Might I add that most of the people who are cheering on GPL/Free software are the ones who don't write software. They get free-beer software and so it's in their best interest to have developers churning out GPL'ed software. They need to "enslave" developers and keep them churning out free software.
I can guarantee you that if Linus and all the open source developers start saying, enough with free-beer, we want to get paid for sofware, you'll find these guys jumping off the Linux bandwagon in a heart beat. It's like how Redhat enforces its trademark on GPL'ed software and still gets paid.
GPL is the hobby and leisure of rich people who can afford to be charitable - after all RMS gets paid more for 1 talk than 1 Indian programmer makes all year and needs to feed a family of 4/6. RMS can get a roof over his head anyday even if he doesn't make money. Poor old Rajeev from Bombay stands in the rain if he's not paid for his programming skills (India doesn't have any safety nets for unemployed people).
Going BSD gives India a way to get a leg up on Western programmers. India doesn't have to share its IP with China or any other up and coming offshore programming outfit and shit that's the ONLY thing India got going.
Check out the OSS/3D plugin for XMMS (look under sound enhancing plugins) - WoW is the same as our Fidelity Enhance and TruBass is the same as our Bass/Virtual Subwoofer plugins.
If someone wants to license our OSS/3D and turn it into a DSP image, by all means call us. We also have Circle Surround compatible DSPs called Surroundizer and TheatreFX (http://www.oss3d.com/usite/tech.html)
More to the point, it is pretty obvious that xine allows binary plugins to be used. They sure haven't complained about their code being used to run existing Windows DLL's, have they?
Xine isn't like the Linux kernel where you are allowed to load binary-only modules/plugins. The license for Xine doesn't specify that in writing.
The Xine plugins to load Windows DLLs are all GPL'ed. If the plugins themselves are binary-only then we have a problem. The plugins don't do the decode, they simply call the wine-loader to load Windows DLLs. Decode happens in the Windows DLLs.
If your license is Mozilla/Apache/MIT-X/etc, you are in the clear. But that is precisely the reason there are no proprietary plugins for the GIMP which is released as GPL.
OTOH, they should have gone with XMMS which allows proprietary plugins because the plugin-API for XMMS is BSD licensed.
I looked at Xine's xine-plugin.h and it's under GPL. Hence anything that includes xine-plugin.h will be automatically gpl'ed.
Check out:
xine-plugin.h
Did Microsoft even look at what Turbolinux was doing with their family jewels?
Fedora uses -mregparm=3 but doesn't set CONFIG_REGPARM in the/boot/config-xxxx file which means that binary only driver and modules that (like our OSS sound drivers or ATI's drivers or NVidia's drivers or VMWare or Win4Lin) drivers have no way of knowing they are running on a REGPARM kernel or a standard kernel. Check out Fedora's griplist on REGPARM and NVidia. BTW, NVidia works perfectly with REGPARM and the vanilla 2.6.5 kernel from kernel.org.
CONFIG_REGPARM is marked *EXPERIMENTAL* and if you get the vanilla 2.6.5 kernel from www.kernel.org it's disabled by default.
When will the kernel developers quit making arbitrary changes?. Andrew Morton.....are you reading this?.
If CONFIG_REGPARM is beneficial, just don't make it an option and force everybody to use it or if it's flakey, don't use it at all and move it to Linux 2.7 - for crying out loud Linux 2.6 is supposed to be a STABLE branch.
As for SuSE griping about Redhat, SuSE do you remember when you guys added CONFIG_4GB and other non-standard stuff in Linux 2.4?. This caused all kinds of problems for memory maps. You still compile your kernels with CONFIG_MODVERSIONS disabled. Get with the plan ok?
And your GPL driver plays ArmyOps with Mesa and how many frames?- oh lets see 5 or 6 tops and then boom a crash!. Give me a freaking break. I have Nvidia's drivers and I can tell you they are a billion times better than the Xfree nv driver. I can care less about closed source and if Nvidia wanted money, I'd be happy to pay for them.
> And the remark about "people gotta eat" is wrong in so many ways. Proprietary software is _NOT_ the only way to make money... And what we are talking about here is a freaking driver, not a Word processor or some huge software package.
