Dell pulled this crap with the XPS 700, their 'enthusiast' line of computer. It took months of furious customers to get them to publish a BIOS with the ability to turn VT back on. They also did a lot of other really evil stuff like selling a gutted version of the nForce 590 chip'set' despite not saying it was gutted, ditto for the X-Fi soundcard (they removed the library that lets anything but Dell's music player play DTS audio).
Despite your angst, PostgreSQL/is/ currently weak when it comes to replication. Trying to talk around that isn't going to lead anywhere. The only stable and well-maintained option right now is basic asynchronous replication which is unsuitable for many types of applications that require data integrity (e.g., read Slony's section on Failover and note the caveats). PostgreSQL is a great database, so I'm hoping that more sophisticated replication strategies will be in its near future.
I wonder what the angle will be - maybe they'll GPL the class libraries without a linking exception and claim you can't use GPL-incompatible software with the GPL version of Java? Or maybe they'll limit it to GPL2 to attempt to drive a wedge in the community? Or not open the class libraries at all? If it's really an honest 'GPL2 or greater' of the runtime and class libraries without any tricks, it will be a really amazing step by Sun, and to me, make up for their funding of the SCO attack. I can't imagine this happening though, so I'll have to wait for the actual announcement. If it does happen, the first order of business will likely be to port Beagle and F-Spot to Java to avoid Novell's implied claim that Mono is patent encumbered and Microsoft will be suing.
Compare the around 2% impact of running an OS built to be virtualization-friendly, like with Linux + Xen, to that of software/hardware solutions to virtualize unfriendly OSes. Massive difference. So, it makes sense to migrate whatever services you're running on Windows to Linux before moving to a virtualized deployment, as you'll save a bundle.
So rather than include support in Kororaa for Free Software 3D drivers like for the Intel GMA chipsets instead of the non-free drivers at issue.. they're going to take their ball and go home? Nice..
The "plot" is just plain weird but we'll excuse that on the basis that there isn't supposed to be any plot (read into the plot what you like but it's not present so you can say that anything "represents" anything you like... I hereby declare that the plot could be about Emo the technophobe not wanting to use the clunky old tech that his father used, in the same way I use CD's where my dad used vinyl).
Just because it was over your head doesn't mean it lacked plot.:) It was definately aimed at a more artsy audience (which was rather refreshing), but you should still be able to figure it out if you think about it for a bit. If you still can't get it, read the reply from 'Brkn' on the digged story and the post he's replying to.
http://digg.com/movies/Elephants_Dream,_the_Open_3 D_Animated_Movie_Released_On-line
A meaningful license would be a GPL and DFSG compatible Open Source license. Anything else is just jerking the community around and won't change the resistance to Java, or could cause forks.
I'm surprised at how many replies put some notion of 'market share' above the philosophy of a Free Software system. Have you all forgotten what got us to where we are now, or did you never know? Did RMS say "Geez, recreating UNIX from scratch is hard, I'll just fill in the gaps with some proprietary stuff so we can have it done sooner!". Did Linus say "Geez, writing a kernel is hard, I should just add a couple features to Minix and it'll be done much faster!". Did the GNOME project say "Geez, writing a widget set from scratch is hard, let's just use the non-free Qt release like KDE and it'll be done much faster!". Hell no. They scarificed, and their sacrifice and hard work are why you have the GNU/Linux system you use today. Do you really think all the corporate support we have now would exist had people caved in and dropped the philosophy? Maybe you should ask the FreeBSD people about Apple if you're not sure.
Sacrifice is not easy, but is required. Making it easy to not sacrifice, like with automatix, win32codecs, etc. is only harming GNU/Linux. Why would anyone encode in or advocate Ogg Vorbis when you've made it easy for everyone to not sacrifice and use mp3 illegally? Why would anyone write Open Source 3D drivers when you've made it easy for everyone to not sacrifice and use binary-only 3D drivers? Why would anyone write Linux games when you've made it easy for everyone to not sacrifice and use pieces of proprietary Windows to run them? Quite simply, they won't. You relieve the pressure in the steam engine that is Open Source development, and the engine just simply won't run.
This isn't an issue of "Oh well, at least the programmers that actually make this stuff care about the philosophy and will save us from ourselves" - you can't just ignore a population problem like that. Everyone needs to be on board, we need advocacy and strength, not sloth and waffling, and especially not people attempting to tear down the philosophy from the inside as this thread reeks of. Build pressure. You might not be able to program but you can still make a difference. See someone producing content in a format that can't be read by a Free system? Complain, and point them to an alternative. See a company refusing to release Free drivers or specs for hardware you want to buy? Complain, tell them why it matters. See people writing web pages that can't be viewed by a Free system? Complain, and tell them how to write web pages right. See a Free project that could overcome any of the problems you're facing? Chearlead and advocate it, show the developers their work is important to you, and refuse to use non-free alternatives.
