Render farms don't need 3d acceleration, as they aren't doing anything real-time, so that's a non-issue.
But yes, the point does stand that if people actually refused to use blobs, and someone offered a non-binary blob solution, there may incentive to compete with that.
Losing those features is a necessary step toward a fully free desktop. Sure, you might lose them now, but that gives incentive for them to be developed so that we *have* free and open source drivers later.
Now I know there are people who think we don't *need* a totally free desktop, but then again, there were people who thought we didn't need an open source browser because there were Netscape binaries. And isn't everyone glad now that we have Firefox?
Besides all that, you'd be surprised at just how much works without needing any proprietary bits in your operating system at all. Before sticking in a gNewSense CD, the idea that I could run a totally, completely free operating system and still do what I need to do was just all theory to me.
One of the things that's with Ubuntu is that it's the only group with a real sense of marketing. Granted, it's viral marketing, but if you look at http://ubuntu.com/ versus http://debian.org/ you'll notice that one is quite pretty and modern, and the other looks like it fell out of a wormhole circa 1996. I even tried talking about a site redesign on #debian on freenode once and got flamed by someone saying "why the hell should the look of a website matter?" Perhaps it somewhat matters because when I was a newbie and knew nothing about the merits of distros, I overlooked Debian as being a fairly amateurish distro because, well, its website looked amateurish. Yes, I know better now, but we should acknowledge at least a little that appearances do matter.
Of course, it's not just the website. Ubuntu also has an army of Diggers, and it's overall just a really easy distro to get started with when you know nothing about Linux, because the project has made appealing to that crowd one of its goals.
Only real possibility of a trap here is that
a) Microsoft claims development over those specific technonlogies and patents them (patenting them likely, but they'll do that anyway)
b) They just don't implement chunks of those technologies, leaving the web development community high and dry for some time (again, they'll probably do that anyway)
I actually have to agree with MS on this one. Client-side databases & such are exciting, and increase the possibility of offline web apps, but HTML is a *markup* language. We should leave the markup to HTML 5, and put the client-side database stuff as a standard javascript set of utilities, or some such thing.
There are already a lot of things that are extremely similar to windows. Nautlius, for example.
I agree that we shouldn't try to make things different from Windows just to be different, but I also think that we shouldn't try to be similar to Windows just to be similar. It's a matter of evaluating what's good and should be similar and perhaps what's better but could be different.
The goal is to be better, not a clone, but on the other hand cloning some things can be good from time to time. We just need to assess it.
If you scrolled down like *one message* in that archive, you'd see that he took it back after he saw the message:
Well, Geoff forwarded me a copy of the DEC message, and I eat my words. I sure would have minded it! Nobody should be allowed to send a message with a header that long, no matter what it is about.
Forward this if you feel like it.
Thus, he wasn't defending the spam, since having not seen the context, he didn't see in the way it was spammy. Once he saw the actual spamminess of the message, he agreed that it was awful and should not be allowed.
Now, you could argue that he should have actually looked at the context first before stating an opinion. That would be a valid point, but it wasn't the one that you made.
If you're interested in pretty, shiny, mathematical things that you can run on Linux, check out:
- electricsheep: animated fractal flames: http://www.electricsheep.org/ (I highly recommend running this as your screensaver, though it takes a bit for the first sheep to download)
- Jenn: pretty, shiny, blue(?) polytopes, rendered on your computer: http://www.math.cmu.edu/~fho/jenn/
Anyone have any others?
There's a difference between GIT and SVN
on
Linus on GIT and SCM
·
· Score: 4, Informative
... And that is that CVS/SVN are centralized, while GIT is distributed, like GNU Arch.
There are appropriate uses to both of these, and in kernel development I think it makes sense to have distributed development. However, in smaller projects, which really *need* a very specific direction (example, Wesnoth, I would think would not have gotten where it is today if there were so many branches where people were all making their own art).
Linus is enough of a famed leader that he's going to be listened to, and thus kind of pulls the community around him as a central source of development. That's not necessarily going to happen everywhere.
1) that it has the copyright for all code it commits
2) that a license for the code is granted
3) that usage of all patents covering the code is granted
Well, the GPL technically does number three. See:
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
There's more legal details to it later, but that's the gist of it.