My friend, try writing a driver! Anybody with decent programming skills can write a word processor - we don't need yet another word processor but we do need more drivers.
And yes, programmers need to eat. It's bad enough that western programmers' jobs are getting off-shored, you now want us to give you everything for free?.
Tell IBM to write an open source driver for Nvidia's card - hell, with all the money IBM's saving using Linux and off shoring, they can pay Nvidia and open source their drivers.
Linux dead - hooray MS won!
on
United Linux Dead
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
This has to be good news - MS beats Wall St. estimates and now Linux is dead.
There's shite the US govt can do now. Maybe you should have thought about this when you go around starting Fab plants in Malaysia, China and India. Too bad your american employees cost you soo much compared to your asian employees but maybe you ought to transfer some us citizens to india and china and pay them asian wages (hmmm....I wonder if americans would like that?)
RealAudio (audio only) plugin is already available for XMMS.
See Input Plugins at http://www.xmms.org/plugins_input.html
rmxmms 0.5.1 / 4Front Technologies ( rmxmms at xmms.org)
Jun 23, 2001 RealAudio Input plugin for XMMS. With this plugin you are able to stream music on the Internet as well as play local files created for the RealMedia Player.
If you want to compile the source you'll need Real Systems SDK. To install the binary just copy libreal.so to ~/.xmms/Plugins/
Did you even read the contest rules?. What it says is that you can write any type of plugin: GPL or closed sourced. If you write GPL, we cannot sell it because it's GPL'ed, if it's closed source you keep your code and you sell your own plugin.
Loki's hack contest was similar but different in the sense that the free hacks help them sell more Civ:CTP games. We aren't selling XMMS - it's GPL'ed for heaven's sakes.
If you don't want to pay for OSS buy SuSE or Turbolinux - these vendors have put an unlocked (no support) version of OSS. If you want support, pay for OSS or use OSS/Free - they work just like the commercial drivers once you get them working. So where's the "OSS TAX" as you call it.
> OSS has always seemed like "baitware" to me - > give a version away for free, and then offer a > much improved version for sale.
FYI, OSS in the kernel existed 3 years before 4front was formed. OSS in the kernel was known as Voxware. So the commercial version came AFTER OSS already existed - so how can it be baitware?.
So let me get this right.....sendmail existed as opensource and now it becomes baitware just becuase Sendmail Inc. released Sendmail PRO????
In the same vein, X Windows becomes baitware just becuase XFree is opensource and MetroX and AccelX are commercial "closed source" versions?
According to your definition of baitware, if something is open sourced, there can absolutely be no closed sourced impelementation that exceeds the open source features.
The price of the SBPCI16 we put was basically what we paid for at CompUSA. This is a boxed version and perhaps it's available for cheaper on PriceWatch. We'll ask Creative Labs what the full retail price is.
If the prices have come down, we'll add a cash reward to the contest to make the final prize come out to $125.00.
Sincere apologies for not doing our homework on prices for SB PCI16s.
Here's the one and only message you'll get from 4Front and you can decide for yourself.
4Front is basically just two people: Hannu Savolainen and Dev Mazumdar (myself). Hannu is the author of OSS/Free which is 100% GPL'ed. We gave p lucerative "DAY JOBS", me at IBM and Hannu at an engineering company in Finland. Today, we are making less that what we can be making if we were working at day jobs and we are decent Linux programmers. We really like what we do - developing OSS drivers for Linux/UNIX.
Crocodile, Fatal and Peter are good friends of ours and they are "poor" guys and don't even make any signficant money. X11amp was stagnating because these guys were busy doing other things so I offered them some money to basically get them motivated to work full time on XMMS. Nobody who downloaded X11amp has offered a plug nickel to these guys!. We stepped up to the plate, and offered them a small token from our meager earnings. We each make less than $60,000 a year - we're not Redhat or VA with millions!. We work damn hard at supporting our customers and who else gives you a product for $20-$30 with free tech support for 2 years and free upgrades for 3 years?. Not Redhat, not Microsoft, not IBM,not Corel and not Caldera, not SuSE, Not Corel. Which two-man company have you seen that can support so many different soundcards, so many different OSs and keep up with the pace of Linux kernel releases?
If you care to see what our customers are saying, visit http://www.opensound.com/guest.html I can also share with you what our customers are raving about our tech support (email me!)
