If you think I automatically run any program upon its mere receipt, let alone doing so as the superuser, then perhaps you'd be interested in some beachfront property in Florida.
To do out of ignorance those things is to be idiotic. Microsoft and the mindless morons who produce software for that crapware non-O/S platform encourage people to do both. This passes beyond the idiotic into a realm that is negligent at the best, and criminal at the worst.
I'd bet the majority of/. readers use MS at work and a Linux box at home.
Only the miserable ones stuck in a shitty job under inhuman conditions. Are you really telling me that you believe most people are so afflicted? God help them if they are so desperate as to put up with that kind of bullshit. If they're talented, they walk away from that kind of abuse. If they're not, oh well.
Now that you mention it, I guess in some senses my own situation is similar. It's just that I use Linux network at work (save for firewall etc, which are BSD), but at home am fortunate enough to use BSD for everything.:-)
There just isn't enough damage to an individual to warrant an action, class or not.
Are you sure? Consider all money paid by people to buy and install anti-virus software plus all the costs associated with the damages caused by viruses. Once you prove that Microsoft knowingly negligent, then it seems that triple damages aren't far off. Even if you can't prove the knowingly part, there are still simple damages.
It was Microsoft's fault, so they need to cover the costs others have incurred because of them. It's as if a car manufacturer would they shipped a car with an insecure gas line. They'd have to pay to fix the problem, and any damages as well. And if it could be shown that they knew they were shipping such, boy, the feeding frenzy would not be a pretty sight.
Then again, if the menu were to feature Lord Bill's Evil Empire pummelled, diced, and stewed, this might be a pretty sight after all.
Most computer users use Microsoft's products. Most virus writers will, therefor, statistically use Microsoft's products. Most virus writers will target systems with which they are familiar, which happens to be Microsoft's products. Thus, most virus/worm/trojan products target Microsoft products.
I see what you're saying, but I still think those who argue as you doing are playing right into the hands of the Evil Empire spin machine by turning a needlessly blind eye to the root cause of this situation: that Microsoft has negligently foisted off on endless droves of consumers a system which is fundamentally unsound insofar as security is concerned, that they did this knowingly, and that they continue to ignore the underlying cause of this tragedy with a neverending series of post-facto band-aids and duplicitous finger-pointing.
The concepts of protection and security are relatively new concepts in the personal computer world.
First of all, that really depends on your definition of a personal computer. It seems clear that this means a computer used by one person, not merely a Wintel box. You yourself cite other non-Wintel PCs.
My first personal computer was a Sun-1, followed by a Microvax. I've since moved on to various brands of Sparc and Intel chips, but those are still mine and mine alone. And I assure you that they all run free anti-viral software loosely referred to as Unix.:-)
This was back in the early and mid-80s, and I don't ever recall there being any problem hooking one computer up to another as you mention. Certainly ethernet and ftp/telnet were easier than serial lines and uucp/uux, but it was hardly black magic.
If you want to discuss business computers, those too had operating systems once upon a time. I never had much fun with Sperry UNIVACs, HP 3000s, or MVS boxes, but you can't say that business has always been accustomed to the negligently insecure systems foisted upon them today.
Second of all, I'm not sure that this would be exculpatory. Just because Microsoft and Apple have inured or lulled hapless consumers into accepting an explosive situation would not appear to my mind to get them off the hook. Yes, it is a wonder that notions of security are not end. Anything else is madness.
No, you aren't wrong. In fact, you're exactly right.
You have to treat the cause, not the symptoms. The viruses are the symptom. Microsoft's inability to design a robust, security-minded operating system is the cause. And installing one of the innumerable Linuces, a BSD, or various commerical Unixen (yes, those are bogoplurals:-) is the most cost-effective cure. It's difficult to imagine Microsoft ever escaping from the single-user ghetto mentality in which they have sequestered themselves for all these years.
I don't agree. I think its not the attention that brings these particular brands of viruses (virii?).
You were right the first time. The answer to your question is that in English, it's viruses. Pretentious pseudo-intellectual script kiddies cursed with "3133t"-speak are prone to using whimsically invented forms, either out of out of ignorance or playful "k3w1ness".
But lest you think these people peculiar in this, notice please how virtually every definable sub-group delights in forming their own invented jargon, and that these sociopaths (crackers) are no different in this regard. Why? Because an "in-speak" serves to separate the "them" from the "us". Anybody who thinks about it for half a second can come up with numerous examples in each of the discrete groups that they belong to. It's just something that we humans do. We like to know who's who, and who's not. It's part of defining the sub-group. The use of the k3w1t0k (yes, that word is an autolog:-) *virii is one such marker.
the fact that MS left the door wide open that keeps these 'viruses' circulating
Bingo! That's exactly right. Microsoft is guilty of selling a system that they know is designed to be easy for anybody to blow up. It is missing the customary and expected safety mechanisms that have been common knowledge for several decades now. I'd like to see Ford Motors get away with this sort of complete negligence. I wish as many people were as upset with the utterly unreliable crapware (speaking of subgroup-specific neologisms:-) that Microsoft keeps foisting off on the public as so many of us are with the monopoly problem.
Use your brain, man. Of course MS is going to represent the lion's share of virus targets. It is by FAR the most widely available OS out there, making it the most visible target.
You seem to have misunderstood a crucial element: Microsoft is ultimately responsible for these so-called viruses because of their negligence in systems design. An operating system is supposed to provide a protected interface to the hardware. MS-DOS does not do that. This notion of carefully controlled, mediated access to the computer's underlying raw resources is hardly a new concept today, nor was it back when Multics was doing rings of protection -- which, you will note, antedates Unix significantly.
The primary reason we don't have viruses for Unix operating systems is because of our security model. The primary reason you do have viruses for Microsoft's soi-disant operating systems is their lack of a sound security model. There are others reasons, but this is the crux upon which hang untold zillions of dollars of needless costs.
That's very interesting. The last time I looked this up in Perseus, they considered it an indeclinable form. In fact, they still do. Curious.
I looked through the vira entries that your cite referenced as well, but of those that one could pull up via a link, none actually used that form. I don't have the non-linked source at hand. How do you explain Ammian?
I'm still looking for more sources, and will happily update my document if and when new research turns up, as it did recently.
And I'll still use viruses when writing English.:-)
The answer to your parenthetical English uses viruses. If you were curious what the Romans appear to have used, the short answer is that they didn't.:-) A longer answer is also available.