Don't attack the philosophy that fed you, be prepared to sacrifice and work. It's why the world's changing, and I want to see that change to its finale.
I switched all my RedHat boxes to Debian Woody a few months ago. Fedora wasn't an option as I require a stable distribution. It was initially painful as I had to relearn all the details (I'm a rather hard-core Linux user and programmer), and the install of Woody was a nightmare each time, but it's a much better system than any distribution I've used before, and that Debian basically packages the universe makes it easy to maintain machines with different requirements. Some software I needed more current than came with Woody I could get backports for (PHP 4.3+, Subversion, etc.), and they fit cleanly into the system. Having learned the hard way that 3rd party RPMs spell disaster, I was quite suprised that these 3rd party Debian packages work so well - it's probably due to it being fairly easy to port the logic of the package in unstable to older distributions. It's also much smoother to put together Debian packages, so I've been able to make my own apt repositories for custom software we need on the machines here with minimal work.
All in all, Debian was what I should have been using all along (I've been using RedHat since 1996), as it's truly a wonderful distribution, has a well-managed and supported stable branch, and the entire process is open. The only problem is, Woody's installer is a disaster, and it's hard to find installers that support modern hardware (e.g., 137GB+ drives). Hopefully Sarge's installer won't be that bad, and will be kept up to date. As-is, the only 'installer' for Woody I've ever gotten to work is doing a chroot install from Knoppix.
What a lot of Slashdot readers seem to be missing is that this isn't just a renamed RedHat Linux - this is an unstable branch by definition (the 'proving grounds' for RedHat's commercial offerings), and its goals do not include creating an OS you can use for real work.
Red Hat will retain editorial control over The Fedora Project but will explicitly include external developers in the process of making technical decisions that align with the project objectives.
This immediately begs the question, what are the project objectives besides just development? Well, what they expect you to be able to do with Fedora is listed at the top of the page:
Community users may:
- Participate in development of open source software
- Report bugs
- Test software
- Advocate Open Source, Linux
- Participate in mailing lists
- Experiment with the technology
- Help others in the community
- Educate students
Did you notice "Use the OS" was missing from that list? It's no accident. Their intent seems to be like Microsoft's shared source; for educational/experimental use only (and free labor).
Now obviously it's still Open Source, and you can still do whatever you want with it, but they aren't aiming to keep a stable branch, and they aren't expecting people to use it for work other than developing/testing it, and they're going to be guiding the project as such, and potentially standing in the way of those that try to do otherwise, as they say on that page.
I've been looking into this and my options since I saw it announced, as I have several RedHat systems, one of which I only use as my answering machine (mgetty+voice), and I can't justify $800/yr for tasks like that just to not have them hacked. I also don't want to be constantly fixing/upgrading those kind of installations as I would with Fedora or other unstable branch distributions. It looks like I'll be converting to Debian's stable branch and selectively mixing in some things from Debian's other branches as needed. It seems to be the only option now for a stable distribution, but appears to be a pretty good one.
So, what does BitKeeper have that Subversion doesn't yet? Is there some killer feature that would be worth implementing sooner rather than later that would make it a good replacement?
SCO continues to shoot itself in the foot with its public statements. let's review two sections of the GPL:
"b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
"4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance."
SCO could have claimed that since they did not know of the alleged code, that they have not granted rights to that piece of code by distributing it. however, they have stated that they knew months in advance of the lawsuit of the alleged code, and continued to sell and distribute their Linux distribution. They have also continued to distribute their Linux distribution via FTP, and now, they prove in this letter that they know they have distributed the alleged code to their customers, and are planning to hold them harmless instead of removing it from their distributions.
So, we have two cases:
1. That SCO has granted rights to the code in question under the GPL by knowingly distributing it. In this case, they have no case against anyone but the original infringer.
2. That SCO has not granted rights to the code in question under the GPL. In this case, they have voided the license to distribute the kernel under the GPL, and have been knowingly stealing Linux, as they have no other rights to distribute it under. Their announced plan for the future is to continue stealing it for benefit of their customers. They could be sued by everyone who has contributed to the kernel for stealing their IP.
So, SCO is simply doomed regardless of the validity of their case.