So now that these guys have joined 4Front, are you going to deny them the right to earn a living???? BTW, Crocodile makes some money selling OSS/Linux licenses in Sweden and all the proceeds go to him, Peter and Fatal.
The number of contributed plugins aren't coming in at the rate at which some of the Winamp or other Windows plugins are coming (says that OpenSource isn't up to keeping pace with Windows in the media dept).
So basically, yes, we are interested in getting XMMS working on all the versions of UNIX we support in OSS (besides Linux) but guys, OSS/Free is GPL, XMMS is GPL.
WHAT PART OF GPL DO YOU NOT GET?.
Go ahead and modify OSS/Free and XMMS all you want. Infact, we'd be too happy if you contributed any improvements to either one.
As for ALSA, we don't know if we can support it since ALSA's asound.h is GPL'ed which means that there can be no "closed sourced" application development. If Linus makes ALSA the standard driver in the kernel, so be it. We'll probably shutdown OSS for Linux and concentrate on other UNIX systems. In anycase, DO NOT CONFUSE OSS/Free and OSS/Linux. The commercial OSS drivers are waaay ahead of OSS/Free - Virtual Mixer, shadow devices for full duplex, more number of sound cards and a working ESS Solo-1/Maestro driver - we used the same docs available to everybody else - neither the ALSA nor OSS/Free have it working - we do!
We have no beef with ALSA guys, we wish them well and perhaps there's enough room in Linux for both APIs - we have never said anything derogatory to ALSA - while they continue to spread FUD about OSS - like no new technologies no new development. All I can say is you ain't seen what we've done with OSS for some of our customers who pay for our services to customise OSS. Here's a small sampling of our successes:
- OSS is used at a defence contractor building helicopter simulations using OSS with Terratec EWS64 soundcards with full DREAM 9407 working with 4 channel surround sound - but that driver isn't for sale to the general public!.
- OSS is used by Marquette Medical systems to build patient monitoring systems using VxWorks.
- OSS is used by Lockheed martin to build voice recognition systems for the next generation of battle tanks.
- OSS is used by Broardcast.com, ZDTV, and by the US Govt and yes, including Microsoft!!!!
- 4Front has donated OSS to the East Palo Alto Inner City Development Center for educating inner city youths.
- 4Front has donated free OSS licenses to all the major Linux audio developers - Alan Cox, Dave Phillips (Linux audio apps website), Sam Lantiga (SDL/Loki) Even some of the ALSA developers like P.J Leonard, all the KDE developers, all the FreeBSD developers. Luminaries like David Korn. Plus we're helping iD Software with Quake3 (see Zoid's.plan).
So the question is are we a Microsoft? Anybody can write a driver - we stepped in and tried to do the right thing, and now that we're making a few bucks (less than what Linus makes, and out of that we're giving some to the XMMS guys) and you're accusing us of Microsoft like tactics?.
I just want to say that if you like OSS/Linux, buy it and you'll be a happy customer, if you absolutely hate our guts, use ALSA or OSS/Free or why not write a driver under Joe's Sound System?. Also please explain why are OSS licenses being hotly pirated on irc if it totally sucked? - obviously we're doing something right!
4Front has been one of the first software companies developing for Linux and gpl'ing our products (we did give away SoftOSS, Yamaha OPL3-SAx and fixed up certain other drivers in OSS/Freee). Why are people so dead against us and not others like Perl, Cygnus, Scriptics, Sendmail - these apps are essential services for Linux and still they are "closed source products".????. If you think 4Front is a monopoly, so is Sendmail, so is Scriptics, so is every stinking successful Linux company - Redhat/SuSE/VA/Caldera/PHT. You have a choice - OSS/Linux or OSS/Free or ALSA or Roll-your-own sound driver (like Corel Netwinder, EMPeg, etc)!.
BTW, PLEASE BUY the JULY ISSUE OF Linux Journal, you'll read about our philosophy in an interview by Dave Phillips. A shameless plug at last:) (disclaimer: we're not making any money of LJ sales!)
Slashdot Mirror
Right on dude!
Might I add that most of the people who are cheering on GPL/Free software are the ones who don't write software. They get free-beer software and so it's in their best interest to have developers churning out GPL'ed software. They need to "enslave" developers and keep them churning out free software.