In that listing, the operating system look 0.22 seconds of the time, and the user's program a bit over two seconds. Certainly there are no end to "systems programmers" who would agree with you if you did this. But alas, systems programmers represent an imperceptibly miniscule portion of those people who use computers.
Another way to look at it is that whatever your vendor includes with the base "system" release is the operating system. That means things like/bin/cat become the operating system, but at least on some system,/usr/bin/cc does not, because it's an "optional" product. If you get one CD from the vendor that says Base O/S, and another that says Development Tools, and still another that says User Contributed Software, you're probably going to end up thinking that the first CD comprises the operating system, but the other two do not. Of course, if you look carefully, you'll find that the first one contains/usr/games/rogue and/usr/games/fortune, but hey, your vendor put them on the O/S CD, so O/S they must be, eh?:-)
One more way to think of this, and one no doubt that the Evil Empire would appreciate, is that if you cannot remove it and have the system still run ok, then it's part of the O/S. If it can be removed without hurting anything, you're not talking the operating system. For example, if you wipe/dev, your system won't run anymore, so those files must be pieces of the operating system. If you remove/etc/rc* and/bin/sh and/sbin/init, you'll have problems booting, so they must be part of the operating system.
But this is really a fuzzy thing. If I remove emacs, which the system did not come with, then the O/S still runs fine, but I've got one user who would just flip. Likewise KDE.
I think most users would consider anything in the system directories to be part of the operating system, even when these programs aren't executing in kernel space. Of course, a kernel hacker isn't going to be so quick say that. He's likely to tell you that if it's in kernel mode, it's the kernel, and that's all there is. He'll run commands like:
And say that those are part of the O/S. A sysadmin will cat out/etc/inetd.conf and tell you that those programs are part of the operating system, especially if they're running as root. Those sysadmins may get a bit fuzzy if you point out that one of the services is just a little add-on script that you wrote, but they'll eventually say that you simply added to the operating system.
So the answer to "what's an operating system" really varies dramatically depending on the purpose of the querent and the background of the queried. I'm not trying to say that truth is relative, but rather that perspective and intent count for a lot here. You'll never convince your grandmother that that solitaire program her computer came with isn't part of the (operating) system she bought, but you'll never convince a kernel hacker that xbill is the operating system.
It might be more useful to stop thinking in terms of "operating systems" and consider instead terms such as "platform" or "environment". Why? Well, that way you can distinguish between a system with say, an a.out and libc environment and one with an elf and glibc environment, despite the fact that they might both run the same kernels. It's a useful distinction, but it's not something uname is going to tell you about.
I don't see the problem with the Linux documentation that so many people seem to be complaining about.
First, there's quality. Let's say you'd like to learn how to program a tty device. On Redhat, I get 66 lines of documentation for tty(4), but on OpenBSD, I get 299 of them. There's a lot more where that came from.
openbsd% find/usr/share/man/cat4 -type f -print | wc -l 371
The same query on my Redhat system came up with only 50 files. And the mere presence does not suffice, as I already showed you with tty(4).
Second, there's simple correctness and completeness. A virgin Redhat installation is so full of crap in the manpages that you want to pop somebody one. They've got catpages installed alongside the manpages (e.g./usr/man/man1/mailq.1) They've got missing.so links -- try getting a manpage for getnetbyaddr(3); it doesn't work, and if you look, you'll realize why. They've got hundreds of broken SEE ALSO links, as well as thousands (well, around 1700) of missing manpages. They've got a few dozen or so that are simply wrong, all thanks to the Fearless Leaders from you-know-where. It's really completely incoherent.
If you go to bugzilla, look up bug numbers 6043, 6044, 6046, 6049, 6255, and 6315. Redhat has been very responsive to these bug reports. I've even given them a bunch of programs to help with this, but the current situation is pretty darned embarrassing to anyone used to a proper Unix release. (Anyone interested in noman(8), cfman(8), or scatman(8) can pull them from bugzilla or send me mail.)
I'm not sure what a "desktop application" is. I guess this is probably some kind or program Some kind of publishing or simulation or CAD program? Every time I hear "application", all I can think of is grauitous bloatware.
I'm serious, and I'm not trying to be obtuse. I'm a Unix programmer, not a starry-eyed neophyte in search of eye-candy. I have mailers, newsreaders, web browsers, web servers, editors, admin tools, a complete development environment, etc.
The only bloatware I've got installed on the openbsd systems is netscape. It's also the only non-source program here. I've tried mozilla, but it crashes all the time. I also offer users amaya and lynx.
As far as bloatware goes, I also installed enlightenment and gimp, mostly as a test to see whether I could. And yes, there was no problem. I've a friend who's an Apple user, so put gimp up for them. And enlightenment was semi-interesting, but I've gone back to tvtwm, which suffices for my purposes. I don't know whether these are what you call "desktop applications" or not.
As for/usr/ports, I get this
openbsd% ls -d/usr/ports/*/*/ | wc -l 642
Although I admit I haven't done an mcs get lately. My only FreeBSD account doesn't have/usr/ports properly populated, so I can't check. What's it like there?
It seems to me that it's more important for a machine that has many users to be fast (what kids these days call a "server") than it is for a machine that serves the needs a lone user (what kids seem to call "clients" or "workstations" or "desktops") to be fast. After all, slowness in a shared resource hurts everyone who's sharing it.
As for file system speed, what do you mean? Are you saying that FreeBSD isn't using FFS, or that OpenBSD isn't? If they're both using the regular FFS, why is there a difference? Have you benchmarked this? Are there published numbers? My only experience is comparing OpenBSD and Redhat for ftw stuff, and the former came out way ahead on a hugely bushy file system.
You're lucky. I never did get printing on my LaserJet 4m working under Linux. Turns out that you can't just:lp=9100@printer: into your/etc/printcap. So I put the server back on openbsd again so it would actually work. Yes, it's an old printer without a built-in lpd, but that's no excuse. BSD handles it just fine. Linux doesn't. (And I know, those words are ill-defined.)
As for file system speed, that's another peculiar complaint. BSD's filesystem is much faster for what I do than Linux's. Test it out by creating equivalent large trees, and running something recursive, like du or ls -R. I have directories with zillions of files in them. BSD is about an order of magnitude faster for this than Linux.
And why do you say that for a desktop machine, the filesystem speed is important? Is this different from what you want in a non-desktop machine? Why?
As for networking, it seems more sensible on BSD. I find that the many Linux versions all have their own little sillinesses that you have to sniff out. They also seem need an extra route that I don't need to remember to do in BSD.
