Re:RMS is more a danger than a help
on
RMS Responds
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· Score: 1
Go read the GNU Manifesto. (If you can keep your lunch down that long.) RMS' utopia is exactly what I described: he would have the world not recognize any ownership rights in software whatsoever. He would do away with copyright protection for those who wish to have it. Instead, he would force all software to be freely distributable and sharable.
The problem with the GPV is that it infects whatever it touches. As Tom Christiansen pointed out in his excellent reply, this is counterproductive to their stated goal of increasing software reuse, since it forces those who cannot, for one reason or another, taint their program with GPV-infected code to reinvent the wheel. This is a Bad Thing.
RMS obviously believes that, if he makes good enough software, the world will suddenly drop their anti-FSF licensing and adopt the GPV instead. He's sadly mistaken, and either intellectually dishonest or delusional. While his supporters paint him as a saint, the wider world sees him as little more than a kook. Is that the kind of champion the idea of making use of open source software needs? --
I'm sorry, I must have missed something. This is still June 1999, right?
Linux hasn't won yet. It may - something I'd dearly love to see. It may not. It's certainly gaining. The battle is far from over.
In the meantime, I would observe that a proprietary M$-Linux would meet with about as much success as other open stuff that they have tried to embrace and extend and lock in customers - not all that much. I do believe that an M$-ified Linux would not wipe out open source Linux, any more than IIS has wiped out Apache. --
RMS is more a danger than a help
on
RMS Responds
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· Score: 0
I'll grant, for the sake of discussion, that without the FSF, Linux as we know it wouldn't exist.
Big, fat, hairy deal.
The thing that Linux needs most right now is acceptance in the larger community. With acceptance comes mindshare, and development, and programs for the real world beyond the computer room, and the only real chance at putting a dent in M$'s current monopoly.
Right now, Linux is gaining acceptance, and carrying along with it the idea that software source should be accessible to the user so that he can modify and fix and enhance. Businesses are, slowly but surely, discovering that there's something to this model, and they can benefit.
RMS would have us believe that his definition of freedom - essentially, the freedom to force others to act in the same utopian manner as him - is an essential component of the model, and that to use the "open source" label is Just Plain Wrong. This view completely and explicitly ignores the criticality of market acceptance. RMS admits as much in his paper.
To me, the choice is between widely accepted, if just possibly a little "impure", usable, running systems, and intellectually pure laboratory curiosities. I know which I'd prefer to use. I also know which will be accepted in the business world, where people care about other things than intellectual purity.
ESR was right to get away from the term "free software" because of the taint of RMS' communist vision. (Yes, I mean communist. RMS would have it so that the creator of software has no rights of ownership in it. If that's not communist, what is?) RMS can only hurt the cause of getting software available to all. --
I used to think that about OS/2. I'm now running NT on the systems that I ran OS/2 on, and to do the same kinds of tasks. There's too much hardware and too many classes of applications - yes, those things that open source coders don't create because it's not interesting to them - whose manufacturers only want to support on Windows because the overwhelming majority of their customers use it. I dearly hope that M$' Windows monopoly is broken, but I just don't see it happening. --
Nice try, Russ. Unfortunately, your premise ignores one crucial factor: M$ can and will find ways to ensure that vendors *don't* ship Linux, through some sort of contractual means. Even if they lose in Washington, they'll find some way around it, or just ignore rules they don't like.
I wish M$ would dry up and blow away, but I don't see it happening short of a court-ordered breakup...and probably not even then. I wish I could realistically run OS/2 as my main operating system instead of NT. I wish BeOS were a realistic choice, instead of another OS/2-style niche product. I wish I could run Premiere 5 and Photoshop 5 and Delphi 4 and AudioCatalyst 2 and Netscape 4.6 and, and... on my Linux-powered Alpha. Wishing ain't gonna make any of that happen, and I don't see it happening any other way either.