I can guarantee you that if Linus and all the open source developers start saying, enough with free-beer, we want to get paid for sofware, you'll find these guys jumping off the Linux bandwagon in a heart beat. It's like how Redhat enforces its trademark on GPL'ed software and still gets paid.
GPL is the hobby and leisure of rich people who can afford to be charitable - after all RMS gets paid more for 1 talk than 1 Indian programmer makes all year and needs to feed a family of 4/6. RMS can get a roof over his head anyday even if he doesn't make money. Poor old Rajeev from Bombay stands in the rain if he's not paid for his programming skills (India doesn't have any safety nets for unemployed people).
Going BSD gives India a way to get a leg up on Western programmers. India doesn't have to share its IP with China or any other up and coming offshore programming outfit and shit that's the ONLY thing India got going.
Check out the OSS/3D plugin for XMMS (look under sound enhancing plugins) - WoW is the same as our Fidelity Enhance and TruBass is the same as our Bass/Virtual Subwoofer plugins.
If someone wants to license our OSS/3D and turn it into a DSP image, by all means call us. We also have Circle Surround compatible DSPs called Surroundizer and TheatreFX
(http://www.oss3d.com/usite/tech.html)
Best regards
Dev Mazumdar
Xine isn't like the Linux kernel where you are allowed to load binary-only modules/plugins. The license for Xine doesn't specify that in writing. The Xine plugins to load Windows DLLs are all GPL'ed. If the plugins themselves are binary-only then we have a problem. The plugins don't do the decode, they simply call the wine-loader to load Windows DLLs. Decode happens in the Windows DLLs.
If your license is Mozilla/Apache/MIT-X/etc, you are in the clear. But that is precisely the reason there are no proprietary plugins for the GIMP which is released as GPL.
OTOH, they should have gone with XMMS which allows proprietary plugins because the plugin-API for XMMS is BSD licensed.
I looked at Xine's xine-plugin.h and it's under GPL. Hence anything that includes xine-plugin.h will be automatically gpl'ed. Check out: xine-plugin.h
Did Microsoft even look at what Turbolinux was doing with their family jewels?
Fedora uses -mregparm=3 but doesn't set CONFIG_REGPARM in the /boot/config-xxxx file which means that binary only driver and modules that (like our OSS sound drivers or ATI's drivers or NVidia's drivers or VMWare or Win4Lin) drivers have no way of knowing they are running on a REGPARM kernel or a standard kernel. Check out Fedora's griplist on REGPARM and NVidia. BTW, NVidia works perfectly with REGPARM and the vanilla 2.6.5 kernel from kernel.org.
CONFIG_REGPARM is marked *EXPERIMENTAL* and if you get the vanilla 2.6.5 kernel from www.kernel.org it's disabled by default.
When will the kernel developers quit making arbitrary changes?. Andrew Morton.....are you reading this?.
If CONFIG_REGPARM is beneficial, just don't make it an option and force everybody to use it or if it's flakey, don't use it at all and move it to Linux 2.7 - for crying out loud Linux 2.6 is supposed to be a STABLE branch.
As for SuSE griping about Redhat, SuSE do you remember when you guys added CONFIG_4GB and other non-standard stuff in Linux 2.4?. This caused all kinds of problems for memory maps. You still compile your kernels with CONFIG_MODVERSIONS disabled. Get with the plan ok?
And your GPL driver plays ArmyOps with Mesa and how many frames?- oh lets see 5 or 6 tops and then boom a crash!. Give me a freaking break. I have Nvidia's drivers and I can tell you they are a billion times better than the Xfree nv driver. I can care less about closed source and if Nvidia wanted money, I'd be happy to pay for them.
> And the remark about "people gotta eat" is wrong in so many ways. Proprietary software is _NOT_ the only way to make money... And what we are talking about here is a freaking driver, not a Word processor or some huge software package.
My friend, try writing a driver! Anybody with decent programming skills can write a word processor - we don't need yet another word processor but we do need more drivers.
And yes, programmers need to eat. It's bad enough that western programmers' jobs are getting off-shored, you now want us to give you everything for free?.