In fact, there's absolutely nothing I want to do that I can do in Linux that I can't do in BSD. Sure, there are kernel threads in Linux, but it's not like they're as robust as on Sun or SGI.
As for games, I find that BSD comes with a lot more than Linux does, which is basically nothing at all. It's nice to be able to just type rogue and it run right out of the box.
The ports stuff is much saner than anything I've ever seen for Linux. I don't understand why people expect absolutely everything pre-installed, or why they always want binaries. It's very scary. There's something very comforting about having a 100% source system, and one where you just type make. You want to know how to make rm stop asking stupid questions? Just cd/usr/src/bin/rm/ and look at rm.c sitting right there. Don't like something? Edit the file, and just type make.
And then there's the fact that/sys is there again, and things are where you expect them to be.
And then there's the fact that all binaries and libraries come with man pages, something that all the Linux operating system bundlers have completely screwed up.
I guess what I'm saying is that BSD is much saner and coherent -- and familiar -- if you're a long-time Unix user than Linux is. Then again, I've been using BSD since 81 or 82, so it's not surprising it makes more sense to me than then Winix stuff you see in Linux.
Several posters have espoused using some flavor of BSD for "servers", but some flavor of Linux for "workstations". This viewpoint is one that you hear repeated so often that it seems to have taken on a life of its own. But what essential criteria are being used to arrive at this position? Proof by repetition has no place in the technical community. Is there any substance to this mantra, or are we just hearing the unexamined echoes of well-trained and well-meaning parrots?
Precisely what features are desirable in a "server"? What features are desirable in a "workstation"? What even is the difference between a "server" and a "workstation"? Does optimizing for one of these environments pessimize-- or at least compromise--the other situation? Is there some technical feature that you really want to have in a multi-user situation that you don't care about in a single-user one? What about the other way around?
Here's my conjecture: there is no difference here. You want the same in both, because a soi-disant single-user Unix workstation is still a complete multi-user environment with all the attendant issues thereof.
A system's inadequacies appear more acceptable in a single-user system only because they can thereby annoy only one person at a time. In a multi-user situation, such problems are less tolerable because the pain is multiplied by the number of individuals affected. But inadequacies they remain.
Just as you want a solid, sane, robust system for a computer that provides services for an entire department, so too do you wish the same coherence and correctness on my very own computer that you are the principle user of. For example, you don't expect to reboot a server just because you install some new software, and neither do you expect to do the same on my own machine. Granted, Unix isn't stupid here, the way the Evil Empire is. But by allowing sloppiness in a "single-user" environment that would never be tolerated in a "multi-user" one, we risk relegating ourselves to a plane of Hell not so far removed from the one currently inhabited by gibbering victims of the Horror Out of Redmond.
It's one rule: if you take what I'm offering, you have to offer what you've done with it. It's the goddam golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Your theology is horribly flawed. We are indeed directed to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. That is nearly diametrically opposite to forcing others to do what we want them to do. Coercion is not free-will. Without free will, there is no chance for goodness, nor for any choice whatsoever.
The BSD licence embodies the Golden Rule. It sets a good example, gives of itself freely, and asks nothing in return.
The GPL is nothing like that. It is not a free gift, being kind and generous and decent even to those who use those gifts in ways that the doner disapproves of.
It is deeply ironic that you should ask God to damn the rule you cite, and then proceed to so disastrously misapply.
Goodness, but silly/. has bugs. Sigh. Here I hope is the right version. If this fails, I surrender. As far as I'm concerned, this is the only Alta Vista page you ever need to keep around. Ignore their tripe.
I agree that we need more native Unix programs across a variety of domains. Furthermore, I hold that many of what we think we have now are not Unix programs. They're actually "Winix apps", which is quite different from a "Unix program".
A "Winix app" is a program that happens to run under Unix but doesn't fee like it. All the social cues are wrong. It's like a hard-core Apple Mac user being given an MS-DOS program that has been ported to his system, where "ported" means no more than making the code run. It's still not going to work for him. And he'll hate it.
What are the the Unix cultural cues that are missing from Winix "apps", or Windows cues that are present in Winix "apps" but missing from Unix programs? It's a lot of little things. Here are just a few:
Trying to be all things, not one thing, and thereby ending up being huge and bloated, not small and functional.
Not being usable as a tool called from other programs, nor being able to call other tools using this programs.
Requiring a bitmapped display with bus-speed updates for proper operation, making them useless over a modem connection or on a vt100-style terminal.
Can't be run in a batch script or cron job, because it can't be automated.
Not having keyboard support, or good keyboard support, for basic operations.
Relying upon the mouse for too much when the keyboard would be more efficient.
Not having regular expressions for searching. You're lucky if you get a case-sensitive string comparison.
Not having any manpages even though these are basic commands, and all commands must have manpages for searching and indexing and printing.
Being forced to learn yet another set of unsearchable, unmemorizable, unsortable hieroglyphics (iconic ideograms) rather than alphabetic commands.
The ubiquitous "toolbar" at the top of every program.
Lack of config files in simple text formats for easy parsing and generation by other tools.
Inability to configure out the eye-cruft, or to avoid the seven levels of mouse clicks needed to get to a particular selection. There's no ease of long-term use, only short-term use.
Complete ignorance of the user's preferences from stty settings for interrupting, line editing, etc.
General disdain for shell globbing conventions, especially tilde expansion.
If you run Word Perfect under Linux, it's still not a Unix program. It's a Winix "app". It doesn't feel like Unix. xv is a Unix program, but ee is a Winix "app". KDE and CDE mostly comprise Winix "apps", not Unix programs. Netscape is a Winix "app", not a Unix program.
Linux users in particular seem to be happy with Winux "apps". Even more frighteningly, they seem happy to crank them out from scratch. I'm not completely certain I understand that phenomenon. Perhaps this is because they never really got into Unix programs in the first place. These things certainly aren't Unix friendly.
I don't see the mindless porting of Windows "apps" to Unix systems as being particularly useful to Unix people. The resulting "Winix apps" will never be proper programs and tools. They weren't designed that way. They may well appeal to the mindless masses who've been trained to accept a completely distinct set of cultural computing cues, and this strategy might get more non-technical users to employ the platform, but it does nothing to make happy those of us who are already comfortable with Unix. In fact, it often has quite the opposite effect.
