Just out of interest, in the 40s and 50s, how how many years had 8 or more hurricanes? How did their strength compare? A comparison of the worsts seasons against each other (factoring out the cycles) might be quite illuminating.
1950 appears to still be the worst on record. That article also mentions that hurricanes seasons have a 25-year cycle.
It also seems we have had a bit of calm weather (hurricane-wise) for quite some time:
"We probably won't see another season like this for a hundred years," the meteorologist said. "The southeastern United States has been extremely lucky for the last 40 years or so, particularly Florida. In the period since 1966, the Florida peninsula was hit by only one major hurricane, Andrew, in 1992. This year, they had three. This is a rare statistical event."
In Austin, TX, all types of vehicles seem to have the same percentage of idiots behind a wheel. I would rather they were in smaller vehicles than larger. Truthfully, I wish they were not allowed to drive at all.
For a commodity OS, developed by many, used by many and owned by none, the GPL is the best license out there.
I disagree.
Under the BSD license, we could see a "splintering" of the OS exactly as we did with the old *nixes. Under the GPL, that is impossible.
We could see a splintering (or forking) of any OS under the GPL too. Both licenses allow the OS to be changed, therefore, the GPL does not prevent splintering.
Many people have a different set of morals than you. What is so difficult to understand about that? For me, the exploration of science should not always come first.
Solution to controversy: find another source.
The researchers should explore using cord blood's stem cells. I stored the cord blood of my daughter in case of cancer later. Why can researchers not pay women for the cord blood? They may make millions off the discoveries; they could at least try paying some money for it. Also, no one will be complaining about harvesting stem cells from the cord blood.
how does it do this? Why can another company not enter the market with a better product and GPL it as well? Alternately, why can the other company not just take the GPLd code, fork the project, make their own additions (released under the GPL), and sell support for the system instead of selling the system itself?
"prevents" should have also been "makes it difficult". Another company can enter the market, but they will have a harder time finding the resources (open source developers) since they will more likely be reluctant to leave the first project. Another company can fork the source, just like BSD source, but the original has the advantage for being able to sell commercial access to the product along with support.
Why would the monopolistic company you described for your GPL argument even consider releasing code under a BSD license?
I company that wants to retain any type of proprietorship over the source would never release it under a BSD license. That is my point behind companies using the GPL.
For that matter, if i was trying to sell the actual software product as a business, why would i release it under a BSD license and guarantee that anyone who wants it can have it for free, and if they have ways to improve it, they can take my source code, add their improvements, and close source the whole thing and sell it?
I understand that a company would be reluctant to release the source under a BSD license if they are trying to dual-license with a commercial-use license it as opposed to make money on pure support. The GPL is good for keeping a proprietory hook on code.
If the project is under active development, closing the source has rarely led to a company becoming overly dominant over other companies or the project using the same code base. Usually, the project surpasses the company unless it shares back anyway. mod_ssl in Apache 1.3 and SSL-support in 2.0 overtook the main providers--I just cannot recall their names--of SSL support with Apache.
Another thing to think about: if I was another company, why would I contribute to a GPL code base that was controlled by another company? I would only be able to help them make more commercial products.
I dont. I see a guy releasing his application to the public under the BSD license giving all of his potential competitors a huge advantage in that they can examine his code base, use what they want of it to improve their products (or build new products off of his code base). The original producer of the code doesnt get anything in return for giving them the codebase they need to compete against him.
IBM has IBM HTTP Server (IHS) which is Apache with some internal hooks, extra authentication modules and a configuration tool. They still gave back to the project when they had no need. They could have closed it, but the Apache project would have surpassed IHS. Personally, I think they have surpassed IHS, but it is only because I had to use IHS as a base for a product before.
The more a company want to release source for all to use (in any manner) they would tend towards a BSD license. If they want to keep it more proprietary, they would tend towards the GPL or another proprietary (hook-wise) license.
I'm not saying the BSD license is a bad thing. I'm just saying i dont see the argument for the GPL fostering monopolies and the BSD license creating a level playing field.
With BSD licenses, I believe they prevent companies from creating a field where only one can sell a closed-source version.
You could always fork the GPL'd code from each company that release their code, but this would convince companies to not release their code at all. Why would I want to release code that I want to keep control over if it would just be forked?
Examples of companies that have more control over a GPL'd product than any other company can:
The BSD license is great if you are a big company and lots of little folks like me are contributing BSD software that you can use in any proprietary way you wish. But it's not so great for those little people, because they are functioning as sort of unpaid employees. GPL gives the whole situation a balance.
