That's hardly a fair comparison. In the case of BeOS, Be was taking Linux source code and trying to pass it off as their own, and not show their changes.
In this case, it's just redistribution, and in some messages, just documentation on how to get around the system -- original works.
If Microsoft took the Linux spec, posted it, and documented, and/. was upset, it would be a similar case. What is actually happening here is Microsoft trying to keep the truth from getting out. It's like the Church of Scientology trying to censor pages about it.
I and many of my peers have probably tried to persuade superiors at our companies to use free software. There are always the technical benefits of many free software projects like Apache, the Linux Kernel, and so on. Anyone can make a persuasive argument on Apache vs. IIS, but what about a situation where the technical merit is questionable or irrelevant?
There are several cases where the technical merit of a free program vs. an unfree program are debatable, like Linux Kernel vs. Solaris Kernel. How do you show the technical merit of freedom itself? Slamming copyright law isn't going to win me any friends where I work, and neither is shunning license agreements. When these guys think of freedom, they think of drinking beer and watching TV. Are there some business-oriented ideas you can give us that address the profitable practicality of using free software?
A "$25,000" patent for a hundred bucks? Sure they will, and they'll make a profit in volume. The research behind most patents, particularly ones sold here, is minimal. Even if "one-click technology" did take $25,000 to develop, if you have 10,000 online stores who want to license the obvious, the revenue at $200 is a nice $2,000,000 -- very substantial!
I think those kind of restrictions would be in what you can patent, and not where you can sell it. I'm sure the opinion of a patent market place is "if the USPTO granted it, we'll market it." The fact that the USPTO will grant anything, regardless of whether it's an original idea, your idea, or an idea at all. That doesn't matter much to the marketers of the patent.
Indeed. We all love and respect what? I don't know about you, but this is the first I've heard of "talk city" and from the looks of it, it's another bloated portal, with "discussions" and so forth.
WHO CARES?
This is less relevant than CompuServ annoncing in has stock quotes!
oh yeah. Zope is what Cold Fusion tries hard to do. I've been using Zope for APP development and it is truely a pleasure. Check out technocrat.net, which is IMHO, a great example of a well-done ZOPE application.
Generally you get arround this by putting everything in spaces, not tab characters. Should you get a script with undesirable tab characters, you can use a program called tabnanny to correct them. It's a hastle if you're using some weak text editor like pico or notepad, but inside emacs' python-mode or idle (Guido's very own Python IDE) problems don't arrise.
When it comes down to it, most python programmers find the whitespac syntax to be more good than bad. It certainly makes for nice looking code.
I should point out this has nothing to do with Congress or the federal government. This is a proposed state law that all states are requested to uniformly endorse. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, from which this arrose, has not actual authority. They just make recomendations.
Don't go knocking down Congress about this, they won't be voting on it. You'll want to contact your state lawmakers and express your feelings about this law. For it to gain effectiveness, most states will need to pass it. If you keep your state abstains from passing it while other states pass it, your state will become a reverse engineering mecca and infact boost its economy.
That issue was also brought up in the Corel Linux debate with Corel denying anyone under the age of eighteen (18) access to their Linux distribution.
Although that was inforced as much as any of the other millions of sites with "Click here if you're over 18" it does provide us with an example of lawyers realizing that inconsistancy.
However, right now, minor or adult, license agreements are not contracts, they are rants on behalf of software companies. As an adult, a contract you don't sign is almost always void.
This brings us to a stunning possibility: maybe people should still have to sign contracts to legally be held accountable. I only hope that the government will someday realize the obvious.
It's less of an inheritance of common law and more of an attribute of legal systems altogether.
One of the goals in the american legal system was to avoid the common effect in most western countries that whoever has the most money has the law on their side. Having written laws, and certain prosocution rules helps.
The first problem is the complexity of the law. There are so many laws out there, so many of which are ambiguous or veguely worded, that one can nearly do anything and state that the law is on their side. In order to do that, you have to have a high-powered research team to find those obscure laws as well as a good team of lawyers to twist words around.
