Yes, companies have a right to defent their IP, yes we need to encourage innovation & research, etc.
But, there is a limit to this. Remember when Apple and Microsoft effectively both tried to copyright the GUI? (which they had both ripped off from Xerox anyway) what it they had succeeded? What if the judge had come down firmly for one side or the other?
If one company has the exclusive right to produce PCs that look good and are designed for the home, it would be as damaging to the computer industry as if only one company had the right to make GUIs.
Yes, the eOne was clearly trying to pass itself off as an iMac, both in name and looks, which could confuse consumers and steal customers from Apple; but this is like Sony trying to prevent other hi-fi manufacturers from selling hi-fis with black boxes.
Re:OT - SMP will barely help at all.
on
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Hmmm, Quake III runs dual-proc. I seem to recall John Carmack's.plan claiming that there was up to a 50-70% speed up - mmmmmm:-)
This would make sense. I remember when the Voodoo2 came out, benchmarks on lower spec PCs showed no speed up over the old Voodoo cards. The reason was, that the slower pentiums couldn't kick out data fast enough to keep up with the graphics cards.
I also remember hearing that back in the days of Wolfenstein/Doom *half* of the processor time was spent in user input routines. I don't know if this is an exagerated figure, but both these facts would support the fact that splitting graphics rendering/world update into seperate threads will speed the game up.
OTOH - you're probably right - at least in the short term it is unlikely to many games players will be owning SMP machines, so this will not have too big an impact.
Meanwhile, he's been doing development, so now he has his changes PLUS the other guy's changes, and he comes out on top.
Better still, they both get their own changes, and the other guys changes, so they both produce better software, so it is the user who comes out on top as he gets a choice of two brilliant programs.
There's no chance that the 24 CPU box will run Linux. IBM is not interested in porting it to the big iron. They would like to keep Linux on the small scale where people expect to see it.
Hmmm. Look at SGI. They were in the same situation, stuck choosing between their own Unix and Linux. In many surveys Irix seems to rank as more popular with admins than AIX. Can IBM afford to develop, build on and support AIX at the same rate as the Linux is developed by the community?
There is too much specialized hardware in a S80 to ever expect that Linux would run on it.
Remember, the work needs doing whether you are getting AIX or Linux running on the machine.
Okay, so my comments were a bit of a rant against a general attitude amongst some posters on Slashdot, of Sun/Apple/etc licences being evil, and GPL being good - and more broadly all free software being a Good Thing and all commercial software being a Bad Thing.
Hey, what did you expect - a rational and unbiased opinion on Slashdot?;)
Great article, and yeah, you got a lot of good points on how restrivtive the licence is.
BTW I wasn't intending to condem RedHat for tightening up the use of their trademark, (I imagine this will help prevent newbies being ripped off being sold copy RH cds expecting tech support) - I was just suggesting that this might be the start of a trend of RH trying to protect their investments.
Apologies if my comments offended, they were not intended to.
In the article he seems to draw the conclusion that the SCSL restricts freedom, compared to the GPL, but in my opinion this is not necessarily the case. Contrary to most people's opinions here I think that StarOffice is now free as in "free-speech", but not as in "free-beer".
The SCSL means that if a company wishes to profit from distributing StarOffice, they must pay royalties to Sun. This is fair enough, as Sun have invested money in buying the product. For example, were RedHat to include SO in their distribution, Sun would have a right to demand a cut of the money RedHat made.
However, if Sun chose to cease to support a particular platform, or took the product in a direction that the user base did not like, then the source is available. The community could continue to develop and support the product itself. They cannot take StarOffice away from you, or hamper it by failing to support new technologies, requiring you to move on to a new product (eg. try using MS Office95 in an environment where collegues are handing you Office97 documents - it soon becomes necessary to upgrade).
The main point I want to make is this: look at RedHat's recent activity with trademarks. RedHat are in a position where anyone can visit RH's web site, download RH's distribution, cut CDs and sell it as their own product. If Redhat could release their Linux distro under SCSL they could demand royalties off anyone doing this, however as Linux is GPLed they can't, so they cannot make any money out of people ripping off their hard work. So instead they turn to tightening their trademarks. What next? incorporate propriety non-GPLed software into RedHat Linux, to prevent other people re-distribuing it? Introduce closed standards and file formats? The GPL introduces many problems for a company like RedHat, preventing them from making fair profit and pushing them into these sorts of tricks.
At the an operating system is only useful if it has software to run on it. Developers will only produce software for Linux if it has a large enough user base. Users will only come to Linux in large numbers if it is relatively easy to use. Companies like RedHat will only work on Linux, and support projects such as Gnome, KDE, and Enlightenment, if they can make a profit in return. Draw your own concusions about where Linux goes from here under thr GPL.
Just my opinion - I'm just saying the GPL isn't perfect. Okay, so I've insulted the GPL. Let the flaming begin:P
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But, there is a limit to this. Remember when Apple and Microsoft effectively both tried to copyright the GUI? (which they had both ripped off from Xerox anyway) what it they had succeeded? What if the judge had come down firmly for one side or the other?