I consider the GPL the friend of monopolistic companies. They release software under the GPL to build it off the backs of us little people while charging others for it. They usually require people to assign copyright to the project/company before it will be accepted. The free availability of the code allows the company to dissuade others from entering the market. The GPL prevents other companies from having the same leverage as the first company.
The BSD license, on the other hand, does not allow any company to wield more power over the code or other companies (small or large). A small start-up of just a few developers could actually compete with a large corporation using the code.
With both licenses, the developers are not paid, but in the BSD case, no unfair (unbalanced) power can be obtained. With the BSD license, I see balance over all involved.
Flaw: our "favorite";) software monopoly likes libX which is LGPL or GPL. They look at the specifications and write their own (libY) using a few meat cogs. Before they even get to adding bells and whistles they make a few "features";) out of the specifications. They then add the bells and whistles.
Due to the fact that the original libX will not even work with the basic libY, they lose market share even faster than if libX had been under a BSD license.
I think people keep forgetting that Microsoft can and will embrace and extend a standard with or without code. They will more likely do that without the code as a base.
Working, but not great. And the threading support is weak.
Actually, the SMP works quite well. Define "weak"?
Which makes it irrelevant right now. Until it's been released and proven to be stable and reliable, I don't see any widespread usage of it.
Soft Updates is quite fast. Journaling will help fsck times on unclean file systems which is the deficiency at the moment. For desktop systems, the background fsck gives fast startup times.
This is something that is missing in Linux. However, its usefulness is limited.
Jail are useful for development as well as service segregation for security.
But even better: when will this make a huge difference in how either operating system works or in functionality?
I would not consider Linux's version of sysctl() as working. Read the BUGS section in the man page of sysctl() to know what is wrong with it. The data format produced from/proc entries has a tendency to change a lot. This can make it harder for applications to be written for Linux than BSD.
Soft updates and journaling file systems are mutually exclusive, and given the success of journaling file systems, I don't see them coming to Linux any time soon.
BTW, the implementation being worked upon may consider Soft Updates plus journaling together.
Only a major concern for desktop users. Just about every sound card nowadays has hardware mixing; why not use that instead of your kernel-level (still software, not hardware!) mixer?
Why does Fedora still use a user-land mixer?
Many of the features you have listed are of no interest to many corporations, unless they are in the business of proving desktop operating system solutions.
I would consider USB, jails and sysctl() to be very relevent to corporations. For example, jails can be useful for ASP's.
"A sysctl call has been present in Linux since version 1.3.57."
I thought it did not handle everything available within/proc.
ALSA has a method for doing that (the dmix plugin). However, it's not enabled by default, because for cards that actually have multiple channels, it's better to use the real ones.
I will look into dmix.
No, I don't think he was. Seems like you both are mildly ignorant of the other camp (or were you purposely asking about thing that are actually in Linux? In that case, I apologize for being thick).
I was trying to point out things that Linux lacked or was at least behind BSD's. My last comment was sarcasm toward his blind attack.
Actually BSD is the project I use to show exactly the opposite. While it's true there have been many individuals who have contributed to BSD, many major corporations have taken very significant code out of it and given back... nothing.
Yahoo!, Apple, and Pair Networks (in money) would probably argue against that.
The companies you mentioned probably use little if anything of the BSD code any longer.
I don't know of any major corporation which has made significant donations back to the BSD core. There may be the rare exception, but the bulk of corporate back-donations has been some bug fixes. That has left the development almost entirely to individual developers or very small groups, and thereby limited how much could be done.
Most companies hire contractors to contribute to the BSD's. You do not see many companies make big shows about it.
It has been my observation that the BSD source base has been relatively stagnant over more than a decade. If you look at what a modern BSD provides and compare it to what BSD 4.3 provided you'll find little that is new. A similar comparison with any major commercial UNIX will yield a great many such features (like working SMP support, journalled filesystems, NUMA support, logical volume management, realtime support, etc).
FreeBSD has working SMP support. A few things are still under the GIANT lock, but most are esoteric devices.
Journaling is currently being added.
USB support existed in the BSD's--I believe NetBSD had it first--about two years before Linux.
Jails have existed in FreeBSD for quite some time.
Remember the list of features modern UNIXen have that BSD doesn't? Did you notice how many of them Linux does support?