This isn't Unix as Literature anymore. We're in the the post-literate age of populist pablum instead. But hey, that's both the price and prize of popularity. You're supposed to enjoy it. Well, unless you're one of those Unix types, that is.
Why yes. Everything be free. Nobody should pay for anything, even if that thing is inherently costly.
You just don't understand. These conferences cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) to produce, and come with severe liabilities.
Please go to a suitable hotel and scout this out on your own. Tell them you'd like a conference with about a thousand people. (Or even a few hundred.) Figure out how much it will cost to rent the meeting space. Then tell them you need a big area most of the time, but for BOFs/tutorials/working-groups, you'll need several smaller areas as well. And don't forget their supply you with coffee in the morning and pop in the afternoon. We're not even talking about a lunch or an evening reception.
Seriously, putting on meetings takes REAL MONEY. You are not going to get some philanthropist to waste a half million bucks just so people don't have to pay their own way.
The Berkeley licence guarantees that the code will always be free. So does the Artistic Licence. So do a lot of licences. They simply refuse to try to tell others what to do with their own code enhancements. BSD code is forever free. The BSD licence makes no claims about non-BSD code, and this is only reasonable. The GPL makes claims about non-GPL code. This is not reasonable. Keep your licence to your own code, and let others live as they will without any holier-than-thou intrusiveness. If someone wants to make a value-added version of BSD and sell that without also giving away their investment money they put in to make the added value, they can do that. And they have. And this is great. It doesn't affect the original BSD-licenced code, which remains forever free. It's remarkably how many people don't understand this. GPL isn't forever free. It's forever in coercive bondage. Hence the whole virus matter. If you want something free, SET IT FREE AND STOP POKING YOUR NOSE INTO OTHERS' CODE!. Your code is and always will be free. No one can change that. Please stop saying they can. That you expect to infect others is immoral.
You seem to be in favor of freely available source code - why, therefore, are you against an incentive for businesses to make their source code freely available?
It's quite simple: compunction is immoral. Period. And when you create a world without choice, you no longer have a moral world. You have an iron world full of exacting laws but bereft of goodness. I don't want people to join my song because they were forced at gunpoint to do so. This is immoral. People must be able to choose if there is to be any virtue in that choice. If they have no ability to choose, they cannot make good or evil decisions, or even good or bad ones. They remain amoral automata.
Of course it would be good if all programs were in free source code. But it is completely immoral to attempt to effect this goal using coercive means. And that this whole matter is misrepresented merely adds insult to injury. It's all very unpleasant.
As for getting a more coherent and more free Linux O/S by using BSD instead of you know what, I found that someone else had already done a lot more of the work, so let them run with it. I haven't checked to see how they were going, and may even have lost their contact information.
As for the compiler, this is not a big issue, and I just can't understand why you and others keep bringing it up. The kernel is GPLed as well, but as with the compiler, Linus refuses to buy into the viral bit. I want reasonable tools that fit together, run quickly, follow standards, and have good documentation. And I'd prefer they were free instead of GPLed, since it was my frustration with the FSF's disdain for standards combined with the self-tooting "GNU/Linux" embarrassment. The wickedness and prevarications in trying to use library APIs to infect innocent programs that no FSFer or GPLer ever touched just fueled the fires.
As for your dispute with Linus's statement on the kernel's not being viral, all I can say is "whatever". I would dearly love to see the thing in court. I'm tired of the fear. You can't use an API for infection. I refuse to believe it. Mere use does not suffice. The kernel's API was designed to be used, whether it be the syscall table or the device driver API. Same with libraries, no matter whether it's glibc or libfoobletch. Use of a library API whether your a shared library or a remote procedure core or eventual static linking is just not material inclusion, and can be no grounds for the iron bar of viral coercion.
But we've been through this all before, and I think everyone knows where I stand. Barring a court decision that shows the real score, the best thing to do is follow Linus's lead and just ignore the coercive and abusive senses that the GPL tries to ram down whatever orifice is handy. Don't try to infect other people. Do goodness for its own sake, not through strong-arming. Hope others do so as well. Never make someone do something against his will.
What I happen to personally desire -- to wit, a completely free operating system -- is somewhat beside the point of my question for Eric. I hoped through that question to generate a well thought-out response to the somewhat unpleasant but nonetheless important situation of the relationship of the various classes of software currently grouped under the term "Open Source". I'd like to solicit comment on the effects both benign and malignant that these shadings might hold on the development and the business communities. Is this effect changing? Do some versions of "open source" prove more efficacious than others?
Some software currently classed as open source is clearly saddled with restrictions on use. For example, anything that cannot be effectively used in a value-added, commercial licensing situation. This is not unique to code under the GPL, although it is the only one that is particularly popular. Most are related to money. Some licences say no one may make money off licensing. Others say no one but the original author/owner can. Still others are "open" only if you buy the licence, and aren't allowed to resell it.
Sometimes the software is branded as "open", but its terms in fact are actually much worse than any of these. Sometimes it's quite tricky to tell the one from the other. Bruce Perens has to his credit done what to me appears to be a commendable job in separating the wheat from the chaff in these areas.
My own personal suspicion is that the general public doesn't care, and the media doesn't understand. I don't class myself as either, for I do care, and I believe I understand. But that's not the point. I want to know whether this helps, hinders, or both, and if so, whom it so affects.
Now, regarding your personal attack on me. I don't like to any sort of restrictions on the use of code, none whatsoever. That doesn't mean I'm some anarchist who wants to enable others to pretend authorship of what isn't theirs. I simply want to return to those precupidinous days when giftware reigned, back when software was source code and the only letter of the law was "Do as thou wilt."
I do not find software such as gcc, bison, or the Linux kernel to be particularly onerous in their approaches to licensing of those particular programs. I refuse to refer to them as "products"; when programs become notionally products, something vaguely unsettling has occurred, something I admittedly cannot really quite put my finger on, however. In fact, although I've heard people preach to the contrary, I am not convinced that those programs' being GPLed has led to more aggregate harm than good. Certainly if those three programs had been released under a less restrictive licence, a different set of benefits and disadvantages would have manifested themselves. I don't know what those would be, and I don't see that it would do us much good to fantasize about them, either.
In some senses, however, those are all three special cases when it comes to software released under the GPL. The compiler does not pretend to contaminate its own output product when used on your non-infected code, and neither does bison -- both despite obvious potential for infection. Linux does not reach into other people's closed-source, dynamically loaded device drivers and blow them up to the whole world, despite at least one popular but untested interpretation of the GPL which would dispute that. Linus said it doesn't, and it's his code, so that's that. And everyone is happier that way.