Like it or not, we're stuck with Windows. --
Disinfecting the GNU General Public Virus
on
Feature:GPL vs BSD
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· Score: 1
If this debate keeps up, I'm going to have to resurrect an old NCR Tower XP I have just to get the posting I made to gnu.general (I think) in 1991 with the above title off of the disk. This debate has been raging for years, and will continue to do so as long as there are those who believe that software communism is a Good Idea. (Yes, I do believe that the GNU Manifesto reads remarkably like the Communist Manifesto.) Personally, I believe that there's a place for proprietary software, and even for object-code-only software - if for no other reason that releasing the source code to a box with embedded programming can destroy any competitive advantage, and so makes the box that much harder to sell to folks with the millions of dollars needed to get something new off the ground. In RMS' utopia, there would be less software created and less neat things invented. It's really that simple. --
This seems to me like the "investment" M$ made in Apple: keeping a "competitor" alive so they can defend themselves more easily against antitrust complaints. If Inprise sinks beneath the waves, then M$ suddenly has no real competition in several categories, and DoJ gets more interested... --
That's my complaint, though. I would have no argument at all if he kept the word away from those who break into computer systems, but instead he continues to use it to refer to them as well as those who, I believe, we all would agree truly qualify for it. --
I've long been angered at the repeated journalistic misuse of the honorable term "hacker" to include those who break into computer systems. Jon appears to understand the distinction, but he confuses the issue by misusing the term anyway. Please, Jon, call 'em anything but hackers, and reserve the term for the true hackers you've come to appreciate. --
The government will try to prove that IE can be separated from 98, and M$ will try to prove it can't. If IE is a separate product that M$ merely bundled - as it appears is the case - then the government's case gets a lot stronger.
Personally, I've always thought it at least disingenuous for M$ to claim that IE is an integral part of 98, while still providing it as an independent product for the few other platforms it supports. --
Rather than split this hair in public, I'll simply point readers to Sun's filing on the matter. It's important to note that, even if you grant that Sun didn't do the Right Thing, Microsoft is still not permitted to simply infringe the trademark.
As for Spyglass's JVM compatibility issues and the treatment they got (which, I assume for the purposes of discussion, is different from what Microsoft received), I'll simply observe that Spyglass had neither the desire nor the ability to destroy Java and its goal of universal interoperability. Microsoft had, and has, both. I don't see Sun as being a bad guy for protecting itself in this manner from M$ and not trying to do so with Spyglass.
The judge hasn't ruled, even tentatively, so far on the issue of trademark infringement. The answer isn't as cut-and-dried as you make it out to be, however. --
The page about making images for IPIX's viewer was taken down, and replaced with a discussion of the status of the dispute.
Personally, while I understand IPIX has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders (yes, it has some, even though it's not publicly offered yet) to protect the value of its intellectual property, this one's gone just a little too far. --
FWIW, Rob passed out before 0025 Eastern when he was called on to plug slashdot... --
Re:Casio E-100: Palm + Rio killer
on
PDA+MP3 Player
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· Score: 1
My HP320LX runs WinCE 2.0, and uses (and eats) AAs.
32 MB RAM? Whoopee. When you add apps to that CE machine, you soak up huge chunks of that memory. A typical nontrivial WinCE app takes up a meg without breathing hard. All that MFC bloat really eats up memory, and the typical Windows programmer couldn't write tight fast code if he got paid $1000 for every byte he saved.
My dgital camera doesn't use CF, nor will I wind up with one that will, I suspect.
The E-100 doesn't replace one critical piece of the functionality of my Palm V: it fits easily and comfortably in my shirt pocket. No CE palm form-factor device even comes close to the V's compact size, and the difference is enough that, unlike the Palm, it wouldn't go with me everywhere.
