If EV1 really cared, they would have put in their license agreement with SCO to not make it public information that EV1 bought the SCO "license". Instead, they let SCO use their name publicly as a poster child, and only after the backlash did EV1 care.
And exactly how are the MS Office formats open? Where can one download the full specs to the formats? MS guards their office formats because MS Office is one of their cash cows. Any other product that can use MS Office formats is because they reverse engineered them and those products generally have sub-par support for those MS Office formats. FAT/FAT32? There is nothing special there. Any file system can replace that. When was the last time someone emailed you removable media or when was the last time you downloaded some removeable media? Real standards like HTTP, FTP, HTML, XML, TCP/IP, POP, SMTP, etc are what have allowed people to share documents, not FAT/FAT32. CIFS? MS doesn't even stick to their own standards. They always "embrace and extend". With "standards" MS put out, there are the published standards and the standards that MS uses, the former are open, the latter are not. This is one of the tactics MS uses to stop competition and lock-in customers. People start to use this published "standard" from MS and then once it is popular, MS "embraces and extends" it and now the customer is locked-in to the MS implementation. Why did the Samba guys have to do so much reverse engineering if MS's SMB stuff is so open and MS sticks to their own standards?
Microsoft *does* give everyone else standards to integrate with. Everyone at least makes their stuff as compatible with Windows(TM) as possible.
And what standards are they? What are the standards that MS gives us to interoperate with? An office document format? That is not a standard that one can work with unless you pay for the program and it is not published so there is no way for a competitor to use this "standard" without reverse engineering it. I am not trolling, I just want to know what standard MS created that _anyone_ can use and interoperate/compete with.
It is much deeper. Look at software; you can go into any software store and get tons of applications for MS Windows, while you will find almost none for Mac and Linux. Read this article, it will give you a good idea of how MS throws their weight around to stop competition. The monopoly status of MS is not because of their size or dominance, but because of what they do to prevent competition and kill it off.
Isn't just not using Windows until Microsoft stops the said monopoly activities the "correct way" in capitialism to change a product if you don't like it? (See Adam Smith).
How can a consumer exercise thier free choice when MS does what ever it can to kill off competition and remove choice?
I bet we would be all shocked if we found out about all the back room deals MS has made over the years. I find the best way to understand the MS situation is to change the product that MS makes. If MS made any other product, they would not have gotten away with what they have done. Imagine if MS made cars. You would not be allowed to look under the hood, the mechanical/electrical parts would all be undocumented, covered by patents and protected by some DMCA type law, you would be required to use MS gas at an MS gas station and have your car serviced by an MS technician who is only allowed to put MS made parts in. Along comes some other car company and MS doesn't allow any car dealer to sell MS cars if they sell cars by any other maker, even used car dealers have to sell only MS cars. The new cars are not allowed to use MS gas at the MS gas stations. Are you beginning to see the picture? This situation would never fly here in the USA, yet MS gets away with this and more.
The DOJ did too little too late. MS has already done the damage. I also don't see how the EU's decision/fine will make any impact. The fine is chump change. The penalties are a joke. What API's will MS have to publish? What will be the fee to use them? I am sure it will be priced a little too high for any OSS project. Maybe the Linux community can get together and make paypal contributions to buy the specs? Maybe IBM/Novell/Redhat could buy them for some projects?
If the cost is not unreasonable, why couldn't our community come up with the money? Everyone can donate via PayPal or something. Also, if the cost is that low, it would be very, very easy for IBM, Novel or Redhat to give that money to a big OSS project so that the project can purchase the specs. Though I am sure MS wil find some legal loophole to try to stop OSS from using these specs. The big issue will be if MS is allowed to choose who can buy/use the specs.
The DOJ's resolution was all smoke and mirrors. It may have helped by allowing OEM's to ship no OS or Linux, etc, however, it still did nothing to stop the MS monopoly. The MS monopoly is much deeper then what OS an OEM can install. MS's monopooly power is in all the back room deals with a wink and a hand shake that give them control. A little email to Intel, AMD, HP, IBM, etc is all that is often needed for MS to get what they want.
Who would try to embed some secret information in an XML file when the whole purpose of XML is so the files can easily be edited
You must have missed all the/. articles on MS's "open" XML format. They just stuff proprietary encoded junk into the XML file for parts of their office documents that they don't want competitors to be able to interoperate with. Simple things in the document stay plain text with XML markup, but that hidden stuff stays binary and just gets base64 encoded and added to the XML.
Go get the new Helix Player for Linux. It is much better IMO then RP8. Just grab the MS2.1 RPM and it will install the plugins for your browser. You can also run it manually by running hxplay.
