Nobody is obliged to give anybody an instant user community. But neither are you obliged to give RedHat your money.
If you think that "this is entirely a non-issue", think again. The main thing that distinguishes Microsoft from other companies is those intangibles: user community, name recognition, etc. Microsoft could open source Windows tomorrow and it wouldn't change their market position much.
If you want a company like Microsoft to have control of Linux, send your money to some commercial Linux vendor. If you want Linux to continue to exist as a system whose design reflects the needs of its users, support projects like Debian.
I have owned half a dozen Macs. They all looked nice and they all felt solid. But some of them have had a lot of hardware problems. Others worked like a charm. As with any computer company, Apple does not always get it right. The G5, being a new architecture and design, is something I would have been somewhat wary of until it has proven itself. As it is, we haven't heard of any major problems with it, so it seems to be OK.
But if you want quality PC hardware, you can certainly easily get that, too.
You definitely could not do that with Opteron or Xeon systems. VT was in negotiations about price and delivery time with Dell and Apple.
Because Dell can't put a cluster together at a good price, you conclude that "[one] definitely could not do that"? That's absolutely idiotic. Dell is overpriced and they didn't even sell Opterons at the time.
Apple beat out Dell's prices (shocking!!!).
That's "shocking" only to people who don't have a clue what's going on in the PC industry. Of course, Apple beats Dell on price. They probably also beat IBM and Sun. That's not where anybody who is cost-conscious would buy their cluster machines.
Also, the G5 makes a great cluster computer. It comes standard with gigabit ethernet and has very easy access to parts (no screws required to install anything).
Yes, and if you buy a dual-Opteron 1U rack mount, not only do you get two Gigabit Ethernet ports on the motherboard, you also get something that provides even easier access to parts.
If you think that a G5 is easier to maintain than a rackmount, you really have never touched a rack mount unit.
Finally, the Apples make a good cluster because in 5 years or so when they disassemble it they have 1,100 really nice desktop machines. PC's need to be upgraded more often to serve as a desktop computer (that's why Macs have awesome resale value compared with PCs).
PCs running Windows need to be upgraded frequently because people want to run the latest version of Windows. If you run Linux on a PC, it has an even longer lifetime than Macs (and, in fact, five year old Macs will not run current versions of OS X particularly happily).
There are various short-range wireless technologies for that, including a short-range version of Bluetooth (1ft range). WiFi makes little sense--too long range and too power hungry.
I think that comparison between the Bluetooth stick and the WiFi stick speaks for itself. What you don't see is that the WiFi stick will also suck your battery dry very quickly.
WiFi makes little sense for PDAs--it's too big and too power hungry. If you really must have something like that, get one of the Enfora WiFi cases (search on Google), which at least includes its own battery.
You can fork the Debian-hacked sources, but that's all, and it's not primarily what RedHat is all about. RedHat is an infrastructure, user community, back-end servers, back-end server software, bug database, and other stuff. You can't fork most of that. In fact, much of that is proprietary and simply can't be accessed.
and an 2816 Opteron 2 GHz cluster, that achieves only three fourths of Big Mac's performance. Now that's a defeat for AMD.
Keep in mind that VT did a lot of assembly-level hacking before they managed to reach the number 3 spot. Presumably, LANL didn't bother since they probably didn't feel like they had anything to prove. Perhaps AMD will invest some time in doing something similar now.
Now where's the G5 XServe ?
Apparently, the G5's run so hot that making 1U rack mounts is difficult.
You may notice that the BigMac is listed as self-assembled. It just doesn't make too much sense to compare a self-assembled system against company-delivered systems. You could do exactly the same thing VT did with G5 Macs using dual-processor Opteron or Xeon systems and end up paying significantly less.
Why don't people? Because most places that build machines that large want something turnkey and something that is supported as a cluster.
Its a good bet too that this thing is going to have lower maintainence costs and higher up-time
Actually, the opposite is probably true: desktop machines, like the G5, do not make good cluster components. They require lots of space, are difficult to access when sitting on racks, etc. And Apple's history on quality is not uniformly good anyway.