My displeasure with the myriad Linux operating systems currently installable is somewhat different. I find each of them that I've tried (only a few compared with the total number, of course) rather less "coherent" than the BSD systems I'm more accustomed to. This includes not just documentation, but rigorous adherence to POSIX standards as well. There's something beautiful about make world that is sometimes hard to explain to followers of a less integrated operating system. The importance of coherence extends to many other areas, including but not limited to documentation and to administration. No version of Linux I've seen does as much here as I'd like to say, nor, in fact, as much as I'm accustomed to seeing.
My displeasure with the FSF is also well known, and quite different. I feel they twist words just like any other self-promoting marketing organization would, be it droves of sales droids or wild-eyed prophets spreading a quasi-religious cult. This is their worst sin, for it is a sin of deception. I can't stand that, and I'm not going to kiss up to them about this mendacity just because I happen to use a program or two from them.
The other of the FSF's major sins is how they immorally try to subject work they did not create to the same onerous licencing as their own work. In short, the GPL bosses people around and tells them what they can do with code that isn't GPLed. This is the sticking point that raises the hackles on so many. It's not hard to understand why. And when the FSF tries to pretend that the GPL doesn't govern use when it patently does, and when they go telling people that mere use of a library API is infective, this blending of their first sin with their second one is quite enough to make any honorable man blanche in disbelieve. I strongly believe they are wrong about a library API, since calling a library is mere use and no more a matter of code stealing than is calling a program. Even Bruce Perens concurs with this, although he does not think people should flout the situation. Perhaps not. But you must call a lie a lie, and not support it, even if its cause is for good. Lying for the sake of good is still evil.
Returning to the original point, no matter what you think of the perpetual virus wars that Richard breeds, that isn't the real point of my question. And no, I'm not going to be dragged into your trolling again after I post this message.
I very much want free software, and do not believe that the FSF provides this despite their claims to the contrary. In fact, were it left to them, we'd be stuck with a lot less non-free software than we now have. But it wasn't left to them, and we're a lot better of because of this. Somehow, "open source" captured far more notice than the FSF ever managed to. We have more giftware than before, and we have more open source than before. And we have a lot more good software that hackers can use than we used to have, and this is not in a small part attributable to the media awareness of open source that Eric and others have fostered.
In short, I wanted to know whether some open source models work better than others to promote software use and reuse by furthering advancing technology and general hacker happiness, and whether there aren't some that merely pretend to be open or free or butterscotch yet instead are really working completely contrary to those goals. I was really thinking more of the commercial forms of quasi-free open software licences as the bad guys here rather than the GNU flavor of quasi-free open software licences.
And I definitely think the religious flames and petty insults hurled between the Big Endians and the Little Endings, or if you would, between the Free Endians and the Open Endians and the GNU Endians, are causing us all phenomenally more harm than good. If you don't believe me, just watch for followups to this posting.:-)
I don't know how to ask this question without it sounding like stirring the pot, but what about the growing chasm between free software (giftware) and GNU software (the viral kind, not the nice LGPL kind)? This is a real issue for some people in some situations. Think about the many BSD resellers and vendors who have custom packaging in highly competitive fields, like video editing? Doesn't the friction hurt everyone? Apple has turned to BSD not Linux, and the GPL is cited as one reason why. This seems to be devisive. There are no end of flamewars on/. and elsewhere, and the heat diminishes the light. What kind of reconciliation is possible? Or is "take no prisoners" just the way it has to work?
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To do out of ignorance those things is to be idiotic. Microsoft and the mindless morons who produce software for that crapware non-O/S platform encourage people to do both. This passes beyond the idiotic into a realm that is negligent at the best, and criminal at the worst.
Now that you mention it, I guess in some senses my own situation is similar. It's just that I use Linux network at work (save for firewall etc, which are BSD), but at home am fortunate enough to use BSD for everything. :-)
It was Microsoft's fault, so they need to cover the costs others have incurred because of them. It's as if a car manufacturer would they shipped a car with an insecure gas line. They'd have to pay to fix the problem, and any damages as well. And if it could be shown that they knew they were shipping such, boy, the feeding frenzy would not be a pretty sight.
Then again, if the menu were to feature Lord Bill's Evil Empire pummelled, diced, and stewed, this might be a pretty sight after all.
Just something to think about. :-)
My first personal computer was a Sun-1, followed by a Microvax. I've since moved on to various brands of Sparc and Intel chips, but those are still mine and mine alone. And I assure you that they all run free anti-viral software loosely referred to as Unix. :-)
This was back in the early and mid-80s, and I don't ever recall there being any problem hooking one computer up to another as you mention. Certainly ethernet and ftp/telnet were easier than serial lines and uucp/uux, but it was hardly black magic.
If you want to discuss business computers, those too had operating systems once upon a time. I never had much fun with Sperry UNIVACs, HP 3000s, or MVS boxes, but you can't say that business has always been accustomed to the negligently insecure systems foisted upon them today.
Second of all, I'm not sure that this would be exculpatory. Just because Microsoft and Apple have inured or lulled hapless consumers into accepting an explosive situation would not appear to my mind to get them off the hook. Yes, it is a wonder that notions of security are not end. Anything else is madness.
You have to treat the cause, not the symptoms. The viruses are the symptom. Microsoft's inability to design a robust, security-minded operating system is the cause. And installing one of the innumerable Linuces, a BSD, or various commerical Unixen (yes, those are bogoplurals :-) is the most cost-effective cure. It's difficult to imagine Microsoft ever escaping from the single-user ghetto mentality in which they have sequestered themselves for all these years.
But lest you think these people peculiar in this, notice please how virtually every definable sub-group delights in forming their own invented jargon, and that these sociopaths (crackers) are no different in this regard. Why? Because an "in-speak" serves to separate the "them" from the "us". Anybody who thinks about it for half a second can come up with numerous examples in each of the discrete groups that they belong to. It's just something that we humans do. We like to know who's who, and who's not. It's part of defining the sub-group. The use of the k3w1t0k (yes, that word is an autolog :-) *virii is one such marker.
