Companies like nVidia just can't see any benifit to open sourcing their drivers and I can quite understand that.
That is not necessarily correct. The company that first releases great os drivers will get a boost to their market share. It is of course possible that this is not enough to counter the effect of showing your competition how your drivers work...
Don't make the mistake of thinking that Free drivers are impossible business wise: If enough people are willing to reward the manufacturer by bying their card, they will open the source, no doubt about that.
#5,249,290, assignment of client requests to the server process having the least load.
#4,924,411, A word processor that has a feature that allows you to specify that a portion of the text should be shaded - such as may be useful when revising a manual - by enclosing the relevant text within commands that turn shading on and off.
They're just examples of course. Maybe they're not obvious, but to a layman they just sound... very, very wrong.
It would be nice to hear a professional opinion: Were those patent decisions correct at the time they were made, and can one really defend their continuing existence now?
If Hugunin has issues accepting patches because of who he works for, then that's a shame.
Of course it's a shame, but Hugunin might not be working on IronPython at all if MS didn't pay him -- which is better? You know, most employers put some restrictions on how their employees use their time.
I'm glad he thinks that that may change post 1.0, but why will these issues suddently be easier to work around just because the code has reached a stable version?
Hugunin thinks there are pros and cons to accepting patches, and that the cons currently outweigh the pros. Later, when the codebase is more mature, outside patches make more sense (patches generally touch less code, there are less conflicts , easier to review). I'm not sure his evaluation of the situation is 100% correct, but that does sound quite understandable to me.
I still would want some answers to these (and Edd Dumbill's, Miguel de Icaza's and Paolo Molaro's) questions before getting behing IronPython. The fact that such questions are raised at all is troubling, however.
Hugunin is participating in this discussion. Really, he seems to be quite reasonable (gotdotnet and the web forums seem to be just tools for him -- if people really want to use something else, then that's what's going to happen).
The fact that questions are raised is not troubling, it just means there is real interest on this project. Different people, groups and companies will always have differing opinions on how a project like this should be run. Since it's a free software project, this is not dangerous - 'wrong' decisions by the project lead will result in a fork (only if the project really is interesting enough to warrant that much work though).
Why do you say he doesn't want Ironpython to work in Mono?
The first sentence on www.ironpython.com is IronPython is a new Python implementation targeting the.NET and Mono platforms.
Lupus@ximian said on the mailing list that ironpython 0.7 compiles with current SVN Mono code.
So... what's the problem?
This is what Hugunin said about accepting patches:
Given the company that I work for, I would have to spend a
LOT of time with lawyers working out the right contribution policy in
order to accept even small patches. This extreme level of legal caution
is part of working for a large company. I don't believe that's the best
way for me to spend my time right now in order to build the best
IronPython 1.0. After 1.0, the value of building a strong external
developer community goes up and I expect to revisit this question.
Personally I can understand that, and am willing to give him the benefit of doubt. By the way, he kind of promised to lessen the reliance on passport.
Please connect the dots for me: What has a legal battle against a spammer to do with DRM?
Also, your 'solutions' to the problem are only good foor personal use - I'd really like to print my (permanent) work email address on my business cards, put it on my website, and on any place that might result in a client contacting me. If the fear of spam prevents me from doing that, then spam is a problem.
Freedom of speech is just one of the many rights we have. None of those rights are absolute, because they are often in contrast with each other. In this case spammers freedom of speech hurts my freedoms (by making my inbox unusable and by using all the bandwidth). Discussion on which right should yeld is desirable, but frankly, your arguments suck.
Well, around here you need to go to the bank to make the (internet banking) contract. Even if it's not like that elsewhere, going to a bank once just to get the CD is not that bad. Would that be secure enough for you?
Let's try to be constructive here. This could really be a good idea, there's no need to say "it's fatally flawed" if the first iteration is not 100% secure...
Apples and oranges. If you really want to compare this to spam, imagine this:
The state issues an "official" spam filter and requires ISPs to offer this filter to their customers. Now, no-one would have any obligation to use the filter and it would probably be effective, but doesn't it sound a little fishy - state filtering your mail?
There have been many fires in aeroplanes due to smoking. I believe a Boeing 707 even crash landed near Orly (Paris) in the 70s because of that. The pilots were the only ones that didn't asphyxiate.
Uh, so don't get me wrong, I loathe IE like the next guy, but how does - at best - 6% of the browser market already make Firefox a major player?? Apple's got around, what, 2%-3% of the desktop market, yet no one's calling them a major player.