Sounds like bollocks to me. Please support this assertion. Why would paying Red Hat for support lock you in to them in future?
All distributions cost money to build and maintain, even Debian. But if you send your money to RedHat, your money is used to enhance something that is owned by RedHat. If you send your money (or, equivalently volunteer work) to Debian, it is used to enhance something that everybody owns.
There is nothing particularly novel about those ideas: in the past, people have formed various cooperatives and community-based businesses for the same reasons. It's no different with software, it just is happening on a global scale.
"Don't pay for Linux services, get your Linux for free and give up your own time and effort." It should almost go without saying that that isn't going to work for everyone.
We are talking about universities and students here.
But I think it would work for almost everyone if they only tried. Even businesses can make financial donations, have their IT staff take over maintenance of a package or two, or just host bandwidth. The cost is low and the benefits go far beyond just helping Debian.
Because line of sight and short-range really matters in this application: you want to know who the "compatible person" is. Someone 30 feet behind you won't do you that much good. Getting Bluetooth to be that specific is much harder.
Many "classic" papers are reissued in "Readings In..." volumes--check on Amazon for your favorite subject area. Also, Citeseer ranks papers by popularity; that's not necessarily an indication of either quality or significance, but it is another measure of interest. Then, ask your colleagues, friends, professors, fellow students for recommendations.
You can also do some digital archaeology: a lot of decades-old ideas are embodied in software you can download. You can get copies of MIT's ITS, TENEX, Smalltalk-80, PDP-11 UNIX, and run them on emulators. In particular, Alan Kay's own Smalltalk-80 system is available as part of Squeak (squeak.org): running it will show you both what Smalltalk-80 was and what it wasn't.
Keep in mind that often, the mere existence of prior art won't convince people. For example, much of the stuff Microsoft and Apple's PR departments are claiming as "new technology" is ideas that people explored and abandoned decades ago. Some of it may well be worth reviving (given that we have faster processors), but that doesn't make it original or innovative. And in some cases, you get the idea that the developers themselves just don't know of the history of their (fairly obvious) idea.
It may very well be free if your institution is one of those beta testing MSDN-AA.
Loss leaders, promotions, and beta-tests aren't "free" either. You may or may not pay money for them in the short term, but in the long term, you will pay for them.
In fact, the biggest cost in using Microsoft software at university is that you will be buying Microsoft software later on--tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime.
People are often confused about the more distant past. While that statement makes no sense to you or me and can't possibly mean anything given what we understand "APL", "Basic", and "UNIX" to be today, it may be accepted, widely known historical fact in another 100 years that such a device existed and did what he said it did.
If you pay for a RedHat or SuSE subscription, you end up helping create an infrastructure in which you will not have a choice but to pay them in the future. And for the measly amount of bandwidth and support you get from them, even $25 is too much.
Rather than financing RedHat and SuSE through purchase of their software, help with a true community effort: Debian. Take over management of a package, host a mirror site, write some documentation, etc. That way, Linux will remain free not just in theory but in practice.
Your copy of Windows isn't "free". In fact, where the money is coming from isn't at all mysterious: it comes out of what you pay to the university, because your university then turns around and pays millions of dollars for that site license.
You probably end up paying several hundred dollars for Microsoft software through that channel and you don't even have a choice in the matter.
Flash itself isn't bad, just like HTML itself isn't bad.
The two are completely different. Flash is a proprietary, binary format under the control of a single company. HTML is an open, text-based standard being developed openly.
By charging those who charge they can maybe hope to barely make payroll if they produce best in the world quality work. You begrudge them this.
No, I'm just saying that the combination of design and license they chose for Qt/Embedded is contrary to the goals of free and open source software.
You see, Qt/Embedded is not just some software product, it's something that excludes every other toolkit from the platform it runs on.
Note that this is a case-by-case issue. I have no problem with dual-licenses for ReiserFS, for example, because the implications are completely different. ReiserFS does not exclude other file systems or other software.
Do you have any concept of how poor almost everyone in this dual-licensing business is compared to what their single proprietary licensing peers are making?
Well, good, so let them make a proprietary product and become rich. I think that would be just swell, instead of pretending that they are somehow supportive of open source software.