If one company has the exclusive right to produce PCs that look good and are designed for the home, it would be as damaging to the computer industry as if only one company had the right to make GUIs.
Yes, the eOne was clearly trying to pass itself off as an iMac, both in name and looks, which could confuse consumers and steal customers from Apple; but this is like Sony trying to prevent other hi-fi manufacturers from selling hi-fis with black boxes.
This would make sense. I remember when the Voodoo2 came out, benchmarks on lower spec PCs showed no speed up over the old Voodoo cards. The reason was, that the slower pentiums couldn't kick out data fast enough to keep up with the graphics cards.
I also remember hearing that back in the days of Wolfenstein/Doom *half* of the processor time was spent in user input routines. I don't know if this is an exagerated figure, but both these facts would support the fact that splitting graphics rendering/world update into seperate threads will speed the game up.
OTOH - you're probably right - at least in the short term it is unlikely to many games players will be owning SMP machines, so this will not have too big an impact.
Ah - the famous 'moderator smoking crack syndrome' strikes again.
They are _meant_ to have SMP disabled ;-)
as mentioned above, check out the Abit BP6 for a dual Celery mobo - and more info at www.bp6.com.
Meanwhile, he's been doing development, so now he has his changes PLUS the other guy's changes, and he comes out on top.
Better still, they both get their own changes, and the other guys changes, so they both produce better software, so it is the user who comes out on top as he gets a choice of two brilliant programs.
Are you being serious?
.sig
Just seems a litle ironic if you read your
There's no chance that the 24 CPU box will run Linux. IBM is not interested in porting it to the big iron. They would like to keep Linux on the small scale where people expect to see it.
;-)
Hmmm. Look at SGI. They were in the same situation, stuck choosing between their own Unix and Linux. In many surveys Irix seems to rank as more popular with admins than AIX. Can IBM afford to develop, build on and support AIX at the same rate as the Linux is developed by the community?
There is too much specialized hardware in a S80 to ever expect that Linux would run on it.
Remember, the work needs doing whether you are getting AIX or Linux running on the machine.
That's why it will never happen.
Never say never!
Okay, so my comments were a bit of a rant against a general attitude amongst some posters on Slashdot, of Sun/Apple/etc licences being evil, and GPL being good - and more broadly all free software being a Good Thing and all commercial software being a Bad Thing.
;)
Hey, what did you expect - a rational and unbiased opinion on Slashdot?
Great article, and yeah, you got a lot of good points on how restrivtive the licence is.
BTW I wasn't intending to condem RedHat for tightening up the use of their trademark, (I imagine this will help prevent newbies being ripped off being sold copy RH cds expecting tech support) - I was just suggesting that this might be the start of a trend of RH trying to protect their investments.
Apologies if my comments offended, they were not intended to.
In the article he seems to draw the conclusion that the SCSL restricts freedom, compared to the GPL, but in my opinion this is not necessarily the case. Contrary to most people's opinions here I think that StarOffice is now free as in "free-speech", but not as in "free-beer".
:P
The SCSL means that if a company wishes to profit from distributing StarOffice, they must pay royalties to Sun. This is fair enough, as Sun have invested money in buying the product. For example, were RedHat to include SO in their distribution, Sun would have a right to demand a cut of the money RedHat made.
However, if Sun chose to cease to support a particular platform, or took the product in a direction that the user base did not like, then the source is available. The community could continue to develop and support the product itself. They cannot take StarOffice away from you, or hamper it by failing to support new technologies, requiring you to move on to a new product (eg. try using MS Office95 in an environment where collegues are handing you Office97 documents - it soon becomes necessary to upgrade).
The main point I want to make is this: look at RedHat's recent activity with trademarks. RedHat are in a position where anyone can visit RH's web site, download RH's distribution, cut CDs and sell it as their own product. If Redhat could release their Linux distro under SCSL they could demand royalties off anyone doing this, however as Linux is GPLed they can't, so they cannot make any money out of people ripping off their hard work. So instead they turn to tightening their trademarks. What next? incorporate propriety non-GPLed software into RedHat Linux, to prevent other people re-distribuing it? Introduce closed standards and file formats? The GPL introduces many problems for a company like RedHat, preventing them from making fair profit and pushing them into these sorts of tricks.
At the an operating system is only useful if it has software to run on it. Developers will only produce software for Linux if it has a large enough user base. Users will only come to Linux in large numbers if it is relatively easy to use. Companies like RedHat will only work on Linux, and support projects such as Gnome, KDE, and Enlightenment, if they can make a profit in return. Draw your own concusions about where Linux goes from here under thr GPL.
Just my opinion - I'm just saying the GPL isn't perfect. Okay, so I've insulted the GPL. Let the flaming begin
well, www.kernel.org is being hosted by transmeta, and www.transmeta.com is running on Linux :).
I have a digital TV decoder. It has advantages (okay, widescreen), but is _does_ crash every so often.
just hope this isn't the start of a trend.
For goodness sake, this is dreadfully off topic. How about in England? ;)