The second problem is that laws are written by either corrupt or ignorant law makers. The ignorant ones beleive the lobbiests. The corrupt ones are on the payroll of the lobbiests.
This article is a case point of both, in fact. The revised copyright law is written to remove all rights of the individual and give them to record labels and movie studios. Corruption and ignorance are both to blame. The restraining order is a stretch of restraining order law to enforce their will.
My solution? Repeal most laws and reword them to be more specific, estalbish a more directly democratic system for passing them, and have a hefty criminal penalty for frivilous lawsuits.
I'd like to see more Gnome compliant window managers. Choice is a good thing. I feel like Oliver Twist actually, "Please Sir, Can I have some more?":-)
In that case... you'll be happy to learn that Fvwm and WindowMaker are also promising gnome compliance in future versions!
And to all those good wm developer souls: It is vitally important that MORE window managers become compliant. One of the X cornerstones is what you get a lot of choice. Don't let the advancements of KDE/Gnome limit our choice of window manager!:)
A single, standard GUI library would be enormously helpful, but it would only get you marginally closer towards the "write once, run everywhere" ideal. Java may not have fufilled the promise completely, but it comes closer than standard libraries do at bridging the gap between otherwise-binary-incompatible operating systems.
Yes, we're all aware of the way Java works and what its goals were.
Java's strong points are:
Write it once, compile it once, run it anywhere
The Object Oriented model in Java is very good. Similar to model OO languages like Smalltalk, Objective C, and Python.
The API is logical
Lots of marketing hype (no, this isn't a proprety of Java itself, but it effects its success in the PHB world)
Its weak points are:
JVM is too slow to run anything realisticly. Write it once, compile it once, run it anywhere, but run it well nowhere.
The programming over-head in Java API is huge. To do very basic things, you have to inherit classes, create objects, do bindings, etc. True, this is becoming the case in a lot of C++ API's *cough*MFC*cough*, but there are still easy and simple C/C++ programs out there.
There no Java compiler that's actually completed out there with a free license. I'll spare you the Open Source propeganda, I'm sure it's been posted 30 other places in this thread.
Java doesn't have many references; in terms of useful programs written in Java that run at a reasonable speed. Take HotJava - it was supposed to be the example of java's power and it runs slow, has page rendering problems, and is generally not very useful.
It met the ideal, but it's not realistic for most projects.
The problem is that they aren't always playing fair. Competition is over-rated. Recently Intel has been throwing dirt. Since the icecream sandwich style P2/Celeron/P3 method of inserting chips replaced ZIF, motherboards have been either AMD - or - Intel.
Bad, Intel! Bad!
This hurts the industry by limiting consumer choice. You can't go out, buy a motherboard, then go buy a chip; you have to plan it out, and if you buy an Intel, you can't just switch to AMD.
And duh, of course this is exactly what Intel wanted.
Theming is a fine toy, but the real effort for customization shouldn't be put into how things look, but how things BEHAVE. That's the power of themes.
I agree totally, it's like "Oh, we can do all this theming stuff, it's really cool - oh by the way, you can't "quite" run this app yet, becuase X part of Y is pretty buggy and need 256mb to run".
True enough. KDE and Gnome are both too system resource intensive. Take a look at how the latest version of Solaris looks on an old Sparc 4: CDE is lightening fast.
Also CDE isn't themable, but if you change the font size, unlike KDE and Gnome, it consistantly changes throughout your desktop. That is the kind of flexiblity that we need here.
Basically, I think the whole situation is still fairly amateurish, there's a lot of skilled and professional people involved right now (I know some of them), but something is not quite clicking.
This I take exception to. "Professional" programmers are not often the best. I remind you that BSD, Linux, postgres, fvwm, and many other projects are "amateurish" and far better than any commercial offerings.
We've come to a general conclusion that the clause exists because minors cannot be held in legally binding agreements, such as a license agreement. Therefor, it is within reason that a minor could violate the license agreement and not be charged for it, since legally, he cannot enter into such an agreement.
