Does this mean that I'll finally be able to enjoy a movie in a theater without some annoying person poking at their cellphone, either making noise or light?
Those people are the reason I don't see movies in theaters and just watch them at home when they come out on DVD.
Exactly. That's a much better reason to ban phones. Maybe if they managed to turn the cinema into a quality experience again, people'd be more willing to pay money for it.
I would also argue that the iPhone user experience would be *nowhere near* as great as it is were Apple to not filter their app store. User complaints about buggy and ugly apps would skyrocket. The quality and ease of use of the app store is just as important to Apple as the smoothness of the multitouch, or the quality of their mobile web browser (which is so fully capable, it almost seems wrong to call it a "mobile" browser).
Are you kidding? Apple doesn't filter on quality. There's tons and tons of crappy, useless, buggy apps in the app store. What Apple filters on is stuff they don't like. Apps that compete with or replace existing iPhone functionality, apps that provide new functionality that Apple doesn't want users to have, etc. They ban Google Voice, thethering, improved mailreaders, etc. The allow apps that make fart noises.
Of course there is a way around this: jailbreaking. The only way to get full value out of your iPhone.
Are you confusing Mono with Wine? Mono is an implementation of the Common Language Runtime and.NET libraries. Very few games are written purely in.NET, and many will invoke native Windows API calls.
I know Wine is far more important when it comes to running Windows software on Linux, but from what little I know of Mono, it sounds like it might help with those few games that are written in.Net.
Stallman's warnings about Mono are not criticisms of the languages/runtimes themselves (the language and libraries are reasonably good), but that Microsoft holds patents over aspects of the implementation that Mono almost certainly infringes on and does not have a legally binding license to use. Given Microsoft's attitude towards free software and GNU/Linux, and the patent infringement case against Tom-Tom, it would be very unwise to rely on Mono.
Is that fundamentally different from Microsoft claiming to have 135 patents that are violated by Linux? Should we not rely on Linux because it probably violates parents of Microsoft and others?
Personally I think that fighting software that might be violating patents is completely the wrong fight. We should fight the patents themselves, and particularly the entire concept of software patents.
The Free Software Foundation focuses on the freedoms of all users, not just a subset of users.
This is not entirely true. The FSF focuses on the particular freedom of end users to change a piece of free software or to replace it with another piece of free software. The FSF does not care much about my freedom to run whatever software I like (including proprietary software that doesn't happen to have a free or open version) on whatever platform I like.
At the moment I don't care much about Mono, but if it helps me to run proprietary Windows games on Linux, I'm all for it.
I fail to see how this is a personal attack. In some contexts, Linus doesn't believe in the Free Software Foundation's view of freedom, especially with respect to including proprietary firmware in the kernel, and the use of Linux in products that reduces user freedoms through technological measures (such as only executing signed software).
Restricting options is usually not the first thing most people think of when they hear "freedom". It's a freedom to bear arms thing. It may need to be limited in order to protect the freedom of others, but you're still limiting a kind of freedom.
When RMS says "freedom", he doesn't mean freedom, he means his own particular brand of freedom. I think Linus does believe in freedom, but he just doesn't believe in RMS's kind of freedom. There are many different kinds of freedom, and some of those conflict with each other.
Stallman has not been able to present a logical argument showing that the legal situation around Mono is any worse than it is around Linux, March, GNU C, or numerous other FOSS projects.
There most definitely is a logical argument. In a word: patents.
Didn't they also claim over a hundred patents were violated by Linux? Because that'd make the legal situation around Mono no different from that of Linux.
It matters little to me. I don't recognise the validity of any software patents at all (although I realise that if push were to ever come to shove, I'd have to convince a judge that my view is the correct one). I think fighting software patents is a better move than living in fear of them.
"Open Source" misses the point. Being able to *see* it is of little use if people that receive it are not also able to modify it, release the modified versions, use it for any purpose, and freely copy it.
I think you're missing a point here. The point of Open Source is that people are able to modify, use and release it as they see fit. Free Software (or at least GPL3) puts a lot of restrictions on it. It restricts for a reason, and arguably a very good one (RMS certainly thinks so), but it's restrictive nonetheless.
Free Software does not benefit from having more software developed for proprietary software platforms. Write Free Software in languages with API's that are themselves fully Free Software.
I don't care about what abstract entities benefit from. I care about what people benefit from, and people benefit from being able to run the code they want on the platform they want. Mono clearly fills a niche there.