Bingo! That's exactly right. Microsoft is guilty of selling a system that they know is designed to be easy for anybody to blow up. It is missing the customary and expected safety mechanisms that have been common knowledge for several decades now. I'd like to see Ford Motors get away with this sort of complete negligence. I wish as many people were as upset with the utterly unreliable crapware (speaking of subgroup-specific neologismsClass action lawsuit, anybody? :-)
The primary reason we don't have viruses for Unix operating systems is because of our security model. The primary reason you do have viruses for Microsoft's soi-disant operating systems is their lack of a sound security model. There are others reasons, but this is the crux upon which hang untold zillions of dollars of needless costs.
I looked through the vira entries that your cite referenced as well, but of those that one could pull up via a link, none actually used that form. I don't have the non-linked source at hand. How do you explain Ammian?
I'm still looking for more sources, and will happily update my document if and when new research turns up, as it did recently.
And I'll still use viruses when writing English. :-)
Another way to look at it is that whatever your vendor includes with the base "system" release is the operating system. That means things like /bin/cat become the operating system, but at least on some system, /usr/bin/cc does not, because it's an "optional" product. If you get one CD from the vendor that says Base O/S, and another that says Development Tools, and still another that says User Contributed Software, you're probably going to end up thinking that the first CD comprises the operating system, but the other two do not. Of course, if you look carefully, you'll find that the first one contains /usr/games/rogue and /usr/games/fortune, but hey, your vendor put them on the O/S CD, so O/S they must be, eh? :-)
One more way to think of this, and one no doubt that the Evil Empire would appreciate, is that if you cannot remove it and have the system still run ok, then it's part of the O/S. If it can be removed without hurting anything, you're not talking the operating system. For example, if you wipe /dev, your system won't run anymore, so those files must be pieces of the operating system. If you remove /etc/rc* and /bin/sh and /sbin/init, you'll have problems booting, so they must be part of the operating system.
But this is really a fuzzy thing. If I remove emacs, which the system did not come with, then the O/S still runs fine, but I've got one user who would just flip. Likewise KDE.
I think most users would consider anything in the system directories to be part of the operating system, even when these programs aren't executing in kernel space. Of course, a kernel hacker isn't going to be so quick say that. He's likely to tell you that if it's in kernel mode, it's the kernel, and that's all there is. He'll run commands like:
And say that those are part of the O/S. A sysadmin will cat outSo the answer to "what's an operating system" really varies dramatically depending on the purpose of the querent and the background of the queried. I'm not trying to say that truth is relative, but rather that perspective and intent count for a lot here. You'll never convince your grandmother that that solitaire program her computer came with isn't part of the (operating) system she bought, but you'll never convince a kernel hacker that xbill is the operating system.
It might be more useful to stop thinking in terms of "operating systems" and consider instead terms such as "platform" or "environment". Why? Well, that way you can distinguish between a system with say, an a.out and libc environment and one with an elf and glibc environment, despite the fact that they might both run the same kernels. It's a useful distinction, but it's not something uname is going to tell you about.
Second, there's simple correctness and completeness. A virgin Redhat installation is so full of crap in the manpages that you want to pop somebody one. They've got catpages installed alongside the manpages (e.g. /usr/man/man1/mailq.1) They've got missing .so links -- try getting a manpage for getnetbyaddr(3); it doesn't work, and if you look, you'll realize why. They've got hundreds of broken SEE ALSO links, as well as thousands (well, around 1700) of missing manpages. They've got a few dozen or so that are simply wrong, all thanks to the Fearless Leaders from you-know-where. It's really completely incoherent.
If you go to bugzilla, look up bug numbers 6043, 6044, 6046, 6049, 6255, and 6315. Redhat has been very responsive to these bug reports. I've even given them a bunch of programs to help with this, but the current situation is pretty darned embarrassing to anyone used to a proper Unix release. (Anyone interested in noman(8), cfman(8), or scatman(8) can pull them from bugzilla or send me mail.)
I'm serious, and I'm not trying to be obtuse. I'm a Unix programmer, not a starry-eyed neophyte in search of eye-candy. I have mailers, newsreaders, web browsers, web servers, editors, admin tools, a complete development environment, etc.
The only bloatware I've got installed on the openbsd systems is netscape. It's also the only non-source program here. I've tried mozilla, but it crashes all the time. I also offer users amaya and lynx.
As far as bloatware goes, I also installed enlightenment and gimp, mostly as a test to see whether I could. And yes, there was no problem. I've a friend who's an Apple user, so put gimp up for them. And enlightenment was semi-interesting, but I've gone back to tvtwm, which suffices for my purposes. I don't know whether these are what you call "desktop applications" or not.
As for /usr/ports, I get this
Although I admit I haven't done an mcs get lately. My only FreeBSD account doesn't haveIt seems to me that it's more important for a machine that has many users to be fast (what kids these days call a "server") than it is for a machine that serves the needs a lone user (what kids seem to call "clients" or "workstations" or "desktops") to be fast. After all, slowness in a shared resource hurts everyone who's sharing it.
As for file system speed, what do you mean? Are you saying that FreeBSD isn't using FFS, or that OpenBSD isn't? If they're both using the regular FFS, why is there a difference? Have you benchmarked this? Are there published numbers? My only experience is comparing OpenBSD and Redhat for ftw stuff, and the former came out way ahead on a hugely bushy file system.
As for file system speed, that's another peculiar complaint. BSD's filesystem is much faster for what I do than Linux's. Test it out by creating equivalent large trees, and running something recursive, like du or ls -R. I have directories with zillions of files in them. BSD is about an order of magnitude faster for this than Linux.
And why do you say that for a desktop machine, the filesystem speed is important? Is this different from what you want in a non-desktop machine? Why?
As for networking, it seems more sensible on BSD. I find that the many Linux versions all have their own little sillinesses that you have to sniff out. They also seem need an extra route that I don't need to remember to do in BSD.
In fact, there's absolutely nothing I want to do that I can do in Linux that I can't do in BSD. Sure, there are kernel threads in Linux, but it's not like they're as robust as on Sun or SGI.
As for games, I find that BSD comes with a lot more than Linux does, which is basically nothing at all. It's nice to be able to just type rogue and it run right out of the box.
The ports stuff is much saner than anything I've ever seen for Linux. I don't understand why people expect absolutely everything pre-installed, or why they always want binaries. It's very scary. There's something very comforting about having a 100% source system, and one where you just type make. You want to know how to make rm stop asking stupid questions? Just cd /usr/src/bin/rm/ and look at rm.c sitting right there. Don't like something? Edit the file, and just type make.
And then there's the fact that /sys is there again, and things are where you expect them to be.
And then there's the fact that all binaries and libraries come with man pages, something that all the Linux operating system bundlers have completely screwed up.
