You mean in the way that IBM would always rule the computing world, or do you mean in the way that DEC was never going to go away?
MS won't be gone by 2010, but if they're around in 2015, they're goiung to be a much different company.
Not *only* that, but the bastards attacked them
on
SCO DOS'ed
·
· Score: 1
Allowing access? Hell, the little "Linux enthusiasts" in their OpenLinux division *DDoSed* their website! I'd say that there's more than a little material for lawsuits!:-)
No, Caldera did not make anywhere *near* 4 billion in their MS settlement -- it was about $150 million. Not pocket change, but nowhere near what you're claiming.
Very true. It's one of the odd curiosities I've always seen between security issues for Linux and Windows. Linux has the exploits published against applications, and Windows has them published against the OS when an application is exploited
I don't get it -- I've never seen this. Can you give an example? The only thing I can think of that you might be thinking of is that IE updates get classified under OS updates, as it's bundled with the OS.
I doubt there's going to be anything like it for Linux. The computer graphics world lost a brilliant man when Kai Krause retired.
Photoshop
If you do output for print, the Gimp is nowhere near Photoshop, and won't be for a while. If you do output for digital media, the Gimp can quite handily go toe-to-toe with Photoshop.
MS Office
Yup. Open Office is good enough for folks that occasionally have to interact with Office docs and are fed up with having to deal with Windows, but if.doc files are bread-and-potatoes for you, Microsoft pretty much has you locked in.
No. The patch lets the exec-shield be toggled off, and adds no more than 2-3 cycles per context switch. On a current x86 box running a vanilla 2.4 kernel, the maximum number of context switches per second is 100. That's a maximum of 300 cycles a second consumed. The oldest machine I've used running Linux was a 486/66 that a friend had. One of these can do at least 66 million cycles a second. On this elderly 486, there will be slowdown of less than a thousandth of a percent. Given that almost all major Linux applications are written in C, the security payoff is probably worth it. I value efficiency a lot, and even so the elimination of the largest security issue in Linux for less than a thousandth of a percent of the CPU time seems like a pretty good trade.
they must give you all the source, including that which they would consider closed, proprietary, trade secret, etc.
No. That is one possible (very unlikely) remedy. A judge is more likely to think that removing the GPLed code and paying a fine would be appropriate, though.
I think it'd be a bad idea to restrict it...but there is one thought in my mind.
If client/server software catches on and reliable broadband becomes universal, all companies need to do is provide a thin client running something like X or VNC or something higher level and never distribute any binaries.
The problem is that's obviously what Caldera *wants* to have happen. IBM wants to, as a long term policy, discourage dying companies from suing them for any IP they might be able to work with.
Intel has similar rules -- they have crosslicensing agreements, and flat fees of up to something like $100K for patents rights, but always fight IP issues other than that. As a result, you have to be a real idiot to go after Intel on IP grounds, because they *will* fight tooth and nail, and they have a lot of resources to pour into said fight. If IBM and Intel didn't maintain such policies, everyone would see them as cash-bloated companies and try to swipe a piece of the pie.
Well, let's see. First, SCO would probably be villified even more, and people with technical knowledge would demonstrate the minimality of whatever was taken.
Second, IBM would probably be blamed. "Oh, IBM was being stupid and got burned." The OSS community would distance themselves, as would RH and Suse (which are *not* liable, regardless of what McBride spouts in interviews).
Third, IBM would probably appeal (since IBM can't afford to lose the SCO license). So it'd drag on and on, almost certainly until after SCO goes under. If they were forced to, they'd honor the agreement. No one else would have to honor everything.
Fourth, Microsoft would probably use it as FUD material for a few years.
Fifth, SCO/Caldera employees would be reviled at conventions for a while.
In sum, it pretty much wouldn't have much of an impact on the Linux community.
I can't even figure out *what* could possibly be copied. This isn't a web browser. It's a kernel. You can't just swipe the scheduler from a completely different kernel and drop it into place. It'd be far harder than just writing the thing yourself.
IBM has for decades been respected for producing good but expensive products, most of the time. They also tend to take care of their customers reasonably well.
SCO has a long, rich tradition of being made fun of for their Unix distribution, which, to be blunt, sucked badly.
They haven't even listed a *technology* that they didn't like being reimplemented. They're just complaining that Linux couldn't possibly scale to enterprise-class use so quickly without stealing their code. It's a pretty inane lawsuit.
The problem is that ever since Caldera won the DR-DOS suit against MS, and made $150M or so, it's had the idea that the way to make money is to sue OS developers rather than to actually produce a good product.
And actually, they *used* to be useful -- siphoning money off MS is fine by me any day of the week. Attacking Linux development by trying to run off with the money that IBM is putting into Linux (and giving half to lawyers instead of software engineers) is less attractive, however.