Here is the 'bad' scenario - Lots of developers spend lots of time making "Mono"/"Dot Net" software, and then Microsoft changes the terms, and either renders all that software unusable on Windows, unusable on Free platforms, or steals it all from the developers and shuts them and everything Free completely out of the loop.
I don't know what kind of terms Microsoft has for Mono, but if Mono is really Open Source, then there's nothing MS can do to take it away from us.
The allies I refer to are folks like Linus, Eric Raymond, Tim O'Reilly and everyone else that advocates the same ideas, but does not take marching orders from him.
Ah, but those people don't advocate the same ideas as RMS at all. RMS isn't about openness, he's about enforcing a very specific philosophy. A valuable philosophy, but he wants to enforce it at the expense of other equally valuable ideas.
Two shoe salesmen were sent to Africa in the early 1900's to scout the territory.
One telegraphed back: "Situation hopeless. Stop. No one wears shoes."
The other telegraphed: "Business opportunity. Stop. They have no shoes."
Since we only have a limited time on earth, I have decided to spend my time on earth as much as I can trying to be like the second salesman. Looking at opportunities where others see hopelessness.
OMG, WTF. The first one thinks with his head, he sees there is no need to wear shoes. The second one avoids thinking and decides to find a way to sell something that nobody needs.
Yet, miraculously, a lot of people in Africa do wear shoes now.
We have Java, as well as Python and various other languages on Linux for the niche Mono wants to fill
Actually Mono fills a niche not satisfied by any other language on Linux. 1. Python - too slow for any processor intensive tasks (I do a lot of python myself.) -- not strongly typed, if the project decides to go that route. 2. Java, the language - No closures, lambdas, generators. Impossible to do any declarative programming. Many, many people hate it.
The whole concept of his article is to suggest that Microsoft is an ally, or if not, a potentially ally if we will only "build bridges" rather than "burn bridges."
That's only your interpretation. The only person he calls an ally is Linus. If you really want to read more into it, I guess you could say that people within Microsoft who try to steer MS towards open source are allies too.
He's wrong of course. Nobody is RMS's ally unless he completely subscribes to every detail of his world view, and believes that only his particular brand of freedom is true freedom. RMS is an extremist. He does think in us-vs-them, and has no tolerance for different opinions.
Look, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, and love free/open source software with all my heart, but in cases like this, Stallman always acts like a complete retard.
I love the american government, where even public information is available at anytime -- for a modest fee.
This sort of thing isn't just limited to the US. I don't know if they still do it, but some years ago, the Dutch state publisher claimed copyright on public government documents, including laws.
So google is claiming that the reason for forcing chrome
In what way is Google forcing Chrome? It's offering Chrome in a new way. A way useful for people who are forced to use something else.
is because they couldn't make Wave work with IE.
They couldn't make their web interface for Wave work with IE. What's so hard about that to understand?
Maybe they could make a really crappy Wave web interface for IE, but they're Google. They don't want to do that. They didn't offer Google Maps to IE users as static gifs, did they? They want to give IE users the same experience that everybody else gets. Apparently this is the only way to do that.
Instead of your coworkers top-posting responses with the same subject line but different threads of conversation, email could look as clean as a message board.
That's all I want.
Exactly! I get more and more annoyed by email due to the way co-workers use it. If Wave offers a cleaner form of communication, I'm in!
Some of the cooler bits are towards the end, though: a dozen people editing the same document simultaneously, completely open protocol and open source server and client so you can set up your own Wave server, and a console client (rather than Google's own web client) to prove that point.
So you're calling this guy a dickhead because you feel there shouldn't be any copyright or patient system?
The problem isn't with copyright or patents, but with calling them "property". They're not. They're temporary government sanctioned monopolies. They can't be stolen, but they can be violated.
Not the same thing at all. Much less invasive, much less in-the-user's face.
Much less thorough, mostly.
It sounds like you'd get odd hybrid rendering rather than a proper rendering engine. So Mozilla's approach is the one that leads to fragmentation and browser soup.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this mean that I'll finally be able to enjoy a movie in a theater without some annoying person poking at their cellphone, either making noise or light?
Those people are the reason I don't see movies in theaters and just watch them at home when they come out on DVD.
Exactly. That's a much better reason to ban phones. Maybe if they managed to turn the cinema into a quality experience again, people'd be more willing to pay money for it.
I would also argue that the iPhone user experience would be *nowhere near* as great as it is were Apple to not filter their app store. User complaints about buggy and ugly apps would skyrocket. The quality and ease of use of the app store is just as important to Apple as the smoothness of the multitouch, or the quality of their mobile web browser (which is so fully capable, it almost seems wrong to call it a "mobile" browser).