Sure there is. Have you never been to one of those silly websites that says "Requires IE"? That is brand lock-in thanks to Microsoft's "embrace and extend" tactics.
That analogy doesn't hold water compared to MS. A much better analogy would be if Ford controled 90%+ of all CD players. Did not give you an option to buy a car without a CD player or competing CD player, and worst of all, said they cannot sell a car without a CD player because the car would stop working if they did. Not only that, but that CD player would only play Ford format CDs. If you wanted another CD player, you would have to leave the original CD player in the car, cover it with a plastic cover to pretend that it is not there any more and would have to find some other place to put your preferred CD player. When you try to play a CD in your new and preferred player, the old player would always take over and try to play your CD and then complain about the CD format because it is not a Ford format CD. I can go on and on about this. The fact is, MS has and continues to abuse their monopoly on the desktop, web browser and office suite. Most people don't care about MS Windows and IE having 90%+ of the market. What people do care about is the MS "hand" trying to force what products they use and if they pick a non-MS product, there are tons of compatibility issues. Another quick example: I have a Nissan, I just did a tune-up myself and bought all the parts from an auto-parts store; I didn't have to get Nissan made parts and purchase them from a Nissan dealer. If I had owned an MS car over a Nissan, I would have to buy MS parts from an MS dealer and pay an MS licensed installer to do the tune-up, not to mention put only MS gas in my MS car from an MS approved/licensed gas station.
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GTK+ and wxWindows both allow commercial use. Your application can be closed source. The only restirction is if you make a change to the GTK+/wxWindows source code, you will have to release those changes, however, your _OWN_ code need not be open. Here is a summary.
What? That is sooo far from the truth. IBM's core business is based on services. In fact they are a bigger company (by revenue) then MS. In the end, IBM's global services will help you with whatever tasks you want. They will help you with MS solutions, Linux solutions and Unix solutions. IBM is in a great position, because no matter what, they can deliver their services on any platform. I think IBM is pushing Linux because they don't want to have to bend over for MS. I think most of the big companies are starting to get tired of bending over for MS with maybe the exception of Dell. To be able to truly leverage the MS Windows platform, you need to make some "partnership" with MS to be able to get undocumented features, API's, document formats and protocols. And MS drops those "partnerships" at the drop of a hat. And not only that, if MS thinks your core business is a big money maker, that "partnership" is over and they will "embrace and extend" your business out of the market with their own competing product. Look at all the Anti-virus and personal firewall companies now. With MS putting their own AV and personal firewall out, over the next 2-5 years, those companies will need to look for some other way to make cash since the home market will no longer need their software. So much for all those "partnerships". With Linux, all these large companies start on a level playing field and can add on top of that their "special sauce" and services to differentiate their business and we would have some great competition which means great products and technology advancing at a much faster pace.
Here is a good break down of MS's restrictive EULA. As you can read, it does not. There is ONE exception and that is for a laptop and MS Office. If you have two computers at home, you cannot put the same copy on both computers without violating your MS EULA, unless one computer is a desktop and the other is a laptop and ONLY the same person can use it. So that means you cannot put it on your desktop and use the same copy for your wifes laptop without violating the MS EULA.
Here is a good break down of MS's restrictive EULA.
And I agree 100% with that line of thought. However, you are breaking MS's EULA and they can certainly take you to court over it and cost you tons of cash in legal fees. I doubt they would do this for your average Joe user, though corporate users need to watch out.
Oh, and with Microsoft being the top donation machine to congress, they do nondirectly set laws. In fact, MS gives about 3 times what the #2 company give to the government.
That is because that is not where they make all their cash from MS Office. When they do that for the corporate and home user, then maybe I would think they might be changing their tune.
Just kidding. I actaully hope that no one person lost their life last night because they could not get help in time. That would be a pretty bad situation to be in : (
If this thing passes, then there is no doubt that we now live in a nation based on corportism. How can any sensible member of congress let something so harsh pass unless they are being influenced by pure greed of all those bribe^h^h^h campaign contributions? Think about it, you can go out and get sloppy drunk, get in a car and kill someone with that car and get less jail time then some dumb kid who shares a song he likes? Sens. Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy are the ones that need to sit in jail for a long, long time for not performing their duty to the US citizens by only serving corporations. What I don't understand is that a corporation is not considered a person and cannot vote, however they are allow to give bribe^h^h^h campaign contributions!
See my comment I posted above.
MS doesn't allow you to use one software license on multiple computers.