I really hated to get away from the WinCE platform, since it meant jettisoning the WinCE development kit I paid good money for as well as a bunch of registered shareware. The simple truth is that a PDA that is sitting on your desk when you're elsewhere is just plain useless. --
Re:Windows CE does this now...
on
PDA+MP3 Player
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· Score: 1
If you like CE machines so much, perhaps you'd be willing to relieve me of my HP320LX?
The current crop of CE devices is still too darned big. A PDA that you leave on your desk because carrying it around is too much of a pain is just plain useless. I came to that realization when I found myself carrying around a pad of post-its and not the 320 to make notes on.
When I came to that conclusion, I went right over to CompUSA to pick up something else. I spent a lot of time looking at the current offerings from all of the players in the market. The WinCE palmtops with keyboards were getting bigger, not smaller; the ones without keyboards were still too big: my metric was simply to drop each one in my shirt pocket and see if it was still comfortable. I wound up with a Palm V.
I do believe the Palm platform can be easily extended to provide the capability of playing audio, but if it's any bigger or heavier than the Palm V, I, for one, won't care. If it's any bigger than that, it won't be with me when I need it, and will therefore be useless. --
The world does not revolve around Silicon Valley and DC.
In places where the cost of living is sane, your girlfriend would only be making $40K or so. That does not mean she's worth any less, just that you can't use an absolute salary as a measuring stick.
I own a 1650 square foot house on an oversized lot. It's on the tax rolls at $75K. The same house in Silicon Valley or DC would cost between 6 and 8 times that. I couldn't afford to live there on twice the salary I'm making here in Houston.
Yes, I agree that not all bosses have pointy hair, but I think it's evident from the comments here that the vast majority don't understand geeks and never will. While organization is needed, the traditional kinds of organization that you'll find in your textbooks don't work with geeks as they do with others. One of my former bosses had the attitude, straight out of those textbooks, that "I don't care if my workers are happy; they should be glad they have jobs." Would you want to work for a boss like that?
The simple fact is that geeks don't think, or work, like the traditional American worker, and can't be managed the same way. Companies that realize this succeed in the technology marketplace; those that don't, fail. --
Publicly available doesn't mean anything more than being able to acquire a copy on the same terms as anyone else. If Simon Cooke wants to pay the fees, and be bound by the terms of the license, then I'm sure Sun will be happy to sell him a copy. Microsoft already has a copy, and the right to use it to validate their software suite to earn the ability to label it as Java compatible. What's the problem?
Oh, right...Microsoft wants to de-commoditize the Internet. Splintering Java plays right into that strategy. Since the license prevents them from shipping something incompatible and calling it Java, they'll have to find another way to do it. --
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with the GPV is that it infects whatever it touches. As Tom Christiansen pointed out in his excellent reply, this is counterproductive to their stated goal of increasing software reuse, since it forces those who cannot, for one reason or another, taint their program with GPV-infected code to reinvent the wheel. This is a Bad Thing.
RMS obviously believes that, if he makes good enough software, the world will suddenly drop their anti-FSF licensing and adopt the GPV instead. He's sadly mistaken, and either intellectually dishonest or delusional. While his supporters paint him as a saint, the wider world sees him as little more than a kook. Is that the kind of champion the idea of making use of open source software needs?
--
Linux hasn't won yet. It may - something I'd dearly love to see. It may not. It's certainly gaining. The battle is far from over.
In the meantime, I would observe that a proprietary M$-Linux would meet with about as much success as other open stuff that they have tried to embrace and extend and lock in customers - not all that much. I do believe that an M$-ified Linux would not wipe out open source Linux, any more than IIS has wiped out Apache.
--
Big, fat, hairy deal.
The thing that Linux needs most right now is acceptance in the larger community. With acceptance comes mindshare, and development, and programs for the real world beyond the computer room, and the only real chance at putting a dent in M$'s current monopoly.
Right now, Linux is gaining acceptance, and carrying along with it the idea that software source should be accessible to the user so that he can modify and fix and enhance. Businesses are, slowly but surely, discovering that there's something to this model, and they can benefit.