Are you kidding? Apple doesn't filter on quality. There's tons and tons of crappy, useless, buggy apps in the app store. What Apple filters on is stuff they don't like. Apps that compete with or replace existing iPhone functionality, apps that provide new functionality that Apple doesn't want users to have, etc. They ban Google Voice, thethering, improved mailreaders, etc. The allow apps that make fart noises.
Of course there is a way around this: jailbreaking. The only way to get full value out of your iPhone.
Right, because crap is the new cool.
It's been for some time now.
You're probably new to this internet thing, aren't you?
Are you confusing Mono with Wine? Mono is an implementation of the Common Language Runtime and .NET libraries. Very few games are written purely in .NET, and many will invoke native Windows API calls.
I know Wine is far more important when it comes to running Windows software on Linux, but from what little I know of Mono, it sounds like it might help with those few games that are written in .Net.
Stallman's warnings about Mono are not criticisms of the languages/runtimes themselves (the language and libraries are reasonably good), but that Microsoft holds patents over aspects of the implementation that Mono almost certainly infringes on and does not have a legally binding license to use. Given Microsoft's attitude towards free software and GNU/Linux, and the patent infringement case against Tom-Tom, it would be very unwise to rely on Mono.
Is that fundamentally different from Microsoft claiming to have 135 patents that are violated by Linux? Should we not rely on Linux because it probably violates parents of Microsoft and others?
Personally I think that fighting software that might be violating patents is completely the wrong fight. We should fight the patents themselves, and particularly the entire concept of software patents.
this looks like it should be on star trek - and it's much nicer looking than that silly circular one
Ooh nice! I've never seen that one, but I agree it looks very Star Trekky.
The Free Software Foundation focuses on the freedoms of all users, not just a subset of users.
This is not entirely true. The FSF focuses on the particular freedom of end users to change a piece of free software or to replace it with another piece of free software. The FSF does not care much about my freedom to run whatever software I like (including proprietary software that doesn't happen to have a free or open version) on whatever platform I like.
At the moment I don't care much about Mono, but if it helps me to run proprietary Windows games on Linux, I'm all for it.
I fail to see how this is a personal attack. In some contexts, Linus doesn't believe in the Free Software Foundation's view of freedom, especially with respect to including proprietary firmware in the kernel, and the use of Linux in products that reduces user freedoms through technological measures (such as only executing signed software).
Restricting options is usually not the first thing most people think of when they hear "freedom". It's a freedom to bear arms thing. It may need to be limited in order to protect the freedom of others, but you're still limiting a kind of freedom.
When RMS says "freedom", he doesn't mean freedom, he means his own particular brand of freedom. I think Linus does believe in freedom, but he just doesn't believe in RMS's kind of freedom. There are many different kinds of freedom, and some of those conflict with each other.
Stallman has not been able to present a logical argument showing that the legal situation around Mono is any worse than it is around Linux, March, GNU C, or numerous other FOSS projects.
There most definitely is a logical argument. In a word: patents.
Didn't they also claim over a hundred patents were violated by Linux? Because that'd make the legal situation around Mono no different from that of Linux.
It matters little to me. I don't recognise the validity of any software patents at all (although I realise that if push were to ever come to shove, I'd have to convince a judge that my view is the correct one). I think fighting software patents is a better move than living in fear of them.
"Open Source" misses the point. Being able to *see* it is of little use if people that receive it are not also able to modify it, release the modified versions, use it for any purpose, and freely copy it.
I think you're missing a point here. The point of Open Source is that people are able to modify, use and release it as they see fit. Free Software (or at least GPL3) puts a lot of restrictions on it. It restricts for a reason, and arguably a very good one (RMS certainly thinks so), but it's restrictive nonetheless.
Free Software does not benefit from having more software developed for proprietary software platforms. Write Free Software in languages with API's that are themselves fully Free Software.
I don't care about what abstract entities benefit from. I care about what people benefit from, and people benefit from being able to run the code they want on the platform they want. Mono clearly fills a niche there.
Here is the 'bad' scenario - Lots of developers spend lots of time making "Mono"/"Dot Net" software, and then Microsoft changes the terms, and either renders all that software unusable on Windows, unusable on Free platforms, or steals it all from the developers and shuts them and everything Free completely out of the loop.
I don't know what kind of terms Microsoft has for Mono, but if Mono is really Open Source, then there's nothing MS can do to take it away from us.
The allies I refer to are folks like Linus, Eric Raymond, Tim O'Reilly and everyone else that advocates the same ideas, but does not take marching orders from him.
