This article is written from a Windows-user point of view, surely (i.e. by someone who lives in a world where software does suck, bigtime). How many of those comments does anyone think applies to 'free' software?
We've really noticed how when our project gets email, the Windows users are "Hey! I've downloaded your software so you owe me a favour, and I want this changed, do it for me NOW!" and the ROTW (Rest of the World) is like "Thanks for trying guys, btw, maybe you could improve it by coding this idea/applying this patch)".
The worst part of this story for me is the rationalisation for it not being open source - "we can't because we now have other peoples IPR in there" (not that that stopped Netscape - they just removed the proprietary bits and then released the code).
Having been around the block on companies funded by VC, I can guess how this came about.
Man in Suit: So, how are we going to convince the stock market we're going to make money eventually?
Another Man in suit: Easy, port it to NT!
MIS: What about the Open Source issue?
AMIS: Easy, bolt some MS code in there and claim you can't release it as it contains IPR we don't own.
MIS: hur hur hur. Ok, let's do it.
Depending on how cynical you are, you could see this as checking the burn rate and thinking about the next round of VC funding.
Speaking as an employer, and as part of a company that shipped Windows-based products, we probably do what a lot of small companies do - use Free software extensively internally but ship products containing nothing but proprietary code (as that's where the money is)
The point is, companies that do use free software should recognise their debt to the Free software community and contribute back to it. Human nature being what it is, though, I suspect a lot of companies will just take take take and not Do the Right Thing and give the appropriate amount back to the community. We do what we can, because we don't want to live in a world dominated by BSOD's (I hate to think how much of my life has been wasted because of Microsofts policy of shipping shoddy code).
Also as an employer, when we're hiring coders (which we always are, so mail if you're interested) we'd take people with C and Linux over someone with C++ and MFC anyway....
Why not just set the disk to "Read only"? Most decent (SCSI) drives have a jumper that allows you to make the disk "Read only" in hardware, which will give you *nearly* the same security as a CDROM. You could write the jumper up to an external switch, or even a relay controlled by some other (appropriately protected) machine.
Personally, I find ZDNN articles extremely suspect. Clever, yes, but at some deep level pure FUD. For example, it was ZD with the bogus story about "Microsoft porting Office to Linux" (yeah right!) and with talk of MS splitting into 4 companies, I read ZDNN are on the one hand trying to 1) pretend MS is going the way the DOJ wants and 2) using FUD to maintain MS's illgotten position. (Me? Bitter? It only took 3 weeks to upgrade my NT system at work....)
I need to look into this in the morning, but at present it seems that the author is using our work, claiming that they are releasing under GPL but the download is BINARY ONLY FOR WINDOWS and source code is *NOT INCLUDED*. Our code works under W95/98 as well as Linux, and all source is available at the URL above. I will contact the author of RioGeo and request that a) as our code is GPL, he includes his source in the download and b) we are credited as requested in our copyright.
When we originally hacked the protocol, we only wrote a minimal program to demonstrate the usage, based on our work on the MpMan (which does both upload and download with equal facility - unlike the Rio). We don't have the time for the fs code, so it would be great to see this implemented. I have to say though, the engineering in the MpMan is way better than in the Rio.
Slashdot Mirror
I quote:
"XFree86 possesses considerable engineering talent, innovation and energy that X.Org is
well positioned to leverage...."
Doesn't that just sound someone in marketing who's just discovered something that'll save their bacon.....
Score: -5 (You're such a cynic!)
This article is written from a Windows-user point of view, surely (i.e. by someone who lives in a world where software does suck, bigtime). How many of those comments does anyone think applies to 'free' software?
We've really noticed how when our project gets email, the Windows users are "Hey! I've downloaded your software so you owe me a favour, and I want this changed, do it for me NOW!" and the ROTW (Rest of the World) is like "Thanks for trying guys, btw, maybe you could improve it by coding this idea/applying this patch)".
The worst part of this story for me is the rationalisation for it not being open source - "we can't because we now have other peoples IPR in there" (not that that stopped Netscape - they just removed the proprietary bits and then released the code).
Having been around the block on companies funded by VC, I can guess how this came about.
Man in Suit: So, how are we going to convince the stock market we're going to make money eventually?
Another Man in suit: Easy, port it to NT!
MIS: What about the Open Source issue?
AMIS: Easy, bolt some MS code in there and claim you can't release it as it contains IPR we don't own.
MIS: hur hur hur. Ok, let's do it.
Depending on how cynical you are, you could see this as checking the burn rate and thinking about the next round of VC funding.
Speaking as an employer, and as part of a company that shipped Windows-based products, we probably do what a lot of small companies do - use Free software extensively internally but ship products containing nothing but proprietary code (as that's where the money is)
The point is, companies that do use free software should recognise their debt to the Free software community and contribute back to it. Human nature being what it is, though, I suspect a lot of companies will just take take take and not Do the Right Thing and give the appropriate amount back to the community. We do what we can, because we don't want to live in a world dominated by BSOD's (I hate to think how much of my life has been wasted because of Microsofts policy of shipping shoddy code).
Also as an employer, when we're hiring coders (which we always are, so mail if you're interested) we'd take people with C and Linux over someone with C++ and MFC anyway....
Why not just set the disk to "Read only"? Most decent (SCSI) drives have a jumper that allows you to make the disk "Read only" in hardware, which will give you *nearly* the same security as a CDROM. You could write the jumper up to an external switch, or even a relay controlled by some other (appropriately protected) machine.
Personally, I find ZDNN articles extremely suspect. Clever, yes, but at some deep level pure FUD. For example, it was ZD with the bogus story about "Microsoft porting Office to Linux" (yeah right!) and with talk of MS splitting into 4 companies, I read ZDNN are on the one hand trying to 1) pretend MS is going the way the DOJ wants and 2) using FUD to maintain MS's illgotten position.
(Me? Bitter? It only took 3 weeks to upgrade my NT system at work....)
I rather miss RT-11 and PDP-11s actually (I've still got 3 or 4 LSI-11s here, must boot them again one day if only to see how rusty my Macro-11 is)
Actually, I rather think porting Linux onto a PDP11 would be a nice retirement project, it has a nice sense of historical completeness to it.
I need to look into this in the morning, but at present it seems that the author is using our work, claiming that they are releasing under GPL but the download is BINARY ONLY FOR WINDOWS and source code is *NOT INCLUDED*. Our code works under W95/98 as well as Linux, and all source is available at the URL above. I will contact the author of RioGeo and request that a) as our code is GPL, he includes his source in the download and b) we are credited as requested in our copyright.
When we originally hacked the protocol, we only wrote a minimal program to demonstrate the usage, based on our work on the MpMan (which does both upload and download with equal facility - unlike the Rio). We don't have the time for the fs code, so it would be great to see this implemented. I have to say though, the engineering in the MpMan is way better than in the Rio.