RMS would have us believe that his definition of freedom - essentially, the freedom to force others to act in the same utopian manner as him - is an essential component of the model, and that to use the "open source" label is Just Plain Wrong. This view completely and explicitly ignores the criticality of market acceptance. RMS admits as much in his paper.
To me, the choice is between widely accepted, if just possibly a little "impure", usable, running systems, and intellectually pure laboratory curiosities. I know which I'd prefer to use. I also know which will be accepted in the business world, where people care about other things than intellectual purity.
ESR was right to get away from the term "free software" because of the taint of RMS' communist vision. (Yes, I mean communist. RMS would have it so that the creator of software has no rights of ownership in it. If that's not communist, what is?) RMS can only hurt the cause of getting software available to all.
--
I used to think that about OS/2. I'm now running NT on the systems that I ran OS/2 on, and to do the same kinds of tasks. There's too much hardware and too many classes of applications - yes, those things that open source coders don't create because it's not interesting to them - whose manufacturers only want to support on Windows because the overwhelming majority of their customers use it. I dearly hope that M$' Windows monopoly is broken, but I just don't see it happening.
--
I wish M$ would dry up and blow away, but I don't see it happening short of a court-ordered breakup...and probably not even then. I wish I could realistically run OS/2 as my main operating system instead of NT. I wish BeOS were a realistic choice, instead of another OS/2-style niche product. I wish I could run Premiere 5 and Photoshop 5 and Delphi 4 and AudioCatalyst 2 and Netscape 4.6 and, and... on my Linux-powered Alpha. Wishing ain't gonna make any of that happen, and I don't see it happening any other way either.
Like it or not, we're stuck with Windows.
--
If this debate keeps up, I'm going to have to resurrect an old NCR Tower XP I have just to get the posting I made to gnu.general (I think) in 1991 with the above title off of the disk. This debate has been raging for years, and will continue to do so as long as there are those who believe that software communism is a Good Idea. (Yes, I do believe that the GNU Manifesto reads remarkably like the Communist Manifesto.) Personally, I believe that there's a place for proprietary software, and even for object-code-only software - if for no other reason that releasing the source code to a box with embedded programming can destroy any competitive advantage, and so makes the box that much harder to sell to folks with the millions of dollars needed to get something new off the ground. In RMS' utopia, there would be less software created and less neat things invented. It's really that simple.
--
This seems to me like the "investment" M$ made in Apple: keeping a "competitor" alive so they can defend themselves more easily against antitrust complaints. If Inprise sinks beneath the waves, then M$ suddenly has no real competition in several categories, and DoJ gets more interested...
--
That's my complaint, though. I would have no argument at all if he kept the word away from those who break into computer systems, but instead he continues to use it to refer to them as well as those who, I believe, we all would agree truly qualify for it.
--
I've long been angered at the repeated journalistic misuse of the honorable term "hacker" to include those who break into computer systems. Jon appears to understand the distinction, but he confuses the issue by misusing the term anyway. Please, Jon, call 'em anything but hackers, and reserve the term for the true hackers you've come to appreciate.
--
The government will try to prove that IE can be separated from 98, and M$ will try to prove it can't. If IE is a separate product that M$ merely bundled - as it appears is the case - then the government's case gets a lot stronger.
Personally, I've always thought it at least disingenuous for M$ to claim that IE is an integral part of 98, while still providing it as an independent product for the few other platforms it supports.
--
Rather than split this hair in public, I'll simply point readers to Sun's filing on the matter. It's important to note that, even if you grant that Sun didn't do the Right Thing, Microsoft is still not permitted to simply infringe the trademark.
As for Spyglass's JVM compatibility issues and the treatment they got (which, I assume for the purposes of discussion, is different from what Microsoft received), I'll simply observe that Spyglass had neither the desire nor the ability to destroy Java and its goal of universal interoperability. Microsoft had, and has, both. I don't see Sun as being a bad guy for protecting itself in this manner from M$ and not trying to do so with Spyglass.
