technology will be carried over from the bochs project to the freemware project. I am currently exploring what needs to be done license-wise to bring the device emulation from bochs to the open source freemware project.
Well, everywhere he says "open source." I hope he goes BSD-esque or GPL, but I'm afraid that it'll be something incompatible with GPL (and thus making it difficult for other authors to use it, seeing as GPL is by far the most popular license for new Free Software.)
Obviously the author of bochs can do whatever he sees fit with his code, include licensing it as part of freemware under whatever license it uses, and we hope he goes with a Good choice (even if it is incompatible with GPL or the vast majority of other licenses (ie, if it's not GPL or BSD/X type license), if it's Free Software it will be ok).
.. is that these layoffs have nothing to do with coders, and everything to do with a regular merger. No coders in Netscape were touched; it was mainly accounting and marketing-types. 'Technology' at AOL was affected, but I'm not sure what that means particularly.
In any case, this had little to no effect on Mozilla itself. Coders are still working as hard on it as they were a year ago.
In short, mozilla.org is failing to follow one of free software's most powerful and effective maxims: release early; release often. Just get the browser out there.
No, they haven't. I refer you to ftp.mozilla.org, on which you may find daily builds of Mozilla for many platforms, as well as a daily sourcedump.
1. Where is 4.51 for FreeBSD?
Who knows. Ask Netscape, that has nothing to do with Mozilla.org.
2. The option to send email in HTML should be emphatically discouraged in the Preferences dialogue box, indicating, for example, that it is highly experimental and will cause lots of pain to users of standards compliant email clients.
I agree. However, lacking a good formatting language for e-mail, which, indeed, is sometimes required, HTML is a good a markup language as any. Given my druthers, however, I would use plaintext only.
They release early and often. Check ftp.mozilla.org for proof - daily builds. Nearly all discussion about concepts, etc is done out in the open on the netscape.public.mozilla.* heirarchy of newsgroups. Mozilla is no cathedral.
What people don't realise is that there is nothing wrong with Mozilla as it is; it is simply not finished, that's all.
Windows 3.1: Netscape doesn't have the resources to support this right away. Do you want it badly? Code the support for it.
Gcc 2.8/egcs: Gcc 2.7.* sucks. It's much buggier than egcs or even gcc 2.8, and it does not support required things like namespaces, etc (Don't believe me? Ask Cygnus or the egcs people. gcc 2.7.3.2 is good for compiling the kernel because people have learned how to work around the bugs). In short, its support of C++ is lacking and it's therefore not good enough to compile Mozilla.
Actually, what you said *was* partially true a little while ago. However, Netscape realised this and said "To hell with it" and started over with raptor, aka nglayout, which, incidentally, *is* a complete rewrite (or as close to it as to render all else pointless).
Lots of independent developers are contributing: if not coding, then by bugfixing. Adam Lock, for example, has created the ActiveX Mozilla control. pavlov@pavlov.net (Sorry, not sure of his real name;) has also helped a lot with the gtk conversion. And there are plenty of people submitting bugreports, be it with crashes or misrenderings or unsupported stuff; check out bugzilla to see proof.
This is not a small thing. Has there been any confirmation from, say Linus himself -- or at least Transmeta? While I'm sure Linux development would go on no matter what (Linus has made that abundantly clear) this isn't a quick decision to be made - especially considering he's gotten settled in in California, as well as his children.
I'm not really sure what the point of your last paragraph is. The point of Free Software, the part that separates it from proprietary software and that which draws me to it is the fact that *anyone* can do pretty much what they see fit with it. While this also means people are free to choose (inferior) proprietary software, I use my liberty to choose to use the better of the two, when possible.
And yes, I've been forced to use proprietary software as my "bread and butter." Of course my aim is to change that, if not now, in the future.
There's only one real problem with your interpretation of "blowing our chances," and that's the fact that the community already exists in which we can live without crappy software. It's already thriving - it's the Free Software community. It's not hype: it truly does create non-crap.
I truly am worried, however, that esr feels that "blowing it" constitutes Free Software in general and Linux specifically not getting into the mainstream, PHB mentality. I'm sure that the majority of people don't care if Free Software (Linux) is used or believed in by PHBs. Does the fact that you haven't seen a car accident make it any less true?