I guess what I'm saying is that BSD is much saner and coherent -- and familiar -- if you're a long-time Unix user than Linux is. Then again, I've been using BSD since 81 or 82, so it's not surprising it makes more sense to me than then Winix stuff you see in Linux.
Precisely what features are desirable in a "server"? What features are desirable in a "workstation"? What even is the difference between a "server" and a "workstation"? Does optimizing for one of these environments pessimize-- or at least compromise--the other situation? Is there some technical feature that you really want to have in a multi-user situation that you don't care about in a single-user one? What about the other way around?
Here's my conjecture: there is no difference here. You want the same in both, because a soi-disant single-user Unix workstation is still a complete multi-user environment with all the attendant issues thereof.
A system's inadequacies appear more acceptable in a single-user system only because they can thereby annoy only one person at a time. In a multi-user situation, such problems are less tolerable because the pain is multiplied by the number of individuals affected. But inadequacies they remain.
Just as you want a solid, sane, robust system for a computer that provides services for an entire department, so too do you wish the same coherence and correctness on my very own computer that you are the principle user of. For example, you don't expect to reboot a server just because you install some new software, and neither do you expect to do the same on my own machine. Granted, Unix isn't stupid here, the way the Evil Empire is. But by allowing sloppiness in a "single-user" environment that would never be tolerated in a "multi-user" one, we risk relegating ourselves to a plane of Hell not so far removed from the one currently inhabited by gibbering victims of the Horror Out of Redmond.
The BSD licence embodies the Golden Rule. It sets a good example, gives of itself freely, and asks nothing in return.
The GPL is nothing like that. It is not a free gift, being kind and generous and decent even to those who use those gifts in ways that the doner disapproves of.
It is deeply ironic that you should ask God to damn the rule you cite, and then proceed to so disastrously misapply.
Be careful what you ask for.
Although I don't, you might see spamverts in the response. These are trivially deleted with any spamvert blocking proxy.
Although I don't, you might see spamverts in the response. These are trivially deleted with any spamvert blocking proxy.
A "Winix app" is a program that happens to run under Unix but doesn't fee like it. All the social cues are wrong. It's like a hard-core Apple Mac user being given an MS-DOS program that has been ported to his system, where "ported" means no more than making the code run. It's still not going to work for him. And he'll hate it.
What are the the Unix cultural cues that are missing from Winix "apps", or Windows cues that are present in Winix "apps" but missing from Unix programs? It's a lot of little things. Here are just a few:
If you run Word Perfect under Linux, it's still not a Unix program. It's a Winix "app". It doesn't feel like Unix. xv is a Unix program, but ee is a Winix "app". KDE and CDE mostly comprise Winix "apps", not Unix programs. Netscape is a Winix "app", not a Unix program.
Linux users in particular seem to be happy with Winux "apps". Even more frighteningly, they seem happy to crank them out from scratch. I'm not completely certain I understand that phenomenon. Perhaps this is because they never really got into Unix programs in the first place. These things certainly aren't Unix friendly.
I don't see the mindless porting of Windows "apps" to Unix systems as being particularly useful to Unix people. The resulting "Winix apps" will never be proper programs and tools. They weren't designed that way. They may well appeal to the mindless masses who've been trained to accept a completely distinct set of cultural computing cues, and this strategy might get more non-technical users to employ the platform, but it does nothing to make happy those of us who are already comfortable with Unix. In fact, it often has quite the opposite effect.
This isn't Unix as Literature anymore. We're in the the post-literate age of populist pablum instead. But hey, that's both the price and prize of popularity. You're supposed to enjoy it. Well, unless you're one of those Unix types, that is.
You just don't understand. These conferences cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) to produce, and come with severe liabilities.
Please go to a suitable hotel and scout this out on your own. Tell them you'd like a conference with about a thousand people. (Or even a few hundred.) Figure out how much it will cost to rent the meeting space. Then tell them you need a big area most of the time, but for BOFs/tutorials/working-groups, you'll need several smaller areas as well. And don't forget their supply you with coffee in the morning and pop in the afternoon. We're not even talking about a lunch or an evening reception.
Seriously, putting on meetings takes REAL MONEY. You are not going to get some philanthropist to waste a half million bucks just so people don't have to pay their own way.
The Berkeley licence guarantees that the code will always be free. So does the Artistic Licence. So do a lot of licences. They simply refuse to try to tell others what to do with their own code enhancements. BSD code is forever free. The BSD licence makes no claims about non-BSD code, and this is only reasonable. The GPL makes claims about non-GPL code. This is not reasonable. Keep your licence to your own code, and let others live as they will without any holier-than-thou intrusiveness. If someone wants to make a value-added version of BSD and sell that without also giving away their investment money they put in to make the added value, they can do that. And they have. And this is great. It doesn't affect the original BSD-licenced code, which remains forever free. It's remarkably how many people don't understand this. GPL isn't forever free. It's forever in coercive bondage. Hence the whole virus matter. If you want something free, SET IT FREE AND STOP POKING YOUR NOSE INTO OTHERS' CODE!. Your code is and always will be free. No one can change that. Please stop saying they can. That you expect to infect others is immoral.
Of course it would be good if all programs were in free source code. But it is completely immoral to attempt to effect this goal using coercive means. And that this whole matter is misrepresented merely adds insult to injury. It's all very unpleasant.
As for getting a more coherent and more free Linux O/S by using BSD instead of you know what, I found that someone else had already done a lot more of the work, so let them run with it. I haven't checked to see how they were going, and may even have lost their contact information.
As for the compiler, this is not a big issue, and I just can't understand why you and others keep bringing it up. The kernel is GPLed as well, but as with the compiler, Linus refuses to buy into the viral bit. I want reasonable tools that fit together, run quickly, follow standards, and have good documentation. And I'd prefer they were free instead of GPLed, since it was my frustration with the FSF's disdain for standards combined with the self-tooting "GNU/Linux" embarrassment. The wickedness and prevarications in trying to use library APIs to infect innocent programs that no FSFer or GPLer ever touched just fueled the fires.
As for your dispute with Linus's statement on the kernel's not being viral, all I can say is "whatever". I would dearly love to see the thing in court. I'm tired of the fear. You can't use an API for infection. I refuse to believe it. Mere use does not suffice. The kernel's API was designed to be used, whether it be the syscall table or the device driver API. Same with libraries, no matter whether it's glibc or libfoobletch. Use of a library API whether your a shared library or a remote procedure core or eventual static linking is just not material inclusion, and can be no grounds for the iron bar of viral coercion.