When will Linux support Soft Updates? When will Linux use sysctl() instead of/proc? How about virtual channels on a sound card? I do not need to run a software multiplexer to run multiple applications on my sound card with FreeBSD.
To be sure, one of the major limitations in the BSD codebase has been the reluctance of the BSD principals to accept code they didn't write.
Huh? That does not match to what happens within the BSD communities. Maybe, you are thinking about the Linux community?;)
After checking information on IDN, I noticed that there are two variations of international domain names. Anyone know whether Microsoft will actually be using IDN or Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)?
I apologize in advance for my anti-Slashdot action of reading a little before commenting.:)
You can't get hold of the propietary, extended code for windows networking to fix the operatability problem without NDA etc. You can only guess the BSD code up to the moment of forking. After the fork point, the code has been tweaked and closed and used to build a system that tries to lock you in forever after. That's the kind of danger the GPL protects you against.
If Microsoft does not use the code, they invent their own protocol. When Microsoft uses BSD code as a basis, they are at least easier to guess or work around. How long has it taken the people working on Samba to under all of the SMB protocol? Many years at least. Even Stallman has said the BSD license is good for standards.
BTW, the network stack in Windows has not been based on the BSD code for years.
The restriction of GPL protects the coders in the long run.
Protects coders from what? For example, when Microsoft embraces and extends a protocol (i.e., Kerberos, DNS, DHCP), they have no need for the source. They break the protocol. The GPL nor any other open source license would have power against that. You would need a patent (yuck).
The freedom of BSD can restrict the coders in the long run.
This is never true. I never need to use a proprietary vesion of open source. Which version of Kerberos do you use? With BSD-licensed code, I have very few restrictions placed upon me as a coder. Fewer than using GPL-licensed code.
For the original poster, it sounded like his company could have handled the Artistic license (or the Perl version of it) much better than the GPL.
I have worked for three companies since I have left college. Two of them were small and one large. All of them have given source to non-GPL code projects. They even have allowed me to provide code outside of work as long as it did not conflict with the non-compete clause.
I thought that Microsoft had violated the RFC, but the version of Kerberos they use was written entirely in-house. I am having trouble confirming or denying the latter. Does anyone have knowledge about it?
Slashdot Mirror
And the same way a DNS works, the IP address of the chip implanted in the persons body can be resolved to his name.
:)
Using IPv666?
I use it as a desktop/workstation. Neverwinter Nights runs very well on it with Nvidia's driver.
It is hard to guess what they may do with the Mozilla Foundation. What about the Mozilla Corporation? It is taxable.
I'll disagree with you. As a user of GPLd software, I am more free than someone who purchases some BSDd agglomeration from ABC Co.
You are more free as a user and as a developer if you use the original BSD base.
That is why it is called "political" science. ;)
1950 appears to still be the worst on record. That article also mentions that hurricanes seasons have a 25-year cycle.
It also seems we have had a bit of calm weather (hurricane-wise) for quite some time:
Politicians with souls.
1. Sell souls to corporations.
;)
I do not think they can sell what they do not have, but they may have changed the laws for them to do that.
In Austin, TX, all types of vehicles seem to have the same percentage of idiots behind a wheel. I would rather they were in smaller vehicles than larger. Truthfully, I wish they were not allowed to drive at all.
For a commodity OS, developed by many, used by many and owned by none, the GPL is the best license out there.
I disagree.
Under the BSD license, we could see a "splintering" of the OS exactly as we did with the old *nixes. Under the GPL, that is impossible.
We could see a splintering (or forking) of any OS under the GPL too. Both licenses allow the OS to be changed, therefore, the GPL does not prevent splintering.
Many people have a different set of morals than you. What is so difficult to understand about that? For me, the exploration of science should not always come first.
Solution to controversy: find another source.
The researchers should explore using cord blood's stem cells. I stored the cord blood of my daughter in case of cancer later. Why can researchers not pay women for the cord blood? They may make millions off the discoveries; they could at least try paying some money for it. Also, no one will be complaining about harvesting stem cells from the cord blood.
"prevents" should have also been "makes it difficult". Another company can enter the market, but they will have a harder time finding the resources (open source developers) since they will more likely be reluctant to leave the first project. Another company can fork the source, just like BSD source, but the original has the advantage for being able to sell commercial access to the product along with support.
Why would the monopolistic company you described for your GPL argument even consider releasing code under a BSD license?