Fair enough about how obvious it is that people are losing their privacy. But I don't think that social networks give up *all* privacy... we're in bigger trouble with, say, AT&T handing over all our data to the NSA than we are with Web 2.0, because with Web 2.0 its at least a voluntary decision of what to hand over.
That said, sure, there are some privacy issues, but I think there may in some ways be some worse things about Web 2.0 than just the privacy part. Why aren't too many people in the FOSS community bothered with this whole trend of "proprietary" web-based applications? Granted, in some areas it isn't such a problem as others, but aren't some of the principles the same?
I actually thought his criticism of Linus was rather fair. What he said was:
Linus Torvalds has publicly spoken of problem with the DRM provisions, in
my opinion jumping the gun, since there were ample opportunities for the
text to be handled on the four existing discussion committees. But Linus
doesn't like politics and policy, and thus he sort of tried to short-circuit
the process through the press without first discussing the problem with any
of the committees. That wasn't productive. Since Linus doesn't like to work
on this, I wish that instead of trying to throw thunderbolts he'd let someone
else on his team who has the right aptitude handle it.
And to be honest with you? I agree with him. The GPL v3 has been open for community discussion. Linus chose not to take part and discuss, slammed the door on GPLv3 before the discussion even began, and refused to take part.
I'll just summarize my fears like this: If you lack privacy, tyrants can go unchecked in power.
And of course, without privacy, everything the citizen does is clear to the government, but the government can act without the same level of transparency.
The government stops working under the whims of the people, and the people start working under the control of the government. We/need/ privacy in order to sustain a democracy.
Granted, too little, too late, and way behind FireFox's release/feature schedule (which is why I use FF and not IE), but at least Microsoft is doing something. Proof that competition is a Good Thing.
Competition is indeed a Good Thing, but the trouble with Internet Explorer is largely that it doesn't support standards. Microsoft has only minimally stepped in the direction of standards compliance, and only because with the rise of other good browsers like opera and firefox, they had to or die. But rest assured, Microsoft doesn't intend to. They don't want competeition, though they'd like to compete, and they have demonstrated their willingness to break or invent their own standards (terrible in design and incompatible with anything else [see activex]) for their own products, and IE is far from any exception.
All in all, the web would be better off with Internet Explorer dead. Nobody benefits from Microsoft's kind of "competetition".
Interesting.. the issue with bitkeeper always seemed to me that it was really non-free software. I've taken a look at GIT's COPYING file, and it looks like this:
--
Note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as this project
is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not
v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.
HOWEVER, in order to allow a migration to GPLv3 if that seems like
a good idea, I also ask that people involved with the project make
their preferences known. In particular, if you trust me to make that
decision, you might note so in your copyright message, ie something
like
This file is licensed under the GPL v2, or a later version
at the discretion of Linus.
might avoid issues. But we can also just decide to synchronize and
contact all copyright holders on record if/when the occasion arises.
Linus Torvalds
--
I guess there's still that worry about how the GPL v3 is going to come out, but it is good at least to see the software under a free-as-in-speech license.
Try using Magnatune. They're a company that focuses on supporting artists, without being evil.
I'd say they're doing pretty well at it. Their stuff is available under a creative commons license... so you have the _right_ to share it. However, you can also support your artists (which I would encourage) without feeling guilty about it.
Arguably, if the OS is secure enough, then you should not have problems with programs that can start executing code without permissions. Granted, it is a matter of balance, but an OS should never allow root control by an application without specific permission. Of course the default with Windows is root, but hey....
Running as root is certainly a bad thing. Of course, even within any reasonable permissions, we'd have to expect that a program has the ability to execute code that might not be desirable. For example, I'd want a python script to _have the ability_ to execute shell commands on a user level, because such a script might be useful. It might not be, and any user could lose a lot of valuable files that way. But then again, that's where we should make sure the applications are secure.
If a small group of evil men want to kill Johnny and his family and destroy his country and his way of life, then yes, maybe he should see about stopping them ahead of time.
Yep, kill the evil men! And their families. And their neighborhood. And the entire city they live in!
Take that small group of evil men!