I agree with you that it does no good to a revolution if everyone gets fed up. There are differences, but the reason anything ever gets done anywhere is that people get over them. Thus far, the Free Software community has done a pretty good job. Why would it fail now?
I don't know about anyone else, but if the proprietary software world, or the so-called "real" world, can't handle the fact that every single community has disagreements -- yes, even in their precious Microsoft -- then I don't want them. The only difference between any large software company and us is that our squabbles are in the public.
I say, let us blow our chances. If our chances involve us bowing to pressure from corporations or conglomerates, I want nothing to do with them. That's not what our community's about. It's never been what our community's about.
After all, we do want World Domination -- but we're taking it on our terms.
The > converted to > is not a slashdot problem but a netscape problem. If you check the page source you'll see that it is in fact > but netscape converts it to > for some reason. Probably in a standard somehwere but I'm unaware of exactly where it is.
hm. If it's not about the uptime, then what is it about? I've had to... allow for a couple more functions that I thought were ANSI but turned out to be Microsoft specific.
E is actually a pseudonym for the real name, Enlightenment - but I'm sure you knew that already, just informing the masses;) I've had to... allow for a couple more functions that I thought were ANSI but turned out to be Microsoft specific.
E 0.14 couldn't minimise. E 15 can. It also has root menu support. I've had to... allow for a couple more functions that I thought were ANSI but turned out to be Microsoft specific.
It seems you've been brainwashed by the Corporate Minds at Apple. Let's deal with your points:
The GPL is the reason Linux and Free Software are so popular - and work so well. It is not a hindrance any more than the kernel is a hindrance in an operating system. (it's the core of everything)
Linux is a project. I, and most other people, never want to see it become a product - because products are ruled by money and timelines rather than technical excellence.
GUI vs CLI, GNOME vs KDE, Mac vs the world. It's all a matter of opinion.
Multimedia is a POS mainly because there aren't any people willing to release specs. I applaud companies like Matrox who release full specs on their cards. Definitely the only way to go is up.
I have the funny feeling that MacOS 10 (X?) will turn out to be "just another" pseudoserver OS, kind of like NT and BeOS are. They're all based upon tried-and-true principles (UNIX) but just can't cut it when you compare it with the real thing.
Linux low-performance? As compared to what?
Hippy-crowd, eh?
Hippy licensing?
You're suffering from a severe lack of clue. We (the Free Software community) can't be defeated, and we know no limits. There's no such thing to us. Sure corporations are coming in and saying "gee isnt this swell" but I, and most others, really don't care all that much. We're in it for the challenge and the ride and the fun, and no matter how much corporate tablebanging and stockholder whining goes on, we don't care. We don't have a tickertape symbol and don't want one. Maybe Linux is approaching the end of its 15 minutes of fame. But once it's no longer the media darling we'll still be here, doing what we love, because we know it's the One True Way.
..that Qt will be free when 2.0 is released. However I'm not sure if this fixes the problem the Debian folk spotted - specifically, that it's illegal to distribute binaries of KDE linked against Qt if you're not the original developer. I know the reason Debian found that they couldn't do it was because Qt wasn't distributed with the base distribution and therefore didn't fall under the system libraries clause; however this new Free license probably allows Qt to be distributed with main.
Can anyone comment on whether it's now legal for non-authors (copyright holders) to ship binaries linked against Qt?
"Card carrying C++ programmers"? definitely not. Alan is a C programmer first and foremost. The majority of Free Software programmers are C programmers. (And perl. And python. And and and. Just not C++.)
All over I see people bashing GNOME for being 'not ready,' even if they haven't tried it yet. Those people don't realise that a major new release is nearly always quickly followed up with a patchlevel release. I didn't see you when it happened to samba 2.0 (.1,oops,.2, oops..) and I didn't see it happen when our beloved Linux kernel had its own brown-paper-bag bugs. It's always something - people have to bash or they can't have fun, or something.