However, if you've been reading the daily SCO articles and interviews, the whole stolen code thing is just misdirection and FUD. What they are really claiming is that anyone who has touched an invention to System V has not only given SCO rights to that invention, but has given up their own rights to that invention. This is simply madness, but this is their claim. This is their basis for claiming non-SCO technologies like IBM's JFS, and claiming that hundreds of thousands of lines of code in Linux are infringing. The sheer audacity of this claim, that they exclusively own 20 years worth of other people's inventions, is probably why they have avoided seeking a temporary injunction, because they would have to make this argument in court immediately, and it would never hold up. They want this to drag on as long as possible in hopes their slander and libel against Linux pays off on its own.
PNG is supported on every browser and has been for years, even PocketPCs support it.
'gif'-like PNGs, truecolor PNGs, and boolean transparent PNGs work great everywhere, but IE (for Windows; IE for PocketPC and Mac render fine, go figure) can't handle variable alpha transparent PNGs without tricks (and the 'AlphaImageLoader' trick fails on https:// addresses due to another IE bug, horray Microsoft).
There's no reason to use non-animated gif rather than PNG. PNGs are smaller (some crappy programs do a poor job of compressing them, convert PNG to PNG in GraphicsMagik to shrink), can do truecolor so you don't have ugly dithered gif graphics, and can do variable alpha transparency (although 5 year old bugs in x86/IE require detecting IE and spitting out ugly MS-specific HTML for this; most people just settle for boolean transparency, which is a shame). Even ignoring the functionality that is hard or impossible to use on x86/IE due to IE being a buggy mess, PNG still does more than gif (except animations - almost no one supports MNG right now).
Recent versions of gd and PHP have support for all these PNG modes. I know, as I fixed them.;)
There's a 'promiscuous mode' you can enable that lets you disclose online status or online status and location to everyone rather than just your buddies. Then you become part of that clutter that can be interacted with.;)
It's the best way I could think of to implement such a system to allow for meeting strangers as well as meeting those in your subcommunity while still giving users full and total control over what information they want to publish about themselves and to who. Promiscuous mode is pretty popular. There's also a location-based 'graffiti' system (It's a _lot_ nicer now than in the screenshots in the paper) that anyone can post to and everyone can see which might introduce you to some different people to say the least.;)
If you've got some better ideas on how to do this, I'd like to hear them.
Actually, it already has a 'friends' list of people as you say (only the friends you've chosen can see your location or if you're logged in), and there's a control for turning on and off the automatic geolocation as well. You can also manually set the location your friends will see to whatever you want like out in the Pacific ocean.:) We have a location-aware instant messaging thingy which will soon let you broadcast to all your nearby friends, which would be a pretty cool thing to have in class I think, and we're looking into getting that component integrated with Jabber.
The Salon article really put some effort into making it sound evil, but it's not about creating new ways to be Big Brother, it's about researching what useful applications, especially in an educational context, can be made by giving people control over their own location information that previously only network admins and hackers had access to.
Slashdot Mirror
Dell pulled this crap with the XPS 700, their 'enthusiast' line of computer. It took months of furious customers to get them to publish a BIOS with the ability to turn VT back on. They also did a lot of other really evil stuff like selling a gutted version of the nForce 590 chip'set' despite not saying it was gutted, ditto for the X-Fi soundcard (they removed the library that lets anything but Dell's music player play DTS audio).
Despite your angst, PostgreSQL /is/ currently weak when it comes to replication. Trying to talk around that isn't going to lead anywhere. The only stable and well-maintained option right now is basic asynchronous replication which is unsuitable for many types of applications that require data integrity (e.g., read Slony's section on Failover and note the caveats). PostgreSQL is a great database, so I'm hoping that more sophisticated replication strategies will be in its near future.
Verisign abuses their monopoly and shouldn't be allowed to keep it. http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=11 569
I wonder what the angle will be - maybe they'll GPL the class libraries without a linking exception and claim you can't use GPL-incompatible software with the GPL version of Java? Or maybe they'll limit it to GPL2 to attempt to drive a wedge in the community? Or not open the class libraries at all? If it's really an honest 'GPL2 or greater' of the runtime and class libraries without any tricks, it will be a really amazing step by Sun, and to me, make up for their funding of the SCO attack. I can't imagine this happening though, so I'll have to wait for the actual announcement. If it does happen, the first order of business will likely be to port Beagle and F-Spot to Java to avoid Novell's implied claim that Mono is patent encumbered and Microsoft will be suing.
Compare the around 2% impact of running an OS built to be virtualization-friendly, like with Linux + Xen, to that of software/hardware solutions to virtualize unfriendly OSes. Massive difference. So, it makes sense to migrate whatever services you're running on Windows to Linux before moving to a virtualized deployment, as you'll save a bundle.