This is actually a pretty good Ask Slashdot, for a change.
I know exactly what you want -- something like a text-based Hypercard...a front-end building toolkit. Also, the insight that computer operators tend to be significantly faster with text-based UIs is interesting.
Suggestions have included text-based web browsers (not really ideal...I think what the guy's thinking of is a screen-by-screen interface where there's no scrolling or anything, much like those custom DOS apps that banks use) and perl (AFAIK, perl will let you enter lines but doesn't natively have a great text-based UI tookit). I don't think any of these are really appropriate.
You may want to look at dialog. It's a GPLed higher-level toolkit that sits on ncurses that ships with (at least) Red Hat. This is probably simpler than what you want, though, and I don't believe it has a drag-and-drop-ish interface. That means you can't "draw" the forms, like you can with common GUI tools.
Another package, which is probably about as powerful as what you want, is newt (ships with RH and made by them, don't have an URL). The problem is that while this is a relatively high-level widget interface, it *still* isn't to the point of drawing your interface -- it requires coding. It's LGPLed.
I've been trying to get myself to seriously try out eiffel for a while now. It seems to be the language closest to what I want, from what I've read.
* It's fairly high level * For such a high level language, SmallEiffel produces very fast output -- not like Java or C# compilers. * It does what I thought ML did -- each function acts like a templated function, and when you use a function, it instantiates a new appropriate template automatically. Very, very cool. * It's heavily object-oriented, much like Java. This could be seen as good or bad. * It takes assertions seriously.
CONS
* The only big downside is that it has a hellova lot of syntactic overhead.
No, because IBM has an SCO license. It's not illegal for another Linux vendor to sell Linux. It *is* a violation of contract for IBM (however unlikely) to use code from their licensed Unix and put it into Linux and attempt to GPL it.
Doesn't really mean anything. You could have a company with each share not valued as much but with many shares issued, or with few shares but each share valued highly.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is not going away.
You mean in the way that IBM would always rule the computing world, or do you mean in the way that DEC was never going to go away?
MS won't be gone by 2010, but if they're around in 2015, they're goiung to be a much different company.
Allowing access? Hell, the little "Linux enthusiasts" in their OpenLinux division *DDoSed* their website! I'd say that there's more than a little material for lawsuits! :-)
Because Microsoft makes IIS.
Also, the majority of the investments came from upper-level management, not the board of directors.
No, Caldera did not make anywhere *near* 4 billion in their MS settlement -- it was about $150 million. Not pocket change, but nowhere near what you're claiming.
Very true. It's one of the odd curiosities I've always seen between security issues for Linux and Windows. Linux has the exploits published against applications, and Windows has them published against the OS when an application is exploited
I don't get it -- I've never seen this. Can you give an example? The only thing I can think of that you might be thinking of is that IE updates get classified under OS updates, as it's bundled with the OS.
Bryce 5
.doc files are bread-and-potatoes for you, Microsoft pretty much has you locked in.
I doubt there's going to be anything like it for Linux. The computer graphics world lost a brilliant man when Kai Krause retired.
Photoshop
If you do output for print, the Gimp is nowhere near Photoshop, and won't be for a while. If you do output for digital media, the Gimp can quite handily go toe-to-toe with Photoshop.
MS Office
Yup. Open Office is good enough for folks that occasionally have to interact with Office docs and are fed up with having to deal with Windows, but if
No. The patch lets the exec-shield be toggled off, and adds no more than 2-3 cycles per context switch. On a current x86 box running a vanilla 2.4 kernel, the maximum number of context switches per second is 100. That's a maximum of 300 cycles a second consumed. The oldest machine I've used running Linux was a 486/66 that a friend had. One of these can do at least 66 million cycles a second. On this elderly 486, there will be slowdown of less than a thousandth of a percent. Given that almost all major Linux applications are written in C, the security payoff is probably worth it. I value efficiency a lot, and even so the elimination of the largest security issue in Linux for less than a thousandth of a percent of the CPU time seems like a pretty good trade.
they must give you all the source, including that which they would consider closed, proprietary, trade secret, etc.
No. That is one possible (very unlikely) remedy. A judge is more likely to think that removing the GPLed code and paying a fine would be appropriate, though.
I think it'd be a bad idea to restrict it...but there is one thought in my mind.
If client/server software catches on and reliable broadband becomes universal, all companies need to do is provide a thin client running something like X or VNC or something higher level and never distribute any binaries.
The problem is that's obviously what Caldera *wants* to have happen. IBM wants to, as a long term policy, discourage dying companies from suing them for any IP they might be able to work with.