But it's just a simple fact that Qt wouldn't have had a chance in hell if it hadn't been for the dual-licensing gimmick and Troll Tech's misleading presentation of the licenses.
What an ass!
While I think the ReiserFS dual licensing scheme is fine, your comments raise serious questions in my mind about your leadership of the project. With your lack of understanding of licensing issues and your attitude, I think there is a serious risk that you will end up killing the project and alienating more potential contributors. We'd been in touch previously about possible contributions to the project, but now I just don't think there is much point to it.
Why do people keep bringing up iBooks whenever there is any discussion of handhelds? iBooks are bricks by modern laptop standards: nearly five pounds and with a huge footprint. Apple has never produced an ultra-portable laptop.
Now, the Panasonic Toughbook, Fujitsu Lifebook, and Sony ultraportables are serious competitors for these kinds of handhelds. Some of them are lighter than two pounds, and some of them are actually quite small. Check out dynamism.com for what's available in tiny x86-based laptops. The Sony U101 is pretty close to a PDA, actually.
The QPL is a Open Source Inititive certified license. It gives you different rights than the GPL, but it is a very open and friendly license that meets all the OSI criteria. In addition, it's applicable to the full, freely downloadable Qt source. I.e., the QPL is another open source license you can use at no cost to write and distribute your software under, if you happen not to like the GPL.
Yes, Qtopia is licensed under OSI-compliant licenses. But the important question is whether those licenses achieve the goals of free software or open source software. Just because a license is OSI-compliant or just because a piece of software is licensed under the GPL doesn't mean it helps free software or open source software. In fact, it may even hurt it.
That's why even FSF software isn't always licensed under the GPL. Instead, the FSF created the LGPL and the GPL-with-exceptions. Those licenses are specifically used for important system libraries that have commercial and free alternatives already available and for which it is desirable that they are used by all applications, commercial or non-commercial. And both conditions are satisfied for GUI toolkits.
Qt/Embedded and Qtopia are basically a grab by a small company to own the commercial handheld space. The company has used open source as a vehicle to achieve a big marketshare and get lots of contributions with a product that would otherwise have not been competitive. And it's no accident that those libraries take over the screen and exclude other toolkits: Troll Tech could have built Qt/Embedded around X11 with probably a smaller memory footprint, but that wouldn't have achieved their commercial aims: control of the Linux handheld space.
The GPL/OSI-compliance of Troll Tech's products is a fig leaf, and the goals of the company are arguably contrary to the goals of both the free software and open source movements.
I see most of the GUI innovation coming from Apple nowadays
I see no GUI innovation coming out of Apple. What "innovative" things do you think Apple has done with the GUI?
[Today, there are better choices available than Objective-C] That's your opinion stated as if it were fact. Today, as then, there was a C++ as well as an Objective-C to choose from, so I hope that's not the new improved language of which you might be thinking.
Well, first of all, let's be clear: even when it came out, Objective-C was only a simplistic engineering compromise--an attempt to bring Smalltalk-style OOP to UNIX workstations without too much effort. Technically, even back then, Smalltalk was a far better language. So, we are really just asking: among the commercially accepted languages and frameworks, which is technically the least bad for applications and GUI development. And I think that honor goes to Java and C# these days.
And by the way, from the time line you gave, the prototype of the graphical browser still came out before the line mode thing you mentioned.
If you think about, you can figure out for yourself what the priorities are of people who wear expensive suits, get great hair cuts, buy expensive cars, and all that. Frankly, I prefer RMS's priorities.
or "I won't answer unless you ask the question with my preferred terminology." when an attorney uses "free" and "open-source" interchangeably or refers to the "Linux operating system.
I doubt that Stallman would get into any trouble over demanding clarity and precision in the questions put before him. The meaning of such terms is integral to the case, and the judge knows that. In fact, most of SCO's case is built on deliberately trying to confuse the meaning of those terms.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody is obliged to give anybody an instant user community. But neither are you obliged to give RedHat your money.