To be fair, it's my general thought that once you think a project is completely finished, you should release it (as -final, a la Linus) about a week before you dub it x.0. There are *always* bugs that will only show up when you're ready to move to a new major release - they wait for it, maliciously. Evil bugs.;)
In any case, if you're going to bash a product for not being ready at a.0 major release, don't limit yourself to GNOME. Otherwise you're showing yourself to be the hypocrate (sp?) that you are.
that's because E is not written by the people who made GNOME, but by Raster and Mandrake. It just happens to be the most gnome-compliant window manager. If you don't like it, use Window Maker - that also obeys gnome hints.
Bugs are inevitable. Checking `critical' bugs, I see none. If everyone waited until every single bug is gone, we'd never ever get any software. Debian has bugs. Even with known fixes. And it will still ship 2.1 with those bugs intact, because sometimes you just can't risk fixing one bug and breaking ten other things. Somewhere, a line has to be drawn.
I was right. See here for ATI's stance on *nix and releasing specs in general.
ATI's 3D Register Specifications are considered proprietary and confidential, and as such have NOT been made available to 3rd party software developers.
3D acceleration support is currently limited to those drivers which are written by ATI to operate in Windows 98, Windows 95 and Windows NT.
At this time, ATI has no intention of writing 3D Accelerated drivers for any UNIX Environment. We also have no intention of releasing the proprietary information required to implement a 3D driver.
That's basically the gist of it. "Screw you. We own this card and we're not giving you information on it. Go to hell."
I'm all for releasing specs, but unfortunately 3dfx hasn't made the announcement I'd hoped they would make. 3Dfx released the 2D specs for their Voodoo Banshee card, but nothing else. While this is good - and it allows X support - it's not what I, and most other people want, which is 3D specs. GLX + Mesa + Precision Insight have the ability to get 'Real' (as in, not just 3dfx, and Open Source) OpenGL support onto Linux, but 3Dfx still thinks that it will benefit them to keep their information propreitary. Thanks but no thanks.
I am happy however, that Matrox has released their full G200 specs. (yes, including 3D). This means that Linux has a chance of getting an OpenGL ICD (ok, just checked, a non-beta ICD;) for the G200 before Windows has one;)
Does anyone have any information about Riva and the (3d) TNT specs? That's the card I really want, but I am desperate not to buy a card which has no specs (eg, not Free Software friendly).
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously the author of bochs can do whatever he sees fit with his code, include licensing it as part of freemware under whatever license it uses, and we hope he goes with a Good choice (even if it is incompatible with GPL or the vast majority of other licenses (ie, if it's not GPL or BSD/X type license), if it's Free Software it will be ok).
In any case, this had little to no effect on Mozilla itself. Coders are still working as hard on it as they were a year ago.
What people don't realise is that there is nothing wrong with Mozilla as it is; it is simply not finished, that's all.
Lots of independent developers are contributing: if not coding, then by bugfixing. Adam Lock, for example, has created the ActiveX Mozilla control. pavlov@pavlov.net (Sorry, not sure of his real name ;) has also helped a lot with the gtk conversion. And there are plenty of people submitting bugreports, be it with crashes or misrenderings or unsupported stuff; check out bugzilla to see proof.
Basically, what I'm saying, is "Is this true?"
And yes, I've been forced to use proprietary software as my "bread and butter." Of course my aim is to change that, if not now, in the future.
I truly am worried, however, that esr feels that "blowing it" constitutes Free Software in general and Linux specifically not getting into the mainstream, PHB mentality. I'm sure that the majority of people don't care if Free Software (Linux) is used or believed in by PHBs. Does the fact that you haven't seen a car accident make it any less true?
I agree with you that it does no good to a revolution if everyone gets fed up. There are differences, but the reason anything ever gets done anywhere is that people get over them. Thus far, the Free Software community has done a pretty good job. Why would it fail now?
Blowing our chances for what, particularly?
I don't know about anyone else, but if the proprietary software world, or the so-called "real" world, can't handle the fact that every single community has disagreements -- yes, even in their precious Microsoft -- then I don't want them. The only difference between any large software company and us is that our squabbles are in the public.
I say, let us blow our chances. If our chances involve us bowing to pressure from corporations or conglomerates, I want nothing to do with them. That's not what our community's about. It's never been what our community's about.