Tell IBM to write an open source driver for Nvidia's card - hell, with all the money IBM's saving using Linux and off shoring, they can pay Nvidia and open source their drivers.
This has to be good news - MS beats Wall St. estimates and now Linux is dead.
Check out http://www.opensound.com/virtmix.html
Is this what you are looking for?
Hey Andy,
There's shite the US govt can do now. Maybe you should have thought about this when you go around starting Fab plants in Malaysia, China and India. Too bad your american employees cost you soo much compared to your asian employees but maybe you ought to transfer some us citizens to india and china and pay them asian wages (hmmm....I wonder if americans would like that?)
RealAudio (audio only) plugin is already available for XMMS.
See Input Plugins at http://www.xmms.org/plugins_input.html
rmxmms 0.5.1 / 4Front Technologies ( rmxmms at xmms.org)
Jun 23, 2001
RealAudio Input plugin for XMMS. With this plugin you are able to stream music on the Internet as well as play local files created for the RealMedia Player.
If you want to compile the source you'll need Real Systems SDK. To install the binary just copy libreal.so to ~/.xmms/Plugins/
Did you even read the contest rules?. What it says is that you can write any type of plugin: GPL or closed sourced. If you write GPL, we cannot sell it because it's GPL'ed, if it's closed source you keep your code and you sell your own plugin.
Loki's hack contest was similar but different in the sense that the free hacks help them sell more Civ:CTP games. We aren't selling XMMS - it's GPL'ed for heaven's sakes.
If you don't want to pay for OSS buy SuSE or Turbolinux - these vendors have put an unlocked (no support) version of OSS. If you want support, pay for OSS or use OSS/Free - they work just like the commercial drivers once you get them working. So where's the "OSS TAX" as you call it.
Best regards
Dev Mazumdar
> OSS has always seemed like "baitware" to me -
> give a version away for free, and then offer a
> much improved version for sale.
FYI, OSS in the kernel existed 3 years before 4front was formed. OSS in the kernel was known as Voxware. So the commercial version came AFTER OSS already existed - so how can it be baitware?.
So let me get this right.....sendmail existed as opensource and now it becomes baitware just becuase Sendmail Inc. released Sendmail PRO????
In the same vein, X Windows becomes baitware just becuase XFree is opensource and MetroX and AccelX are commercial "closed source" versions?
According to your definition of baitware, if something is open sourced, there can absolutely be no closed sourced impelementation that exceeds the open source features.
Best regards
Dev Mazumdar
The price of the SBPCI16 we put was basically what we paid for at CompUSA. This is a boxed version and perhaps it's available for cheaper on PriceWatch. We'll ask Creative Labs what the full retail price is.
If the prices have come down, we'll add a cash reward to the contest to make the final prize
come out to $125.00.
Sincere apologies for not doing our homework on prices for SB PCI16s.
Best regards
Dev Mazumdar
Jwz, look at Geo's streaming Java video stuff
at http://www.emblaze.com/
I think this is what they mean...
Best regards
Dev Mazumdar
Hi,
.plan).
:) (disclaimer: we're not making any money of LJ sales!)
Here's the one and only message you'll get from 4Front and you can decide for yourself.
4Front is basically just two people: Hannu Savolainen and Dev Mazumdar (myself). Hannu is the
author of OSS/Free which is 100% GPL'ed. We gave p lucerative "DAY JOBS", me at IBM and Hannu at an engineering company in Finland. Today, we are making less that what we can be making if we
were working at day jobs and we are decent Linux programmers. We really like what we do - developing OSS drivers for Linux/UNIX.
Crocodile, Fatal and Peter are good friends of ours and they are "poor" guys and don't even make
any signficant money. X11amp was stagnating because these guys were busy doing other things so I offered them some money to basically get them motivated to work full time on XMMS. Nobody who downloaded X11amp has offered a plug nickel to these guys!. We stepped up to the plate, and offered them a small token from our meager earnings. We each make less than $60,000 a year - we're not Redhat or VA with millions!. We work damn hard at supporting our customers and who else gives you a product for $20-$30 with free tech support for 2 years and free upgrades for 3 years?. Not Redhat, not Microsoft, not IBM,not Corel and not Caldera, not SuSE, Not Corel. Which two-man company have you seen that can support so many different soundcards, so many different OSs and keep up with the pace of Linux kernel releases?