If you think that "this is entirely a non-issue", think again. The main thing that distinguishes Microsoft from other companies is those intangibles: user community, name recognition, etc. Microsoft could open source Windows tomorrow and it wouldn't change their market position much.
If you want a company like Microsoft to have control of Linux, send your money to some commercial Linux vendor. If you want Linux to continue to exist as a system whose design reflects the needs of its users, support projects like Debian.
I have owned half a dozen Macs. They all looked nice and they all felt solid. But some of them have had a lot of hardware problems. Others worked like a charm. As with any computer company, Apple does not always get it right. The G5, being a new architecture and design, is something I would have been somewhat wary of until it has proven itself. As it is, we haven't heard of any major problems with it, so it seems to be OK.
But if you want quality PC hardware, you can certainly easily get that, too.
You definitely could not do that with Opteron or Xeon systems. VT was in negotiations about price and delivery time with Dell and Apple.
Because Dell can't put a cluster together at a good price, you conclude that "[one] definitely could not do that"? That's absolutely idiotic. Dell is overpriced and they didn't even sell Opterons at the time.
Apple beat out Dell's prices (shocking!!!).
That's "shocking" only to people who don't have a clue what's going on in the PC industry. Of course, Apple beats Dell on price. They probably also beat IBM and Sun. That's not where anybody who is cost-conscious would buy their cluster machines.
Also, the G5 makes a great cluster computer. It comes standard with gigabit ethernet and has very easy access to parts (no screws required to install anything).
Yes, and if you buy a dual-Opteron 1U rack mount, not only do you get two Gigabit Ethernet ports on the motherboard, you also get something that provides even easier access to parts.
If you think that a G5 is easier to maintain than a rackmount, you really have never touched a rack mount unit.
Finally, the Apples make a good cluster because in 5 years or so when they disassemble it they have 1,100 really nice desktop machines. PC's need to be upgraded more often to serve as a desktop computer (that's why Macs have awesome resale value compared with PCs).
PCs running Windows need to be upgraded frequently because people want to run the latest version of Windows. If you run Linux on a PC, it has an even longer lifetime than Macs (and, in fact, five year old Macs will not run current versions of OS X particularly happily).
There are various short-range wireless technologies for that, including a short-range version of Bluetooth (1ft range). WiFi makes little sense--too long range and too power hungry.
I think that comparison between the Bluetooth stick and the WiFi stick speaks for itself. What you don't see is that the WiFi stick will also suck your battery dry very quickly.
WiFi makes little sense for PDAs--it's too big and too power hungry. If you really must have something like that, get one of the Enfora WiFi cases (search on Google), which at least includes its own battery.
You can fork the Debian-hacked sources, but that's all, and it's not primarily what RedHat is all about. RedHat is an infrastructure, user community, back-end servers, back-end server software, bug database, and other stuff. You can't fork most of that. In fact, much of that is proprietary and simply can't be accessed.
and an 2816 Opteron 2 GHz cluster, that achieves only three fourths of Big Mac's performance. Now that's a defeat for AMD.
Keep in mind that VT did a lot of assembly-level hacking before they managed to reach the number 3 spot. Presumably, LANL didn't bother since they probably didn't feel like they had anything to prove. Perhaps AMD will invest some time in doing something similar now.
Now where's the G5 XServe ?
Apparently, the G5's run so hot that making 1U rack mounts is difficult.
Now this system is the cheapest of the top 10.
You may notice that the BigMac is listed as self-assembled. It just doesn't make too much sense to compare a self-assembled system against company-delivered systems. You could do exactly the same thing VT did with G5 Macs using dual-processor Opteron or Xeon systems and end up paying significantly less.
Why don't people? Because most places that build machines that large want something turnkey and something that is supported as a cluster.
Its a good bet too that this thing is going to have lower maintainence costs and higher up-time
Actually, the opposite is probably true: desktop machines, like the G5, do not make good cluster components. They require lots of space, are difficult to access when sitting on racks, etc. And Apple's history on quality is not uniformly good anyway.
Sounds like bollocks to me. Please support this assertion. Why would paying Red Hat for support lock you in to them in future?