IE is a platform, ok? Imagine a third-party developer thinking: "Well, I could use standard web technology Y here, but with Microsoft proprietary technology Active-Y I get more whizz-bang and I'll only lose about 2% of the target market."
See what I mean? When that percentage grows, more and more developers will abandon MS-only solutions.
Oh, and don't compare Apples and oranges -- browser market changes rapidly (we've seen that before, and we're seeing it now), computer markets not so. If this trend continues for a year IE will not be interesting as a general internet application platform anymore.
Microsoft is not interested in IE itself (no profit there). But they are interested in deploying their proprietary network-based technologies. If IE (and with it said proprietary technologies) deployment stays at below some figure, let's say 90%, third party developers might use standard and/or open web technologies instead of those proprietary ones, even though that might mean less bells and whistles.
This is why Mozilla and other browser manufacturers matter. This is why Microsoft is developing IE again. Do you think they'd have changed their plans about this if they weren't losing sleep?
The arrogance in these discussions does not cease to surprise me.
"As long as they they are not willing to fix this" - Do you honestly think someone made a decision not to fix this even though there was a simple fix? Contrary to what many people seem to believe, software development is often not trivial.
Also, care to reveal what exactly is so suspicious about this? Mozilla development is largely volunteer work: if no-one is interested in fixing a bug, it simply does not get fixed. True, it's not a perfect development model, but -- what is suspicious about it?
There will always be an unimplemented bug fix or feature that would enable someone to switch to Mozilla. The fact that this fix/feature hasn't been implemented does not necessarily mean development has been inefficient... It just means the developers have decided to use their time on some other fix/feature -- developer time is scarce in all development models. You are of course free to criticize the choices they make, but please justify how the fixes you propose would have been a better use of the developers time than the ones they decided to implement, ok?
Could someone do the parents comparison with more words?
Maybe I am just dense and the similarities are striking... but as I see it, Ford was against worker unions and Mihaly is an indie games developer who argues that other (non-indie) developers are unrealistic whiners. Huh?
RTF website:) Harald Welte has gone to court against Sitecom GmbH. He's won a preliminary judgement and later the court turned down Sitecoms appeal.
By the way, why do think anyone has to prove GPL has legal weight behind it? The license itself is quite simple and it's based on copyright, which definitely has legal weight. I'd be quite surprised if there was a problem.
In fact, in the Sitecom case the judges said that even if there were problems with the validity of the GPL, there is... considerable ground for the argument that in such cases there has been no agreement in rem at all with the consequence that any use of the software is illegal. This is quite logical - if the GPL (for some reason) does not hold, then copyright law is applied with full force.
CSS 2.1 is a candidate recommendation. Yes, they could have started working on it already, but saying that [Microsoft] is waiting for a standard that's already been floating around for a year is a lie.
No need to twist the facts, in this case the plain truth is damning enough.
I don't see the need for an update. Their TOS still says what it said back then, and CowboyNeal didn't claim they actually had a habit of monitoring AIM messages.
The fact that they now say they're not monitoring, does not covince me that the TOS weren't intentionally vague.
I am not a lawyer, but to me the language used in MSN Terms Of service is very different from AIM's new obnoxious "we own your first born"-license:
We consider your use of the Service, including the content of your communications, to be private. We do not routinely monitor your communications or disclose information about your communications to anyone. However, we may monitor your communications and disclose information about you, including the content of your communications, if we consider it necessary to: (1) comply with the law or to respond to legal process; (2) ensure your compliance with this contract; or (3) protect the rights, property, or interests of Microsoft, its employees, its customers, or the public.
Then again, maybe the third clause means: "If Microsoft profits from selling your conversations, then selling them is considered 'protecting the interests of Microsoft'."
In defence of my metric: Google news is not for "people interested in computers". It just aggregates 4500 news sources from all over the world. I don't understand how Firefox can get a 60% larger coverage and still be irrelevant as a brand?
A brand is not ads, it is mindshare. You said that the majority of the planet is not interested in Firefox. Well, that's probably an understatement (as the majority probably don't even know what a browser is), but in any case it's the same thing with Netscape too...
Slashdot Mirror
tags out-of-the-box.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that Free drivers are impossible business wise: If enough people are willing to reward the manufacturer by bying their card, they will open the source, no doubt about that.
It would be nice to hear a professional opinion: Were those patent decisions correct at the time they were made, and can one really defend their continuing existence now?
We dont even read the blurbs anymore?