Maybe it is paid for by Microsoft. They, after all, have worked very hard to create "independent" studies which show that GNU/Linux is inferior for IT purposes. Do a Google search for "Linux." You'll see at least one ad paid for by microsoft about this stuff.
Of course, the irony is that the very Google search you are running is powered by GNU/Linux servers.
Slashdot Mirror
Render farms don't need 3d acceleration, as they aren't doing anything real-time, so that's a non-issue. But yes, the point does stand that if people actually refused to use blobs, and someone offered a non-binary blob solution, there may incentive to compete with that.
Losing those features is a necessary step toward a fully free desktop. Sure, you might lose them now, but that gives incentive for them to be developed so that we *have* free and open source drivers later.
Now I know there are people who think we don't *need* a totally free desktop, but then again, there were people who thought we didn't need an open source browser because there were Netscape binaries. And isn't everyone glad now that we have Firefox?
Besides all that, you'd be surprised at just how much works without needing any proprietary bits in your operating system at all. Before sticking in a gNewSense CD, the idea that I could run a totally, completely free operating system and still do what I need to do was just all theory to me.
One of the things that's with Ubuntu is that it's the only group with a real sense of marketing. Granted, it's viral marketing, but if you look at http://ubuntu.com/ versus http://debian.org/ you'll notice that one is quite pretty and modern, and the other looks like it fell out of a wormhole circa 1996. I even tried talking about a site redesign on #debian on freenode once and got flamed by someone saying "why the hell should the look of a website matter?" Perhaps it somewhat matters because when I was a newbie and knew nothing about the merits of distros, I overlooked Debian as being a fairly amateurish distro because, well, its website looked amateurish. Yes, I know better now, but we should acknowledge at least a little that appearances do matter.
Of course, it's not just the website. Ubuntu also has an army of Diggers, and it's overall just a really easy distro to get started with when you know nothing about Linux, because the project has made appealing to that crowd one of its goals.
Only real possibility of a trap here is that
a) Microsoft claims development over those specific technonlogies and patents them (patenting them likely, but they'll do that anyway)
b) They just don't implement chunks of those technologies, leaving the web development community high and dry for some time (again, they'll probably do that anyway)
I actually have to agree with MS on this one. Client-side databases & such are exciting, and increase the possibility of offline web apps, but HTML is a *markup* language. We should leave the markup to HTML 5, and put the client-side database stuff as a standard javascript set of utilities, or some such thing.
There are already a lot of things that are extremely similar to windows. Nautlius, for example. I agree that we shouldn't try to make things different from Windows just to be different, but I also think that we shouldn't try to be similar to Windows just to be similar. It's a matter of evaluating what's good and should be similar and perhaps what's better but could be different. The goal is to be better, not a clone, but on the other hand cloning some things can be good from time to time. We just need to assess it.
Chaoscope looks *awesome*. Too bad it isn't open source, I'd love to run it locally :\
If you're interested in pretty, shiny, mathematical things that you can run on Linux, check out:
- electricsheep: animated fractal flames: http://www.electricsheep.org/ (I highly recommend running this as your screensaver, though it takes a bit for the first sheep to download)
- Jenn: pretty, shiny, blue(?) polytopes, rendered on your computer: http://www.math.cmu.edu/~fho/jenn/
Anyone have any others?
... And that is that CVS/SVN are centralized, while GIT is distributed, like GNU Arch.
There are appropriate uses to both of these, and in kernel development I think it makes sense to have distributed development. However, in smaller projects, which really *need* a very specific direction (example, Wesnoth, I would think would not have gotten where it is today if there were so many branches where people were all making their own art).
Linus is enough of a famed leader that he's going to be listened to, and thus kind of pulls the community around him as a central source of development. That's not necessarily going to happen everywhere.
...And it influenced the GNOME project to open the Women Summer Outreach program and so on...
e nder_Integrated_Report_of_Findings.pdf
e nder_Policy_Recommendations.pdf
It was a report commissioned by the European Union of all things. Have you every checked out the FLOSS Policy Support page?
http://flosspols.org/
Very interesting stuff.