All distributions cost money to build and maintain, even Debian. But if you send your money to RedHat, your money is used to enhance something that is owned by RedHat. If you send your money (or, equivalently volunteer work) to Debian, it is used to enhance something that everybody owns.
There is nothing particularly novel about those ideas: in the past, people have formed various cooperatives and community-based businesses for the same reasons. It's no different with software, it just is happening on a global scale.
"Don't pay for Linux services, get your Linux for free and give up your own time and effort." It should almost go without saying that that isn't going to work for everyone.
We are talking about universities and students here.
But I think it would work for almost everyone if they only tried. Even businesses can make financial donations, have their IT staff take over maintenance of a package or two, or just host bandwidth. The cost is low and the benefits go far beyond just helping Debian.
There are zillions of clues you get from people's appearance; no electronic gadget can come even close.
Because line of sight and short-range really matters in this application: you want to know who the "compatible person" is. Someone 30 feet behind you won't do you that much good. Getting Bluetooth to be that specific is much harder.
We are all all wearing these tags--we are all dorks, after all.
Many "classic" papers are reissued in "Readings In..." volumes--check on Amazon for your favorite subject area. Also, Citeseer ranks papers by popularity; that's not necessarily an indication of either quality or significance, but it is another measure of interest. Then, ask your colleagues, friends, professors, fellow students for recommendations.
You can also do some digital archaeology: a lot of decades-old ideas are embodied in software you can download. You can get copies of MIT's ITS, TENEX, Smalltalk-80, PDP-11 UNIX, and run them on emulators. In particular, Alan Kay's own Smalltalk-80 system is available as part of Squeak (squeak.org): running it will show you both what Smalltalk-80 was and what it wasn't.
Keep in mind that often, the mere existence of prior art won't convince people. For example, much of the stuff Microsoft and Apple's PR departments are claiming as "new technology" is ideas that people explored and abandoned decades ago. Some of it may well be worth reviving (given that we have faster processors), but that doesn't make it original or innovative. And in some cases, you get the idea that the developers themselves just don't know of the history of their (fairly obvious) idea.
It may very well be free if your institution is one of those beta testing MSDN-AA.
Loss leaders, promotions, and beta-tests aren't "free" either. You may or may not pay money for them in the short term, but in the long term, you will pay for them.
In fact, the biggest cost in using Microsoft software at university is that you will be buying Microsoft software later on--tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime.
People are often confused about the more distant past. While that statement makes no sense to you or me and can't possibly mean anything given what we understand "APL", "Basic", and "UNIX" to be today, it may be accepted, widely known historical fact in another 100 years that such a device existed and did what he said it did.
(Not that I believe the guy.)
If you pay for a RedHat or SuSE subscription, you end up helping create an infrastructure in which you will not have a choice but to pay them in the future. And for the measly amount of bandwidth and support you get from them, even $25 is too much.
Rather than financing RedHat and SuSE through purchase of their software, help with a true community effort: Debian. Take over management of a package, host a mirror site, write some documentation, etc. That way, Linux will remain free not just in theory but in practice.
Your copy of Windows isn't "free". In fact, where the money is coming from isn't at all mysterious: it comes out of what you pay to the university, because your university then turns around and pays millions of dollars for that site license.
You probably end up paying several hundred dollars for Microsoft software through that channel and you don't even have a choice in the matter.
Flash itself isn't bad, just like HTML itself isn't bad.
The two are completely different. Flash is a proprietary, binary format under the control of a single company. HTML is an open, text-based standard being developed openly.
By charging those who charge they can maybe hope to barely make payroll if they produce best in the world quality work. You begrudge them this.
No, I'm just saying that the combination of design and license they chose for Qt/Embedded is contrary to the goals of free and open source software.
You see, Qt/Embedded is not just some software product, it's something that excludes every other toolkit from the platform it runs on.
Note that this is a case-by-case issue. I have no problem with dual-licenses for ReiserFS, for example, because the implications are completely different. ReiserFS does not exclude other file systems or other software.
Do you have any concept of how poor almost everyone in this dual-licensing business is compared to what their single proprietary licensing peers are making?