I company that wants to retain any type of proprietorship over the source would never release it under a BSD license. That is my point behind companies using the GPL.
For that matter, if i was trying to sell the actual software product as a business, why would i release it under a BSD license and guarantee that anyone who wants it can have it for free, and if they have ways to improve it, they can take my source code, add their improvements, and close source the whole thing and sell it?
I understand that a company would be reluctant to release the source under a BSD license if they are trying to dual-license with a commercial-use license it as opposed to make money on pure support. The GPL is good for keeping a proprietory hook on code.
If the project is under active development, closing the source has rarely led to a company becoming overly dominant over other companies or the project using the same code base. Usually, the project surpasses the company unless it shares back anyway. mod_ssl in Apache 1.3 and SSL-support in 2.0 overtook the main providers--I just cannot recall their names--of SSL support with Apache.
Another thing to think about: if I was another company, why would I contribute to a GPL code base that was controlled by another company? I would only be able to help them make more commercial products.
I dont. I see a guy releasing his application to the public under the BSD license giving all of his potential competitors a huge advantage in that they can examine his code base, use what they want of it to improve their products (or build new products off of his code base). The original producer of the code doesnt get anything in return for giving them the codebase they need to compete against him.
IBM has IBM HTTP Server (IHS) which is Apache with some internal hooks, extra authentication modules and a configuration tool. They still gave back to the project when they had no need. They could have closed it, but the Apache project would have surpassed IHS. Personally, I think they have surpassed IHS, but it is only because I had to use IHS as a base for a product before.
The more a company want to release source for all to use (in any manner) they would tend towards a BSD license. If they want to keep it more proprietary, they would tend towards the GPL or another proprietary (hook-wise) license.
I'm not saying the BSD license is a bad thing. I'm just saying i dont see the argument for the GPL fostering monopolies and the BSD license creating a level playing field.
With BSD licenses, I believe they prevent companies from creating a field where only one can sell a closed-source version.
You could always fork the GPL'd code from each company that release their code, but this would convince companies to not release their code at all. Why would I want to release code that I want to keep control over if it would just be forked?
Examples of companies that have more control over a GPL'd product than any other company can:
The BSD license is great if you are a big company and lots of little folks like me are contributing BSD software that you can use in any proprietary way you wish. But it's not so great for those little people, because they are functioning as sort of unpaid employees. GPL gives the whole situation a balance.
I consider the GPL the friend of monopolistic companies. They release software under the GPL to build it off the backs of us little people while charging others for it. They usually require people to assign copyright to the project/company before it will be accepted. The free availability of the code allows the company to dissuade others from entering the market. The GPL prevents other companies from having the same leverage as the first company.
The BSD license, on the other hand, does not allow any company to wield more power over the code or other companies (small or large). A small start-up of just a few developers could actually compete with a large corporation using the code.
With both licenses, the developers are not paid, but in the BSD case, no unfair (unbalanced) power can be obtained. With the BSD license, I see balance over all involved.
Flaw: our "favorite" ;) software monopoly likes libX which is LGPL or GPL. They look at the specifications and write their own (libY) using a few meat cogs. Before they even get to adding bells and whistles they make a few "features" ;) out of the specifications. They then add the bells and whistles.
Due to the fact that the original libX will not even work with the basic libY, they lose market share even faster than if libX had been under a BSD license.
I think people keep forgetting that Microsoft can and will embrace and extend a standard with or without code. They will more likely do that without the code as a base.
That, my friend, is not what I would call it. My guess is that you never actually tried to use it under stress.
You mean the same stress I have used to lock up a Linux SMP machine?
Working, but not great. And the threading support is weak.
/proc entries has a tendency to change a lot. This can make it harder for applications to be written for Linux than BSD.
Actually, the SMP works quite well. Define "weak"?
Which makes it irrelevant right now. Until it's been released and proven to be stable and reliable, I don't see any widespread usage of it.
Soft Updates is quite fast. Journaling will help fsck times on unclean file systems which is the deficiency at the moment. For desktop systems, the background fsck gives fast startup times.
This is something that is missing in Linux. However, its usefulness is limited.
Jail are useful for development as well as service segregation for security.
But even better: when will this make a huge difference in how either operating system works or in functionality?
I would not consider Linux's version of sysctl() as working. Read the BUGS section in the man page of sysctl() to know what is wrong with it. The data format produced from
Soft updates and journaling file systems are mutually exclusive, and given the success of journaling file systems, I don't see them coming to Linux any time soon.