So rather than include support in Kororaa for Free Software 3D drivers like for the Intel GMA chipsets instead of the non-free drivers at issue.. they're going to take their ball and go home? Nice..
You can't magically evade the GPL by adding a layer. That's a good thing, as it keeps software Free.
A meaningful license would be a GPL and DFSG compatible Open Source license. Anything else is just jerking the community around and won't change the resistance to Java, or could cause forks.
I'm surprised at how many replies put some notion of 'market share' above the philosophy of a Free Software system. Have you all forgotten what got us to where we are now, or did you never know? Did RMS say "Geez, recreating UNIX from scratch is hard, I'll just fill in the gaps with some proprietary stuff so we can have it done sooner!". Did Linus say "Geez, writing a kernel is hard, I should just add a couple features to Minix and it'll be done much faster!". Did the GNOME project say "Geez, writing a widget set from scratch is hard, let's just use the non-free Qt release like KDE and it'll be done much faster!". Hell no. They scarificed, and their sacrifice and hard work are why you have the GNU/Linux system you use today. Do you really think all the corporate support we have now would exist had people caved in and dropped the philosophy? Maybe you should ask the FreeBSD people about Apple if you're not sure.
Sacrifice is not easy, but is required. Making it easy to not sacrifice, like with automatix, win32codecs, etc. is only harming GNU/Linux. Why would anyone encode in or advocate Ogg Vorbis when you've made it easy for everyone to not sacrifice and use mp3 illegally? Why would anyone write Open Source 3D drivers when you've made it easy for everyone to not sacrifice and use binary-only 3D drivers? Why would anyone write Linux games when you've made it easy for everyone to not sacrifice and use pieces of proprietary Windows to run them? Quite simply, they won't. You relieve the pressure in the steam engine that is Open Source development, and the engine just simply won't run.
This isn't an issue of "Oh well, at least the programmers that actually make this stuff care about the philosophy and will save us from ourselves" - you can't just ignore a population problem like that. Everyone needs to be on board, we need advocacy and strength, not sloth and waffling, and especially not people attempting to tear down the philosophy from the inside as this thread reeks of. Build pressure. You might not be able to program but you can still make a difference. See someone producing content in a format that can't be read by a Free system? Complain, and point them to an alternative. See a company refusing to release Free drivers or specs for hardware you want to buy? Complain, tell them why it matters. See people writing web pages that can't be viewed by a Free system? Complain, and tell them how to write web pages right. See a Free project that could overcome any of the problems you're facing? Chearlead and advocate it, show the developers their work is important to you, and refuse to use non-free alternatives.
Don't attack the philosophy that fed you, be prepared to sacrifice and work. It's why the world's changing, and I want to see that change to its finale.
Anyone know if Theora's reference decoder uses floating point math, or is it all fixed integer? I.e., can it run on Familiar Linux on PDAs?
I switched all my RedHat boxes to Debian Woody a few months ago. Fedora wasn't an option as I require a stable distribution. It was initially painful as I had to relearn all the details (I'm a rather hard-core Linux user and programmer), and the install of Woody was a nightmare each time, but it's a much better system than any distribution I've used before, and that Debian basically packages the universe makes it easy to maintain machines with different requirements. Some software I needed more current than came with Woody I could get backports for (PHP 4.3+, Subversion, etc.), and they fit cleanly into the system. Having learned the hard way that 3rd party RPMs spell disaster, I was quite suprised that these 3rd party Debian packages work so well - it's probably due to it being fairly easy to port the logic of the package in unstable to older distributions. It's also much smoother to put together Debian packages, so I've been able to make my own apt repositories for custom software we need on the machines here with minimal work. All in all, Debian was what I should have been using all along (I've been using RedHat since 1996), as it's truly a wonderful distribution, has a well-managed and supported stable branch, and the entire process is open. The only problem is, Woody's installer is a disaster, and it's hard to find installers that support modern hardware (e.g., 137GB+ drives). Hopefully Sarge's installer won't be that bad, and will be kept up to date. As-is, the only 'installer' for Woody I've ever gotten to work is doing a chroot install from Knoppix.
Go to the 'about Fedora' page and first read:
This immediately begs the question, what are the project objectives besides just development? Well, what they expect you to be able to do with Fedora is listed at the top of the page: Did you notice "Use the OS" was missing from that list? It's no accident. Their intent seems to be like Microsoft's shared source; for educational/experimental use only (and free labor).Now obviously it's still Open Source, and you can still do whatever you want with it, but they aren't aiming to keep a stable branch, and they aren't expecting people to use it for work other than developing/testing it, and they're going to be guiding the project as such, and potentially standing in the way of those that try to do otherwise, as they say on that page.