Well, good, so let them make a proprietary product and become rich. I think that would be just swell, instead of pretending that they are somehow supportive of open source software.
But it's just a simple fact that Qt wouldn't have had a chance in hell if it hadn't been for the dual-licensing gimmick and Troll Tech's misleading presentation of the licenses.
What an ass!
While I think the ReiserFS dual licensing scheme is fine, your comments raise serious questions in my mind about your leadership of the project. With your lack of understanding of licensing issues and your attitude, I think there is a serious risk that you will end up killing the project and alienating more potential contributors. We'd been in touch previously about possible contributions to the project, but now I just don't think there is much point to it.
Why do people keep bringing up iBooks whenever there is any discussion of handhelds? iBooks are bricks by modern laptop standards: nearly five pounds and with a huge footprint. Apple has never produced an ultra-portable laptop.
Now, the Panasonic Toughbook, Fujitsu Lifebook, and Sony ultraportables are serious competitors for these kinds of handhelds. Some of them are lighter than two pounds, and some of them are actually quite small. Check out dynamism.com for what's available in tiny x86-based laptops. The Sony U101 is pretty close to a PDA, actually.
The QPL is a Open Source Inititive certified license. It gives you different rights than the GPL, but it is a very open and friendly license that meets all the OSI criteria. In addition, it's applicable to the full, freely downloadable Qt source. I.e., the QPL is another open source license you can use at no cost to write and distribute your software under, if you happen not to like the GPL.
Yes, Qtopia is licensed under OSI-compliant licenses. But the important question is whether those licenses achieve the goals of free software or open source software. Just because a license is OSI-compliant or just because a piece of software is licensed under the GPL doesn't mean it helps free software or open source software. In fact, it may even hurt it.
That's why even FSF software isn't always licensed under the GPL. Instead, the FSF created the LGPL and the GPL-with-exceptions. Those licenses are specifically used for important system libraries that have commercial and free alternatives already available and for which it is desirable that they are used by all applications, commercial or non-commercial. And both conditions are satisfied for GUI toolkits.
Qt/Embedded and Qtopia are basically a grab by a small company to own the commercial handheld space. The company has used open source as a vehicle to achieve a big marketshare and get lots of contributions with a product that would otherwise have not been competitive. And it's no accident that those libraries take over the screen and exclude other toolkits: Troll Tech could have built Qt/Embedded around X11 with probably a smaller memory footprint, but that wouldn't have achieved their commercial aims: control of the Linux handheld space.
The GPL/OSI-compliance of Troll Tech's products is a fig leaf, and the goals of the company are arguably contrary to the goals of both the free software and open source movements.
I see most of the GUI innovation coming from Apple nowadays
I see no GUI innovation coming out of Apple. What "innovative" things do you think Apple has done with the GUI?
[Today, there are better choices available than Objective-C] That's your opinion stated as if it were fact. Today, as then, there was a C++ as well as an Objective-C to choose from, so I hope that's not the new improved language of which you might be thinking.
Well, first of all, let's be clear: even when it came out, Objective-C was only a simplistic engineering compromise--an attempt to bring Smalltalk-style OOP to UNIX workstations without too much effort. Technically, even back then, Smalltalk was a far better language. So, we are really just asking: among the commercially accepted languages and frameworks, which is technically the least bad for applications and GUI development. And I think that honor goes to Java and C# these days.
And by the way, from the time line you gave, the prototype of the graphical browser still came out before the line mode thing you mentioned.
Look at it more carefully...
Obviously, you'd much rather have a clean-cut, God-fearing ex-Jock representing "the movement".
If you think about, you can figure out for yourself what the priorities are of people who wear expensive suits, get great hair cuts, buy expensive cars, and all that. Frankly, I prefer RMS's priorities.
or "I won't answer unless you ask the question with my preferred terminology." when an attorney uses "free" and "open-source" interchangeably or refers to the "Linux operating system.
I doubt that Stallman would get into any trouble over demanding clarity and precision in the questions put before him. The meaning of such terms is integral to the case, and the judge knows that. In fact, most of SCO's case is built on deliberately trying to confuse the meaning of those terms.