By that virtue, all license agreements would be void for minors - or at least the software contract style ones, right? Maybe it's a fat chance, but could minors legally buy a copy of Windows 98, copy it around, reverse engineer it, and modify it w/o violating a license agreement they were never bound by?
I really don't feel anything can save old school mags. Well done web sites just offer too much interactivity and productivity to be bested by paper mags. Not to mention they are much more up to date.
Hardly. Do you find it odd that C|Net, an online publisher would bash paper? I don't. It's not a score for C|Net and (the writer)'s journalistic integrity. There was nothing compelling in that article, nothing at all.
The only point skillfully made was that PC Magazine is still the same format as it was over ten years ago. There's nothing wrong with that. The change of computer prices from $3,000 to $300 doesn't effect the layout of a magazine. Let's not forget, computer magazine revamps have often ended badly. Byte did a lot of revamping before it bit the dust (no pun intended).
C|Net declares paper magazines dead. Why are all you going alone with this?
it depends on how you define window manager and desktop environment. XFce doesn't provide things like corba orbs, web browsers, mail clients - etc - things that KDE and Gnome do.
But then again, do they need to? Is vi still a text editor even though emacs does this and this and this? The point: XFce isn't intended to be another KDE or Gnome - it's reduces what a desktop environment should actually be thinking about.
The main difference between XFCE and the more popular X window managers such as WindowMaker and FVWM is that XFCE is far less flexible...
We all love those themes as seen in Enlightenment, the crazy fun stuff that you can do with Window Maker, and FVWM2's sheer power. Well, you'll leave it all behind in XFCE.
XFCE does not support themes, re-arranging buttons on the title bar, menus, functions - or anything like that.
XFCE is mostly like twm with gtk... Bottom line: Fast, small, but not flexible
Correction: 3DFX has always been stingy with code. This is not the whole glide library, it's just a subset for interfacing mesa. 3Dfx has a very bad track record - lawsuits over glide clones anyone?
Slashdot should get it together and not post headlines confusing part of glide with the whole library. This does not mean you can take full advantage of your Voodoo card with free software - not even close. In order for that to a happen, all the device drivers and the complete glide library would need to be freed.
One step in the right direction, but 3dfx still has a long way to go before they respect the rights of users in having source code for all of it.
I think as Linux hits more and more mainstream, we'll see more distributions being more and more vegue. The reasons:
Marketing's involvement in Linux. There was clearly some marketing influence on that page. Put simply, marketers don't like to put specifics or anything meaningful. Kelvin Cline ads anyone?
They are trying to present Linux as ideal for non-technical users. Non-technical users, sadly, are scared by specific information.
Ignorance is in.
And you thought Red Hat's web page was vegue! Caldera Linux is in this croud too: its page is about as vegue as it gets. Without the word "Linux" on the title, no one would know what they're talking about.
This would depend on the way they "based" thier OS on Linux. If they were talking strictly about the Linux kernel, they would have the liberty to redistribute it under a license more restrictive than GPL. Thanks to GPL, we don't have to worry about the kernel going proprietary.
However, if they used the more general sense of Linux - meaning Linux and accompanying tools, they could easily distribute proprietary tools. This isn't really another OS, it's another distribution that wants to pretent to be its own OS.
I don't think you get what he said. He said that one's personality (soul?) continues in the sense that others remember your personality... If everyone you knew was dead, then perhaps your personality dies?
It's a little more concrete than the supersticious religious view of a soul.
Slashdot Mirror
In this case, it's just redistribution, and in some messages, just documentation on how to get around the system -- original works.
If Microsoft took the Linux spec, posted it, and documented, and /. was upset, it would be a similar case. What is actually happening here is Microsoft trying to keep the truth from getting out. It's like the Church of Scientology trying to censor pages about it.
Enough with the crap already.
There are several cases where the technical merit of a free program vs. an unfree program are debatable, like Linux Kernel vs. Solaris Kernel. How do you show the technical merit of freedom itself? Slamming copyright law isn't going to win me any friends where I work, and neither is shunning license agreements. When these guys think of freedom, they think of drinking beer and watching TV. Are there some business-oriented ideas you can give us that address the profitable practicality of using free software?