I've been looking into this and my options since I saw it announced, as I have several RedHat systems, one of which I only use as my answering machine (mgetty+voice), and I can't justify $800/yr for tasks like that just to not have them hacked. I also don't want to be constantly fixing/upgrading those kind of installations as I would with Fedora or other unstable branch distributions. It looks like I'll be converting to Debian's stable branch and selectively mixing in some things from Debian's other branches as needed. It seems to be the only option now for a stable distribution, but appears to be a pretty good one.
So, what does BitKeeper have that Subversion doesn't yet? Is there some killer feature that would be worth implementing sooner rather than later that would make it a good replacement?
SCO continues to shoot itself in the foot with its public statements. let's review two sections of the GPL:
"b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
"4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance."
SCO could have claimed that since they did not know of the alleged code, that they have not granted rights to that piece of code by distributing it. however, they have stated that they knew months in advance of the lawsuit of the alleged code, and continued to sell and distribute their Linux distribution. They have also continued to distribute their Linux distribution via FTP, and now, they prove in this letter that they know they have distributed the alleged code to their customers, and are planning to hold them harmless instead of removing it from their distributions.
So, we have two cases:
1. That SCO has granted rights to the code in question under the GPL by knowingly distributing it. In this case, they have no case against anyone but the original infringer.
2. That SCO has not granted rights to the code in question under the GPL. In this case, they have voided the license to distribute the kernel under the GPL, and have been knowingly stealing Linux, as they have no other rights to distribute it under. Their announced plan for the future is to continue stealing it for benefit of their customers. They could be sued by everyone who has contributed to the kernel for stealing their IP.
So, SCO is simply doomed regardless of the validity of their case.
However, if you've been reading the daily SCO articles and interviews, the whole stolen code thing is just misdirection and FUD. What they are really claiming is that anyone who has touched an invention to System V has not only given SCO rights to that invention, but has given up their own rights to that invention. This is simply madness, but this is their claim. This is their basis for claiming non-SCO technologies like IBM's JFS, and claiming that hundreds of thousands of lines of code in Linux are infringing. The sheer audacity of this claim, that they exclusively own 20 years worth of other people's inventions, is probably why they have avoided seeking a temporary injunction, because they would have to make this argument in court immediately, and it would never hold up. They want this to drag on as long as possible in hopes their slander and libel against Linux pays off on its own.
PNG is supported on every browser and has been for years, even PocketPCs support it.
;)
'gif'-like PNGs, truecolor PNGs, and boolean transparent PNGs work great everywhere, but IE (for Windows; IE for PocketPC and Mac render fine, go figure) can't handle variable alpha transparent PNGs without tricks (and the 'AlphaImageLoader' trick fails on https:// addresses due to another IE bug, horray Microsoft).
There's no reason to use non-animated gif rather than PNG. PNGs are smaller (some crappy programs do a poor job of compressing them, convert PNG to PNG in GraphicsMagik to shrink), can do truecolor so you don't have ugly dithered gif graphics, and can do variable alpha transparency (although 5 year old bugs in x86/IE require detecting IE and spitting out ugly MS-specific HTML for this; most people just settle for boolean transparency, which is a shame). Even ignoring the functionality that is hard or impossible to use on x86/IE due to IE being a buggy mess, PNG still does more than gif (except animations - almost no one supports MNG right now).
Recent versions of gd and PHP have support for all these PNG modes. I know, as I fixed them.
It's the best way I could think of to implement such a system to allow for meeting strangers as well as meeting those in your subcommunity while still giving users full and total control over what information they want to publish about themselves and to who. Promiscuous mode is pretty popular. There's also a location-based 'graffiti' system (It's a _lot_ nicer now than in the screenshots in the paper) that anyone can post to and everyone can see which might introduce you to some different people to say the least. ;)
If you've got some better ideas on how to do this, I'd like to hear them.
Actually, it already has a 'friends' list of people as you say (only the friends you've chosen can see your location or if you're logged in), and there's a control for turning on and off the automatic geolocation as well. You can also manually set the location your friends will see to whatever you want like out in the Pacific ocean. :) We have a location-aware instant messaging thingy which will soon let you broadcast to all your nearby friends, which would be a pretty cool thing to have in class I think, and we're looking into getting that component integrated with Jabber.
The Salon article really put some effort into making it sound evil, but it's not about creating new ways to be Big Brother, it's about researching what useful applications, especially in an educational context, can be made by giving people control over their own location information that previously only network admins and hackers had access to.