Ah, but those people don't advocate the same ideas as RMS at all. RMS isn't about openness, he's about enforcing a very specific philosophy. A valuable philosophy, but he wants to enforce it at the expense of other equally valuable ideas.
From Miguel's article:
Two shoe salesmen were sent to Africa in the early 1900's to scout the territory.
One telegraphed back: "Situation hopeless. Stop. No one wears shoes."
The other telegraphed: "Business opportunity. Stop. They have no shoes."
Since we only have a limited time on earth, I have decided to spend my time on earth as much as I can trying to be like the second salesman. Looking at opportunities where others see hopelessness.
OMG, WTF. The first one thinks with his head, he sees there is no need to wear shoes. The second one avoids thinking and decides to find a way to sell something that nobody needs.
Yet, miraculously, a lot of people in Africa do wear shoes now.
We have Java, as well as Python and various other languages on Linux for the niche Mono wants to fill
Actually Mono fills a niche not satisfied by any other language on Linux.
1. Python - too slow for any processor intensive tasks (I do a lot of python myself.)
-- not strongly typed, if the project decides to go that route.
2. Java, the language - No closures, lambdas, generators. Impossible to do any declarative programming. Many, many people hate it.
What about Scala?
I read the OP, and I'm familiar with many (older) articles and essays written by RMS. I've never seen RMS make a *personal* attack.
Didn't he call Linus someone who doesn't believe in freedom? You know, the Linus who shares almost everything he can?
The whole concept of his article is to suggest that Microsoft is an ally, or if not, a potentially ally if we will only "build bridges" rather than "burn bridges."
That's only your interpretation. The only person he calls an ally is Linus. If you really want to read more into it, I guess you could say that people within Microsoft who try to steer MS towards open source are allies too.
He's wrong of course. Nobody is RMS's ally unless he completely subscribes to every detail of his world view, and believes that only his particular brand of freedom is true freedom. RMS is an extremist. He does think in us-vs-them, and has no tolerance for different opinions.
Look, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, and love free/open source software with all my heart, but in cases like this, Stallman always acts like a complete retard.
I love the american government, where even public information is available at anytime -- for a modest fee.
This sort of thing isn't just limited to the US. I don't know if they still do it, but some years ago, the Dutch state publisher claimed copyright on public government documents, including laws.
So google is claiming that the reason for forcing chrome
In what way is Google forcing Chrome? It's offering Chrome in a new way. A way useful for people who are forced to use something else.
is because they couldn't make Wave work with IE.
They couldn't make their web interface for Wave work with IE. What's so hard about that to understand?
Maybe they could make a really crappy Wave web interface for IE, but they're Google. They don't want to do that. They didn't offer Google Maps to IE users as static gifs, did they? They want to give IE users the same experience that everybody else gets. Apparently this is the only way to do that.
Cool! Thanks! Haven't gotten an invite yet, so this is a great way to play around with it.
Instead of your coworkers top-posting responses with the same subject line but different threads of conversation, email could look as clean as a message board.
That's all I want.
Exactly! I get more and more annoyed by email due to the way co-workers use it. If Wave offers a cleaner form of communication, I'm in!
Sure, thats why sites like slashdot look the same on webkit, presto, and gecko... oh.. wait...
It works in all of them. Well, when it works at all.
Some of the cooler bits are towards the end, though: a dozen people editing the same document simultaneously, completely open protocol and open source server and client so you can set up your own Wave server, and a console client (rather than Google's own web client) to prove that point.
I agree. When I get mod points, I usually try to meet people's expectations when they expect to be modded down.
*You* may not believe in IP, but it has some legal standing and thta's enough to make it real.
The pretense that it has the same legal standing as property is relatively new, however. And harmful.
So you're calling this guy a dickhead because you feel there shouldn't be any copyright or patient system?
The problem isn't with copyright or patents, but with calling them "property". They're not. They're temporary government sanctioned monopolies. They can't be stolen, but they can be violated.
What can't work on IE is the standard html/javascript wave client. The console app, for example, is a different client.
Yuhuh. And if you can interface with the server via a console app, why in the world wouldn't you be able to do it with a browser?
You can. You're free to write an IE6-specific Wave gateway, if you like. But Google's own Wave gateway will only work if you have a modern browser.
Not the same thing at all. Much less invasive, much less in-the-user's face.
Much less thorough, mostly.
It sounds like you'd get odd hybrid rendering rather than a proper rendering engine. So Mozilla's approach is the one that leads to fragmentation and browser soup.