And here's the article on their on gender findings:
http://flosspols.org/deliverables/FLOSSPOLS-D16-G
Along with their recommendations...
http://flosspols.org/deliverables/FLOSSPOLS-D17-G
A bit dry perhaps, but still a very interesting, and informative, read full of thorough investigation and professionally collected statistics.
Well, the GPL technically does number three. See:
There's more legal details to it later, but that's the gist of it....is why OpenBSD is so infamous for being insecure.
Fair enough about how obvious it is that people are losing their privacy. But I don't think that social networks give up *all* privacy... we're in bigger trouble with, say, AT&T handing over all our data to the NSA than we are with Web 2.0, because with Web 2.0 its at least a voluntary decision of what to hand over. That said, sure, there are some privacy issues, but I think there may in some ways be some worse things about Web 2.0 than just the privacy part. Why aren't too many people in the FOSS community bothered with this whole trend of "proprietary" web-based applications? Granted, in some areas it isn't such a problem as others, but aren't some of the principles the same?
I actually thought his criticism of Linus was rather fair. What he said was:
And to be honest with you? I agree with him. The GPL v3 has been open for community discussion. Linus chose not to take part and discuss, slammed the door on GPLv3 before the discussion even began, and refused to take part.
Maybe people keep reading him because they keep mistaking him for the developer of the superior keyboard (or typewriter) layout.
I just wish I had that option. I live in Chicago. I can't see the stars even if I want to. Which I do.
But even when I lived in the suburbs, it was hard as hell to see the stars anyway. The city's light penetrates that far.
I'll just summarize my fears like this: If you lack privacy, tyrants can go unchecked in power.
/need/ privacy in order to sustain a democracy.
And of course, without privacy, everything the citizen does is clear to the government, but the government can act without the same level of transparency.
The government stops working under the whims of the people, and the people start working under the control of the government.
We
Competition is indeed a Good Thing, but the trouble with Internet Explorer is largely that it doesn't support standards. Microsoft has only minimally stepped in the direction of standards compliance, and only because with the rise of other good browsers like opera and firefox, they had to or die. But rest assured, Microsoft doesn't intend to. They don't want competeition, though they'd like to compete, and they have demonstrated their willingness to break or invent their own standards (terrible in design and incompatible with anything else [see activex]) for their own products, and IE is far from any exception.
All in all, the web would be better off with Internet Explorer dead. Nobody benefits from Microsoft's kind of "competetition".
Interesting.. the issue with bitkeeper always seemed to me that it was really non-free software. I've taken a look at GIT's COPYING file, and it looks like this:
--
Note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as this project
is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not
v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.
HOWEVER, in order to allow a migration to GPLv3 if that seems like
a good idea, I also ask that people involved with the project make
their preferences known. In particular, if you trust me to make that
decision, you might note so in your copyright message, ie something
like
This file is licensed under the GPL v2, or a later version
at the discretion of Linus.
might avoid issues. But we can also just decide to synchronize and
contact all copyright holders on record if/when the occasion arises.
Linus Torvalds
--
I guess there's still that worry about how the GPL v3 is going to come out, but it is good at least to see the software under a free-as-in-speech license.
Try using Magnatune. They're a company that focuses on supporting artists, without being evil.
I'd say they're doing pretty well at it. Their stuff is available under a creative commons license... so you have the _right_ to share it. However, you can also support your artists (which I would encourage) without feeling guilty about it.
Running as root is certainly a bad thing. Of course, even within any reasonable permissions, we'd have to expect that a program has the ability to execute code that might not be desirable. For example, I'd want a python script to _have the ability_ to execute shell commands on a user level, because such a script might be useful. It might not be, and any user could lose a lot of valuable files that way. But then again, that's where we should make sure the applications are secure.
Maybe it is paid for by Microsoft. They, after all, have worked very hard to create "independent" studies which show that GNU/Linux is inferior for IT purposes. Do a Google search for "Linux." You'll see at least one ad paid for by microsoft about this stuff.
Of course, the irony is that the very Google search you are running is powered by GNU/Linux servers.
Corporate lobbying is altogether anti-democratic. It should be illegal.
What we need is to start an anti-corporate lobbying campaign. Otherwise these problems are never going to end.
But people DID know how it worked.
Here's a good ol' Wikipedia article which has had the formulas for it on there for some time now.