Intel has similar rules -- they have crosslicensing agreements, and flat fees of up to something like $100K for patents rights, but always fight IP issues other than that. As a result, you have to be a real idiot to go after Intel on IP grounds, because they *will* fight tooth and nail, and they have a lot of resources to pour into said fight. If IBM and Intel didn't maintain such policies, everyone would see them as cash-bloated companies and try to swipe a piece of the pie.
Well, let's see. First, SCO would probably be villified even more, and people with technical knowledge would demonstrate the minimality of whatever was taken.
Second, IBM would probably be blamed. "Oh, IBM was being stupid and got burned." The OSS community would distance themselves, as would RH and Suse (which are *not* liable, regardless of what McBride spouts in interviews).
Third, IBM would probably appeal (since IBM can't afford to lose the SCO license). So it'd drag on and on, almost certainly until after SCO goes under. If they were forced to, they'd honor the agreement. No one else would have to honor everything.
Fourth, Microsoft would probably use it as FUD material for a few years.
Fifth, SCO/Caldera employees would be reviled at conventions for a while.
In sum, it pretty much wouldn't have much of an impact on the Linux community.
You could say that SCO is intending to harm the Linux community.
Also, if some enterprising hacker broke into SCO and forwarded internal memos as leaked memos, I imagine that might work as proof.
I'm pretty sure you'd have to countersue for that.
I can't even figure out *what* could possibly be copied. This isn't a web browser. It's a kernel. You can't just swipe the scheduler from a completely different kernel and drop it into place. It'd be far harder than just writing the thing yourself.
IBM has for decades been respected for producing good but expensive products, most of the time. They also tend to take care of their customers reasonably well.
SCO has a long, rich tradition of being made fun of for their Unix distribution, which, to be blunt, sucked badly.
They haven't even listed a *technology* that they didn't like being reimplemented. They're just complaining that Linux couldn't possibly scale to enterprise-class use so quickly without stealing their code. It's a pretty inane lawsuit.
The problem is that ever since Caldera won the DR-DOS suit against MS, and made $150M or so, it's had the idea that the way to make money is to sue OS developers rather than to actually produce a good product.
And actually, they *used* to be useful -- siphoning money off MS is fine by me any day of the week. Attacking Linux development by trying to run off with the money that IBM is putting into Linux (and giving half to lawyers instead of software engineers) is less attractive, however.
Because the RIAA has the rights to good music, and SCO the rights to grotty, bad code.
This is actually a pretty good Ask Slashdot, for a change.
I know exactly what you want -- something like a text-based Hypercard...a front-end building toolkit. Also, the insight that computer operators tend to be significantly faster with text-based UIs is interesting.
Suggestions have included text-based web browsers (not really ideal...I think what the guy's thinking of is a screen-by-screen interface where there's no scrolling or anything, much like those custom DOS apps that banks use) and perl (AFAIK, perl will let you enter lines but doesn't natively have a great text-based UI tookit). I don't think any of these are really appropriate.
You may want to look at dialog. It's a GPLed higher-level toolkit that sits on ncurses that ships with (at least) Red Hat. This is probably simpler than what you want, though, and I don't believe it has a drag-and-drop-ish interface. That means you can't "draw" the forms, like you can with common GUI tools.
Another package, which is probably about as powerful as what you want, is newt (ships with RH and made by them, don't have an URL). The problem is that while this is a relatively high-level widget interface, it *still* isn't to the point of drawing your interface -- it requires coding. It's LGPLed.
I'd say that functions in ML (not functors) aren't generic, since they're assigned a fixed type once the type is inferred.
I've been trying to get myself to seriously try out eiffel for a while now. It seems to be the language closest to what I want, from what I've read.
* It's fairly high level
* For such a high level language, SmallEiffel produces very fast output -- not like Java or C# compilers.
* It does what I thought ML did -- each function acts like a templated function, and when you use a function, it instantiates a new appropriate template automatically. Very, very cool.
* It's heavily object-oriented, much like Java. This could be seen as good or bad.
* It takes assertions seriously.
CONS
* The only big downside is that it has a hellova lot of syntactic overhead.
No, because IBM has an SCO license. It's not illegal for another Linux vendor to sell Linux. It *is* a violation of contract for IBM (however unlikely) to use code from their licensed Unix and put it into Linux and attempt to GPL it.
Doesn't really mean anything. You could have a company with each share not valued as much but with many shares issued, or with few shares but each share valued highly.
Market capitalization is much more useful:
IBM:
Market Capitalization $147.9B
Caldera International:
Market Capitalization $40.2M
(Yahoo Quotes)
The CNN article isn't particularly clear on it, and the Slashdot article is likely wrong. It sounds like the worms were killed in space.