After all, we do want World Domination -- but we're taking it on our terms.
The > converted to > is not a slashdot problem but a netscape problem. If you check the page source you'll see that it is in fact > but netscape converts it to > for some reason. Probably in a standard somehwere but I'm unaware of exactly where it is.
I too had troubles, until I told Rob about it. He was able to log in find and now I am too. ;)
hm. If it's not about the uptime, then what is it about? ... allow for a couple more functions that I thought were ANSI but turned out to be Microsoft specific.
I've had to
E is actually a pseudonym for the real name, Enlightenment - but I'm sure you knew that already, just informing the masses ;) ... allow for a couple more functions that I thought were ANSI but turned out to be Microsoft specific.
I've had to
E 0.14 couldn't minimise. E 15 can. It also has root menu support. ... allow for a couple more functions that I thought were ANSI but turned out to be Microsoft specific.
I've had to
- The GPL is the reason Linux and Free Software are so popular - and work so well. It is not a hindrance any more than the kernel is a hindrance in an operating system. (it's the core of everything)
- Linux is a project. I, and most other people, never want to see it become a product - because products are ruled by money and timelines rather than technical excellence.
- GUI vs CLI, GNOME vs KDE, Mac vs the world. It's all a matter of opinion.
- Multimedia is a POS mainly because there aren't any people willing to release specs. I applaud companies like Matrox who release full specs on their cards. Definitely the only way to go is up.
- I have the funny feeling that MacOS 10 (X?) will turn out to be "just another" pseudoserver OS, kind of like NT and BeOS are. They're all based upon tried-and-true principles (UNIX) but just can't cut it when you compare it with the real thing.
- Linux low-performance? As compared to what?
- Hippy-crowd, eh?
- Hippy licensing?
You're suffering from a severe lack of clue. We (the Free Software community) can't be defeated, and we know no limits. There's no such thing to us. Sure corporations are coming in and saying "gee isnt this swell" but I, and most others, really don't care all that much. We're in it for the challenge and the ride and the fun, and no matter how much corporate tablebanging and stockholder whining goes on, we don't care. We don't have a tickertape symbol and don't want one. Maybe Linux is approaching the end of its 15 minutes of fame. But once it's no longer the media darling we'll still be here, doing what we love, because we know it's the One True Way.run!
Can anyone comment on whether it's now legal for non-authors (copyright holders) to ship binaries linked against Qt?
"Card carrying C++ programmers"? definitely not. Alan is a C programmer first and foremost. The majority of Free Software programmers are C programmers. (And perl. And python. And and and. Just not C++.)
To be fair, it's my general thought that once you think a project is completely finished, you should release it (as -final, a la Linus) about a week before you dub it x.0. There are *always* bugs that will only show up when you're ready to move to a new major release - they wait for it, maliciously. Evil bugs. ;)
In any case, if you're going to bash a product for not being ready at a .0 major release, don't limit yourself to GNOME. Otherwise you're showing yourself to be the hypocrate (sp?) that you are.
that's because E is not written by the people who made GNOME, but by Raster and Mandrake. It just happens to be the most gnome-compliant window manager. If you don't like it, use Window Maker - that also obeys gnome hints.
Bugs are inevitable. Checking `critical' bugs, I see none. If everyone waited until every single bug is gone, we'd never ever get any software. Debian has bugs. Even with known fixes. And it will still ship 2.1 with those bugs intact, because sometimes you just can't risk fixing one bug and breaking ten other things. Somewhere, a line has to be drawn.
They didn't. KDE is in contrib only. (contrib = repository for software which depends on non-free, afaik)
That's basically the gist of it. "Screw you. We own this card and we're not giving you information on it. Go to hell."
I am happy however, that Matrox has released their full G200 specs. (yes, including 3D). This means that Linux has a chance of getting an OpenGL ICD (ok, just checked, a non-beta ICD ;) for the G200 before Windows has one ;)
Does anyone have any information about Riva and the (3d) TNT specs? That's the card I really want, but I am desperate not to buy a card which has no specs (eg, not Free Software friendly).