Next we can stop reading the titles too and just talk about.... umm... you know, whatever.
The fact that questions are raised is not troubling, it just means there is real interest on this project. Different people, groups and companies will always have differing opinions on how a project like this should be run. Since it's a free software project, this is not dangerous - 'wrong' decisions by the project lead will result in a fork (only if the project really is interesting enough to warrant that much work though).
- The first sentence on www.ironpython.com is IronPython is a new Python implementation targeting the
.NET and Mono platforms.
- Lupus@ximian said on the mailing list that ironpython 0.7 compiles with current SVN Mono code.
So... what's the problem?This is what Hugunin said about accepting patches:
Personally I can understand that, and am willing to give him the benefit of doubt. By the way, he kind of promised to lessen the reliance on passport.Also, your 'solutions' to the problem are only good foor personal use - I'd really like to print my (permanent) work email address on my business cards, put it on my website, and on any place that might result in a client contacting me. If the fear of spam prevents me from doing that, then spam is a problem.
Freedom of speech is just one of the many rights we have. None of those rights are absolute, because they are often in contrast with each other. In this case spammers freedom of speech hurts my freedoms (by making my inbox unusable and by using all the bandwidth). Discussion on which right should yeld is desirable, but frankly, your arguments suck.
Let's try to be constructive here. This could really be a good idea, there's no need to say "it's fatally flawed" if the first iteration is not 100% secure...
How can we be sure the banks servers are not cracked in some way?
The lousy usage approximation is an oddity of Windows: Raymond Chen has documented this, just like every other strange Windows phenomenon .
The state issues an "official" spam filter and requires ISPs to offer this filter to their customers. Now, no-one would have any obligation to use the filter and it would probably be effective, but doesn't it sound a little fishy - state filtering your mail?
The chart only goes to June 2004, so I'd say you're extrapolating pretty wildly...
There have been many fires in aeroplanes due to smoking. I believe a Boeing 707 even crash landed near Orly (Paris) in the 70s because of that. The pilots were the only ones that didn't asphyxiate.
"Well, I could use standard web technology Y here, but with Microsoft proprietary technology Active-Y I get more whizz-bang and I'll only lose about 2% of the target market."
See what I mean? When that percentage grows, more and more developers will abandon MS-only solutions.
Oh, and don't compare Apples and oranges -- browser market changes rapidly (we've seen that before, and we're seeing it now), computer markets not so. If this trend continues for a year IE will not be interesting as a general internet application platform anymore.
This is why Mozilla and other browser manufacturers matter. This is why Microsoft is developing IE again. Do you think they'd have changed their plans about this if they weren't losing sleep?
"As long as they they are not willing to fix this" - Do you honestly think someone made a decision not to fix this even though there was a simple fix? Contrary to what many people seem to believe, software development is often not trivial.
Also, care to reveal what exactly is so suspicious about this? Mozilla development is largely volunteer work: if no-one is interested in fixing a bug, it simply does not get fixed. True, it's not a perfect development model, but -- what is suspicious about it?
There will always be an unimplemented bug fix or feature that would enable someone to switch to Mozilla. The fact that this fix/feature hasn't been implemented does not necessarily mean development has been inefficient... It just means the developers have decided to use their time on some other fix/feature -- developer time is scarce in all development models. You are of course free to criticize the choices they make, but please justify how the fixes you propose would have been a better use of the developers time than the ones they decided to implement, ok?
Maybe I am just dense and the similarities are striking... but as I see it, Ford was against worker unions and Mihaly is an indie games developer who argues that other (non-indie) developers are unrealistic whiners. Huh?
By the way, why do think anyone has to prove GPL has legal weight behind it? The license itself is quite simple and it's based on copyright, which definitely has legal weight. I'd be quite surprised if there was a problem.
In fact, in the Sitecom case the judges said that even if there were problems with the validity of the GPL, there is ... considerable ground for the argument that in such cases there has been no agreement in rem at all with the consequence that any use of the software is illegal. This is quite logical - if the GPL (for some reason) does not hold, then copyright law is applied with full force.
No need to twist the facts, in this case the plain truth is damning enough.
AMD said they used "most comparable offering from the competitor" for the comparison, and didn't. Now, that's a fault, mmkay?
The fact that they now say they're not monitoring, does not covince me that the TOS weren't intentionally vague.
A brand is not ads, it is mindshare. You said that the majority of the planet is not interested in Firefox. Well, that's probably an understatement (as the majority probably don't even know what a browser is), but in any case it's the same thing with Netscape too...