If you care to see what our customers are saying, visit http://www.opensound.com/guest.html
I can also share with you what our customers are raving about our tech support (email me!)
So now that these guys have joined 4Front, are you going to deny them the right to earn a living????
BTW, Crocodile makes some money selling OSS/Linux licenses in Sweden and all the proceeds go to him, Peter and Fatal.
The number of contributed plugins aren't coming in at the rate at which some of the Winamp or other Windows plugins are coming (says that OpenSource isn't up to keeping pace with Windows in the media dept).
So basically, yes, we are interested in getting XMMS working on all the versions of UNIX we support in OSS (besides Linux) but guys, OSS/Free is GPL, XMMS is GPL.
WHAT PART OF GPL DO YOU NOT GET?.
Go ahead and modify OSS/Free and XMMS all you want. Infact, we'd be too happy if you contributed any improvements to either one.
As for ALSA, we don't know if we can support it since ALSA's asound.h is GPL'ed which means that there can be no "closed sourced" application development. If Linus makes ALSA the standard driver in the kernel, so be it. We'll probably shutdown OSS for Linux and concentrate on other UNIX systems. In anycase, DO NOT CONFUSE OSS/Free and OSS/Linux. The commercial OSS drivers are waaay ahead of OSS/Free - Virtual Mixer, shadow devices for full duplex, more number of sound cards and a working ESS Solo-1/Maestro driver - we used the same docs available to everybody else - neither the ALSA nor OSS/Free have it working - we do!
We have no beef with ALSA guys, we wish them well and perhaps there's enough room in Linux for both APIs - we have never said anything derogatory to ALSA - while they continue to spread FUD about OSS - like no new technologies no new development. All I can say is you ain't seen what we've done with OSS for some of our customers who pay for our services to customise OSS. Here's a small sampling of our successes:
- OSS is used at a defence contractor building helicopter simulations using OSS with Terratec EWS64 soundcards with full DREAM 9407 working with 4 channel surround sound - but that driver isn't for sale to the general public!.
- OSS is used by Marquette Medical systems to build patient monitoring systems using VxWorks.
- OSS is used by Lockheed martin to build voice recognition systems for the next generation of battle tanks.
- OSS is used by Broardcast.com, ZDTV, and by the US Govt and yes, including Microsoft!!!!
- 4Front has donated OSS to the East Palo Alto Inner City Development Center for educating inner city youths.
- 4Front has donated free OSS licenses to all the major Linux audio developers - Alan Cox, Dave Phillips (Linux audio apps website), Sam Lantiga (SDL/Loki) Even some of the ALSA developers like P.J Leonard, all the KDE developers, all the FreeBSD developers. Luminaries like David Korn. Plus we're helping iD Software with Quake3 (see Zoid's
So the question is are we a Microsoft? Anybody can write a driver - we stepped in and tried to do the right thing, and now that we're making a few bucks (less than what Linus makes, and out of that we're giving some to the XMMS guys) and you're accusing us of Microsoft like tactics?.
I just want to say that if you like OSS/Linux, buy it and you'll be a happy customer, if you absolutely hate our guts, use ALSA or OSS/Free or why not write a driver under Joe's Sound System?. Also please explain why are OSS licenses being hotly pirated on irc if it totally sucked? - obviously we're doing something right!
4Front has been one of the first software companies developing for Linux and gpl'ing our products (we did give away SoftOSS, Yamaha OPL3-SAx and fixed up certain other drivers in OSS/Freee). Why are people so dead against us and not others like Perl, Cygnus, Scriptics, Sendmail - these apps are essential services for Linux and still they are "closed source products".????.
If you think 4Front is a monopoly, so is Sendmail, so is Scriptics, so is every stinking successful Linux company - Redhat/SuSE/VA/Caldera/PHT. You have a choice - OSS/Linux or OSS/Free or ALSA or Roll-your-own sound driver (like Corel Netwinder, EMPeg, etc)!.
BTW, PLEASE BUY the JULY ISSUE OF Linux Journal, you'll read about our philosophy in an interview by Dave Phillips. A shameless plug at last
Best regards
Dev Mazumdar