OOo can export any of its documents to PDF, MS Office can not do that by itself. OOo can also export its presentations to Macromedia Flash(tm) which makes it very easy to put it out to a web page somewhere to share. You just click the Flash presentation to go to the next slide. Again, MS Office cannot do that. Those two features are very useful to me. Plus the format for OOo is open so I will always be able to read my documents with out paying the MS Tax. Not to mention that I can keep all my important docs as PDF by exporting them from OOo and not have to worry about some proprietary format going away after the support period has expired.
Well if that is truly what happened, then yes, I would respect that. However, how do you know that this was not part of the whole plan? Do the deal with SCO, and if they get too much backlash, just make a public statement about how you might have done it differently the next time? The point is, is that the damage has already been done. EV1 gave credibility to SCO's claims to other CEO's/CIO's. If EV1 really cared, they would have put in their license agreement with SCO to not make it public information that EV1 bought the SCO "license". Instead, they let SCO use their name publicly as a poster child, and only after the backlash did EV1 care.
And exactly how are the MS Office formats open? Where can one download the full specs to the formats? MS guards their office formats because MS Office is one of their cash cows. Any other product that can use MS Office formats is because they reverse engineered them and those products generally have sub-par support for those MS Office formats. FAT/FAT32? There is nothing special there. Any file system can replace that. When was the last time someone emailed you removable media or when was the last time you downloaded some removeable media? Real standards like HTTP, FTP, HTML, XML, TCP/IP, POP, SMTP, etc are what have allowed people to share documents, not FAT/FAT32. CIFS? MS doesn't even stick to their own standards. They always "embrace and extend". With "standards" MS put out, there are the published standards and the standards that MS uses, the former are open, the latter are not. This is one of the tactics MS uses to stop competition and lock-in customers. People start to use this published "standard" from MS and then once it is popular, MS "embraces and extends" it and now the customer is locked-in to the MS implementation. Why did the Samba guys have to do so much reverse engineering if MS's SMB stuff is so open and MS sticks to their own standards?
The DOJ did too little too late. MS has already done the damage. I also don't see how the EU's decision/fine will make any impact. The fine is chump change. The penalties are a joke. What API's will MS have to publish? What will be the fee to use them? I am sure it will be priced a little too high for any OSS project. Maybe the Linux community can get together and make paypal contributions to buy the specs? Maybe IBM/Novell/Redhat could buy them for some projects?
If the cost is not unreasonable, why couldn't our community come up with the money? Everyone can donate via PayPal or something. Also, if the cost is that low, it would be very, very easy for IBM, Novel or Redhat to give that money to a big OSS project so that the project can purchase the specs. Though I am sure MS wil find some legal loophole to try to stop OSS from using these specs. The big issue will be if MS is allowed to choose who can buy/use the specs.
The DOJ's resolution was all smoke and mirrors. It may have helped by allowing OEM's to ship no OS or Linux, etc, however, it still did nothing to stop the MS monopoly. The MS monopoly is much deeper then what OS an OEM can install. MS's monopooly power is in all the back room deals with a wink and a hand shake that give them control. A little email to Intel, AMD, HP, IBM, etc is all that is often needed for MS to get what they want.
Go get the new Helix Player for Linux. It is much better IMO then RP8. Just grab the MS2.1 RPM and it will install the plugins for your browser. You can also run it manually by running hxplay.
That analogy doesn't hold water compared to MS. A much better analogy would be if Ford controled 90%+ of all CD players. Did not give you an option to buy a car without a CD player or competing CD player, and worst of all, said they cannot sell a car without a CD player because the car would stop working if they did. Not only that, but that CD player would only play Ford format CDs. If you wanted another CD player, you would have to leave the original CD player in the car, cover it with a plastic cover to pretend that it is not there any more and would have to find some other place to put your preferred CD player. When you try to play a CD in your new and preferred player, the old player would always take over and try to play your CD and then complain about the CD format because it is not a Ford format CD. I can go on and on about this. The fact is, MS has and continues to abuse their monopoly on the desktop, web browser and office suite. Most people don't care about MS Windows and IE having 90%+ of the market. What people do care about is the MS "hand" trying to force what products they use and if they pick a non-MS product, there are tons of compatibility issues. Another quick example: I have a Nissan, I just did a tune-up myself and bought all the parts from an auto-parts store; I didn't have to get Nissan made parts and purchase them from a Nissan dealer. If I had owned an MS car over a Nissan, I would have to buy MS parts from an MS dealer and pay an MS licensed installer to do the tune-up, not to mention put only MS gas in my MS car from an MS approved/licensed gas station.