Here's to a Wal-mart selling the obvious!
So his new theory is: "If your bogus patents don't last long, see if someone else's will?"
I think those kind of restrictions would be in what you can patent, and not where you can sell it. I'm sure the opinion of a patent market place is "if the USPTO granted it, we'll market it." The fact that the USPTO will grant anything, regardless of whether it's an original idea, your idea, or an idea at all. That doesn't matter much to the marketers of the patent.
WHO CARES?
This is less relevant than CompuServ annoncing in has stock quotes!
oh yeah. Zope is what Cold Fusion tries hard to do. I've been using Zope for APP development and it is truely a pleasure. Check out technocrat.net, which is IMHO, a great example of a well-done ZOPE application.
When it comes down to it, most python programmers find the whitespac syntax to be more good than bad. It certainly makes for nice looking code.
Don't go knocking down Congress about this, they won't be voting on it. You'll want to contact your state lawmakers and express your feelings about this law. For it to gain effectiveness, most states will need to pass it. If you keep your state abstains from passing it while other states pass it, your state will become a reverse engineering mecca and infact boost its economy.
Although that was inforced as much as any of the other millions of sites with "Click here if you're over 18" it does provide us with an example of lawyers realizing that inconsistancy.
However, right now, minor or adult, license agreements are not contracts, they are rants on behalf of software companies. As an adult, a contract you don't sign is almost always void.
This brings us to a stunning possibility: maybe people should still have to sign contracts to legally be held accountable. I only hope that the government will someday realize the obvious.
One of the goals in the american legal system was to avoid the common effect in most western countries that whoever has the most money has the law on their side. Having written laws, and certain prosocution rules helps.
The first problem is the complexity of the law. There are so many laws out there, so many of which are ambiguous or veguely worded, that one can nearly do anything and state that the law is on their side. In order to do that, you have to have a high-powered research team to find those obscure laws as well as a good team of lawyers to twist words around.
The second problem is that laws are written by either corrupt or ignorant law makers. The ignorant ones beleive the lobbiests. The corrupt ones are on the payroll of the lobbiests.
This article is a case point of both, in fact. The revised copyright law is written to remove all rights of the individual and give them to record labels and movie studios. Corruption and ignorance are both to blame. The restraining order is a stretch of restraining order law to enforce their will.
My solution? Repeal most laws and reword them to be more specific, estalbish a more directly democratic system for passing them, and have a hefty criminal penalty for frivilous lawsuits.
- I'd like to see more Gnome compliant window managers. Choice is a good thing. I feel like Oliver Twist actually, "Please Sir, Can I have some more?"
:-)
In that case... you'll be happy to learn that Fvwm and WindowMaker are also promising gnome compliance in future versions!And to all those good wm developer souls: It is vitally important that MORE window managers become compliant. One of the X cornerstones is what you get a lot of choice. Don't let the advancements of KDE/Gnome limit our choice of window manager! :)
- A single, standard GUI library would be enormously helpful, but it would only get you marginally closer towards the "write once, run everywhere" ideal. Java may not have fufilled the promise completely, but it comes closer than standard libraries do at bridging the gap between otherwise-binary-incompatible operating systems.
Yes, we're all aware of the way Java works and what its goals were.Java's strong points are:
- Write it once, compile it once, run it anywhere
- The Object Oriented model in Java is very good. Similar to model OO languages like Smalltalk, Objective C, and Python.
- The API is logical
- Lots of marketing hype (no, this isn't a proprety of Java itself, but it effects its success in the PHB world)
Its weak points are:- JVM is too slow to run anything realisticly. Write it once, compile it once, run it anywhere, but run it well nowhere.
- The programming over-head in Java API is huge. To do very basic things, you have to inherit classes, create objects, do bindings, etc. True, this is becoming the case in a lot of C++ API's *cough*MFC*cough*, but there are still easy and simple C/C++ programs out there.
- There no Java compiler that's actually completed out there with a free license. I'll spare you the Open Source propeganda, I'm sure it's been posted 30 other places in this thread.