But we've been through this all before, and I think everyone knows where I stand. Barring a court decision that shows the real score, the best thing to do is follow Linus's lead and just ignore the coercive and abusive senses that the GPL tries to ram down whatever orifice is handy. Don't try to infect other people. Do goodness for its own sake, not through strong-arming. Hope others do so as well. Never make someone do something against his will.
What I happen to personally desire -- to wit, a completely free operating system -- is somewhat beside the point of my question for Eric. I hoped through that question to generate a well thought-out response to the somewhat unpleasant but nonetheless important situation of the relationship of the various classes of software currently grouped under the term "Open Source". I'd like to solicit comment on the effects both benign and malignant that these shadings might hold on the development and the business communities. Is this effect changing? Do some versions of "open source" prove more efficacious than others?
Some software currently classed as open source is clearly saddled with restrictions on use. For example, anything that cannot be effectively used in a value-added, commercial licensing situation. This is not unique to code under the GPL, although it is the only one that is particularly popular. Most are related to money. Some licences say no one may make money off licensing. Others say no one but the original author/owner can. Still others are "open" only if you buy the licence, and aren't allowed to resell it.
Sometimes the software is branded as "open", but its terms in fact are actually much worse than any of these. Sometimes it's quite tricky to tell the one from the other. Bruce Perens has to his credit done what to me appears to be a commendable job in separating the wheat from the chaff in these areas.
My own personal suspicion is that the general public doesn't care, and the media doesn't understand. I don't class myself as either, for I do care, and I believe I understand. But that's not the point. I want to know whether this helps, hinders, or both, and if so, whom it so affects.
Now, regarding your personal attack on me. I don't like to any sort of restrictions on the use of code, none whatsoever. That doesn't mean I'm some anarchist who wants to enable others to pretend authorship of what isn't theirs. I simply want to return to those precupidinous days when giftware reigned, back when software was source code and the only letter of the law was "Do as thou wilt."
I do not find software such as gcc, bison, or the Linux kernel to be particularly onerous in their approaches to licensing of those particular programs. I refuse to refer to them as "products"; when programs become notionally products, something vaguely unsettling has occurred, something I admittedly cannot really quite put my finger on, however. In fact, although I've heard people preach to the contrary, I am not convinced that those programs' being GPLed has led to more aggregate harm than good. Certainly if those three programs had been released under a less restrictive licence, a different set of benefits and disadvantages would have manifested themselves. I don't know what those would be, and I don't see that it would do us much good to fantasize about them, either.
In some senses, however, those are all three special cases when it comes to software released under the GPL. The compiler does not pretend to contaminate its own output product when used on your non-infected code, and neither does bison -- both despite obvious potential for infection. Linux does not reach into other people's closed-source, dynamically loaded device drivers and blow them up to the whole world, despite at least one popular but untested interpretation of the GPL which would dispute that. Linus said it doesn't, and it's his code, so that's that. And everyone is happier that way.
My displeasure with the myriad Linux operating systems currently installable is somewhat different. I find each of them that I've tried (only a few compared with the total number, of course) rather less "coherent" than the BSD systems I'm more accustomed to. This includes not just documentation, but rigorous adherence to POSIX standards as well. There's something beautiful about make world that is sometimes hard to explain to followers of a less integrated operating system. The importance of coherence extends to many other areas, including but not limited to documentation and to administration. No version of Linux I've seen does as much here as I'd like to say, nor, in fact, as much as I'm accustomed to seeing.
My displeasure with the FSF is also well known, and quite different. I feel they twist words just like any other self-promoting marketing organization would, be it droves of sales droids or wild-eyed prophets spreading a quasi-religious cult. This is their worst sin, for it is a sin of deception. I can't stand that, and I'm not going to kiss up to them about this mendacity just because I happen to use a program or two from them.
The other of the FSF's major sins is how they immorally try to subject work they did not create to the same onerous licencing as their own work. In short, the GPL bosses people around and tells them what they can do with code that isn't GPLed. This is the sticking point that raises the hackles on so many. It's not hard to understand why. And when the FSF tries to pretend that the GPL doesn't govern use when it patently does, and when they go telling people that mere use of a library API is infective, this blending of their first sin with their second one is quite enough to make any honorable man blanche in disbelieve. I strongly believe they are wrong about a library API, since calling a library is mere use and no more a matter of code stealing than is calling a program. Even Bruce Perens concurs with this, although he does not think people should flout the situation. Perhaps not. But you must call a lie a lie, and not support it, even if its cause is for good. Lying for the sake of good is still evil.
Returning to the original point, no matter what you think of the perpetual virus wars that Richard breeds, that isn't the real point of my question. And no, I'm not going to be dragged into your trolling again after I post this message.
I very much want free software, and do not believe that the FSF provides this despite their claims to the contrary. In fact, were it left to them, we'd be stuck with a lot less non-free software than we now have. But it wasn't left to them, and we're a lot better of because of this. Somehow, "open source" captured far more notice than the FSF ever managed to. We have more giftware than before, and we have more open source than before. And we have a lot more good software that hackers can use than we used to have, and this is not in a small part attributable to the media awareness of open source that Eric and others have fostered.
In short, I wanted to know whether some open source models work better than others to promote software use and reuse by furthering advancing technology and general hacker happiness, and whether there aren't some that merely pretend to be open or free or butterscotch yet instead are really working completely contrary to those goals. I was really thinking more of the commercial forms of quasi-free open software licences as the bad guys here rather than the GNU flavor of quasi-free open software licences.
And I definitely think the religious flames and petty insults hurled between the Big Endians and the Little Endings, or if you would, between the Free Endians and the Open Endians and the GNU Endians, are causing us all phenomenally more harm than good. If you don't believe me, just watch for followups to this posting. :-)
I don't know how to ask this question without it sounding like stirring the pot, but what about the growing chasm between free software (giftware) and GNU software (the viral kind, not the nice LGPL kind)? This is a real issue for some people in some situations. Think about the many BSD resellers and vendors who have custom packaging in highly competitive fields, like video editing? Doesn't the friction hurt everyone? Apple has turned to BSD not Linux, and the GPL is cited as one reason why. This seems to be devisive. There are no end of flamewars on /. and elsewhere, and the heat diminishes the light. What kind of reconciliation is possible? Or is "take no prisoners" just the way it has to work?