The judge hasn't ruled, even tentatively, so far on the issue of trademark infringement. The answer isn't as cut-and-dried as you make it out to be, however.
--
The page about making images for IPIX's viewer was taken down, and replaced with a discussion of the status of the dispute.
Personally, while I understand IPIX has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders (yes, it has some, even though it's not publicly offered yet) to protect the value of its intellectual property, this one's gone just a little too far.
--
FWIW, Rob passed out before 0025 Eastern when he was called on to plug slashdot...
--
My HP320LX runs WinCE 2.0, and uses (and eats) AAs.
32 MB RAM? Whoopee. When you add apps to that CE machine, you soak up huge chunks of that memory. A typical nontrivial WinCE app takes up a meg without breathing hard. All that MFC bloat really eats up memory, and the typical Windows programmer couldn't write tight fast code if he got paid $1000 for every byte he saved.
My dgital camera doesn't use CF, nor will I wind up with one that will, I suspect.
The E-100 doesn't replace one critical piece of the functionality of my Palm V: it fits easily and comfortably in my shirt pocket. No CE palm form-factor device even comes close to the V's compact size, and the difference is enough that, unlike the Palm, it wouldn't go with me everywhere.
I really hated to get away from the WinCE platform, since it meant jettisoning the WinCE development kit I paid good money for as well as a bunch of registered shareware. The simple truth is that a PDA that is sitting on your desk when you're elsewhere is just plain useless.
--
If you like CE machines so much, perhaps you'd be willing to relieve me of my HP320LX?
The current crop of CE devices is still too darned big. A PDA that you leave on your desk because carrying it around is too much of a pain is just plain useless. I came to that realization when I found myself carrying around a pad of post-its and not the 320 to make notes on.
When I came to that conclusion, I went right over to CompUSA to pick up something else. I spent a lot of time looking at the current offerings from all of the players in the market. The WinCE palmtops with keyboards were getting bigger, not smaller; the ones without keyboards were still too big: my metric was simply to drop each one in my shirt pocket and see if it was still comfortable. I wound up with a Palm V.
I do believe the Palm platform can be easily extended to provide the capability of playing audio, but if it's any bigger or heavier than the Palm V, I, for one, won't care. If it's any bigger than that, it won't be with me when I need it, and will therefore be useless.
--
The world does not revolve around Silicon Valley and DC.
In places where the cost of living is sane, your girlfriend would only be making $40K or so. That does not mean she's worth any less, just that you can't use an absolute salary as a measuring stick.
I own a 1650 square foot house on an oversized lot. It's on the tax rolls at $75K. The same house in Silicon Valley or DC would cost between 6 and 8 times that. I couldn't afford to live there on twice the salary I'm making here in Houston.
Yes, I agree that not all bosses have pointy hair, but I think it's evident from the comments here that the vast majority don't understand geeks and never will. While organization is needed, the traditional kinds of organization that you'll find in your textbooks don't work with geeks as they do with others. One of my former bosses had the attitude, straight out of those textbooks, that "I don't care if my workers are happy; they should be glad they have jobs." Would you want to work for a boss like that?
The simple fact is that geeks don't think, or work, like the traditional American worker, and can't be managed the same way. Companies that realize this succeed in the technology marketplace; those that don't, fail.
--
Publicly available doesn't mean anything more than being able to acquire a copy on the same terms as anyone else. If Simon Cooke wants to pay the fees, and be bound by the terms of the license, then I'm sure Sun will be happy to sell him a copy. Microsoft already has a copy, and the right to use it to validate their software suite to earn the ability to label it as Java compatible. What's the problem?
Oh, right...Microsoft wants to de-commoditize the Internet. Splintering Java plays right into that strategy. Since the license prevents them from shipping something incompatible and calling it Java, they'll have to find another way to do it.
--