- Java doesn't have many references; in terms of useful programs written in Java that run at a reasonable speed. Take HotJava - it was supposed to be the example of java's power and it runs slow, has page rendering problems, and is generally not very useful.
It met the ideal, but it's not realistic for most projects.Bad, Intel! Bad!
This hurts the industry by limiting consumer choice. You can't go out, buy a motherboard, then go buy a chip; you have to plan it out, and if you buy an Intel, you can't just switch to AMD.
- I agree totally, it's like "Oh, we can do all this theming stuff, it's really cool - oh by the way, you can't "quite" run this app yet, becuase X part of Y is pretty buggy and need 256mb to run".
True enough. KDE and Gnome are both too system resource intensive. Take a look at how the latest version of Solaris looks on an old Sparc 4: CDE is lightening fast.Also CDE isn't themable, but if you change the font size, unlike KDE and Gnome, it consistantly changes throughout your desktop. That is the kind of flexiblity that we need here.
- Basically, I think the whole situation is still fairly amateurish, there's a lot of skilled and professional people involved right now (I know some of them), but something is not quite clicking.
This I take exception to. "Professional" programmers are not often the best. I remind you that BSD, Linux, postgres, fvwm, and many other projects are "amateurish" and far better than any commercial offerings.By that virtue, all license agreements would be void for minors - or at least the software contract style ones, right? Maybe it's a fat chance, but could minors legally buy a copy of Windows 98, copy it around, reverse engineer it, and modify it w/o violating a license agreement they were never bound by?
It's interesting. I'm not a lawyer. Who is? :)
Hardly. Do you find it odd that C|Net, an online publisher would bash paper? I don't. It's not a score for C|Net and (the writer)'s journalistic integrity. There was nothing compelling in that article, nothing at all.
The only point skillfully made was that PC Magazine is still the same format as it was over ten years ago. There's nothing wrong with that. The change of computer prices from $3,000 to $300 doesn't effect the layout of a magazine. Let's not forget, computer magazine revamps have often ended badly. Byte did a lot of revamping before it bit the dust (no pun intended).
C|Net declares paper magazines dead. Why are all you going alone with this?
But then again, do they need to? Is vi still a text editor even though emacs does this and this and this? The point: XFce isn't intended to be another KDE or Gnome - it's reduces what a desktop environment should actually be thinking about.
Geeks, ready your efficient code.
We all love those themes as seen in Enlightenment, the crazy fun stuff that you can do with Window Maker, and FVWM2's sheer power. Well, you'll leave it all behind in XFCE.
XFCE does not support themes, re-arranging buttons on the title bar, menus, functions - or anything like that.
XFCE is mostly like twm with gtk... Bottom line: Fast, small, but not flexible
Slashdot should get it together and not post headlines confusing part of glide with the whole library. This does not mean you can take full advantage of your Voodoo card with free software - not even close. In order for that to a happen, all the device drivers and the complete glide library would need to be freed.
One step in the right direction, but 3dfx still has a long way to go before they respect the rights of users in having source code for all of it.
Until 3fx gets a clue, it's still no good guys...
- Marketing's involvement in Linux. There was clearly some marketing influence on that page. Put simply, marketers don't like to put specifics or anything meaningful. Kelvin Cline ads anyone?
- They are trying to present Linux as ideal for non-technical users. Non-technical users, sadly, are scared by specific information.
- Ignorance is in.
And you thought Red Hat's web page was vegue! Caldera Linux is in this croud too: its page is about as vegue as it gets. Without the word "Linux" on the title, no one would know what they're talking about.Geeks, ready your non-commercial distributions!
However, if they used the more general sense of Linux - meaning Linux and accompanying tools, they could easily distribute proprietary tools. This isn't really another OS, it's another distribution that wants to pretent to be its own OS.
Neither one would suprise me.
well, yeah... it's not a very solid idea. Our true effect on the world is unmeasured. Chaos theory anyone?
It's a little more concrete than the supersticious religious view of a soul.
No, he's clearly talking about Jesus - that 60s haircut guy who hasn't been up to much for about 2 thousand years.