BTW, the implementation being worked upon may consider Soft Updates plus journaling together.
Only a major concern for desktop users. Just about every sound card nowadays has hardware mixing; why not use that instead of your kernel-level (still software, not hardware!) mixer?
Why does Fedora still use a user-land mixer?
Many of the features you have listed are of no interest to many corporations, unless they are in the business of proving desktop operating system solutions.
I would consider USB, jails and sysctl() to be very relevent to corporations. For example, jails can be useful for ASP's.
"A sysctl call has been present in Linux since version 1.3.57."
/proc.
I thought it did not handle everything available within
ALSA has a method for doing that (the dmix plugin). However, it's not enabled by default, because for cards that actually have multiple channels, it's better to use the real ones.
I will look into dmix.
No, I don't think he was. Seems like you both are mildly ignorant of the other camp (or were you purposely asking about thing that are actually in Linux? In that case, I apologize for being thick).
I was trying to point out things that Linux lacked or was at least behind BSD's. My last comment was sarcasm toward his blind attack.
Yahoo!, Apple, and Pair Networks (in money) would probably argue against that.
The companies you mentioned probably use little if anything of the BSD code any longer.
I don't know of any major corporation which has made significant donations back to the BSD core. There may be the rare exception, but the bulk of corporate back-donations has been some bug fixes. That has left the development almost entirely to individual developers or very small groups, and thereby limited how much could be done.
Most companies hire contractors to contribute to the BSD's. You do not see many companies make big shows about it.
It has been my observation that the BSD source base has been relatively stagnant over more than a decade. If you look at what a modern BSD provides and compare it to what BSD 4.3 provided you'll find little that is new. A similar comparison with any major commercial UNIX will yield a great many such features (like working SMP support, journalled filesystems, NUMA support, logical volume management, realtime support, etc).
Remember the list of features modern UNIXen have that BSD doesn't? Did you notice how many of them Linux does support?
When will Linux support Soft Updates? When will Linux use sysctl() instead of
To be sure, one of the major limitations in the BSD codebase has been the reluctance of the BSD principals to accept code they didn't write.
Huh? That does not match to what happens within the BSD communities. Maybe, you are thinking about the Linux community?
Neither uses bash (or even tcsh) as the default shell.
Huh? csh is the default shell on FreeBSD. It also happens to be tcsh. Personally, I use zsh for my shell on all Unix systems I run.
After checking information on IDN, I noticed that there are two variations of international domain names. Anyone know whether Microsoft will actually be using IDN or Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)?
:)
I apologize in advance for my anti-Slashdot action of reading a little before commenting.
You can't get hold of the propietary, extended code for windows networking to fix the operatability problem without NDA etc. You can only guess the BSD code up to the moment of forking. After the fork point, the code has been tweaked and closed and used to build a system that tries to lock you in forever after. That's the kind of danger the GPL protects you against.
If Microsoft does not use the code, they invent their own protocol. When Microsoft uses BSD code as a basis, they are at least easier to guess or work around. How long has it taken the people working on Samba to under all of the SMB protocol? Many years at least. Even Stallman has said the BSD license is good for standards.
BTW, the network stack in Windows has not been based on the BSD code for years.
The restriction of GPL protects the coders in the long run.
Protects coders from what? For example, when Microsoft embraces and extends a protocol (i.e., Kerberos, DNS, DHCP), they have no need for the source. They break the protocol. The GPL nor any other open source license would have power against that. You would need a patent (yuck).
The freedom of BSD can restrict the coders in the long run.
This is never true. I never need to use a proprietary vesion of open source. Which version of Kerberos do you use? With BSD-licensed code, I have very few restrictions placed upon me as a coder. Fewer than using GPL-licensed code.
For the original poster, it sounded like his company could have handled the Artistic license (or the Perl version of it) much better than the GPL.
I have worked for three companies since I have left college. Two of them were small and one large. All of them have given source to non-GPL code projects. They even have allowed me to provide code outside of work as long as it did not conflict with the non-compete clause.
I thought that Microsoft had violated the RFC, but the version of Kerberos they use was written entirely in-house. I am having trouble confirming or denying the latter. Does anyone have knowledge about it?
Yeah, but without a license obligating you to give you back that code, do you think your company would have allowed you to give it back?
It happens much more often than you think. IBM gives a lot to Apache, for example, without any such obligation.
The FSF favors the GPL for libraries over the LGPL.